There was movement on the right-hand side of the porch, near my one-person wooden swing. Cats liked to perch there at night. Like other areas of Season’s Greetings, stray cats were becoming an issue. I was more worried about it freezing and starving to death than I was at a homeless cat claiming my porch as a resting place.
A figure lunged toward me. It was not cat-sized.
I screeched and lurched backwards, the keys and phone slipped from my fingers and clattered to the wooden porch.
Cassie grabbed my arm. “Where’s the RV?” There was venom in her voice.
Her anger brought out mine, shoving out common sense. “Why was the registration dated for the wrong day?”
Her grip fell from my arm and she stepped back. “What are you talking about?”
“I checked the registration for the RV. It’s not dated for the day I bought it.” I almost mentioned the signature, changing my mind at the last moment. I didn’t need to let Cassie know everything I discovered.
Cassie rubbed her left ring finger and thumb together. “What are you talking about? You watched me date and sign it. Everything was legit. You’re trying to switch the topic on me. I told you I needed to get my ticket. You said I could get it today.”
A ticket consisting of six numbers was my guess. At least I didn’t have to worry about her well-being anymore. She was feisty as ever and dressed quite nicely, if not warmly. Her feet were shoved in sparkly canvas shoes without any socks. I spotted a faint hint of black and red on her left ankle. I squinted. Was it a tattoo?
She glanced down and blushed. She used her right ankle to block her left one.
“The RV was secured by the police,” I fibbed a little.
Her eyes widened and her face paled. “They took it because of Dad’s murder?”
Tears filled my eyes. The truth sounded eviler and bleaker coming from his daughter. I drew in deep breaths and brought my emotions under control. Cassie needed my support.
I took hold of her hands. They were ice cold. “It was vandalized. The police thought it best to have it moved to a safe place.”
Tears welled in her eyes and her mouth and body trembled. She was ready to crumble. “What did they do?”
“Cushions were ripped. Whatever I had in the refrigerator was on the floor. Just trashed.”
Like the culprit was searching for something—a ticket. I was positive my suspicion was correct. Everything added up. Bonnie asking for a trip. All the Go Fund Me requests on Samuel’s Facebook page. Samuel had won the lottery and apparently a lot of people in town knew, except me.
Cassie tucked her hands under her arms and wandered away, looking devastated, hopeless, and scared. She knew her dad won the lottery and counted on finding the ticket. Now, someone else had it. I prayed Samuel had signed it to protect himself and his daughter, making it useless to anyone else.
Except for possibly his wife, who I doubted would share it with the stepdaughter she loathed.
The frosted glass doors of Season’s Living parted, and I tugged my utility wagon into the lobby. The pale blue walls added a hint of color, giving the room some warmth and cheer. Plush gray chairs were staged throughout the lobby in conversational groupings. The area was used for open houses and parties for the residents. Most residents stayed in their care units, especially the memory care resident-patients like my mother. The staff had wanted functions that allowed the residents from all the special care units time to mingle together so they hosted special get togethers four times a year.
The wheels of the cart sailed over the honey-colored laminate oak floor. I waved to Holly. “Here to spread Christmas cheer.”
She tapped a pen onto the clipboard at the reception counter. “Merry, you have to sign in. Every time.”
“Alright.” I scribbled my signature down. Right above my name was a barely legible one. William Grayson. My heart dipped. What was he doing here? Heck, I knew what he was doing here—talking to my mother.
I raced down the hall, the cart banging into walls.
“Merry,” Holly called out to me.
I ignored her. I reached the end of the hall and smacked the button that opened the main doors to the memory care unit. There were four apartments down this corridor, my mother’s place was at the end of the hall on the left side. At the very end of the hallway was a window with a locked bar keeping it secured so a resident couldn’t slip out. Every staff member in the unit had a key to unlock the window if there was an emergency. Everything was built with safety and comfort for the residents.
I punched in the code to unlock my mom’s apartment door, violently twisting the knob and throwing the door open. It banged against the wall.
Grayson spun, hand on the butt of his weapon.
“You want to shoot me?” I stalked toward him, scanning the room for my mother. Masking tape marked off the floor around my mother’s kitchenette. “Arresting me isn’t enough for you?”
“You broke in here.” His arm dangled by his side.
“I belong here.” I jabbed a finger toward the detective. “You don’t.”
My mother was huddled in a corner of her living room, squished between the couch and the wall. A nurse sat on the couch, trying to coax my mom to sit next to her. The detective was lucky my mom was my main priority because the other instinct rolling through me was to punch him in the jaw.
Tears flowed down my mother’s cheeks, dipping into the deep lines on face. “I did it. He said I did it.”
Rage roared through me. What had the horrible man accuse my mom of? He was worse than a Grinch. Worse than Scrooge. He was like a parent who took away Christmas from a child and made them watch their siblings enjoy the holiday. I kissed the top of her head, running my hand over her white hair. “I don’t care what he said or told you. Mom, you did nothing wrong. He’s an awful man. A liar.”
“Watch what you’re saying, Ms. Winters.” The warning in Grayson’s words came through as clear as ringing Salvation Army bells.
I didn’t care. No one messed with my babies. No one messed with my mom. I knelt beside her, drawing her trembling form into my arms. “You’re the one who should watch themselves. How dare you come here? You have no right.” I’d contact everyone I could think of and tell them how a detective treated my mother. The mayor. The newspaper. Television. Brett. Twitter.
“The nurse allowed me in.” The man was too pleased with himself, increasing my ire.
“He said he had some questions about your divorce.” The nurse wrung her hands. “There was a little confusion about it.”
She was new. I looked at her nametag. Evelyn Graham. She was around my age, mid-forties, and had dyed bright red hair falling in a tangled mess of faux curls to her shoulders and was makeup free. I couldn’t recall seeing her around Season’s Greetings, although we were a small town, it wasn’t so small everyone knew each other.
“He tricked you. He wanted to question my mother about me, and you gave him the opportunity to do so.”
“I was doing what I felt was right.”
“Strangers are not to visit my mother. It’s in her chart.” Why did they pair this nurse with my mother?
“He’s a police officer,” Evelyn whispered, looking at the ground. “Why wouldn’t I trust him?”
My anger toward the nurse ebbed away. She was right. We were raised to trust law enforcement. Heck, I usually trusted those with a badge. My son always adored police officers and the job they did—protect and serve—it was why he became one. The person who was in the wrong was the detective for lying to the nurse and bullying my ailing mother.
“Nurse Graham, can you please get Doctor Yielding and call the local police. I want this detective removed from this facility. He has no right to interrogate my mother.”
“Your mother,” Grayson’s voice rose, “admitted to seeing Samuel Waters Thursday afternoon, she is likely the last one
to have seen him alive.”
“He came here?” I leaned away from my mother, checking her eyes for clarity.
My mother nodded though her brows were scrunched together. Her gaze roamed around the room. She was trying to place herself, figure out where she was—and when. What Grayson didn’t understand was that Thursday to my mother might not have been the Thursday that just passed. Time had no meaning to my mother anymore.
“He said he had happy news for you. Your life was going to change.” My mother stroked my cheek, a shaky smile developing. “You’d get everything you ever asked from him whether you changed your mind about him or not.”
Grayson sneered. “What was Mr. Waters’ net worth?”
I ignored him. What the detective didn’t want to understand was the only thing I had wanted from Samuel was a divorce. “I think it’s time you left, Detective.”
“It’s important to retrace the final moments of Samuel Waters. It will help determine who might have information about motives and give us some viable suspects. I’d have thought you’d want that Merry Winters.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, he drew out my last name. Why? There was a reason for everything he said and did. Like visiting my mom. Grayson talked to someone else who sent him to my mother. But who? Everyone in town liked my mother and even me. Some residents found my Christmas love a little over the top and my usual normal cheerfulness hard to take, but no one disliked me enough to hurt my mother.
I aimed my foot to nudge Evelyn’s and missed, kicking her ankle instead. She sucked in a pained breath and speed-limped out of the room.
“This situation doesn’t involve my mother. I want you to stop harassing her.”
“Harass?” A bitter laugh erupted from him. “So, that’s the way you want to play this. You want to claim this situation, investigating Samuel’s murder, is improper police behavior. It’s my job to find the truth when someone is killed. Murdered. Someone is guilty. And no one,” his gaze settled on my mother, “is off the hook.”
I enclosed my arms around her and glared at him. “You’re threatening my mother.”
“I’m not the one trying to get away with something,” Grayson said. “Someone in this room is.”
A breath hitched in my mom’s throat then more sobs shook out.
I tightened my hold on her and glared at Grayson. Why was he tormenting an eighty-seven-year-old woman? “My mother did not see Samuel on Thursday. He was instructed not to visit her.”
“Why was that?” Grayson asked.
“Because he upset her,” I said.
“That’s true, Detective,” Doctor Yielding entered the apartment and the conversation. She pulled my abandoned utility cart into the room. “We were instructed not to allow Samuel Waters to see Gloria Winters as he was a source of agitation. His visits upset her. Almost as much as yours.”
The detective had the good graces to blush. He pulled out a pen and a small notebook from his pocket. A bit of relief flowed through me. He hadn’t been taking notes when he talked to my mother, or at least not when I arrived. “When was Samuel banned from seeing Mrs. Winters?”
“About three months ago, if my recollection is correct,” Doctor Yielding said, “though I’d need to check Mrs. Winters records to confirm. I do know it was within a day or two of Merry making that request that she filed for divorce.”
“Why was that?” Grayson asked.
I answered the question. “He was a jerk to my mom.”
“That’s interesting because Mrs. Gloria Winters told me she saw him on Thursday. November fifteenth. She was quite insistent on the date being correct. I asked her numerous times if she was certain. She said yes.”
“Of course, she agreed with you. She knew that was the answer you wanted, and it stopped you from asking again.” My body felt heated. I fidgeted as a flashflood of emotions rushed through me. I knew it was anger and not the onset of hot flashes. The detective’s questioning convinced my mother of her rightness. If asked a question multiple times, my mother responded with the same answer. She never liked her memory questioned, even more so now when it was slipping away from her day by day.
“It was an important detail to the case.” Grayson snapped the book closed. “Samuel Waters is dead. You don’t seem to care about that.”
I took some deep breaths, hoping to settle my anger. “I do care. I care that his daughter is basically an orphan. I care that Bonnie Waters is now a widow. She and Samuel were married a week before he died. It must be heartbreaking for her. I’m also saddened for Samuel as he likely had finally found his true soulmate and he died right after.”
“Why do you keep changing the truth? There is a distinction between died and was killed. Samuel was murdered. Someone ended his life. It wasn’t natural,” Grayson said.
My mother wailed, a sound from the soul. Heart breaking. If terror and hopelessness had a sound, it was like the one coming from my mother. Her body quaked. Eyes were cloudy as if she was far away. Some other time or place. She was leaving the here and now. Leaving me. Going to a place in her mind where she felt safe.
I grabbed onto my mom, desperate to hold her together. Terror and rage pulsed through me. I had never disliked a person as much as I did Detective Grayson.
Doctor Yielding knelt beside my mother, checking her pulse. “Detective, I insist you leave.”
“Leave my mother alone,” my voice cracked. “I’ll answer anything you want. Just leave her alone. She doesn’t understand what you’re asking. She has dementia. She doesn’t know when November fifteenth was, you could’ve asked if she saw him on October thirty-first, or November sixteenth and she’d have said yes.”
For the first time since I encountered Detective Grayson in my mother’s room, he looked unsure of himself.
“If you’d done all your homework, Detective Grayson,” the doctor’s voice was colder than the North Pole during a massive blizzard, “you’d know this assistant living facility specializes in memory loss issues. Gloria resides in our memory care unit.”
“Is that true?” Instead of the rage that was usually in my mom’s voice when her diagnosis was mentioned in front of her, there was hope.
I gazed into her widened eyes.
“So, I might not have seen him just a few days ago? I might not have killed him?”
Shock rendered me speechless and immobile. Frozen. Detective Grayson wasn’t trying to prove I killed Samuel, he had a new suspect. My mother.
Seventeen
I fisted my hands and stood, turning to face the detective. First, he tried to use my son against me and now my mother? Hate churned inside me. I was unaccustomed to the raw, blistering emotion and it unsettled me. “She did not see Samuel. You will not railroad my mother.”
Our gazes clashed. My mom opened her mouth, struggling to her feet.
Doctor Yielding shushed her and helped her stand. “Don’t say anything in front of that Detective, Gloria. He’s trying to blame a death on you.”
“But I—” She started.
“Don’t!” I screamed. “Don’t talk.”
My mother cowered away from me. Shame filled me.
“Mom, he’s tricking you.” I gentled my voice.
Detective Grayson let out a dramatic sigh. “I do not think Mrs. Winters murdered anyone. I highly doubt she’d been able to kill him, sneak him out of this building, and place him in a RV that her daughter bought. Your mother misunderstood what I was saying.”
My mother looked at me, confusion clear on her face. “Merry, why did you bring this man to visit? Do you need my help deciding if he’s the one?”
Heat blasted across my face.
She sized up Detective Grayson. “I don’t like him. You can do better, Merry. You need a nice Christmas man. This one isn’t a holly jolly type.”
She was correct. Grayson was more a Scrooge than Bob Cratchit.
; There was a knock on the door of my mother’s apartment. The detective answered it and Drew Harrison, a local handyman around my children’s age, entered carrying a piece of carpet and a roll of duct tape worn like a bracelet.
“Want me to come back later, Gloria? You have a lot of visitors right now.” The young man looked worried.
Then again, Drew’s natural expression was eagerness with a hint of did-I-do-something-wrong. He had hung out with Scotland a few times, though Scotland always said it was because the guy had a crush on Raleigh.
“For what?” My mother’s voice was hesitant.
“To lay down the rug in the kitchen area. You said the tile was slippery and you almost fell three times. You were afraid you’d break your hip.” Drew ping-ponged his gaze around the room. “Remember?”
She shook her head.
“On Thursday.” He looked to us for reassurance.
“Did my mom call you?” I asked.
“No, Samuel did.”
“You saw Samuel Waters on Thursday?” The detective broke into the conversation.
“Yeah. Who’s he?” Drew dropped the rug and let the tape slide from his arm.
“A detective.” Why hadn’t my mom told me she needed a rug? Why had she called Samuel? “Mom, you never told me you were having trouble with the tile floor.”
“Or the staff,” Doctor Yielding said.
Gloria listened to every word. Her brows still furrowed but she was now nodding. “I do remember talking about it, but I don’t remember Samuel. Someone told him.”
“Who else has been visiting you?” I asked. How many times had my ex-husband visited my mother? Something he was forbidden from doing.
“You. Raleigh. Scotland. The new nurse and Cassie. I don’t like the new nurse. I liked Bonnie.” My mother fixed an accusatory glare onto me. She kept forgetting that Bonnie was now married to Samuel and that meant my mom’s former nurse was no longer trusted.
NOT a CREATURE WAS STIRRING Page 15
