Dead by Dinner Time

by Jeff Shelby

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get her back on track. “My word choice was insensitive.” I tried to rephrase. “You seemed pretty convinced yesterday that someone killed him with those leaves.”

  She hesitated before offering a slight nod of agreement.

  “So if you had to name someone who might have a bone to pick with Arthur, who would it be?”

  “I hear gossip,” she said pointedly. “Not assassination plots.”

  “Okay, but was there gossip where someone spoke unkindly about Arthur?”

  Denise moved the stack of folded napkins so she could start another. “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  “Just think,” I urged. “Think if there was someone who might have been disgruntled about something.” I thought about his dining room routine. “Maybe someone who was offended that they couldn’t sit with him and Mary for meals?”

  Denise worried her bottom lip as her hands deftly moved through the piles of napkins, folding into triangles and then folding again.

  “The only person who comes to mind is Ruth,” she finally said.

  “Ruth?” I repeated.

  “Ruth Simpson.”

  I knew who she was talking about. Ruth was the resident who’d stepped in to help serve. Ruth was the woman who had been a carhop, and who loaded herself down with pounds of jewelry for every meal. “Why Ruth?”

  Denise clucked her tongue. “Because she was in love with that man.”

  “With Arthur?”

  Denise nodded.

  “So because she was in love with him, you think she poisoned him?”

  “I think nothing of the sort,” she pointed out primly. “You asked for the gossip I’d heard. That’s all I’m giving you.”

  “Fair enough. Ruth was in love with Arthur. And...?”

  She looked at me as though I were daft. “And Arthur was in love with Mary.”

  Of course.

  “Ruth wasn’t too happy about that,” Denise said. “She tried everything: flirting with him, sitting with him out in the Gathering Room before the dining room doors opened. He just wasn’t interested.”

  I pictured Ruth in my head. I had a hard time imagining her as a scorned woman, bitter over a man’s rejection. She was always sweet, always willing to lend a helping hand. Why, we’d witnessed that just the other night when she helped serve dinner...

  My hand flew to my mouth.

  Denise was too busy folding napkins to notice.

  Ruth had helped serve dinner on the night Arthur died.

  Could that have been a coincidence?

  Absolutely.

  But there was something else I knew about Ruth, something that immediately made me further question her involvement in all of this the minute I remembered.

  I’d been to Ruth’s apartment.

  And I knew one of her greatest passions was plants.

  Lots of them.

  ELEVEN

  Ruth wasn’t in her apartment.

  I only realized this after I bolted up the stairs and into the northern wing of the building and then proceeded to pound on her door for thirty seconds straight.

  Standing there panting and trying to catch my breath, I remembered where Ruth would be on Wednesday morning. Water aerobics.

  Sure enough, just as I was headed back down the stairs, she was climbing up them, taking the steps one at a time, clutching her terrycloth robe tight to her midsection. It was always a little disconcerting to see her so dressed down considering how she came to meals. Her short gray hair was still dry and styled, however, which probably meant she either hadn’t gone underwater or had worn a swim cap for protection.

  “Ruth,” I said, plastering a smile on my face. I was still a little out of breath. “Just who I was looking for.”

  She squinted at me. “You’re looking for me? Why?”

  I stopped midway between two stairs.

  Why was I looking for her?

  I mean, I knew the reason, but it wasn’t something I could just blurt out. Hey, I think someone might have poisoned Arthur Griggs and your name has come up as a potential suspect.

  That definitely was not going to work.

  “I wanted to talk to you about your plants!”

  She startled, and I reached out my hand, worried my enthusiastic answer might send her tumbling backwards down the stairs.

  “My plants?” she repeated.

  “I remember that you had a whole bunch of plants,” I said, in a much softer tone. “Flowers and stuff. Do you still?”

  Ruth nodded. “Oh, my, yes. Of course I still have them. They’re all my little darlings.”

  I’d followed her back up the stairs and we had reached the landing.

  “What did you want to know about them?” she asked.

  But before I could answer, she said, “Why don’t you come on in with me? I do need to get out of this wet swimsuit and begin dressing for lunch.”

  I stole a glance at the clock on the far end of the hallway. It was barely ten a.m. and I wondered if she truly did need almost two hours to get herself ready for her dining appearances.

  Ruth produced a key from her bathrobe pocket and inserted it into the lock. She stepped into her apartment and I followed after her.

  Ruth’s apartment was almost like stepping into a Brazilian rainforest. Flowering plants littered almost every horizontal surface, and ferns and trailing ivy hung from planters attached to the ceiling.

  “They’re all so lovely,” I murmured.

  I walked the room slowly, staring at the flowers and scrutinizing the leaves of all the plants, trying to identify the ones in the baggie. But I wasn’t a botanist—far from it—and nearly all of the leaves looked identical to me.

  I remembered the photos from the plant book Aidan had showed me, and I tried to focus on just the plants with purple flowers, but there were at least a few dozen of them.

  “You have a lot of purple flowers,” I said.

  She giggled. “It’s my favorite color. The color of royalty.”

  She disappeared into the bathroom and then came back out with a tube of lotion. “The chlorine is so drying,” she complained as she squeezed out a dollop of cream. She rubbed it between her hands and then bent down to massage it into her legs.

  I found a flowering plant that I thought looked similar to the one Aidan showed me in the book. “What kind of plant is this?” I asked.

  Ruth glanced at the plant. “Hmm. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t?” I moved to another one that also looked similar. “How about this one?”

  She gave me a rueful smile. “Oh, honey, I don’t know what any of them are. Does it still have the little stick in the pot? The thing that tells you its name and how to grow it properly?”

  I didn’t see one. But I didn’t look too hard because I got stuck on what she’s just said. “What do you mean, you don’t know what any of them are?”

  There was that giggle again. “I just buy them because they’re pretty.”

  And just like that, my hope of finding a connection to Ruth evaporated.

  She didn’t even know what she was growing in her apartment. The chances that she would pluck leaves off of one of her plants in the hopes that it might poison Arthur seemed infinitesimally small.

  She set the lotion on the kitchen table, next to the only plant in the room I could actually identify: an African violet, blooming with beautiful purple flowers.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me about my plants,” Ruth said.

  I swallowed. I had said that, hadn’t I? It had been a spontaneous statement, just something to get me into her apartment so I could look around.

  “Um, yes.” I smiled brightly, racking my brain for something to say. “I just...well, you know I’m always looking for new activity ideas and I thought about you and your plants and how it might be fun for the other residents to attend a little seminar about how to care for plants.” I took a breath. It actually didn’t sound as stupid as I’d feared. And now, with the
words out of my mouth, I was starting to see that the idea wasn’t actually terrible. I continued. “Maybe learn the best ones to grow in apartments, the benefits of having them. All those kinds of things.”

  Ruth smiled, and her eyes practically disappeared into her wrinkles. “Oh, that sounds delightful. Except I’m not really much of an expert.” Her smile faded. “I don’t know what most of these plants are, I’m afraid. And as for taking care of them, well I just make sure the blinds are open and water them a few times a week. Pinch off the dead leaves. Oh. And I talk to them.”

  “You what?”

  “I talk to them.” She touched the African violet on the table, her pointer finger stroking the velvety leaves, “Tell them about my day. What I did.” She leaned close. “And I always tell them how pretty they are.”

  I felt an unexpected lump in my throat, and I wondered if Ruth talked to her plants because she wanted to or if she did it because she didn’t have anyone else to share her news with.

  I blinked. I could feel the wetness building behind my eyes. Yes, the idea of Ruth using plants as a substitute for human companionship and interaction was sad, but the last thing I needed was to start blubbering in a resident’s apartment.

  She didn’t seem too upset by her statement, though. In fact, watching her continue to whisper to the robust African violet on her kitchen table, she actually looked as though she enjoyed it.

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe we can bring in someone from a nursery to talk about the best plants to grow for people in apartments. And you could bring some of your plants and talk about how much you enjoy taking care of them.”

  Ruth nodded. “Oh, I can certainly do that.

  “Oh, good.”

  And that was that. There was nothing left to say.

  I stood there awkwardly for a minute, unsure of how to make a graceful exit, especially since she was still cooing at her plant.

  I cleared my throat. “I also wanted to thank you for helping out in the dining room. You know, with Patty being sick and everything,” I said. “It was very nice of you to offer to help out.”

  She finally shifted her attention away from her plant and back to me. “Well, it’s nice to feel useful,” she said. “I spent quite a few years in my youth waiting tables. It’s amazing how those sorts of things stick with you. I picked up that tray in the dining room and it was as if I was back at Ace’s, roller skating orders out to cars.”

  I grinned at the image, mostly because all I could picture was Ruth as she was now, her gray hair flying out behind her as she skated across a parking lot, balancing a tray loaded down with baskets of burgers and fries.

  “And I also wanted to say how sorry I am about what happened in the dining room.”

  Her brow puckered.

  “With Arthur, I mean.”

  I caught the scowl that crossed her face, even though she tried to turn so I wouldn’t see it.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “Everything is just fine.”

  I didn’t know how much I wanted to ask her. How much would be too much. But I also knew I couldn’t let that change in her expression go without asking about it.

  I decided to try the innocent, uninformed route.

  “Were you and Arthur close?”

  She practically guffawed. “Not hardly.”

  “No?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Not after how he treated me.”

  I raised my eyebrows. She’d just given me the opening I wanted. “How did he treat you?”

  “Horribly.” She took a deep, fluttery breath. “He was such a cad. So insensitive.”

  “To you?”

  “To everyone,” Ruth said. “To me, and to every other woman at Oasis Ridge. I know I shouldn’t say this but if you ask me, he got what he deserved.”

  I blinked a couple of times. Was she really saying she thought Arthur deserved to die?

  I frowned. “I’m concerned about what might have happened between you and Arthur. As a representative for Oasis Ridge, it is my responsibility to make sure our residents feel safe at all times, and to provide the most comfortable living environment we possible can.” Could she tell I was lying through my teeth, and that wasn’t the reason at all as to why I was grilling her? “So if there is something you think we should know about Mr. Griggs, I hope you know you can confide in me.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing much to tell,” Ruth said.

  “You said he was insensitive. A cad.”

  “Well, he is a man...” Her voice trailed off.

  I waited, but she didn’t offer anything more. I bit back a sigh of disappointment. It was clear I wasn’t going to get anything more out of her.

  “Anyway, men just can’t be trusted,” she finished. “Just ask Mary.”

  “Mary? Mary Ulrich?”

  Ruth nodded. “As bad as Arthur treated me, it was nothing compared to the way he treated Mary.”

  This was news to me. “What do you mean?”

  “What? How he treated me?” She sat down at the table. “He led me on is what he did. Pretended to be interested in me and then tried to break my heart. Well, let me tell you something.” Her voice began to rise. “At my age, I’ve been around the block a few times, and there is no man who is worth my tears. None.”

  Ruth sounded like a first-rate feminist, which took me by surprise. But that wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been looking for.

  “How did he treat Mary?” I asked.

  She shook her head and tsked. “That man strung her along.”

  I was confused. “They were a couple, though.”

  “Yes, they most certainly were. But Mary wanted to get married.”

  I nodded. I knew this now, thanks to my conversation with Mary herself.

  “And he kept stringing her along. Telling her he needed more time, he wasn’t ready. It went on for weeks. Poor Mary was beside herself. She begged and begged him to marry her, and every single time he flat-out told her no.”

  This was news to me, because this was not what Mary had said. She’d told me she and Arthur were engaged, and she’d even suggested that their wedding was imminent. That the only thing that had gotten in the way of them tying the knot had been Arthur’s unfortunate demise.

  Not because Arthur had gotten cold feet...or because he’d never intended to marry her in the first place.

  “Mary was furious,” Ruth continued. “Imagine how you would feel if a man treated you that way!”

  I flashed back to the series of disastrous relationships I’d had over the years. Mary’s situation felt relatively benign compared to Jake, the guy who’d gambled away our vacation savings account. To Keith, the guy I dated for six months before finding out he already had a long-term girlfriend back home in Georgia. To Sam, my high school boyfriend who decided, after three years of dating me, that he was really Samantha.

  “The poor thing,” I murmured.

  Ruth nodded in agreement. “I’ll bet you something. I’ll bet you she’s happy she no longer has to deal with his bull crap.” Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry. I should watch my language.”

  I pressed my lips together so she wouldn’t see my reaction to her choice of profanity.

  “Anyway,” she said. “When I heard the news that Arthur died, the one thing I thought of was Mary. And how I bet that, after the shock wore off, she would be happy about it.”

  “Happy?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Ruth was adamant. “She wouldn’t have to give one more thought, one more piece of her heart, to that cad of a man.”

  “Well,” I said, clapping my hands and heading toward the door. I was suddenly in a hurry to leave Ruth’s apartment. “I’ll be in touch about the plants if we can get a seminar scheduled.” I wanted to tell her not to hold her breath, as getting Anne to sign off on it would probably prove to be impossible, but since I’d already planted the seed, I didn’t want to burst her bubble just yet. Especially when she was so worked up over Arthur.

  “You know w
here to find me,” she said.

  I did know.

  Just like I knew where to find Mary Ulrich.

  I was pretty sure she was the next person I needed to talk to if I wanted to figure out if there was indeed someone responsible for Arthur Grigg’s death.

  I thought about everything Ruth had said.

  Yes, I was more than sure I needed to talk to Mary.

  Because she just might have the answers I was looking for.

  TWELVE

  Mary Uhlrich was exactly where I thought she would be.

  Because she was attending one of the activities I’d planned for the week.

  I found her and a few other residents in the community kitchen, a smaller area off the activity room. She was sitting at the counter, scooping small mounds of cookie dough on to a waiting cookie sheet.

  I smiled as soon as I walked into the room, and it wasn’t just because the aroma of baking chocolate chip cookies was making my mouth water and my stomach grumble. No, seeing the residents gathered around the kitchen area, chatting and stirring ingredients and sliding finished cookies onto cooling racks filled my heart with happiness. This was something engaging, something comforting for the individuals who lived here. Something familiar and productive, an activity that hadn’t been created just to fill time but to provide them with a sense of community and purpose instead.

  It was moments like these that made me feel like I was doing what I’d set out to do: find ways to enrich people’s lives. I just wished they weren’t so few and far between.

  I stood close to the doorway, watching surreptitiously for a moment. Becky, one of the home health aides, was standing in the kitchen with the residents, doing her best to stay out of their way. Connie, another aide, was sitting at one of the tables, scrolling through her phone. I knew she was probably bored, and I knew there were probably a dozen other things both of these women could be doing, but since Anne had insisted on that three-to-one ratio, they were both stuck there.

  Even though it was clear that the residents had everything under control.

  Billie Applegate was at the sink, washing dishes. She picked up a dishtowel as her eyes swept the room and met mine. She waved.