by Hillary Avis
“She won him. Right. But she probably spent more on the raffle tickets than the bird would have cost to begin with. It’s like she can’t help herself...when she has a chance to win something, she pours out her purse like it’s full of water.”
“She’s a gambler?”
He nodded. “Why do you think she lives at the Dream-A-Lot? It’s not for the view. It’s because all she has to do is cross the street and she’s at the casino. She’s there every day, pretty much. Even now that the loan sharks won’t give her any more money, she plays the penny slots.” He shook his head. “I can’t make sense of why someone would throw away money like that. That’s what I told her—forget the slots! If she wants to insert money, pull lever, she can come to me!” He winked at Allison as if to say that he was joking, but she suspected he probably had said that. It was just the kind of dirty joke Harman would tell.
But it was more than a dirty joke—it was another plea for money, and Harman fleeced women by playing them against each other. He’d used that trick on Lilian and Gertrude when they were best friends, but was he low enough to pull it on sisters?
“Did you and Hedy ever date?” Allison tried to keep her voice casual.
He took some time answering, shifting his plug of tobacco back and forth as he scrutinized her face. Finally, he asked, “Why?”
She shrugged. “Just curious. You seem to know her business.”
“We were family for twenty years. Got to know her real well back then. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Harman turned abruptly and went back up on the porch.
“Don’t forget, the dog needs food and water every day,” Allison called after him, but he didn’t turn around. He just yanked open the screen door and let it bang shut behind him.
Chapter 21
“Guess Harman gave up on flirting with me,” Allison said to the dog, who was grinning at her with water dripping from her muzzle. Allison cautiously held out the back of her hand for the dog to sniff again before gently stroking her head. The dog butted up against her hand, her tail wagging. “See, you’re a good girl.”
She gave the dog one last pat and, with a backward glance at the poor skinny thing, headed back to the truck. Pogo yipped a greeting as she slid behind the wheel, and she gave him a pat, too. As she started up the engine, she caught sight of the clock on the dash. It was far later than she’d realized; her feed store errands had taken a huge chunk out of the day. “Shoot, we need to get the truck back to Myra!”
As she drove back toward town, she reflected on her conversation with Harman. She knew for a fact that Gertrude called him to tell him about the winning sweepstakes, yet he acted like he’d never heard a word about it.
“Strange,” she murmured to herself. Why would Harman hide that piece of information, especially now that Gertrude’s death had been ruled an accident? Unless he knew that it wasn’t...
Maybe Harman climbed through Gertrude’s window to grab the envelope. He might be eighty years old, but he was lean and fit from his years of working on his farm. There was no reason to think he couldn’t have done it physically, and he was the only person who knew about Gertrude winning the sweepstakes, besides Lilian and Myra. Even if they didn’t believe Gertrude won, but maybe Harman had.
That would also explain how Gertrude recognized her killer when she woke up that night. She’d recognize Harman instantly. But why would she be angry to see him? From everything Allison had seen in the memories, Gertrude adored Harman, despite their divorce. He could have just asked her for the sweepstakes money, and she’d probably have given it to him.
Then again, by his account, she wrote him out of her will. There had to be a reason for that. Punishment for his infidelities? Maybe she didn’t want to reward his bad behavior, especially since he didn’t seem to have changed his tune since then. He was still flirting with every woman he met. Perhaps that was the real reason Gertrude had been so angry to see him there in her room in the middle of the night. She might have assumed that he was sneaking in to visit Lilian, not her!
“Sorry!” Allison called, as she passed Riverview Avenue without making the turn, as though Myra could hear her inside Golden Gardens, three blocks down the street. “I just need to make one little stop.”
Two minutes later, she pulled into the Dream-A-Lot parking lot. She parked in the shade and rolled the windows down a crack for Pogo, then knocked on Hedy’s door. She had to know whether Hedy and Harman ever had a secret relationship.
“Go away!” Lester screeched from behind the door.
“Hush, you!” Allison heard Hedy say. The door opened and Hedy emerged, her hair tied up in a bright floral scarf that matched her silky robe. Her face broke into a smile when she saw Allison standing there. “Come in, come in. I’m making daiquiris!”
Allison followed Hedy inside, her stomach rumbling as she caught the scent of fresh pineapple. She spied a cutting board on the dresser with a partially dismembered fruit on it. A knife was stuck in the remaining half, and a blender next to it was full of pineapple chunks.
Lester flapped his wings from his perch on the headboard. “Nobody’s home! Get out!”
“Did you hear, dear?” Hedy asked, ignoring Lester’s outburst.
“Hear what?” Allison made herself comfortable in one of the wicker chairs by the bed, but kept a wary eye on Lester and his intimidating beak.
“The good news!” Hedy flipped a switch on the blender and it roared to life, drowning out Lester’s squawks. When the pineapple was reduced to a slurry, she turned off the machine and flashed a grin at Allison as she poured some of the pureed pineapple into a cocktail shaker, added ice cubes and a few other ingredients from bottles on the dresser, and then rattled the shaker over her shoulder. Over the clatter of the ice cubes, she added, “No murder! Gertrude just fell. I’m so happy!”
“Happy?” Allison asked. What a callous thing to say about your sister’s tragic death!
“Happy’s the wrong word. Relieved.” Hedy poured the shaker contents into two highball glasses and handed one to Allison. “Cheers.”
Allison’s sipped the fruity cocktail and her eyes widened. “This is fantastic! I’ve never had a daiquiri this good.”
“It’s the fresh pineapple.” Hedy plopped down on the bed and took a long drink of her own daiquiri, smacking her lips appreciatively. “It’s the best. Most people use canned.”
Allison nodded, her mind still turning over what Hedy has said earlier. “I can understand the relief knowing that nobody had ill will toward your sister.”
Lester climbed down off the headboard onto Hedy’s shoulder and began picking through the hair that escaped her bandana. Hedy shooed him away. “It’s not that. Plenty of people hated her guts. I was just worried it was someone I knew. I don’t like to think that one of my friends is capable of murder.”
“You mean Lilian? I had a hard time with that one, too! She’s not the type.”
“Not Lilian. I was afraid it was Harman!” Hedy slugged back the rest of her drink, and then grabbed the bridge of her nose. “Ouch! Frozen forehead!”
“Why would Harman kill Gertrude?” Allison asked, grinning at Hedy’s pained expression despite her puzzlement. “Wasn’t she kind of his cash cow?”
“Aren’t we all?” Hedy asked. She arched her penciled eyebrows at Allison and waggled them suggestively.
Allison snorted, nearly inhaling her latest sip of daiquiri. “Not me!”
Hedy shrugged and pushed up from the mattress. “Time for a refill?”
Allison eyed her nearly empty glass. “Sure, why not.”
“Thatta girl.” Hedy poured the rest of the blender contents into the shaker and made another round of daiquiris.
When both their glasses were full and Hedy was settled back into the bed pillows, Allison couldn’t help asking the question that had made her come here in the first place. “Are you and Harman an item?”
“Well. I don’t want him repeating this later.” Hedy eyed Lester and set her cocktail glass down o
n the nightstand. She held out her arm for the cockatoo and then took the bird into the bathroom, returning without him. “I put him to roost on the shower rod. I want to be clear—I never let Harman put a finger on me until he and Gertrude were divorced, no matter how often he asked. But I may or may not have loaned him some money over the years since then.” Her cheeks grew more pink, but whether from her memories or her second cocktail, Allison couldn’t tell.
“By loaned him some money, you mean...”
“We may have danced the forbidden dance a time or fifty, if you catch my drift. But I never just gave him money, not like she did; I loaned it to him and kept track. When his tab got up to a couple grand, I cut him off—no more dancing until he paid up.” Hedy pulled open a drawer on the nightstand next to her and took out a tiny notebook. She flipped it open so Allison could see the row of dates and amounts that were recorded in neat blue handwriting.
“Anyway. The afternoon before Gertrude died, Harman stopped by. He said he was going to pay me back in full, and he wanted to know the total amount. I asked him where he got the money, but he wouldn’t say. Of course, I knew where he got it.” She rolled her eyes.
“Gertrude,” Allison said, leaning forward in her seat. This kind of juicy gossip was exactly why she came.
“Exactly. So I called him on it, and he admitted that Gertrude won some kind of lottery thing.”
“And he thought she’d share?”
“That’s right. She was giving half of it to him. Or so he said, anyway. And there was no way I was taking my own sister’s money as payment for her squirrely ex-husband’s bad behavior. So I called her on the phone. Told her Harman was trying to give me her sweepstakes money.”
“What did she say?”
Hedy laughed. “What do you think? She was ticked!”
“I bet she was. Did she cut him off?” If so, that certainly gave Harman a motive to steal the sweepstakes entry from her room.
“Oh, she wasn’t mad at him—she was mad at me. She knew right away that if I’d given him money, he had a thing for me. But so what?” Hedy shrugged. “They weren’t married anymore. And everyone else had a little piece of Harman’s attention, so why shouldn’t I?”
Allison grimaced, imagining Gertrude’s reaction when she found out her sister was “dancing” with her ex-husband. “I’m guessing she didn’t see it that way.”
“Nope.” Hedy got up to make herself another drink, and realizing she was out of puree, began hacking at the pineapple’s juicy carcass. “She called me a ‘scarlet harlot,’ can you believe it? She thought I was only worried about what I’d inherit when she finally kicked the bucket. She said I was scared that she’d give all her money to Harman before she died.”
Allison’s mind raced. If Gertrude planned to write Hedy out of her will, that gave Hedy a significant motive to snatch the winning sweepstakes envelope. Her tongue loosened by one and three-quarters daiquiris, she asked, “Well...were you? Worried about that, I mean. I’m sure you’d rather she gave the money to you.”
Hedy whirled around and pointed her dripping knife at Allison, who froze in her chair, her cocktail halfway to her mouth. “No. I was trying to protect her from herself. She’s spent her whole life—and her whole bank account—making bad decisions when it comes to that man. I wasn’t about to let her fritter away this kind of cash. I told her to hang onto it and we’d talk about it.”
Hedy turned back to the pineapple and finished cutting it into cubes. She piled them into the blender and turned it on. It roared for a few seconds, prohibiting conversation.
When it was done, Allison asked, “Did she agree to wait?”
Hedy filled the cocktail shaker—adding more rum this time than before, Allison noted. After shaking it vigorously and pouring it into a larger glass, she took the finished drink back to the bed and crawled beneath the covers. She patted her lap and whistled, and Lester flew out of the bathroom, flaring his crest and chattering until she let him dip his beak into the daiquiri. “I don’t let him do that too often. Just a little treat,” she said to Allison, as though Allison were a disapproving bird warden.
Allison nodded politely and nursed the last bit of her cocktail, hoping Hedy would pick up the conversation thread and answer the question about Gertrude. She didn’t have to wait long.
“When I told Gertrude not to give Harman any money to pay his debt to me, she said flat out that she was writing me out of the will. She said she was going to give everything to him. She wouldn’t leave me a dime.”
Allison drew in her breath sharply, almost dropping her glass. Maybe Harman wasn’t the one with the motive—maybe Hedy was! If she thought she was going to lose her entire inheritance, she might have grabbed the sweepstakes entry before Gertrude could cash it in and give it to Harman.
Hedy noticed her expression and chuckled, waving her hand. “Oh, don’t worry. I knew she was just saying that because she was mad. I said go right ahead and hung up on her. Nothing better than slamming down that receiver, is there?” She lifted her glass in an imaginary toast and took a deep drink.
“Was that the last time you spoke with your sister before she died?” Allison asked quietly.
Hedy bent so Lester could press his feathered forehead against hers. The bird nuzzled her affectionately and then nibbled her sparkly earring. “Ah ah! Don’t do that!” she admonished him, shaking her finger. “You know, one time he pulled out my pearl earring and swallowed it.”
“Oh no!” Allison said sympathetically. “Did you have to take him to the vet?”
“Nope! Came out just OK on the other end. It was a little messy, but I cleaned it right up. The earring was just fine.” Hedy stretched out her arm so Lester could climb his way to her shoulder. “I’m telling you this because it was the same for me and Gertrude. Doo-doo happened over the years, but we always cleaned it up. And I knew we’d work this out, too. It’s just too bad she had her fall before we could do that.”
Allison nodded slowly. “So...you inherited the sweepstakes money after all?” she asked.
“That’s the funny part. When the police brought me her things yesterday”—Hedy pointed to a small pile of cardboard boxes in the corner near the door—“I went through every scrap of paper. Nothing about a sweepstakes. Nada.”
Of course it wasn’t among Gertrude’s possessions. Someone had stolen it. But only the thief and Allison knew that. If Hedy was the thief, she was also a very good actress.
“What do you think happened to it?” Allison asked.
“Who the heck knows,” Hedy slurred, having reached the bottom of her very large third glass of pineapple daiquiri. “My guess? That new cop took it. She was hanging around that place for no reason I could tell. She probably thought nobody would miss it and just”—Hedy wiggled her fingers and Lester leaned down and nibbled them like they might be juicy caterpillars—“used her sticky fingers.”
“She was at Golden Gardens because Lilian was in protective custody,” Allison explained. “I’ve met her and she seems pretty straight-laced. I don’t think she’d steal from a crime scene.”
Hedy shrugged, and Lester squawked at her. “Could have been someone else there. If not her, then I’d bet on Lilian. They always were fighting over everything.” Allison must have looked skeptical, because Hedy added, “Or maybe a nurse!”
A nurse? Allison hadn’t really considered the staff at Golden Gardens, but of course they had all heard about Gertrude’s supposed win, too. Myra herself had said the words “filthy rich.” That could have caught a caregiver’s ear. But a Golden Gardens caregiver wouldn’t need to climb through a window if they were already inside the building. They could just enter the bedroom through the door. And Gertrude wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of the staff in her room at night, because the visits would be a normal occurrence.
Obviously, Lilian didn’t steal the sweepstakes entry, either—she’d been asleep in bed in the thief’s memory. And it didn’t make sense that another patient took the envelo
pe, either, because none of the Golden Gardens residents had the presence of mind to escape their own rooms, climb through Gertrude’s window, steal something, and then make it back into their rooms undetected. It just didn’t add up. The thief and killer had to be someone from outside the care facility.
But who? Harman Winter, who wanted the sweepstakes money all to himself? Hedy, who feared her sister might give it away to someone undeserving—and, at least according to Harman, had her gambling debts to pay? Or someone else? It was impossible to tell. Allison shook her head.
“You don’t think so?” Hedy leaned back against the pillows, causing Lester to lose his perch and flap his way over to the bedside lampshade. “Who knows, then. Maybe there never was a winning envelope. Gertrude probably just made the whole thing up. She does that sometimes, now that her bell has lost a little of its ding-a-ling. You know how it is.”
“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” Allison said uneasily, the killer’s memory playing like a movie behind her eyes. That envelope was real, even if its contents were fabricated.
“Sure we will! We’ll just wait and watch...if someone starts throwing money around town like a lunatic, we’ll have our thief!” Hedy roared a laugh and fanned herself with her hand, then squeezed her eyelids shut. She waved toward the nightstand. “Phew, that daiquiri went straight to my head! Can you hand me my sleep mask?”
The blue silk mask hung from the drawer knob. Allison grabbed it, narrowly missing Lester’s sharp beak as he lunged for her hand, and passed it to Hedy.
Hedy slipped on the mask without opening her eyes and then clasped her hands over her stomach. “Naptime!” she announced. “Don’t worry about washing your glass. Just leave it by the sink.”
Allison obeyed. “Thanks for the cocktail,” she said on her way out, but Hedy didn’t reply, her breathing already slow and regular. Lester gave Allison a sideways stare before tucking his head under his wing. Naptime for birds, too, Allison thought, and left the dreamers at the Dream-A-Lot.
