The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One

by Ann Warner

  The man should try out for one of those reality television shows. Biggest Liar, maybe.

  “If I lost my insurance, Sara could die.”

  I stood. I could not take another moment of the man’s duplicity and Myrtle and Bertie’s fawning stupidity. Lill stood as well. I thought to make a parting statement about what had transpired, but Lill got a firm grip on my arm and steered me out the door.

  “Did you believe him?” I said as we walked away.

  “Of course not. The man’s no good.”

  “Then why—”

  “Why didn’t I say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t have done a lick of good. Myrtle was on a sympathy roll. No sense getting riled about something unstoppable like that. What we need to do is make sure those receipts and written statements are hidden away where Eddie can’t get his hands on them. Then we’re going to find out if he has a sick daughter, which I don’t believe he has. And once we do that, I’m ready to report him, but to someone with more authority than Mr. Souter.”

  “Edna has the documentation.”

  “She’s currently engaged. I propose we go collect it,” Lill said.

  “But her door will be locked.”

  “Of course it won’t. Nobody locks their doors, Josephine.”

  “I do.”

  “But what’s the point? All the staff have those key cards. They can walk in anytime, you know.”

  “Of course I know. So, where do we hide the evidence?”

  “In the mail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We put it in an envelope and address it to . . . well, we need to figure that out,” Lill said. “And then we mail it. While he’s looking for it, and trust me, he will look, it’ll be safely in the hands of the post office.”

  “What do you mean, he’ll be looking?” I thought her post office idea was too complex, but I hesitated to say so.

  “It’s his livelihood. Of course he’ll look.”

  I had a sudden sharp pain in my abdomen at the thought of Eddie going through my things.

  At that point, Lill and I arrived at Edna’s apartment. Sure enough, the door was unlocked. Since I’d worked with Edna on the receipts, I knew where everything was. Lill found a plastic bag in a kitchen drawer, and I dumped the receipts and affidavits into it. I smoothed the bag and slipped it into the small tote I carry with me. The one with my keys.

  We were in and out of Edna’s in under a minute. But we still had the problem of what to do with the receipts. We needed to hide them in a place Eddie wouldn’t think to look, which meant some where other than my apartment or Lill’s.

  “I have an idea what to do with these,” I said. “How about we put them in Devi Subramanian’s desk? She’s hardly ever in her office. Besides, most people rarely look in the file drawer of their desk. I think it’ll be safe there for the time being. What do you think?”

  Lill agreed it was a brilliant idea, so we went to the front lobby and took seats at a table in the corner and waited for the woman at the front desk to go to the bathroom. I hoped that Eddie wouldn’t walk through the lobby on his way out the door, although I believe most of the staff uses the back door.

  Lill and I were on our second hand of Crazy Eights before the receptionist finally got up and disappeared into the restroom. I set my cards down, picked up my tote, and hustled into Devi’s darkened office. The file drawer was locked, and in the dim light, I’d never find the key, so I opened the bottom drawer on the other side and slipped the bag of receipts under the papers in that drawer, closed it, and hustled back out.

  “Good,” Lill said. “You were so quick, there wasn’t time for anyone to see you. Shall we finish this hand?”

  I wanted to say, “Must we?” Instead, I smiled at Lill. “Of course, we’ll finish.”

  Lill picked up her cards, glanced at them, then looked at me. “This was a good night’s work, Josephine.”

  “Not if Eddie smothers one of us.”

  Lill sat back, blinking. “Oh. I do hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Having her share, instead of contest, my concern was certainly not reassuring. “Maybe we should prop chairs against our bedroom doors?”

  “Yes. I believe that would be an excellent idea.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Devi

  Friday morning, when I opened my bottom desk drawer where I keep my purse, I noticed the drawer’s disordered appearance. The poker ladies appropriating more paper clips, or someone else?

  There wasn’t anything of particular importance in the drawer, but I still didn’t like the feeling it gave me to know that someone had been in my office, going through my things.

  Then I noticed a plastic bag pushed beneath a few loose papers. I pulled it out to find it contained a bunch of supermarket receipts. In addition to the receipts were several sheets of paper that appeared to be affidavits. It didn’t require much of a leap to conclude this was evidence of Eddie’s activities.

  I put everything back in the bag, but instead of returning it to the desk drawer, I took it out and locked it in my car. Then I returned to the lobby to gather the group I was accompanying on a mall outing. When I realized one of the people on the outing had also been listed in one of the affidavits, I caught up with her to have a private word.

  “It’s so nice to see you, Mrs. Griffiths. You aren’t usually on my mall and grocery runs,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re quite right, sweetie. I don’t get around so good, you know.” It was true. Mrs. Griffiths was bent over a walker, making slow progress down the interior walkway of the mall. “But I need new shoes, and Eddie can’t buy those for me.”

  “Eddie?”

  “He does most of my shopping. Although, I may have to make other arrangements, you know.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Eddie took the money I gave him for my groceries and bought a gift card for himself and put it on my bill. Can you imagine that?”

  “Have you reported it?”

  “Oh, that’s being taken care of.”

  “By?”

  “Why, Josephine and her gang.”

  “Her gang?”

  “You know. Lillian and . . . well, I can’t remember the other two ladies’ names.”

  “Would they be Myrtle and Edna?”

  “Why, yes, sweetie. I believe they would.”

  When we returned from the mall, I had a break until late afternoon when I was taking a group out for dinner. Since Josephine wasn’t present for the mall activity, and she wasn’t signed up for the dinner, I decided to visit and ask for an update on what she and “the gang” were doing about Eddie. I picked up a master keycard, just in case.

  When there was no answer to my repeated knocks, I unlocked Josephine’s door and stuck my head around the jamb. “Josephine? It’s Devi.” I waited a moment and called out again, but there was still no response.

  I slipped inside and closed the door. I had no business doing that. My agreement with Josephine did not include solo visits, and I knew it.

  Taking a breath to settle my nerves, I walked over to the painting and, for a time, lost all sense of where I was. Then the sound of a door slamming nearby made me realize the risk I was running.

  I opened the door and peered down the hall, breathing a sigh of relief to find it empty. Slipping out, I pulled the door shut as quietly as I could, fingers crossed that no one had heard me knocking earlier. In the activities center, I found the four poker ladies were in their usual spot and in the middle of a game.

  I walked up to the table. “Josephine, I need to speak to you. When you finish this hand, perhaps?”

  She shrugged. “I planned to fold. Might as well do it now.” She laid her cards down, got up, and followed me to my office.

  I ushered her in and closed the door. “I found something in my desk drawer this morning, and I thought you might know how it got there?”

  “If it was a bag of receipts and affidavits, I put it there.”
/>   “Why?”

  “I needed a hiding place that wasn’t my apartment.”

  “This is about Eddie Colter. Right?”

  Josephine nodded. “He admitted he’s taking the money, but he claims it’s because he needs it to pay for his daughter’s medical treatments.”

  “You confronted him?” I considered it a terrible idea. Eddie is six three and nearly two hundred pounds, most of it muscle.

  “I didn’t think it was wise,” Josephine said. “But Myrtle and Bertie insisted.”

  “Does Eddie know you have the evidence?”

  “He knows one of us has it. Lill thinks he’ll be searching for it. That’s why we hid it.”

  “And he claims to have a sick daughter?”

  “That’s what he said. But I have my doubts.”

  “Did you know he’s Mr. Souter’s nephew?” Mr. Souter, the manager, was someone else I avoided.

  “That explains a lot.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Aside from the shopping, with its obvious opportunities, Eddie doesn’t seem to do much. And I’ve overheard the other aides complaining about it.” She chewed on her lip. “You know, the daughter question concerns me.”

  That surprised me. I had Josephine pegged as unlikely to be swayed by emotional considerations. After all, she refused to speak with her own son.

  “Is there any way we can check if he has a daughter?” Josephine said.

  I thought about it. Then I remembered the list of names and addresses I’d been given since it was my responsibility to send out get-well, birthday, and Christmas cards. I turned on my computer, and after a search, pulled up the file.

  “I’m checking the staff listings,” I told Josephine. “Eddie doesn’t claim either a spouse or any children.”

  “You have his address there?”

  “Yes.”

  “We could take a little field trip, see where he lives?”

  I thought about it. Although it probably wouldn’t answer the daughter question, I was curious to see where he lived. I wrote down the address, then brought up MapQuest.

  Brookside is in a northern suburb of Cincinnati named Montgomery, and Eddie lived about five miles farther north in a town called Mason. I printed out the directions, then looked at Josephine who was sitting, waiting.

  “I have a couple of hours free. Shall we?”

  Josephine didn’t hesitate. “Let’s.”

  We arranged to meet at the back door in five minutes. That gave Josephine time to tell the others she was going out and to pick up a jacket from her apartment.

  I signed out, saying I was accompanying a resident to an appointment, and drove around to the back door to meet Josephine. I handed her the directions to keep us on track, but it was a simple matter to find Eddie’s place.

  And it took only a glance to know that, unless he had roommates or an undeclared domestic partner with a job that paid considerably more than a job at Brookside did, there was no way he could afford this place. I certainly couldn’t.

  “Did you see the sign?” Josephine said. “It says this is an adult community. I believe the translation is, ‘If you have kids, don’t bother trying to live here.’”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s the rental office,” Josephine said, pointing. “Why don’t I find out?”

  Before I could respond, Josephine was out of the car and walking briskly toward the designated unit. She returned after twenty minutes, looking quite pleased with herself.

  “It’s exactly as I thought,” she said, clicking her seatbelt. “Megan says they even frown on kids visiting overnight. She asked how I’d heard about the place, and I said that a friend of mine knew someone who lived here and told her how nice it was. Of course Megan asked me the resident’s name, and I said I thought it was Eddie something. ‘Eddie Colter?’ she said, and I could tell she was smitten. She’s a plain little thing. I doubt Eddie knows she exists. She knows all about him, though.”

  Josephine handed me a brochure. I glanced at it to find I was correct in thinking I couldn’t afford an apartment here.

  “Eddie lives alone, but he has frequent female visitors, much to Megan’s obvious distress. I said my friend mentioned something about him having a daughter who was very ill, and Megan said my friend must have confused Eddie with someone else, and I said that it was entirely possible I was the confused one, since I’d never met the man. Then I made my excuses, and here I am.”

  We grinned at each other.

  “So you’re pretty well convinced there’s no sick daughter,” I said.

  “No, I don’t believe there is.”

  “And clearly Eddie is living beyond his means.”

  “It appears so.”

  “What do you want to do next?”

  “I think we should go to the police,” Josephine said. She stopped and frowned. “I didn’t want to say anything, but when I went back to my apartment for my coat, I could tell someone had been inside. And the staff know not to come in when I’m not there.”

  I cleared my throat, trying not to sound guilty. “How did you know?”

  “Whoever it was, was neat about it. But my things had been moved.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, I thought Josephine had some way of telling when her door was opened, like in spy novels. But I hadn’t moved anything. So . . .

  Oh my God. Eddie? Perhaps searching for the receipts?

  The thought of what could have happened if I’d walked in on Eddie in an empty apartment made me shiver.

  “He might not be satisfied with searching, you know,” Josephine continued. “He knows I helped collect the evidence, and he also knows neither Lill nor I believed his story. He might want to stop us from talking to anybody else.”

  “You think you could be in danger?”

  “We’re both old ladies. Would anyone be very surprised if we died in our sleep?”

  I considered Josephine too young to die in her sleep. But Lillian was old enough it might be plausible, so Josephine did have a point.

  ~ ~ ~

  Although my interacting with the police was a very bad idea, I drove Josephine to the Montgomery Safety Center where the police station is located. I would have been happy to wait in the car, but Josephine insisted I go in with her. Reluctantly, I did so.

  We entered through the public entrance to find ourselves in a small anteroom. A woman sitting behind glass, bulletproof no doubt, asked us our business. I let Josephine do the talking, although I was the one carrying the evidence.

  “We’re here to report a crime,” Josephine said.

  “What kind of crime?”

  “A burglary. Or maybe it’s a robbery. At any rate, it’s a theft.”

  The woman directed us to open the door to our left and take a seat, saying an officer would be with us shortly. A lock release buzzed, and I pulled the door open on a small conference room with a table and chairs, wishing I could usher Josephine and the bag of receipts inside and escape.

  We sat down, and within a couple of minutes, a police officer came through the door carrying a notebook.

  I concentrated on my breathing, trying to tamp down a feeling of irrational panic. I was safe and anonymous. I was simply the companion of the person here to make a report.

  The officer introduced himself as Detective Darren McElroy, and we told him who we were. He took his time, shaking our hands and then sitting opposite us and opening a slightly battered notebook to a fresh page. That gave me time to calm down enough to notice the air of quiet authority he’d brought into the room with him. I had the fanciful thought that if I were in imminent danger, I would want this man protecting me.

  Although that air of competence was unusual and made him immediately appealing, he wasn’t otherwise remarkable, except perhaps for the fact he had very short hair and was clean-shaven. Fortyish was my guess. I wondered if his friends called him Mac. He looked like a Mac.

  He wrote our names, double-checking the spe
llings, along with the time and date, and we watched him do it in silence. Then he looked up and asked our business. I had a sense he was weighing and measuring us, and I sat up straighter and folded my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t be tempted to fidget.

  I let Josephine do the talking, and she did a creditable job of laying everything out in a logical fashion with little embellishment. She also added to her report of Eddie’s thefts the fact that the son of a recently deceased resident and the daughter of a second resident who’d been moved to the memory unit had subsequently discovered valuable items missing. That was a surprise to me, since I’d heard nothing about either loss.

  Occasionally, the officer interrupted Josephine’s account to check on a name or ask for more details. Throughout, he took careful notes. Although I was watching him do it upside down, I could see his handwriting was as neat and precise as his demeanor and grooming.

  I wondered what his wife was like, and whether he had any children. I could easily picture a skinny towhead with hair as short as his, begging him to play catch. But then I noticed he wore no wedding ring. Did that mean he was single, or did he simply not wear it at work?

  I shook my head in confusion at the direction of my thoughts since I’d given up checking out guys some time ago.

  “As far as you know, this Eddie,” he stopped and looked at his notes, “Mr. Colter, never stole anything from you personally?”

  Josephine nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “And I take it that’s true for you as well, Ms. Subramanian?” He looked at me with eyes that were more aware and probing than I preferred.

  I also nodded.

  “Then why are you two reporting this rather than one of the victims?”

  “I’m not reporting. I’m just here to give Josephine . . . support.” I’d almost said a ride, but decided that sounded too disengaged.

  “The majority of the victims,” Josephine said, “are elderly. They have difficulties getting around. Which is why Eddie does their shopping.”

  I shared a moment of amusement with Detective McElroy at Josephine’s assertion that the victims were elderly. As if she wasn’t. Then I recalled watching her put a standard-shift Mazda Miata through its paces on Sunday, and the intelligent and wide-ranging conversation we’d shared at dinner. Josephine might have enough gray hairs and birthdays to be classified as elderly, but the label clearly didn’t fit.