I ran to the woman and knelt on the grass. Dep rubbed against my arm.
I shined my light near the woman’s face. She was small, thin, and white haired. It took a few seconds to register. I gasped, “Lois?”
She opened her eyes and gave me a sweet smile. “Emily! Can you help me sit up?”
I shook my head. “If you’re hurt, you shouldn’t move.” I placed my fingers on her wrist. “I’ll call 911.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not that bad. I was petting my kitty, and I fell over, that’s all.”
“You should be checked out.” Her pulse was strong.
“I’m okay. I was just winded there for a minute, and then I thought that maybe I’d been hearing someone talking, so I called for help. I thought I shouldn’t try to stand up by myself, but I’m okay.” She grasped my hand, bent her elbow, and levered herself to a sitting position. As I’d noticed that morning, she was strong. “There! See? I’m not dizzy.”
“Were you? Before you fell?”
“Not the tiniest bit. I just lost my balance, that’s all, and toppled over.” She knocked one fist against the side of her head. “Skulls are heavy. Hard, too, especially mine.” She smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be carefree. “I’m both hardheaded and stubborn.”
“You said you’d moved back to Fallingbrook, but I didn’t realize that you were the new owner of the house behind mine.”
“We’re neighbors, Emily? That’s wonderful!”
“Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Looks like I fell for your neighborhood.”
I groaned. I hoped that her punning was a sign that she wasn’t badly injured.
She moved her shoulders like someone pretending she wasn’t quaking. “We should go inside before the damp gets to us.”
I pointed at the wall separating her yard from mine. “A friend’s asleep in my yard.”
Lois whispered, “Then we should be quiet.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Still, I kept my voice low. “She’s the police officer who arrived first at Georgia’s. She’d be glad to come over. Even better, I have a friend who’s an EMT.” Samantha would come to my aid even if she was off duty.
“EMT?”
“Emergency Medical Technician.”
“Oh, an ambulance driver.”
Samantha hated it when people called her an ambulance driver, as if all she knew how to do was drive.
Lois flapped a hand in dismissal. “We don’t need that. Don’t bother her.”
“She wouldn’t mind.”
“Sure, she wouldn’t. She’s probably been patching people all day, and can hardly bear not bandaging arms and legs and shoving oxygen masks into faces. She’s probably dying to look after some old lady who tempted gravity.” Lois paused as if catching her breath. “Emily, if you’re just going to kneel there like a lump, I’ll get up and go inside by myself.” She leaned forward and pressed her hands into the lawn. Even if she couldn’t walk, she was going to crawl, with or without help from me.
I caved. “Take my arm, but let’s go only as far as your pretty lawn chairs. We can sit for a while before we go inside.”
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I called out after I fell. You’re going to too much bother.”
“It’s no bother.”
We rose together. She was light, and didn’t seem tottery. We made it past her ornate white-painted chairs, mainly because Lois was pulling, and climbed the stairs to her back porch.
Racing through her kitchen before, I hadn’t really paid it attention, but now I saw that it was amazing. Her appliances were aqua, authentic 1950s, and appeared to be in pristine shape. The cabinets were spotless and undented white-enameled metal. Dep sauntered to the one underneath the sink, stared down into an empty glass bowl on the black slate floor, and meowed.
Lois touched the handle of that fabulous fridge. “You want a sardine, don’t you, Tiger?”
I figured she wasn’t speaking to me. “Tiger?” I asked.
“My kitty. That’s what I call him.”
“Her. She’s a girl. I mean the cat is female. Tricolored cats usually are.”
Lois put her hands on her hips and squinted at Dep, who was still fixated on the empty bowl. “She doesn’t look like a tortoiseshell. She’s not all spotted and speckly, except for that darling orange patch on her head.”
“Her tortoiseshell coloring is mostly blended into tabby stripes. And she has those funny donut circles on the sides like some tabbies have. She’s a tortoiseshell tabby, a torbie.”
“Did you make that up?”
“No, that’s what they’re called, torbies.”
Lois insisted, “She’s still a tiger.”
“How long have you had her?”
Lois patted her shiny black counter. “She showed up after I moved in. She comes inside every evening and I give her a sardine. Then she prowls around the house, checking for mice, I guess, and meows to be let out for the night.”
I glanced out at the darkness beyond her back porch. “How does she get into your yard? Isn’t it walled?”
“It was, but there was a stone plugging up this clever cat-sized tunnel that goes into the next . . . oh, does the kitty tunnel go into your yard?”
“Yes. I just discovered it tonight.”
Lois glanced down at Dep, sitting beside the empty bowl. “So, you knew Tiger was a girl cat because she’s your cat?”
“I thought so, but maybe she doesn’t quite agree with me.”
“Let me guess. Your yard doesn’t have gates, either, and Tiger doesn’t climb walls, so you thought she was safely enclosed in your yard.”
“Yes, I did.” With one paw, Dep bopped the bowl a couple of inches toward Lois.
“She was shut in until I took that rock out of my side of her tunnel. Then she was safely enclosed in your yard and my yard. Our houses were built in 1889 by a pair of sisters who lived together until they were in their sixties and then they suddenly couldn’t stand each other.”
I’d never heard that story, but it explained the brick walls, maybe.
Lois straightened a kitchen chair that, as far as I could tell, didn’t need straightening. “I devoured everything I could about this neighborhood and this darling house before I moved in. I’d have liked to live closer to Georgia, but her house is too . . .” She gulped. “Too far out and lonely. You need a car. You can’t walk to anything. I thought that if I moved here, she might move closer to the center of town. Like . . . like into the house behind mine.” Eyes wistful, she quickly added, “I didn’t know you, then, Emily, and I’m happy having you for a neighbor. Anyway, I’m guessing the sisters who built the cottages shared a small pet or two, and that’s why they had that wall built with a secret passageway for small animals.”
All I could think of, with belated panic, was that Lois’s front and back doors had both been open. Dep could have wandered out into the street. I ran into the living room and closed Lois’s front door. Obviously, before I let Dep explore my garden again, I would have to block my end of the tunnel.
I went back to the kitchen. Lois was wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. “I’m sorry about being such a crybaby. It’s just that, well, you know, Georgia.”
I murmured, “I know.”
Purring so loudly that she almost could have been mistaken for a tiger, Dep rubbed Lois’s ankles. Lois started to stoop, then must have thought better of petting the cat so soon after her previous disastrous attempt. She leaned back against her white porcelain sink. “She’s such a sweetie that I don’t know what I ever did without her.” She squared her shoulders. “But if she’s your cat, I should get my own.” Wiping her eyes again, she turned around and opened that vintage aqua fridge.
Drying blood matted a small patch of hair on the back of her head.
“Lois, did you hit your head when you fell?”
“Maybe. I didn’t notice.”
“Let me see.” The wound didn’t look too bad, and the bleeding had stoppe
d. “Do you have ice?”
“Yes.” She pulled an old-fashioned aluminum ice cube tray out of the tiny freezer compartment at the top of the fridge.
I removed two cubes, wrapped them in paper towels, and handed them to her. “Hold this to the back of your head to keep the swelling down. I’d clean the wound for you, but I’m afraid I’d start it bleeding again, and I don’t see any dirt particles or anything like that in it.”
“I don’t know where to put the ice. I can’t see the back of my head.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
She seemed to be staring inward. “Maybe.” I guided her hand and the ice to the spot.
“How long do I have to do this?”
“Twenty minutes.”
Holding the ice against her head with her left hand, she took a bowl out of the fridge, removed plastic wrap from it, scooped out a small sardine with her fingers, and dropped it into the bowl.
Dep hunkered down. Head tilted to one side, she gnawed on the treat. She finished it, made a stab at cleaning her whiskers, and headed into the dining room.
“See?” Lois said. “It’s like she’s checking for intrude . . . I mean mice.”
I followed Dep. She investigated the dining room, and then marched into the living room. Mouth open, she sniffed at the books I’d noticed scattered on the floor. They were photo albums. Dep sat down beside them and let out a loud meow.
Lois called from the kitchen, “What is it, Tiger?”
“She doesn’t like change,” I answered. “Last time she was here, your photo albums must have been on the bookshelf.”
Lois’s wounded head did not prevent her from rushing, holding the ice against the back of her head, into the living room. The previously white knees of her jeans were grass stained. She stared at Dep and the photo albums as if puzzled. She studied the tipsy lamp, too. “Did you move the lampshade, Emily?”
“No. It was like that when I got here. And your front door was standing open.”
Lois glanced at me and then away almost immediately, but not before I saw raw fear flit through her eyes.
Chapter 6
I demanded, “Lois, did someone break into your house?”
“No, no . . .” Her voice trailed away. “I must have left the door open and forgot. It was kind of hot earlier. And . . .” Her chin trembled. “Georgia . . . my best friend.” My sympathy swelled for the petite woman standing staunchly in her old-fashioned living room.
Deputy Donut trotted up the stairs toward the second floor.
Lois wiped her eyes. “It was bad enough when Matthias was killed. He was like a son to me. And now Georgia, too . . .”
“And you’ve been attacked.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“No, no, I told you. I left the doors open because it was hot.” She must have seen the skeptical tilt of my head. “Maybe it wasn’t that hot, but I got overheated, taking those books off the shelf so I could dust them. Then before I put the books back, well, I’ve been flibberty-gibbeting between one thing and another, not really thinking about what I’m doing.” She let out a shaky breath. “Georgia.” She raised her chin. “Then I thought I heard my . . . your cat, and there she was, outside. I bent over to pet her, and I fell. That’s all. No big deal. Don’t call an ambulance. Don’t tell anyone, especially not the Knitpickers. They don’t know me yet. They’ll think I’m an old fool. Really, it’s all very simply explained, but embarrassing.”
“Who tilted the lampshade?”
She gave the lamp a dirty look. “I must have. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m sure I jostled it when I stood up. I just forgot, that’s all.” She straightened the shade. There was an air of defiance in her obviously tense neck.
I didn’t put my phone away. “Do you usually throw things on the floor before you dust them?”
“Yes. No. Well, sometimes.” She fanned her face. “It was hot. I mean I was hot. And I wasn’t thinking, except about . . .” She swallowed. “Georgia.” She wiped her eyes again.
“Did you feel faint?”
“No. I told you. I wasn’t dizzy, and I wasn’t nauseous. I just lost my balance and fell.”
If she was bending forward to pet the cat, how did she cut the back of her head? When I’d found her, she was on her right side. And the grass stains on her jeans were in the front and on the right side. Not on the back.
I was almost positive that someone had broken in, pulled photo albums off the shelves, knocked the lampshade askew, chased her into the backyard, and hit her head from behind.
But who, and why?
And why didn’t she want me to know what had really happened? Did the attack have something to do with the murders of Georgia and Georgia’s son?
“You might as well go now, Emily,” Lois said. “Remember, I recognized you as soon as I opened my eyes. I don’t have a concussion.” Her smile was tentative, but her eyes twinkled with intelligence and humor. “I’m tired. Take Tiger with you. I’ll be sure to keep my front door closed—”
“And locked.”
“That, too. So, if your kitty comes back, she won’t get out. And I suppose you’ll want to barricade her secret passageway again.”
I wished I could fit through the cat tunnel and keep track of Lois even better than my cat would. Meanwhile, I could use Dep as an excuse to check on Lois, who was refusing to admit she could be in danger.... “I don’t think I will. As long as Dep can’t escape from our two yards and houses, she’s perfectly safe.”
“Dep? What kind of name is that?”
“It’s short for Deputy Donut. Tom and I named the shop after her. She comes to work with me.”
“I didn’t notice her there.”
“She stays in the office. You could have seen her looking through a window from the office into the dining room.”
“Well, I didn’t. I didn’t notice an office. Or Tiger. I mean Dep.”
“You were facing the front windows. The office is in the back, next to the kitchen.”
“And I was distracted.” She ran her fingers through her hair and didn’t seem to notice that a blade of grass landed on the carpet. “Wondering where Georgia was.” Her eyes watered. Dep trotted down the stairs and joined us in the living room. Lois gave her a fond look. “And your Deputy Donut comes inside and pads through my entire house before she goes outside again. It’s like she really think she’s a deputy, and she’s patrolling! I thought she only worked the evening shift, but now I know where she is all day—Deputy Donut. I’ll make certain to look for her when I’m there with the Knitpickers.” She twisted the tissue in her hands. “But all of those po—” She broke off. “I mean, now that Georgia’s gone, maybe I should go back to concentrating on art.” She glanced toward the painting above her couch. It showed a lazy river winding between meadows and reflecting apricot-tinted cottony clouds in a pale blue sky, obviously changing color around sunset.
“That’s beautiful.” I meant it. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a calm evening. Did you paint it recently?”
“No, I did paint it, but . . . it’s one of my favorites.”
That was an odd way to answer—or not answer—my question. “Do you have art shows? A gallery?”
“A gallery down in Madison shows my work.” She waved a hand toward the stairs. “I have a studio in a room tucked under the eaves upstairs.”
“Those sisters built their houses from the same floor plan, didn’t they?”
Lois’s vigorous nod didn’t seem to hurt her head. “Originally, they were going to build a house for the two of them, but after they had their tiff, they needed two houses. They cut costs by building smaller homes and sharing the blueprints.”
“How funny that they cooperated that much. Their brick walls send a strong message, and must have cost a minor fortune.”
“Labor was cheap in those days.” She gave me a sharp glance. “You have a policewoman friend and a former police chief who works with you. Plus, police come to your donut shop a lot. You’re not goin
g to tell any of them that I was attacked, are you?”
“Were you? Attacked, I mean?” Was she finally going to admit it?
“No. I just don’t want you making things up.”
“I won’t.” I didn’t need to. “You know what my EMT friend would say about you not going to the hospital tonight, don’t you?”
“An ambulance driver would expect to drive people to the hospital, so she’d say I should go. But I don’t need to, and I won’t.”
“Samantha would say that if you’re not going to the hospital, someone should wake you up every hour to make certain you’re still conscious.”
“That never made sense to me. If I wasn’t conscious, what would that person do about it?”
Lois had a way of making me smile, even though the situation wasn’t funny. “Probably call an ambulance.”
She raised her gaze to the ceiling and lowered it to me. “And they’d take me to Emergency where I could sit up for the rest of the night on some horrid, hard chair while people sneezed and coughed all over me. I’d rather sleep in my own bed, thank you very much.”
“They wouldn’t consider taking you to the hospital if someone checked on you.”
“Feel free to call me every hour.” She gave me her phone number.
“It’s a deal.” Although Lois had tried to get me to say I wouldn’t tell anyone about the attack she denied, I hadn’t agreed. If Misty was still at my place, I could sound her out. I wouldn’t necessarily have to mention Lois’s name. I asked, “Will you lock the front door after I leave, and your kitchen door, too, after you let Dep out into your backyard?”
“Wouldn’t you rather take her with you, to make certain she gets there?”
I smiled down at the winsome kitty. “I don’t have her leash and halter with me, and I don’t want to try carrying her around the block. She’d squirm, and her claws are sharp.” My hand still stung from its encounter with those claws at my end of Dep’s tunnel. “Let her outside, and I’ll go out my back door and call her. When she’s ready, she’ll come.”
Lois accompanied me to the front door, opened it, and switched on her porch light.
Survival of the Fritters Page 4