Drip Dead

by Christy Evans

  “Mom? I’m really sorry, Mom.”

  “You never liked him.” Her voice croaked when she spoke as though she had forgotten how to use it.

  “Not much,” I admitted. There was no reason to argue with her. She was right. “Still, he was important to you—”

  I stopped as Dr. Cox came into the room.

  “Hello,” he said. He glanced my way before focusing on my mom. “How are you doing, Mrs. Neverall?” He walked over and took her hand, gently turning it over and pressing his fingertips against her wrist.

  “I, well, I don’t know,” she admitted slowly.

  “Sheriff Mitchell told me what happened,” he reassured her. “I’m very sorry.” He held a stethoscope to her chest. “Deep breath.”

  She sucked in air, her breath catching in a sudden hiccup that seemed to break something loose in her chest. She held the breath for a moment as Dr. Cox moved the stethoscope, but when he said, “Breathe out,” what escaped was a ragged sob.

  The doctor caught her as she crumpled forward, tears running down her face. He looked at me over her head. I moved closer and Dr. Cox transferred Mom into my arms. I patted her back, not knowing what else to do.

  We stayed that way for a couple minutes, until Mom drew a deep breath and shook herself free of my embrace.

  “My apologies, Doctor,” she said stiffly. She took the tissue the doctor offered and wiped delicately at her eyes. “Please forgive my outburst.”

  “Certainly, Sandra. It’s a perfectly normal reaction.” He placed the stethoscope back against her chest. “Okay. Breathe in.”

  Dr. Cox spent several minutes with Mom, examining her and talking to her. By the time he was through, my mother was once again her usual controlled—and controlling—self.

  “May I have my keys, please?” she asked as we left the Immediate Care Clinic. She held out her freshly manicured hand. Plum Crazy. It was a perfect color for my mother—it described exactly how she made me feel.

  I turned over the keys and climbed into the passenger’s seat of the Escalade. I wasn’t sure she should be driving, but I wasn’t anxious to get behind the wheel of that beast again. And my car was at her house.

  When we pulled up in front of her house, the ambulance was gone but the sheriff was still there. At least it would save me a phone call. His car was parked where Mom had found us, and several other cars were parked nearby. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across the gate, where a deputy stood guard with a clipboard.

  As we climbed from the car, I saw the deputy writing notes. Another deputy came out of the backyard and stopped to sign the clipboard.

  Before we could reach the door to the house, Sheriff Mitchell appeared from the backyard and intercepted us on the front lawn.

  “You can’t go in there, ladies.”

  “I most certainly can, Sheriff. This is my house.” Yep, Mom was definitely back to her usual self.

  “This is a crime scene, Mrs. Neverall. No one is allowed in until we have finished our investigation.”

  Color drained from Mom’s face, and for an instant I was afraid she was going to shut down again. But she recovered quickly, drawing herself up straight. “Crime scene? My house? I find that hard to believe.”

  The sheriff shrugged off her objection. “Until we know how Mr. Whitlock died and what he was doing under your house, it’s a crime scene and no one is allowed in.”

  He gave me a quick glance and I thought there was a hint of amusement in his eyes. He’d dealt with my mother before and he knew it wasn’t often anyone got the upper hand with her. The gleam of humor disappeared so fast I couldn’t be sure I’d really seen it, and he resumed speaking.

  “Mrs. Neverall, do you have someplace else to stay? I really can’t let you in the house.”

  Mom shook her head in disgust. “I’ve already started moving, so I guess I can just stay at Gregory’s . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she had said, and she studied the sheriff’s face. “No, I suppose that’s out, too, isn’t it?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Someplace else, maybe?”

  I’d been backed into a trap, and we all knew it. With as much grace as I could muster, I said, “She can stay with me.”

  Mom looked horrified at the prospect, but there wasn’t much she could say. It was that or stay somewhere out of town. There wasn’t a real hotel in Pine Ridge, and the local bed and breakfast certainly wasn’t up to her standards. Besides, she wasn’t about to admit to anyone in town that she didn’t have a place to stay.

  The negotiations for Mom’s move continued for several minutes. She demanded to pack her clothes, the sheriff refused. Eventually they settled on giving her ten minutes’ access to her dresser and closet, under the supervision of one of Mitchell’s deputies.

  Mom wasn’t happy with the arrangement, especially since there were no female deputies to oversee her packing, but eventually the sheriff gave her a take-it-or-leave-it choice and she capitulated.

  I didn’t wait for her to pack and follow me back to my house. Instead I climbed into the driver’s seat of the Beetle and drove as fast as I dared to my rental house.

  I only had a few minutes to prepare for Mom’s visit.

  I had to work fast.

  I had a mess of my own to tackle before Mom walked through my door.

  Water damage is one of the most expensive problems that can crop up in your home. One way to keep from being taken by surprise is to buy several small, battery-operated moisture alarms and put them in places that are likely to have small leaks that aren’t easy to see—by the water heater, behind the toilets, under the sinks, and so on. Pick them up when you clean, and replace them when the floor is dry and they’ll last for years. You’ll hear an ear-splitting alarm at the first sign of trouble and can get a plumber in before thousands of dollars’ worth of water damage has occurred.

  —A Plumber’s Tip from Georgiana Neverall

  chapter 5

  Daisy and Buddha greeted me at the door, anxious for a treat and a walk. I told them that even Airedales took second place to Mom right now and shooed them out into the backyard.

  I threw myself into a cleaning frenzy. The house would never meet Sandra Neverall’s exacting standards of domestic achievement, but I could at least scrape off a couple layers of chaos before she arrived.

  I stripped the bed and set out clean sheets. The bathroom was, thankfully, mostly clean. I ran a sponge over the sink and counter, and yanked the used towels off the towel bar.

  By the time Mom’s Escalade pulled into the driveway, I had managed to get the bathroom fully clean, the bed remade, and the dirty dishes stowed in the dishwasher. I glanced at my watch and grinned. She had stretched her ten minutes into half an hour. The deputy charged with watching her was probably nursing a monster headache. I bet she’d packed half her wardrobe.

  As if to confirm my conclusion, Mom came up the walk pulling two roll-along suitcases, with a computer case hanging from one shoulder. No way she managed to pack all that in ten minutes.

  I met her at the door and took one of the suitcases. I rolled it back to the bedroom and left it at the foot of the freshly made bed.

  “You don’t have to give up your bedroom, Georgiana,” she said crisply. “I can take the guest room.” She glanced down the hall toward the closed door. “Is that it?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not a bedroom, Mom. It’s where I work out. You go ahead.” I waved toward the bed with a gesture that took in the whole room. “I can sleep on the couch for a few days.”

  I was already regretting my decision to offer her a place to stay. She had only been in the house three minutes and already I could feel my shoulders knotting.

  Silently I said a little prayer that it would only be a few days. Any longer than that and I knew we would be at each other’s throats.

  Mom’s eyebrow shot up. “You have a workout room? I am impressed. What kind of equipment do you have?”

  Before I could stop her she swung the door wi
de. She stopped in the doorway, her mouth drawing into a thin line. She turned to stare at me, arching one eyebrow in a way she knew annoyed me.

  “This is what you call a workout room?” She waved one hand dramatically. “It looks more like a padded room.” She let the phrase hang in the air, the tight lift of her lips suggesting I might really need a padded room.

  “You know my workouts are based in martial arts, Mom. We’ve talked about this before.” I clamped my mouth shut. No sense starting an argument within her first quarter hour in my house. Not when I would have plenty of time to argue with her in the days—or, heaven forbid, weeks—to come.

  I picked up the laundry basket I’d brought from the bedroom and began stacking the sort-of-folded shirts and underwear on the empty shelf in the closet.

  I made a mental note to get a new pair of pajamas. I couldn’t actually sleep on the couch in the buff—my usual practice—and Mom would never approve of my alternative of a worn-out T-shirt.

  There was a more pressing matter however. My refrigerator was in its usual state: mostly empty. In spite of repeated vows to shop and eat healthier, I always fell back into the bad habits that came from my years of hundred-hour workweeks in the high-tech industry.

  Without looking I could inventory the contents: a few bottles of microbrew, leftover pizza, and a plastic container full of condiment packets from various fast-food joints.

  The cupboards weren’t much better. I needed to do some grocery shopping if I didn’t want Mom to take control of that, too.

  “Why don’t I give you a little time to get settled, Mom?” I led her back to the bedroom. “You can unpack—I emptied the dresser for you—while I go pick up some groceries.”

  Mom opened her mouth but I continued before she could get a word out. “I won’t be long. Just go ahead and make yourself at home.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I bit back the impulse to laugh manically. Mom was a control freak. She would not only make herself at home, she’d take over completely. The only question was how long it would take.

  I grabbed my wallet and keys and whistled for the dogs. If I took them with me there would be one less thing for Mom to complain about when I returned.

  As soon as I parked the Beetle I pulled out my cell phone and called my best friend, Sue Gibbons, at Doggy Day Spa. I needed help if I was going to survive Mom’s invasion.

  “You’re coming to dinner tonight,” I told her when she answered the phone. “No argument, okay?”

  “Why would I argue?” Sue laughed. “I love Garibaldi’s.”

  “No pizza. Sorry. I’m going to cook.”

  “Whoa. What’s the occasion? And what should I bring?”

  “No occasion,” I lied. “And you don’t have to bring anything. I’m thinking spaghetti and garlic bread. I can handle it.”

  “Six?” Sue asked.

  “Works for me,” I replied.

  “Uh, Georgie? You don’t just randomly decide to cook because it’s Thursday. Is Wade coming? Should I call Fred?”

  “No!” I shouted into the phone, then realized how strongly I’d reacted. “No, don’t call Fred. I can’t explain right now, but Wade won’t be there. Just us girls. Okay?” I tried not to wince at the word girl and carefully avoided mentioning that there would be another “girl” at dinner.

  I hesitated. I hadn’t really expected to get away without telling her, and it really wasn’t fair not to give her some advance warning that she was having dinner with Mom. And why.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is an emergency. And it’s complicated. Listen, I’m at the grocery store. I really can’t explain this on the phone. I’ll come by the spa on my way home. But I can’t stay long if I’m going to cook.”

  I hung up before she could ask me anything else.

  Twenty minutes later I pulled up in front of Doggie Day Spa, having set a personal power-shopping record for the grocery store. The front-end cargo space of the Beetle was packed with enough groceries to last me several weeks, or Mom and me a few days. Fast-food dining made groceries last a long time, but I knew that wasn’t going to be possible with Mom in the house.

  I let the dogs out of the car, clipping on their leashes. Sue met us at the door of her pet grooming shop with treats for the dogs and a question for me.

  “What’s going on, Georgie? When I tried to call Fred he wasn’t available, and the deputy who took my message was acting awfully strange. That couldn’t have anything to do with why you didn’t want me to invite him to dinner, could it?”

  Her tone was curious, but there was an edge. She’d been dating the sheriff for a few months, and we occasionally double-dated: her and Fred, and me and Wade Montgomery, a Pine Ridge City Councilman and my sort-of boyfriend. But since I’d been involved in the investigation of a couple murders in Pine Ridge, Fred and I were sometimes at odds.

  I motioned to a stool behind the counter, and Sue took the hint.

  I still didn’t know where to start, but there wasn’t time to tiptoe around the truth. “Gregory Whitlock’s dead.”

  Sue’s mouth dropped open but no sound came out.

  “I found him,” I continued, “this morning.” Had it only been a few hours ago? It felt like an eternity since those few horrible minutes under the house.

  “You found him? Where was he?” Sue’s voice strained with shock.

  “He was under Mom’s house.” Even though it was the truth, I realized how absurd it sounded when I said it that way.

  “What?”

  I tried to explain. “I went to check the plumbing and stuff in the crawl space under the house. He was down there.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how he got there or what he was doing. In fact, I don’t know much of anything about this. I just know he was dead.”

  “But, how . . .?”

  I shrugged again. “Ask Fred. He isn’t telling me—or Mom—anything. All I know is that he won’t let my mother back in her house, and she can’t stay at Gregory’s, either.”

  Sue eyed me suspiciously. “And just where is she staying?”

  “With me,” I admitted miserably. “Which is why you have to come to dinner tonight. I left her unpacking, but I’m stuck with her until your boyfriend lets her back in her house, or lets her stay at Gregory’s. I mean, she’d practically moved in there already, so she ought to be able to stay there, shouldn’t she?”

  I tried not to think about how long it might be before I could get Mom back into her own house. I already knew it wouldn’t be soon enough.

  “So you have to come to dinner,” I pleaded. “Just for a little while, to give me a break. Maybe, with you there, we can get through this evening with a little dignity intact.”

  Speaking of dignity, another thought occurred to me. “And do you have a pair of pajamas I can borrow? Just until I can get into town to buy some new ones.” Pine Ridge wasn’t known for its shopping opportunities.

  Sue’s brow furrowed. Usually she was the one on a conversational roller coaster. It took a second for the question to register, then she nodded. “Sandra won’t approve of the ratty T-shirt, will she? I have a brand-new pair at home. I’ll bring them with me.”

  She glanced over at the dogs, settled contentedly in their favorite nap spots, and shook her head. “The pups could use a brushing. Why don’t you leave them here and go deal with Sandra? I owe you for the last round of computer work and I can bring them with me at six.”

  She looked around the empty shop. “Pretty quiet here this afternoon, anyway.”

  I couldn’t hide the relief I felt. I wished, for Sue’s sake, the shop was busier, but I was grateful for her willingness to take Daisy and Buddha off my hands for the afternoon.

  She did owe me for some computer maintenance I’d done for her. Not many people in Pine Ridge knew I’d owned a computer security firm in San Francisco, but the ones who did—like Sue and my boss, Barry Hickey—were happy to take advantage of my expertise.

  The reminder stayed with me through the drive home. W
hen I’d returned to Pine Ridge I thought Samurai Security was behind me. But the unexpected appearance of Blake Weston, and his subsequent murder, had landed the whole mess on my doorstep again, and nearly drawn me back into the world of high tech.

  There was still the matter of Samurai’s finances to sort out. A small army of lawyers and accountants were trying to untangle the mess. One of these days, they told me, there might be a financial settlement due me.

  I wasn’t holding my breath.

  By the time I hauled the last load of grocery bags into the kitchen, Mom was unpacking the first bags and putting them away. I got another of her raised-eyebrow looks when she opened the refrigerator to put away the salad. She didn’t have to say anything—we replayed the same conversation every time she looked in my fridge.

  First she would bemoan the state of my nutrition, then she’d move on to how she’d taught me better eating habits, and finally she’d sigh deeply and tell me that soon I would regret not taking better care of myself.

  “Just wait until you turn forty, Georgiana—and it’s not that far away, you know. You can’t eat like this forever.” I realized she had been talking for several minutes without me really hearing her.

  “I’ve got a long way till forty,” I countered. “And I don’t ‘eat like this’ all the time. I just hadn’t been to the grocery store this week.”

  Well, maybe I hadn’t been to the grocery store this month, but I’d been busy. I had my licensing exam coming up soon, and I’d been spending every spare minute studying.

  The exam had me spooked. I’d done fine on all the classroom work in my nearly four years in the apprenticeship program, and I had a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Caltech—one of the toughest schools in the country. But test anxiety was still an old nemesis. Intense preparation was my main defense, and I wanted to pass this thing the first time.

  “And don’t tell me how hard you’ve been studying. That’s no excuse. In fact”—she closed the refrigerator and leveled her gaze at me—“you should be more careful of your diet when you’re under stress. It’s a fact that proper nutrition is essential to proper brain function.”