by E M Kaplan
“No idea,” Dan Beardsley said, shrugging. “Maybe try before lunch.”
A camera at the part of the hall where Lynetta and Betty’s room was caught their doorway just at the edge of the frame in grayscale clarity. They could just barely see the entire door, but it was there, the number 39 marking it. The date and time in the upper left corner of the footage confirmed that it was from the correct day and approximately ten in the morning.
She watched as Marcy zoomed through hours of footage in just minutes as people passed back and forth in front of the room in hyper-speed, walking like they were in an old Charlie Chaplin silent film. Staff members pushed carts of supplies and laundry down the halls. Other residents ambled by. However, no one had lingered near room 39 or gone inside. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Marcy paused the video. With a blunt-tipped, unpainted fingernail, she tapped the timestamp on her monitor. “This is still from earlier today, but already after lunch. You can see the door is open, so that means Betty is inside her room reading. If the door was closed, that would mean she was still down at the café room, but she likes to keep her door open if she’s inside. We have some activities right after lunch since they’re already out of their rooms, but Betty usually just goes somewhere quiet and reads.”
Josie had a sudden pang in the center of her chest. At that exact same moment, they’d already had to make the decision to take Lynetta off the breathing machines. Her heart had already stopped by the time Betty had finished her lunch.
Did Betty have any trouble swallowing her meal knowing that her roommate was gone? Was Betty the one who’d poisoned her or had someone else planted the powdery substance in her favorite chair?
“How do we know she was really inside her room?” Josie asked. “We can’t see her.”
Marcy scrolled the video ahead. “Because she’s right there. Leaving with someone.”
Chapter 32
“Who is that? Betty didn’t have any visitors listed on the sign-in sheet,” Josie said.
The person on the screen was tall and thin, and bundled up to the teeth in a puffy winter coat and hat. From the posture and slight profile they could see in the nearly black-and-white image, it was definitely a man, youngish to middle-aged.
Marcy grabbed her clipboard and glared, the coiled springs of her hair quivering as she clutched the board in her doughy arms. “I thought I said not to touch my stuff.”
Let’s see how territorial you are when the police confiscate everything on this stupid desk and lawyers subpoena your butt for the witness stand.
After a pointed glare aimed at Josie, Marcy shuffled the top two sheets on it. Then she squinted at the video on her screen again where she’d frozen the footage. She flipped the paper again. And then one more time, scrunching up her nose. “He didn’t sign in.”
Genius. I could have told her that.
Marcy hugged the clipboard to her chest again and tipped her chin up defensively. “I don’t know why he didn’t follow the rules, but that’s obviously Harris Kane on the video.”
“What?” Josie craned her neck and peered at the frozen profile on the monitor. “How can you tell?”
“Oh, please. I’ve known him since preschool. He asked me to prom, but I said no.” Marcy’s upper lip curled in disgust. “As if I would go with him. He’s like my brother. We literally got potty-trained together, so I’m not going to date him. That’s gross.”
And just think what might have happened if you’d ended up with him. You probably saved yourself from a life of angry shouting matches and loud make-up sex. And possibly being clonked on the head with a snow shovel.
“Look,” Marcy said. “That’s definitely his stupid hat. Anyone can see that.” She tapped the screen with her short-trimmed nail, making a tink tink tink sound.
The man on the screen had turned slightly in the door frame so more of his jacket was in view. His front pocket bulged with the bulk of a knit cap having been jammed into it. Even in the fuzzy resolution of the video and washed out colors, Josie could clearly see the distinctive checked pattern of his knit cap.
“Where is he taking Betty? How does he even know her?” Josie asked.
Dan Beardsley spoke up. “Betty is Harris’s aunt’s mother-in-law.”
Josie stared at him. “I can’t even begin to understand what you just said without a twelve-page PowerPoint slide and a Venn diagram, but what I did get from all that is that Harris is distantly related to her by marriage.”
“In this town, who isn’t related?” Marcy asked, rolling her eyes.
Even so, if he was related to Betty, that didn’t explain why any of them would want to kill Lynetta.
Marcy shoved back from her desk on her wheeled chair, forcing Josie along with Dan Beardsley to jump out the way or get bowled over. In Josie’s case, she lurched back, hopping on her good foot.
This whole one-legged situation is getting old. Luckily for me, it’s only temporary.
As Marcy turned around, Josie did a double-take at the woman’s rounded midsection. She was definitely pregnant.
Okay, not definitely. Never assume a woman is pregnant, dummy. She could have a food baby. Or recently have been pregnant and just hasn’t recovered. Or was not-so-recently pregnant and has never regained her previous shape. Maybe she has a tumor. The point is, don’t mention it.
With great effort, Josie kept her mouth shut, but she was notorious among her friends for blurting things out, and now that something she was not supposed to acknowledge was right at the forefront of her mind, it was bubbling in her throat, percolating and waiting to escape from her lips like a verbal fart.
But she better not drink that beer I gave her if she does have a grouchy little bun in the oven.
Marcy checked her watch. “I’m almost off shift for the day. Someone wanna go grab Darren Ross and a cop so they can see this video and I can get out of here? I have somewhere I need to be in fifteen minutes.” She scooped up her purse, which was a black leather shoulder bag with fringe that had a Harley Davidson tag hanging from the strap and began digging around inside it, apparently not too concerned that one resident of the facility was missing and one was dead.
Dan Beardsley looked at Josie, who pointedly picked up her crutch. “I’ll go get a police officer,” he said belatedly and disappeared back through the door.
Oh, wait, let me jog down the three miles of hallway to get someone, Josie thought to herself, her irritation rising with her need to elevate her throbbing foot. The pulse beating in her ankle was a metronome keeping pace with her escalating bad temper.
Josie asked Marcy, “You’re leaving now? Don’t you want to stay and figure out where Betty is?”
Marcy was still digging around in her purse, muttering to herself, her neck splotches growing larger and joining together in one red flush. “Where the hell are my keys?”
“Aren’t you the least bit concerned about Betty?” Josie pushed further.
The other woman finally looked up, her hazel eyes had turned bright green in contrast against the florid color of her neck, which had traveling up into her cheeks.
“I have to get my kid from daycare. If I don’t get there on time, they’ll fine me thirty bucks and give me a warning. I already have two warnings this year because of some hassle or another here at work, and it’s only February. If I get one more warning, they’ll kick us out of daycare. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent place for your kid?” Marcy’s mouth clamped shut even though it looked like she wanted to say more. When she finally spoke again, she said, “I’m sorry the lady is missing, but I still have to get my son. Now are you going to help me look for my keys or are you going to get out of my way?”
The woman’s irritated question was probably a rhetorical one, but Josie didn’t mind taking a look around the office under the pretense of helping. Fed up with her crutch, she leaned it against the counter and gingerly limped her way along the side of the room on her good foot, pushing papers to the side and peering at th
e floor under the desk.
“What do they look like?”
“Duh. It’s a bunch of keys, including the one to this place. If Darren finds out I lost it, he’s going to can my ass.”
“So it’s a big clump of them?” Josie asked, scanning the dusty linoleum tiles under her feet. “If it fell on the floor somewhere you definitely would have heard it, right?”
“It has my house key, a key to this place, my car, and a Harley keychain. That’s all.”
Josie straightened up and frowned, trying to picture Marcy on a motorcycle. “You have a Harley?”
“No, I have a 2005 Impala.” She said it like Josie was obviously a moron.
Josie stared at her for a split second before they both headed for the front window to check the parking lot. She put her nose close to glass as Marcy mirrored her position next to her. The two of them peered out at the ice-covered parking lot.
“Can you see your car from here?”
After a split second pause, Marcy swore a blue streak, her breath fogging up the window in a growing oval the more she cursed. “That son of a bitch stole my Chevy.”
Chapter 33
“Why would Harris Kane take your car?” Josie asked, just to make sure she was following Marcy’s bouts of rage and cursing. “He has his own car.” She’d seen him peel out of his driveway in his gray Ford sedan more than once in the last couple of days.
My possibly murderous neighbor took an old lady out of her room and stole a vehicle? What in the ever-lovin’ heck is going on here?
Dan Beardsley pushed back through the office door accompanied by Officer Jablonski, to whom Marcy related their latest discovery of her missing car through shouts and angry gestures. The officer took her statement with a preternatural calmness, staring at them all with his laser-sharp blue eyes, and Josie wondered if she should pull out her P.I. license to show her credentials, but thought better of it. He didn’t seem bothered by her presence. Maybe he was used to nosy neighbors in this sitcom-like town.
“You still driving the Impala?” Jablonski asked Marcy, who nodded.
He radioed in a description of Marcy’s dark red car to add to the report about the missing old woman and the female dispatcher’s monotone voice confirmed the details, adding, “Will post to the LPVPD’s Facebook to be on the lookout for Betty Harris Edwards. Should be picture on file from the Master Gardener’s charity garden walk last spring.”
How did she even know that?
“‘Appreciate it, Nancy,” the officer said at top volume, clipping his com unit back on his shoulder. “We’ll get your car back, Bates,” he said and it took Josie a second to figure out he was talking to Marcy and that it was her last name, which meant they also knew each other.
“Are you sure it was him?” Josie asked Marcy. “Maybe it was someone with the same hat?”
“Of course it was him. I think I would recognize someone I’ve known my whole life.” Marcy’s face had grown so pink it was no longer blotchy but all one hue—and that color was fifty shades of fury.
Josie pressed further, knowing she was pushing the already stressed out, possibly hormonal woman to her limit, “But how can you be sure?”
Marcy lunged a step toward Josie, and Dan Beardsley stuck his arm between them. As if that would stop Marcy, the raging bull. Josie wobbled on her bad ankle as she put both feet on the floor and prepared to dodge whatever attack Marcy might try.
I should have thought this through a little better… Story of my life.
“He knows I have to pick up Aiden from daycare. It’s already bad enough trying to raise my kid as a single mom. I can’t be in two places at the same time and everyone is always asking me to do this, pushing me to do that. Shoving me one way and another. Don’t they know I already have too much on my plate? I don’t have an extra thirty dollars in my budget to pay the daycare late pick-up fee!” Marcy shouted. “And I have my house key on that keychain!”
Josie, unable to stop her own momentum, leaned forward, ducking around Dan Beardsley’s arm. “But how can you be so certain it was Harris Kane who took your keys?”
Marcy exploded, a scream of rage erupting from her fuchsia-colored throat. She jammed a finger toward the floor directly toward her own feet. “Because he was standing RIGHT HERE with his STUPID hands in my pockets GROPING ME.”
First of all, gross. And second of all, so much for them being like brother and sister.
“Oh, Marcy,” Dan Beardsley said, looking disappointed on both a moral and philosophical level, as if the universe had somehow failed him. He put his hands on his hips and shook his head, lips pursed.
Jablonski’s eyebrows shot up, although he had the good grace to keep quiet. Even his com unit was silent for a beat or two as this latest development sank in.
Marcy jabbed one of her thick fingers in Dan Beardsley’s direction and shouted, “Don’t you dad me. You have no right to try to be my father now. It’s too late for that. You had your chance to adopt me and you blew it.”
“But Harris? You hate him.”
“I don’t hate him. I just don’t like him. But beggars can’t be choosers.”
No one is that desperate, girl.
“He’s a married man. You’re better than all this,” Dan Beardsley told her.
Marcy stuck out her chin. “Maybe I’m not.” She pointed at Jablonski next. “And don’t you dare tell my brother.”
Aha, that explained how they know each other. The ol’ annoying younger sister of my friend situation.
Jablonski looked a lot older than Marcy, but in reality he could have been less than ten years her senior. His gray hair and world-weary worry lines around his eyes might have been the result of a high-stress job or a Type A personality. He probably had a side business for when he retired from the police force, like brewing his own small-batch private-label moonshine or hot sauce. Something with a cute name like Red, Hot, and Blue.
“You are better than that,” Dan Beardsley told her. “You know you are. Come on,” he said with a sigh, trying to put an arm around her round shoulders, which she shoved off. “I’ll take you to pick up your boy.”
“Screw you—you don’t have a car seat,” she said and glared at him, her bright green eyes flashing. “But I have one. In my car, which Harris knew.”
“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out,” Dan Beardsley said in a tone of voice Josie had heard only on TV from sitcom dads during “very special” Sweep’s Week ratings episodes. He grabbed a puffy blue jacket off the coat hook by the door.
Marcy allowed herself to be helped into the sleeves. She punched her hand through the cuff and pointed another finger at him. “I’m only doing this because I don’t have any other options. Don’t get any ideas that you’re a part of our lives now. You’re not my dad, and you’re not my son’s grandfather.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only giving you a ride. I’m just helping out a friend in need.” He sounded anything but innocent. Maybe his obsession with the history of the town was really a cover-up to disguise his desire for interaction with its living, current-day residents.
But maybe that’s me reading too much into it.
As the pair left, Josie stood with Officer Jablonski listening to them quarrel all the way out the door. “Those two have a lot of layers of history,” she said, stating the obvious. She was still a bit stunned at the turn of events.
“Small town,” Jablonski barked at her in the tiny, enclosed space of Marcy’s office, and she tried not to flinch and lean away too noticeably from his elevated volume problem.
“What are you going to do next?” she asked him, hoping to get some insider investigation techniques. She reached in her pocket to dig out her P.I. license.
It’s time to fess up.
Before she could get her wallet out, the radio on his shoulder chirped. The woman dispatcher’s voice blared. “We got a hit on the Facebook post. Possible sighting of Marcy’s red Impala over by Booth Road near the high school.”
“Cripes. That was fast.”
“Social media. What can I say? It helps us out more than you’d ever know.”
Josie didn’t doubt it. She had some half-hearted internet stalkers thanks to her food blog. She rarely even showed her face online—the only skin she regularly displayed was of the fruit and vegetable variety—yet she still had readers who still seemed to know some of her more intimate thoughts and details of her life. Cyber stalkers. People who sent her pictures of their private bits.
While Jablonski called in his response and stomped down the hall in his boots to grab his partner, Josie got out her phone and used her map app to figure out where the road in question was. With her crutch, she wouldn’t be able to chase anyone across a frozen cornfield, but she might be able to follow along—at a safe distance, of course—and see what they discovered.
Hopefully they’d find Betty safe and be able to return with her for questioning. Right now, however, a second little old lady’s well-being was in question. Even if she did hold the key to what had happened to Lynetta.
Chapter 34
Thanks to the post on the police department’s Facebook page, Marcy’s car had been sighted parked on the side of the road next to a cornfield far north of town. The dark red Impala sat parallel to the rows of gray, cut stalks that jutted out of the frozen field only about calf-high as Josie limped past it into the field. Under a gray sky in the gathering dusk, the wind whipped up, burning her cheeks and making her ears ache.
Please don’t let me find a body. Please don’t let me find a body.
She may have muttered the words under her breath once or twice.
Officer Jablonski didn’t seem to mind that she’d tagged along with them on their way to the field—or rather behind them in her rental car. “The more eyes, the better,” he’d said in his extra loud voice that could probably be heard over sirens and across unruly crowds of teenagers. His bright blue eyes had both smile crinkles in the corners and tired bags under them. He and his partner had parked their police cruiser on the opposite side of Marcy’s car from her and were scanning the field in that direction.
