by Ann Warner
“My dad married an Indiana girl instead of the Indian girl his parents picked out.”
“And what did they think of that?”
“They weren’t very happy. At least at first. My mother won them over by having me.” I grinned at her and was surprised when she smiled back.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind stopping by tomorrow afternoon?” she said with another glance out the window.
I set my empty cup down with a happy sigh. “Because?”
“I don’t want my son and his wife to see the painting, but I’ll need help taking it down.”
It was the real deal then. There’d be no need to hide a copy. “I could do it right now.”
“No. That’s all right. Tomorrow will be better.”
“Of course. I’m happy to help.”
“Good.” Mrs. Bartlett stood and reached for my cup in a clear sign of dismissal, not one of additional hospitality.
Without further ado, I left.
Chapter Ten
Josephine
Our Eddie surveillance went so well that at dinner that evening, my co-conspirators, minus one, were all bubbling like crock pots over what they’d discovered.
“Where’s Edna,” I asked.
“She’s no longer on the meal plan,” Myrtle said. “Told me she was tired of eating mystery meat. As to what we discovered, well, besides Bertie, who was shorted seven dollars on his change, we identified three additional customers.”
“All three remembered how much money they gave Eddie, and they still had their receipts, but two of them couldn’t verify how much change they’d received,” Lill said. “However the one who could was eight dollars short, and she wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss without our help. They all just glance at the receipts. It never occurred to them to check the amount of change.”
“What do we do now?” Myrtle said.
“With evidence from you, Bertie, and only one other person, I don’t know if that will be enough to convince anyone in authority that Eddie’s stealing.” I didn’t quite trust the manager, a Mr. Souter. He tends to speak to us as if we were all hard-of-hearing infants who are just learning to talk. “They could all just be careless mistakes.” It occurred to me that we might discuss the problem with Devi. If she could threaten me, she could do the same with Eddie.
“Do you know who Devi Subramanian is?” I asked them.
“Of course,” Lill said. “She’s the young woman who organizes our outings.”
“What do you think of her?”
“She’s too bright to be stuck in a place like this,” Lill said.
I had to agree. Anyone who could recognize a Lariston rug and an Edward Hopper painting with a glance shouldn’t be stuck shepherding wobbly senior citizens on mall trips. “She visited me in the middle of our operation.”
“Did you let her in?” Myrtle said.
“I’m afraid I had no choice.”
“I doubt you were happy about that.” Lill’s comment tells me she’s beginning to know me a little too well.
“I just know I’d be more comfortable talking to her than to the manager.”
“I agree,” Lill said. “Mr. Souter doesn’t seem to be the responsive type.”
For me, the suggestion to enlist Devi’s help was simply an application of that old saying, Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
The others considered it a stroke of genius.
~ ~ ~
When Devi arrived to help me hide the Hopper painting, I first fixed us tea. An Osmanthus Chin Hsuan tea this time. Once again, she took a sip and closed her eyes, obviously savoring the brew. My outlays for tea are one of the things Jeff doesn’t know about, although I force him to pay all my obvious expenses—my Brookside fees, food, clothing, and miscellaneous medical costs.
I also made liberal use of those assets in furnishing this apartment, clearly a wise move, now that Jeff is coming to visit. I want to keep him in the dark about my independent means, just like Thomas kept me in the dark about the movement of our assets to Jeff’s control.
It still makes me angry when I think how Jeff and Lynn hustled me out of my house a few days after the funeral, claiming that they would worry about me, that there was no way I could handle such a large place on my own, that I needed to be some where safe. I thought about calling the police, but once Jeff informed me Thomas had transferred the title of the house and its contents to him, I knew there was no point.
Jeff and Lynn had then helped themselves to whatever they wanted and sold the house out from under me, as if I’d died too. Not that it hadn’t been my intention to get rid of the house and most of its contents. I just wanted to do it in my own time, in my own way.
Devi set her cup down with a click. “Another delightful brew. Your tea broker does excellent work.” She cocked her head and examined me. “Will you tell me the story of the painting?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps. Someday.” In reality, I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would tempt me to share that information. With anyone.
“Good,” Devi said, obviously unable to read my mind. “Where are we putting it? And you do realize your wall is going to look bare.”
“Under my bed. We’ll move the painting from my bedroom out here.”
Devi nodded, and we went to work. She finished hanging the replacement painting, a watercolor by Domenic Demeri, an artist who never achieved the fame I thought him worthy of.
“I like this,” Devi said, stepping back. “It might not have the emotional heft of the Hopper, but it’s very fine.”
I gestured for her to take a seat. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”
She grinned at me. “For another cup of that tea, I’ll listen to whatever you want to say.”
While she sat waiting for me, I brewed another pot. After our first sips, I set my cup down. “I’ve been delegated to speak to you about Eddie Colter.”
She set her cup down with a rattle and cleared her throat. “Wh-who delegated you?”
“Myrtle, Edna, and Lillian.”
“Oh? What’s it about then?”
“Myrtle thinks he’s stealing from the people he shops for. In at least three instances we’re aware of, he’s short-changed people.”
“And you think he’s done it deliberately?”
“It’s not easy to prove intent. He may just be very bad with math. The amounts, you see, are small, but over time they could add up to a substantial amount.”
“You’ll likely need more evidence to prove that. But why talk to me about it? Why not Mr. Souter?”
“I don’t like Mr. Souter.”
“You do realize I have no power here.”
“Except when it comes to threatening me that you’ll report my painting.”
“I apologize for that.” She lowered her head and stared at her cup. Then she looked up. “Although it would be easier to go back on my word about that than it would be to report Eddie.”
“You don’t have a thing for him, do you?”
She shook her head and shuddered. “Absolutely not. I can’t stand the man.”
“Why is that?” I thought her reaction extreme. I don’t care for Eddie, but he doesn’t make me shudder in obvious revulsion. “Did he do something to you?” It was a shot in the dark, but it obviously hit its mark.
“He keeps touching me, and the other day, he grabbed me and tried to kiss me.”
“What happened next?” I wasn’t trying to pry. But this seemed like useful information to add to our ongoing investigation.
“He let me go when a nearby door opened. But I had a feeling. . .”
I waited.
She closed her eyes and shuddered again. “I don’t think he’s used to taking no for an answer.”
“So along with him being a thief, we’re talking a potential rapist?”
“I don’t know about that. I just think it’s not a good idea to be alone with him.”
It didn’t surprise me that Eddie would be attracted to her. Whil
e he has a fake tan, she’s naturally a lovely golden color. Perhaps he’s smitten and just expressing it inappropriately.
“Avoiding him sounds like a good plan,” I told her.
“Yes.” She looked at her watch. “Sorry, I need to get going. Thanks for the tea.” And with that, she jumped to her feet and headed for the door.
~ ~ ~
When Jeff and Lynn arrived promptly at ten Saturday morning, the receptionist called to let me know. Hoping to head them off, I grabbed my tote and a jacket and went to meet them.
“Mother.” Jeff hugged me. He hadn’t bothered to shave, so I leaned away when he tried to kiss my cheek.
Lynn also stepped up and hugged me, although I know she dislikes me. But at least she wasn’t prickly like Jeff.
“You didn’t have to come meet us,” Jeff said. “We want to see your place. Then we thought we’d take you to lunch.”
Rather than argue, I turned and led the way back to my apartment. I stepped inside, then watched the two of them enter and look around.
“Well,” Jeff said. “You’ve, ah, fixed this up . . . nicely.”
I didn’t understand why he was surprised. After all, he’d paid the bills.
Lynn frowned. “But what happened to all your things?”
My “things,” as she called them, were leftovers from their house after they’d appropriated what they wanted from mine. “Goodwill was thrilled to take them off my hands.”
“This is—”
“That’s okay. I know it’s not your taste, Lynn.”
“I thought you were into antiques.”
“No, Thomas was. Not me.”
“That’s one of the things I need to talk to you about, Mother,” Jeff said, standing awkwardly in the doorway.
“What? My new furniture?”
“Sort of.”
Ah, he wanted to talk about my spending. How pleasant.
“Maybe we should sit down?” Lynn said, glancing from Jeff to me.
“Yes, perhaps we better,” Jeff said.
I moved quickly to take a seat in the chair by myself, forcing them to sit together on the sofa opposite me.
Jeff, wringing his hands, was still examining my things. He frowned at my rug, which well he might. It had been my single largest expenditure. Then he spotted the Demeri painting, and his frown deepened.
“Is that new?”
“No, I’ve had it for years. It was upstairs in the guest bedroom.” Clearly, it was superior planning on my part to hide the Hopper.
He continued to frown. “I don’t remember it.”
“You must have overlooked it. You were so busy deciding what else you’d help yourselves to.”
“Now, Mother, I don’t want to fight with you. You’d just lost Dad, and since you were moving in with us, Lynn and I took on the burden of deciding. We wanted to make your transition as easy as possible for you.”
I doubted they’d given a single thought to making my transition easy. And saying they expected me to be living with them for more than five minutes was, at the least, a gross exaggeration.
“You could have asked me what I wanted to take.”
Jeff’s lips went through a number of contortions that made him look distinctly odd. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. We should have.”
“What is it you want to talk to me about?”
“Since you moved here, your expenses have been far greater than expected. I need to make sure your resources last the rest of your life. But in order for that to happen, two strategies are essential. One is that you not make any more large purchases.”
“And the second?”
“That you agree to a lower monthly allowance.”
“Lower by how much?” I said, ignoring the rest of his request.
“I believe you should be able to manage your incidentals on Dad’s Social Security check, and that will leave sufficient resources for your Brookside fees.”
“How parsimonious of you.”
“Now, Mother, I’m doing it for your own good.”
“Of course you are. I hope you don’t expect me to pay for lunch.”
He looked away, as well he might. No doubt he was dipping into the “resources” whenever he could.
“How much is in the accounts?” I’d asked him before, and he’d always evaded the question.
“There’s enough to last as long as you live, but only if we start conserving now.”
“There’s no way I can possibly spend five million dollars, even if I live to be a hundred.” But I could certainly figure out some good uses for it.
His mouth firmed, making him look exactly like his father. “Five million? Really, Mother. Where did you get an idea like that?”
“Didn’t your father ever share with you where most of that money came from?”
“Of course. He said he made some excellent investment choices. But the market’s been, well, not good these last few years.”
“Are you saying there’s less than five million?”
He squirmed and didn’t answer. The fact was if Thomas hadn’t changed anything, several of the stocks I bought back in the sixties had appreciated so much, there should be considerably more than five million. But the way Jeff was acting . . .
I didn’t need another dime from those accounts, but fair is fair. It’s my money. And my intention has been to recoup as much as I could through periodic requests for large amounts. I planned to then transfer those assets to Aardvark’s coffers, and those resources would eventually pass to groups I judged much more deserving than my son.
“I’m sorry, Jeff. Unless you’re willing to give me a full accounting that proves such austerity measures are necessary, I’m not going to agree to a lesser amount.”
“I don’t need your agreement since everything’s in my name.”
“That’s true. And I know what you’re doing here is legal. But that doesn’t make it right.”
“I’m doing what Dad asked me to do. Taking care of you.”
“English is such a funny language, is it not?”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Taking care of me. There’s more than one way to interpret that.”
As he sat there, his face twitching in a most unbecoming manner, I sighed inwardly. He’d been such a darling little boy. So sweet and loving; the light of my life. Something else I held against Thomas.
Why hadn’t I asked for a divorce?
In the beginning, I stayed because I’d feared Thomas would take Jeff away from me. But it turned out he took Jeff away anyway, by turning him against me. By the time I realized that was happening, divorcing Thomas would have meant revealing the existence of Aardvark Holdings, and I’d had no intention of letting him take anything more from me. Instead, I shaped a life separate from his, although we still shared a house.
I stiffened my spine and faced Jeff and Lynn. “You do what you have to do, Jeff. And now I’d like you to leave.”
“What about lunch?”
“I think you and Lynn will have a much more enjoyable lunch if I’m not there.” I stood.
Jeff did as well. “I was hoping we could make a fresh start today.”
“A fresh start?”
“Yes. You and me, and Lynn, of course. I know you’re angry at Dad for setting things up the way he did. But all I’m trying to do is the best I can.”
“Do you really believe that? That asking me to justify every penny I spend and to give up my allowance is the best you can do for me?”
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the expression on his face was so bleak that for a moment, I considered whether he might be telling the truth. Suppose, for example, Thomas had invested heavily in technology stocks right before the bubble burst, and left Jeff holding the bag, so to speak.
I’ve invested very little in technology myself, aside from early purchases of Intel and Microsoft that I’ve since sold. One of my best performers is actually a stodgy old Kansas City railroad stock that
has appreciated several thousand-fold over the years.
Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out and touched Jeff’s arm. He jumped.
“Did your dad lose the money, Jeff?”
“Of course not,” he snapped.
With that, my tenuous feeling of sympathy, along with the chance we would see eye to eye anytime soon, snapped as well.
I walked over to the door. “Thank you for coming. And just so you know, there’s no need for you to visit me.” I opened the door.
“Damn it, Mom. You need to answer your phone then.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll be sure to do that.”
There were no hugs this time. When I closed the door on them, it took all my strength to make it back to a chair before my legs gave out. I allowed myself that bit of weakness, but I was determined not to cry.
My grief was not about the money, but about the loss of trust. But, after all, that had been lost long ago. And it was unlikely we’d ever regain it.
~ ~ ~
Sunday afternoon, Devi showed up. Since she usually has weekends off, I was surprised to see her.
“I thought I could help you re-hang the Hopper,” she said.
“Yes, I’d like that.”
“How was the visit with your son?”
“Not good.”
I motioned for her to sit at the table. I heated water, chose a robust black tea, and carried the teapot to the table.
Devi jumped up and got two cups out of the cupboard, a clear sign she was beginning to feel at ease with me. I was unsure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“He scolded me for spending so much on furnishing this place, and he said he planned to cut my allowance.”
“You’re not going to have to fire your tea broker, are you?” Devi had a twinkle in her eye.
“Definitely not. Jeff did notice the painting, by the way, so it’s a good thing we hid the Hopper.”
“You can’t hide it forever, you know.”
“What? I thought you said you wouldn’t tell.”
“I won’t. But another staff member might recognize it. And we do have art lovers among the residents.”
