Rip grumbled a few unrepeatable four-letter words. "Do you seriously expect me to eat this salmon on a glob of salmonella balls?"
"Semolina, not salmonella."
"What's the difference?" Rip asked in disgust.
"Well, for starters, semolina is not a potentially lethal bacterium."
"Thank you for small favors."
"Oh, for gosh sakes, Rip! Bag the bitching and just try it. You might actually like it. And you're going to have to start getting used to eating food that doesn't shoot straight for an artery like a well-trained homing pigeon. I'm trying to keep you alive, whether you like it or not."
"Well, at the moment, I'm not sure I like you trying to keep me alive."
Feeling unappreciated, I slammed a second door in the space of ten minutes, before another insufferable individual could finish his insulting retort.
Keeping Rip alive might be an even harder challenge than I'd anticipated. You know what they say, don't you? You can lead a stubborn mule to water, but you can't make him drink. Or something like that. I'm sure the same theory goes for bull-headed husbands and couscous.
* * *
When I returned to the house with four bags of groceries, the cleaning crew had already called it a day, and the construction crew was packing up their tools. It was nice not to have to be wary of falling through the front porch as I carried the bags into the house. All of the bad boards had been replaced.
"Can't eat that, skid," Goofus said as I walked into the kitchen toting the groceries.
"Behave yourself, silly bird. Besides, this food's for me and my husband, not you."
"Scwam Sam. Can't eat that, skid."
"I think you mean kid, Goofus. And I must admit I prefer that to the 'old bag' you called me earlier."
The bird continued his talking and squawking as he danced around the cage. He was making up for lost time after being uncharacteristically quiet because of the construction racket all day.
After I finished putting away the groceries, Gallant strolled into the kitchen. I caressed his muzzle as I clipped the leash on to his collar.
Before the two of us could exit through the back door, the old-fashioned rotary phone on the counter rang. I picked it up and said "hello". All I could hear in the background was the sound of someone breathing. I repeated the greeting a couple of times in case the caller hadn't heard me, but to no avail. I told the caller what he could do with himself and slammed the phone down angrily, convinced it'd been some young punk making prank calls to random phone numbers.
"Okay, Gallant. Are you ready to roll?"
"Ruff! Ruff!"
* * *
We fell into a comfortable routine the following week. Rip hadn't been released to drive yet, so I drove him to rehab Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, and encouraged him to do his assigned daily walking and exercises on the off days. Throughout that week, the construction crew completed their numerous projects around the place. They didn't touch the garage, but the supervisor of the crew told me there were plans to eventually raze it and put up a multi-vehicle carport in its place.
Throughout that first week of our residence in the Heart House, the cleaning crew labored hard to get the place sparkling. The dust bunnies had been relocated and the new vertical blinds brightened up the drawing room considerably.
It was now a very comfortable place for me to spend the evening hours with a good book and a quart jar full of tequila and orange juice, while Rip alternately exercised, ate, slept, and watched crime shows in the master suite. The first two he did reluctantly and with a great deal of grumbling, but the latter two he managed splendidly without complaint.
I'd spent much of the first few days in the bedroom watching over him, until he began to balk at my constant hovering.
"You don't need to watch over me like I was a knife-wielding toddler in a room full of exposed electrical outlets. Kick your feet up, honey. Get some rest before you end up in the same boat I'm in. Who's going to look after me if you're laid up? Besides, I've got my sidekick here now to keep me company." As he spoke, he caressed the head of the huge grey and white fur ball sprawled out across his lap. Dolly purred loudly and contentedly in return.
So, I did as he suggested. I did sneak upstairs and look in on him every hour or so, just to make sure he didn't need something, and to ensure that Dolly hadn't parked herself atop his slumbering face and suffocated him.
But for the most part, I enjoyed the peace and quiet and some alone time. I especially reveled in the huge space available to me. Our entire home on wheels would fit in the drawing room, with a duplicate one parked beside it. The Heart Shack consisted of more square footage than every house I'd ever lived in put together. I don't think I'd have wanted to be responsible for the upkeep of a structure this large for any length of time, but I could definitely handle it for a couple of months.
The only things that troubled me about the house were the odd sounds and unusual occurrences that defied explanation. For example, the previous day I brought a pitcher of sun tea into the drawing room and set it down on a trivet. I filled a glass with tea and took it upstairs to Rip. When I returned to the drawing room, the pitcher was empty. There was no evidence that the remaining tea had leaked out of the pitcher. It was just gone! Convinced someone was playing a trick on me, I searched the house, only to find out Rip and I were the only ones in the building.
Another eerie event was the morning I'd found Gallant sitting on the front porch whining to get inside when I'd first gone downstairs after waking up. I distinctively remembered taking him out to do his duty before I'd gone to bed the previous evening. I let Gallant in, unnerved about how he'd gotten outside. I'd then gone upstairs to dust and vacuum, put freshly laundered sheets on the bed, and scour the toilet and lavatory in the master suite. When I went downstairs forty-five minutes later, I could hear Gallant pawing at the back door, wanting inside again.
Several thoughts crossed my mind. Was someone trying to scare us away, perhaps the same individual who'd instigated the music box prank? Secondly, was there a great big doggy door somewhere in the house I hadn't discovered yet that would allow Gallant to come and go as he pleased? If so, wouldn't a doggy door big enough to allow Gallant to pass through be an open invitation to burglars, intruders, and other animals? What would keep a family of rabid raccoons from moving in and taking up residence in the Heart Shack? But the thought that bothered me the most was that I was honestly beginning to believe I was going cuckoo for cocoa puffs. I felt like I was one hallucination away from needing to be institutionalized.
In the event it wasn't merely my imagination in free fall, knowing someone had twice entered the house undetected, let Gallant outside, and then departed without letting him back in was upsetting. The lovable pooch could have wandered off and become hopelessly lost, been dog-napped by someone who wanted a massive St. Bernard to spend hundreds of dollars feeding, or been injured by a car or another animal, like that aforementioned rabid raccoon family.
Even more disconcerting was the notion Rip and I could've been axed to death as we slept, and never known anyone had been in the house until we woke up dead the next morning. And waking up dead was not something I'd signed up for when I'd accepted Sydney's offer. I'd have to ask her about who else might have a key to her aunt's house.
I was slowly getting accustomed to the unexpected noises, intermittent electrical outages, and oddities of that nature, but the day I saw a rubber dog toy fly horizontally across the room when there was no other living creature in sight, was the day I nearly called Sydney and told her Rip and I would be moving on. Immediately, if not sooner!
Rip had tried to convince me Gallant had tossed the toy while playing with it, but if the dog could sling a toy like that, he should have been signed to the Seattle Mariners pitching staff. I'd never seen Gallant tossing a toy around as if he were a rambunctious puppy. He typically exhibited about as much get up and go as Rip did. Finally, Rip calmed me down by reminding me I'd been under more pre
ssure than normal, and the mind can do unimaginable things when it was stressed to the max.
And then the mysterious piano-playing began.
Chapter 19
"Rip! Wake up!" I whispered to Rip one night as he lay in the bed beside me, sawing great big redwood logs. When I failed to rouse him, I shook him several more times. "Wake up!"
"What's wrong?" He mumbled, letting the fog clear.
"Listen."
I could clearly hear music emanating from the bottom floor.
"Listen to what?"
"Someone is playing the piano." I wasn't surprised Rip couldn't hear it. The music was barely audible to me, and I didn't have a hearing impairment that prevented me from hearing high tones like he did.
I could tell Rip thought he'd been awakened from a sound sleep in order to listen to a figment of my imagination. "I don't hear anything. You were having a dream, Rapella. Go back to sleep."
"I was not dreaming. I hadn't even fallen asleep yet. I've been tossing and turning since I came to bed. I'm telling you, Rip, there's someone playing the piano downstairs. I'm going to go see who it is."
"No. You're not going downstairs if you think there might be an intruder. I'll go check it out if it'll make you sleep better." Rip groaned as he sat up in bed. I felt bad, knowing it was an effort for him so soon after having his chest split open like a watermelon on Independence Day. But I felt it was an emergency, possibly even a life-or-death situation.
As Rip leaned over to put on his slippers, he moaned a time or two before saying in a mocking manner, "I can't count the number of middle-of-the-night calls I responded to during my law enforcement career where an intruder, burglar or, on occasion, a serial killer, had broken into someone's home to play classical tunes on their piano."
"There's no call for sarcasm, Rip. If I'm not mistaken, someone's playing the Hungarian Rhapsody piece by Franz Liszt that was on the music rack of the Steinway."
"You're not familiar with 'Who Let the Dogs Out', but you recognize a Franz Liszt number?" Rip can be very persnickety when awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night.
"Are you going to check it out or not? I'm quite capable of doing it myself if you don't want to be bothered." At that point, I was actually hoping it was a serial killer pounding the ivories. Naturally, I wouldn't want the dude to hurt Rip. I only wanted to prove to my husband I hadn't gone bonkers.
* * *
"There was no one at the piano or anywhere else downstairs," Rip said when he returned to the master suite about fifteen minutes later. "I checked every room so you wouldn't make me go back down a second time."
"I heard the music stop before you even got to the staircase. Whoever was playing it obviously heard us talking and escaped out the front door before you made it down there. I understand your desire to practice caution while descending the stairs, but an intruder could have finished the song, made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, eaten it while watching an old Honeymooners episode, and still escaped the house with his walker before you got to the drawing room. That's why I wanted to go down rather than ask you to do it."
"I wish now I'd let you," Rip grumbled. "I'm in no condition to be chasing down imaginary piano-playing villains."
"I think 'chasing' is a bit of an exaggeration." I knew I was being overly snippy. But knowing someone had let himself into the house without our knowledge was alarming and Rip's refusal to believe me had me seeing red. "Besides, it wasn't my imagination! I swear. Whoever the intruder was, he or she was talented enough to be a concert pianist."
Rip looked at me as if I'd just told him I was planning to travel to the planet Antarea with a group of aliens I'd found encapsulated in cocoons at the bottom of a friend's swimming pool. Purely to humor me, he said, "Okay, dear, whatever you say. Regardless, I've ascertained we're alone in the house now, so get some sleep."
Where's a piano-playing serial killer when you need one?
* * *
After coffee the next morning, I calculated I had just over an hour before I needed to take Rip to his Wednesday morning therapy session. I put Gallant on a leash and was going to walk him up the street to a dog park about three blocks away. I needed the exercise and knew he would benefit from it too.
"Good morning, Itsy! Beautiful day, isn't it?" I called out to my neighbor as Gallant and I headed down the sidewalk to the street.
"Yes, it is," Itsy replied. She was pulling weeds in one of her flower beds that were so small they were barely visible to the naked eye, as if they'd only germinated an hour ago. "At my age, every day I wake up is a beautiful day."
"I guess you're right. You're up and at it bright and early this morning. No wonder you have the prettiest front yard in the neighborhood."
"Thanks. I won the 'yard of the month' award three times in the last two years. Unfortunately, your crabgrass-ridden lawn is an absolute hell hole, and your obnoxious weeds are trying to invade my yard."
"You mean noxious?"
"Yeah, they're that too." Itsy laughed, but I could tell she found the infringing weeds maddening. She began to choke, then leaned over to spit a mouthful of black saliva into her flower patch. I watched with concern. She smiled, and said, "Tobacca's a natural fertilizer, you know."
I nodded in response, wondering how she kept from upchucking her entire cheek full of "tobacca".
"Yes, of course it is, Itsy," I said. "When Sydney stops by today, I'm going to ask her if the heart center would consider buying some gardening tools and a few plants. It's really not my lawn, but if they'll pay for the necessary items, I'll donate my time and trouble to make it look better."
Itsy nodded. Then she pulled her gardening gloves off and stood up. "Did you hear about Mabel's autopsy results on the news last night? It looks to me like the medical board's going to point the finger at Sydney, as if she was to blame for her aunt's death due to negligence in her nursing duties."
"Yes, we watched the news last night, too. Rip and I know from personal experience that Sydney couldn't be a finer, more conscientious care-giver. I hate to see the girl's life turned upside down for something she's not responsible for, don't you?"
"Yeah. I don't particularly trust Adelaide and Tasman, but I've always liked Sydney. I can't believe she's to blame in any way."
I had to agree. With years of experience and substantial training in cardiac care, how could Mabel Trumbo's vitamin K level have reached the excessive level the autopsy report had indicated while under Nurse Combs' care? On the other hand, how could Adelaide or Tasman have been involved in their aunt's death if the official cause was pulmonary embolism?
I couldn't put the pieces together. Yet. But I was determined to try, for Sydney's sake. If Rip came through this cardiac episode in one piece, as it appeared he would, I had the nurse to thank more than anyone else, with the exception of Dr. Murillo. "You may be on to something, Itsy. I hadn't considered the possibility of Sydney's siblings trying to frame her; intentionally killing their aunt in such a way it'd appear as if it was due to Sydney's negligence as their aunt's primary care giver. They seemed to think they were in line to each inherit a third of the proceeds from selling their aunt's house, and obviously feel it's Sydney's fault they won't get a dime out of it."
The expression on Itsy's face prompted me to inquire about the extent of the deceased woman's estate. "Do you know if she had a lot of money invested that the Combs' kids stood to inherit? Did she own anything else of great monetary value they might have believed they had coming their way?"
"Possibly," Itsy said. After a long pause, she added, "But I can't say for certain. I don't honestly know what she had in her possession."
I thought it an odd answer, but I didn't press the lady further, as she appeared to be in deep thought. The possibility of a frame-up was something to mull over. I was happy to discover I had a neighbor who liked to gossip. I'm not a rumormonger myself, of course. But that doesn't mean I don't like being kept in the loop.
"By the way, Itsy, did yo
u happen to see anyone coming or going from Mabel's house last night?"
"No. And I was sitting out on my front porch until about eleven, like I often do on mild evenings. Why do you ask?"
I started to tell her about the piano-playing I'd heard in the middle of the night, but decided better of it. I didn't want the nice neighbor to think I'd recently escaped from the funny farm, so instead I asked, "Did you happen to be sitting out on your porch the night before Mabel passed away?"
"Yep. I remember that night well. It was a Sunday. Tasman had been looking after Mabel all day because the day nurse was off on Sundays, and Sydney had a long shift at the heart center. I saw Sydney stop by, probably on a break from work, around five. Tasman came out of the house about ten minutes later. He raced up the sidewalk to his car like the place was on fire and cases of fireworks inside the house were about to light up the sky. He looked stoned, as usual."
"Are there cases of fireworks inside the house somewhere?" The thought troubled me. I wasn't sure I wanted to be living in a house that might turn into a Fourth of July display at any given moment.
"Nah. I just meant he had skates on in his rush to leave."
"Tasman had skates on?"
"It's just a saying, Rapella. Good grief. I'll try to be more literal so you can keep up," Itsy shook her head in frustration, as if she was trying to communicate with someone who was dense as a vat of mercury. And here I thought I was the master of clichés and colloquialisms. Itsy used phrases I'd never even heard before. I shook my head, and asked, "Is that all you saw?"
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