“Rusty? Who’s Rusty?”
“Never mind, forget I mentioned it. Any progress on getting the foster care files opened?”
“Something strange about that. I don’t know how to tell you this, but it seems the Cobbs’ file can’t be located.”
My heart sank. Missing! Now the key to determining the young woman’s true identity rested solely on Peggy Cobb’s feeble mind. “I’m going to call the director of the group home first thing tomorrow morning and set up an appointment to see Peggy. I know her memory is iffy, but she may be able to …” I heard a noise behind me and saw that Mama had knocked the jar of mayonnaise off the fridge shelf.
“Everything okay, Mama? If you’re looking for the casserole, I already made you a plate. It’s on the counter. You might want to put it in the microwave for a minute or so.” I pointed out her dish before turning back to my call.
“Anyway, I’ll let you know how it turns out,” I told Sean. “By the way, there’s something important that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Mama was still hovering. I wanted to bring up the Damian York thing, but not in front of her. I sighed. “In person,” I added.
“How about lunch tomorrow at the James Joyce Pub?”
“Tomorrow may not work …” I hedged. At this week’s status meeting, Bentley had added ten more things to my to-do list. Of course, once she discovered the president of the Dirty Dozen was behind bars, she would call a DAC (damage assessment and control) meeting. Probably first thing in the morning. Plus I was behind on emails, still had several outstanding proposals to read and anxious authors to respond to, not to mention finding time to visit Peggy at the nursing home. “How about Thursday?” Except, what if I didn’t get all my to-dos checked off my list? The event was just a few days away. It’d be cutting things too close. “I mean Friday. Let’s make it Friday for lunch,” I amended, thinking surely everything would be under control by Friday. Actually, if luck was on my side, maybe Peggy would be able to identify one of the photos and Sean could also mark the cold case file off his to-do list. Then we’d be able to get on with our lives.
No answer. After a half minute of silence, I cleared my throat. “Hello? Sean?”
“How about you just call me back when you get your schedule worked out. We’ll talk then.” He disconnected before I had a chance to reply.
“What was that all about?” my mother asked as soon as I hung up the phone.
“Um, that was Sean. We were talking about Fannie’s murder.”
She placed the plate in the microwave and slammed the door. “Didn’t sound that way to me,” she accused, jabbing the start button.
I sighed. First Sean and now Mama. I don’t know why everyone was so prickly, but I was too tired to deal with it all. “If you really must know all the details of our discussion, we were talking about the case. Alice Peabody was arrested tonight.” I went on to explain the whole ordeal at Fannie’s house and how Alice was caught digging up Fannie’s roses with a spade. “Seems the rose plant is valuable. The way I see it, Alice snuck into Fannie’s yard last week, intending to dig up the plant, but Fannie interrupted her. Maybe threatened to report her. Alice flipped and hit her with the spade.”
Mama pulled a fork from the silverware drawer as the microwave buzzer sounded. “Really? That doesn’t seem right.”
“What do you mean? Of course it seems right. She was caught red-handed.”
“Stealin’, but not murderin’. I don’t think she murdered Fannie.” She paused and took a few bites of the casserole. “I forgot to tell you, but Alice came visitin’ yesterday.”
I gawked at her. “She did?”
“Yes, wanted me to read her fortune. It was important to her to know the outcome of that garden contest all those ladies are so worked up about.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before? How did the reading go?”
“Well, funny thing about that. You see, I started with a palm readin’ and then laid out the tarot cards. I’ve been feelin’ bad about missin’ so much in Fannie’s readin’ that I wanted to get things right. Anyways, the first card she drew was a Sword card, indicatin’ trickery to gain power.” She took a couple more bites, mulling over her story.
I drew in my breath and exhaled slowly, trying to appear patient.
Mama swallowed and went on, “I assumed that it meant someone was gettin’ ready to trick her into losin’ that prize. But now that I look back on it, it meant she was the tricky one. But, the point bein’, I didn’t see nothin’ worse than trickery. If she was a cold-blooded murderer it would have been in the cards.”
Vicky, Sean, and now my mother. Why didn’t anyone believe that Alice Peabody was capable of murder? “Isn’t it possible that you missed something, Mama?” I regretted my words as soon as they were out. The hurt look on Mama’s face made my stomach bunch into knots. I scrambled to soften my words. “I mean, you can’t expect to see everything with just a few flips of the cards.”
My mother’s shoulders crumpled. “It’s possible, sug. I’ve been missing a lot lately.”
“Oh, Mama, that’s not what I meant and you know it. I’m just saying that—”
She held up her hand, stopping me midsentence. Slowly rising, she said, “It’s okay, hon. Let’s just call it a night. We’re both ’bout tuckered out.”
“Wait, Mama,” I pleaded, but she turned away, placing her empty bowl in the sink, grabbing a glass and her favorite man, Jim Beam, from the cupboard, and heading for a nightcap and her makeshift bed on the sofa.
Chapter 16
A thundering boom and the sound of shattering glass woke me sometime in the early predawn hours. I sat straight up in bed, my heart in my throat. I knew exactly what I’d heard. The sound of a shotgun!
“Mama!” I screamed, running toward the front room and colliding with Trey in the hall. “Get back to your room and lock the door,” I ordered.
In the family room, I found my mother still gripping the gun and staring with a dazed look toward what used to be my front window. It was no longer there. “Mama! Are you okay?”
“What?” She thumped the side of her head. “Lawd! My ears are ringin’ somethin’ awful. I don’t remember this gun packin’ so much kick. It’s just a darn good thing I had a couple spare cartridges in my purse.” She glanced around. “Where in blazes did I put that box of ammo anyway?”
I looked from her to the window and then back again. I was speechless.
“Wow, Nana! Why’d you shoot out the window?”
“I thought I told you to stay in your room,” I barked at Trey. I heard the sounds of sirens. I turned back to my mother. “What were you shooting at?”
She pointed toward the window. “An intruder. Right there. Coming through the front window. See, my feelin’ was right. Somethin’ was about to happen.”
I stared at the window, shards of glass around the edges like the teeth of a shark’s jaw, menacing and evil-looking. The sirens grew louder. Through the fragmented glass, I could see a couple of police cruisers pull to the curb. Uniformed officers jumped out and ran down our walk, their weapons drawn. “Put the gun down, Mama. The police are here.”
“How’d they get here so fast?” she asked, placing Rusty on the recliner.
“Must have been in the neighborhood,” I responded, not mentioning the threat letter that prompted Sean to place patrolmen in our neighborhood through the night. I went to the door and threw it open before they even reached the front porch. “Everything’s okay. My mother saw someone breaking in and—”
“Step aside, ma’am.”
The officers pushed past me and filed into the family room. One of the officers immediately picked the shotgun off the recliner, turned it over, pushed some sort of release, and pulled back the pump to see if it was unloaded. “What’s happened here?” he asked, keeping hold of the gun.
“There was a man comin’ through that window there. It’s been so hot, I had it open for some air,” Mama exp
lained.
The officer surveyed the window. “A man coming through there?”
“That’s what I said,” Mama reiterated. “See, I was sleepin’ right here on the sofa when I heard some noise. I looked over and saw this man, well, one of his legs anyways, comin’ in through the window. So I got Rusty and shot at him.”
The officer glanced at Trey. “Are you Rusty?”
My son shook his head. “No, I’m Trey. That’s Rusty.” He pointed to the gun.
The officer raised a brow but didn’t say anything. He motioned for the other officers to look around. “These fellows are going to check things out, ma’am. Why don’t you sit down and rest a minute.” Then, turning to me, he said, “I’m going to call Griffiths. Let him know what’s going on.”
I nodded and went to help my mother to the recliner. I covered her with a blanket. Despite the stifling heat, she was shivering. A few minutes later, one of the officers came back in. “We’ve checked the entire perimeter of the house and didn’t find anything,” he said. “There’s nothing outside the window that indicates anyone’s been injured.”
“No blood?” the head officer inquired.
“No blood. I couldn’t find any footprints, either. All the other windows and the back door seem to be undisturbed.”
The officer in charge furrowed his brow and nodded toward the bottle of Jim Beam and empty shot glass on the end table. “You been drinking tonight, ma’am?”
Mama folded her arms across her chest, her chin jutting outward. “Just my nightly constitutional, that’s all.”
The officers exchanged a knowing look. “Are you sure you saw an intruder, ma’am? Could you have been mistaken? See, it’s unlikely that some of the scatter from the shot wouldn’t have hit him. The window’s not that far away.”
I knew what they were thinking. They thought Mama was some old drunk who went around shooting at shadows. “Look, if my mother says she saw an intruder, she did.”
“Stop, sugar.” Mama held out one hand while another clasped her forehead. “Maybe they’re right. These old eyes have been playin’ tricks on me lately. Maybe I was seein’ things. Or dreamin’, maybe.”
“No, Mama, you’re not seeing things,” I started, wanting to come to her defense.
I was about to bring up the threat letter, just to ease her doubts, and explain to her how there might be some sort of connection, when the officer pulled me aside. “We’ll check the local hospitals and see if anyone turns up with a gun wound.” We glanced back at Mama. Trey was bent over, patting her arm and whispering something in her ear. “It just seems peculiar that there wasn’t any blood. With the stress of you being threatened and all, well … Do you think it’s possible that she was just seeing things?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t told her about the threat I received. And she usually doesn’t act so irrationally.” Then again, the body in the yard, Fannie’s murder … all these things were a lot for anyone to handle. I sighed. “Maybe. I really don’t know.” I rubbed my temples. Why would someone try to break into our home? Again, the threat letter came to mind as a plausible connection, but still the police had Alice in custody. She was the most logical fit for Fannie’s murder—the rose, the whole eliminating the competition thing. Or what if I was wrong and it was Grant Walker all this time? Maybe it was his leg Mama saw.
The officer patted my back. “Things like this happen at her age.” He nodded again toward the empty shot glass. “Especially when there’s whiskey mixed in. You’d best put up the gun up before she hurts someone,” he finished.
I agreed, and sequestered Rusty to the top shelf of the linen closet for the time being. I’d no sooner tucked the gun safely behind a stack of old blankets than the phone rang. It was Sean. I spent the next ten minutes or so answering his questions and reassuring him that we were fine. Before hanging up, he spoke to the officers, instructing them to remain positioned outside our home for the rest of the night. As soon they returned to their cruiser, I went straight to my mother and wrapped her in my arms.
She trembled against my shoulders. “You think I’m crazy, don’t ya? That this old woman is losin’ her mind. You think old age is finally catchin’ up to me, don’t you?”
“You’re not old, Mama.”
“Not at all,” Trey added. “You’re the coolest grandma around.”
I glanced over at him. “Honey, would you go out to the garage and see if you can find something to secure this window for the night?”
“Sure thing, Mom.”
As soon as he took off, Mama wriggled out of my hold and turned an angry face my way. “You say I’m not old, but I heard you talkin’ on the phone about it to Sean this evening.”
I scrunched my face, thinking back to the conversation I’d had with Sean before we went to bed. “What? Now you aren’t making any sense.”
“I may be losin’ it but I’m not deaf. I heard you tell him you were calling a group home tomorrow to set up an appointment.”
Then it hit me; she’d overheard bits and pieces of me telling Sean about visiting Peggy at the group home in Dunston. No wonder she was so touchy. And maybe that added stress had been all it took for Mama’s subconscious to “see” something to prove she was needed here, to prove to herself and to us all that she could still protect her family. “You shouldn’t be eavesdropping, Mama. But since you were, you might as well know the whole story. I’m not going to the old folks’ home to see about you. I’m going to visit a woman named Peggy Cobb sometime this week. She used to own this house.” I pointed toward the box of photos in the corner. “I’m taking those photos for her to look at because I think one of them might be of the young woman buried in our yard.” I drew in a deep breath, waiting for her to digest all this new information.
“Oh,” she said, then shook her head. “Still, I’ve been havin’ plenty of trouble with my predictions these days. First, I didn’t see Fannie’s death comin’, and now you’re telling me that I didn’t see that Alice Peabody is a murderer. Then, I done gone and shot out the window.”
I sighed. Should I tell her about the threat letter? Put her mind at ease about her senses? Or would it just cause her more worry? I’d already, even though mistakenly, given her the stress of thinking I was turning her in to a nursing home, for heaven’s sake! And I had a blown-out window to show for it. I didn’t think either she or I could afford stressing her out anymore by mentioning the threatening letter. I glanced over at the wall clock. Three o’clock. I could decide just how much I wanted to tell her in the morning. For right now, I needed to salvage what sleep I could; the rest of my week was going to be hard enough as it was. “You just made a mistake tonight, that’s all. With everything that’s been going on around here, we’re all on edge. Besides, everyone has that type of trouble now and then.”
Trey came in, carrying a hammer and some boards. “I think I can jury-rig something that’ll work.”
“Thanks, Son.” I placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you come share my bed for the rest of the night? It’s big enough for the both of us and you won’t be comfortable sleeping out here anymore.”
She nodded, so I helped her out of the chair and back to my room. Right before settling into bed, I gave her another reassuring hug. “If your predictions are off, it has nothing to do with your age, Mama. I’m sure of it. There’s just something more going on than we can explain at this point.” More going on than I wanted to tell her, lest she worry herself absolutely sick. And my house ended up with even more damage!
She nodded her head. “In that case, I might feel better knowin’ that there was something wrong with my senses. Because, I’m still have that dreadful feelin’ of mine and I’m ’fraid of what it might mean.”
*
DESPITE MY SLEEPLESS night, the next day I was able to work steadily. Every once in a while, I looked up from my computer screen to pet Eliot, who was contently curled on top of my desk. “You really do make a good mascot,” I told him, peering into his me
smerizing green eyes. “I bet you saw what happened to your owner, didn’t you, boy? It was that mean old Alice Peabody, wasn’t it?” I asked. For some reason, I didn’t feel a bit silly for talking to a cat. Although even as I asked the cat about Alice, my mother’s words snuck back to my mind. “Trickery and thieving,” she’d said. “Not murder.” Her pronouncement caused a little niggle of doubt in my mind. All indicators, at least in my mind, pointed to Alice as Fannie’s murderer, still I’d come to trust my mother’s instincts over the years. And, there was the leg she saw last night. Her imagination? The police officers seemed to think so. Even Sean, when I spoke to him on the phone early this morning, felt that Mama might have been overreacting. Still, deep down, I knew my mother usually wasn’t prone to such irrational behavior. Then again, something didn’t seem quite right with her senses these days. Or her behavior. Poor Mama. Could it really be that the strain of the past two weeks was getting to be too much for her? After all, bringing a loaded gun into our home wasn’t exactly rational behavior, at least not to me. I thought back to my window, flaps of ugly green tarp peeking between crooked boards, and took a long cleansing breath. I needed to remember to call the glass company.
I shook my head and turned my eyes back to my computer screen. So many things to consider, when what I really needed to do was get through the next few days of work and mark this Damian event down as a done deal. So I homed in on my screen and worked on email correspondence straight through lunch. Then I spent over an hour on the phone with the editor who was publishing Jay’s sequel to The Alexandria Society. The book was due to be released early next year, so we needed to work out some key editing dates and start making marketing and promotion plans. Since Jay was, in essence, writing the sequel under the original author’s name, there would no doubt need to be some extra editing. Jay was a talented writer, but writing in someone else’s style and tone was a difficult task. Our main objective was to make the transition from the previous author’s writing to Jay’s writing as seamless as possible for readers.
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