"They didn't show up," Belinda said.
Alan, who hadn't looked up when Arie and Grumpa came in, did so then but quickly turned his attention back to the clay flowerpot he was painting.
Grumpa got his birdhouse and a selection of brushes and paints and took his seat. Without looking at his attempted gearshift shifter, he said, "So, uh, Al. How's the ol' noggin?"
The table stilled, waiting for Alan's undoubtedly snarky response. A slight smile flitted across Belinda's face. She seemed to approve of Grumpa's overture.
Alan cleared his throat then shot a glance at Grumpa, whose eyes caught and held Alan's. "It could have been worse, I guess," Alan said." I could have knocked my hip out."
"Your cha-cha partners would certainly hate that," Merilee said.
"That would be a tragedy." Alan waggled his eyebrows, which made his bandage jump.
Everyone relaxed and settled into their previous conversations, all except for Viv, who was staring at Grumpa. When he noticed, he flushed and shot an irritated look at Arie. She gave a slight I-didn't-say-anything shrug.
"You know, Harlan," Viv said, "I was at a store the other day and remembered how you weren't happy with the quality of the paintbrushes we have here."
"Oh. Uh-huh?" Grumpa had been dabbing a dark purple onto a lilac blossom but stopped to look at her.
Viv giggled and held out a rectangular package containing three new brushes in varying sizes.
Grumpa slowly straightened, a blush rising up from under the collar of his short-sleeved dress shirt. "Well, now. You didn't have to go and do that."
"Oh, it's nothing." Viv waved the gesture off. Grumpa had yet to take the gift, so she held it out and waggled the package at him. "Go on, now. Let's see what you can do with the right equipment. It'll be fun."
Alan guffawed, which only increased Grumpa's discomfort.
"Oh, my," Merilee said. She sent Kathy a glance rife with meaning.
"Well, that's... uh... that's very nice of you," Grumpa said. He wrestled with the plastic covering of the package for a bit before giving up. "Is there any scissors around here? I can't get this goldarn thing open."
Viv giggled. "Isn't it terrible? I almost lost my mind yesterday, trying to get a package of cookies open."
Merilee snorted. "Almost?" she said, sotto voce.
"You'll have to ask Carly for the scissors," Viv continued, apparently not even having heard Merilee's comment.
"Well"—Grumpa held up the paintbrush he'd been using—"maybe I'll go wash this off first." He rose, sticking the package into the back pocket of his slacks, then hurried over to the sink on the other side of the room.
"Excuse me, I'm going to the ladies’ room to fix my face," Viv chirped.
"Yeah, why don't you go do that?" Merilee said to the other woman's retreating back. Turning to Kathy, she said, "Can you believe that? Trying to buy herself another stud."
Stud?
Kathy shook her head. "Some people never learn."
"So, Carly has the scissors?" Arie asked.
Kathy nodded. “They treat us like children.”
Arie left them to their sniping session and went to ask the activity director for the scissors.
"Oh, sure," Carly said. "Give me a minute to finish this up. I don't usually give out the meds, and I want to double check before I call them up."
"Didn't Karen come in?"
"Karen? No, this is Cindy's shift." She turned back to the meds, checking them against a list.
Arie didn't want to distract her, so she kept quiet as Carly verified that the medications were correct. As she waited, the door to the staff lounge swung open, and Karen emerged. Carly's face lit up when she saw the nurse and waved her over. While they were speaking, Jane emerged from her office and approached the two.
"Karen, thank you so much for coming in on such short notice. I can't imagine what happened to Cindy. She's usually so dependable."
Surprised, Arie turned to Karen, expecting her to explain the arrangements Cindy had made with her the previous afternoon.
Karen ducked her head, almost as if she were blushing, though her pallid skin tone never changed. "Oh, that's all right, Jane. I'm happy to help."
"But didn't you tell Cindy yesterday you would cover for her?" The words popped out of Arie's mouth before she could stop them.
Karen's eyes slitted momentarily, then she shook her head and laughed. "Uh, no, I sure didn't."
"Yeah, when we were in the lounge with Alan."
Karen plastered a crazy-woman-alert expression on her face and laughed again. "No, I didn't. She asked me, but I told her I couldn't. I had a dentist appointment this morning." She turned to Jane and smiled with fuzzy yellow teeth. "Luckily, I had just finished there when you called."
"There's no excuse for Cindy's behavior," Jane said. "If she couldn't find someone to cover her shift, then she should have been here. Send her in to me as soon as she does manage to show up." The director turned and retreated to her office, cane tapping out her irritation as she went.
"Oh boy," Carly said. "I'd hate to be in Cindy's shoes tomorrow." Shaking her head, she began calling patients up for their meds.
"It's her own fault," Karen said.
Arie stared at her in disbelief, but the nurse didn't even flinch. In fact, she looked so assured that Arie almost wondered whether she'd been mistaken. After all, she'd been talking to Alan, trying to sort out the situation Grumpa had caused. Maybe they'd been talking about something else when—
"I hope your grandfather isn't going to be a problem," Karen said. Her muddy-brown eyes stared into Arie's.
"A problem? He's never been—"
"Because we don't tolerate any kind of violence. Another stunt like yesterday, and he'll have to go."
"That was an accident. Grumpa didn't mean to trip Alan."
"Right," Karen said, her flat gaze unwavering. "An accident." She walked away, leaving Arie to stare after her. The nurse crossed the room to Ruth, giving the octogenarian a big, warm hug.
Arie spent the rest of the day avoiding Karen, which wasn’t difficult since Carly had the more mobile patients finishing their craft projects and then participating in a period of yoga and meditation, and Karen spent the majority of her time with Ruth. Although she didn't—as far as Arie could see—shirk her duties, every spare moment the nurse had was spent interacting with her special charge.
At some point when Arie was distracted, Grumpa asked Viv to accompany him to bingo night. The group buzzed about it behind his back for most of the afternoon. Several of the women sounded like bees whose hive had been encroached upon.
All that meant Arie would have to follow through with her end and call Connor.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The conversation started out on the chilly side. When it didn't seem as though it was going to warm up, Arie plunged ahead and asked Connor to join her, Grumpa, and Viv for a festive night of bingo at the Legion hall.
"Wait," he said. "Are you actually asking me to double date with your grandfather?"
"I really don't like to think of it in those terms. Let's call it bingo with benefits."
"With benefits, huh?" Connor's voice warmed considerably. "Care to expand on that?"
"Uh... well... I can fill you in on Bernie Reynolds's history. He was quite the ladies' man."
"And you think he was killed for that?"
"I don't know. I just thought the more information you have, the better."
Connor's sigh rattled through the phone's speaker. "Can't argue with that."
"So you'll come?"
"When is it?"
Arie gave him the details. Relief made her heart pound, or maybe it was the thought of seeing Connor again.
"Bingo." He didn't sound excited.
"Oh, come on," Arie said. "How bad can it be?"
"Have you ever been to a bingo hall?"
"Well, no."
"I'll bring my gun. We may need it."
Arie and Grumpa arrived at the VFW f
ifteen minutes early because Grumpa was jittery with first-date nerves. Arie suspected he'd taken his bath in Aqua Velva, and he was even crankier than usual, if that was even possible.
"How come you never dated after Grandma left?" Arie had been wondering that for quite a while, but the topic of her grandmother's abrupt departure had always been off-limits and a bit of a family mystery.
The silence stretched so long she became certain Grumpa wasn't going to answer. She jumped when he did.
"Because we're still married."
"You're still married?"
Grumpa's face bunched up in a frown. "I never signed no papers, so I guess so. Besides, I never found anyone I liked enough to ask out."
"In sixty-some years, you never found one woman you liked enough to ask out?"
He stuck his nose in the air. "I have very high standards."
"Oh, well, sure. High standards. Absolutely."
"You wouldn't understand. Your generation is all if-it-makes-you-happy-just-do-it."
"I think that was a couple generations back, but I get it."
Grumpa opened the car door. "Here's the center's van. Time to get this stupid thing over with."
Arie reached over and grabbed his arm. The bones under his button-down shirt seemed frail and vulnerable. "I'm sorry, Grumpa. I didn't mean to make fun of Grandma leaving and all that. I really am curious about it, though. If you ever feel like telling me..."
Grumpa scowled at her hand, but he didn't pull away, either. "Don't go getting all sappy on me. It was a long time ago."
He pushed the door open and got out, nervously adjusting the bow tie she'd tried to talk him out of. It hung crooked, but the blue set off his eyes nicely. She wondered if, long ago, some woman had ever told him that. Maybe her grandmother...
The center's residents were unloading from the van, a process that, despite their enthusiasm, seemed to take forever as they got their assorted canes and walkers sorted out. Grumpa waited on the sidewalk for Viv, one of the last to disembark. When he caught sight of her outfit, he blanched visibly.
Leopard-print stretchy leggings with a long neon-pink T-shirt that barely skimmed her plump butt, along with huge geometric looped earrings that pulled her earlobes almost to her shoulders, all topped off with a mustard-yellow feather boa that Viv had twined around her neck.
Flash.
I can't believe that sorry heifer thinks I would ever marry her. I'm tired—
Viv waved gaily at her "date" and trotted over to him.
"Hellooo," she trilled. "Are you ready? This is going to be so much fun!"
Grumpa only had time to send Arie one desperate, beseeching look over his shoulder before Viv dragged him away. He tripped and would have gone down except Viv grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.
"Whoopsie daisy!" Her strong "linebacker" legs kept them moving forward without missing a beat.
Arie didn't have time to commiserate. A black Jeep Rubicon pulled into the space next to Grumpa's Caddy. A pair of startlingly blue eyes gazed at her from behind the windshield. In the sudden silence of the truck's engine turning off, Arie's breathing sounded loud and uneven. Connor's long frame unfolded from the vehicle, his eyes never leaving Arie's.
"Hi," Arie said. Her voice sounded Marilyn Monroe wispy, and she cleared her throat.
Connor grinned then leaned down and kissed her cheek. The smell of his aftershave—something crisp and woodsy—drifted over Arie like a sexy breeze. She shivered and rubbed the goose bumps from her arms.
"You sure about this?" His question seemed heavy with meaning, something other than a mere reconsideration of a night of bingo.
Arie felt a sudden flare of indignation. "I never questioned it in the first place."
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and sailed past him, heading toward the VFW. His chuckle made her shiver, and her butt suddenly felt as though it were on fire. Is he looking at my butt? Arie spun around but, despite the twinkle in his eye, couldn't be sure. His long stride caught him up to her before she could even get the door open.
The vestibule seemed gloomy after they’d been outside, as well as loud. Laughter and chatter from the large hall made it difficult to concentrate. Arie moved to the banquet table, where a portly bald man sat collecting money for the bingo cards.
"How many?" he asked her.
"Um, just one, I guess."
"Oh, boy. Big spender. Lemme guess. You're a virgin, huh?"
"What?"
Behind her, Connor laughed. "He means this is your first time for bingo." He leaned around Arie. "We'll take two cards. I'm buying."
"Oh, look. Another big spender. How about go wild? Live a little. Three for twenty. It's a deal."
"How many games per card?"
"Three. Come on. It's for a good cause." The guy slapped three cards down in front of Connor, his thumb and forefinger rubbing in the universally understood gesture for "gimme your money."
Connor pulled out his wallet and paid then picked up the cards and two ginormous markers. He handed one to Arie. "It's for a good cause, he says."
"Well, he's not wrong," Arie said.
"We'll see." Placing a hand on the small of her back, he opened the door leading into what seemed to be the Fourth Circle of Hell. Or maybe it was the Fifth. Arie wasn't as familiar with Hell as she was Heaven. A sign by the door said the hall capacity was 275, but there appeared to be fifty thousand people at first count. Although many were seated, a good number were still jostling for seats or yelling over the crowd's heads at friends on the other side of the large room to see if they "had room."
Chaos.
Connor guided Arie to a back table, nabbing two seats next to each other and facing the stage. Three other people sat around the table as well. One was a middle-aged woman with an assortment of knickknacks placed in a half circle on the table in front of her, presumably guarding her cards, of which she seemed to have nearly a dozen. She had pulled her hair back out of the way in a tight ponytail, her long T-shirt sleeves rolled up past her elbows, and she clutched her oversized marker as if ready to do battle. Looking more closely, Arie realized the marker was a different brand from the ones she and Connor had been given. Oh wow. The woman had brought her own personal bingo marker.
It was gettin' serious here.
Before sitting down, Arie scanned the room, looking for Grumpa. Finding Viv in the crowd wasn't too difficult despite the fact that—and this was surprising also—she wasn't the only woman wearing a boa. Apparently, boas as well as leopard-print and zebra-striped fabric were trending in bingo circles. Who knew? Arie caught Grumpa's eye and waved. He did not wave back. Instead, he shot her a baleful glare and turned away.
"He doesn't look too happy with you," Connor remarked as Arie sat down.
"Grumpa? He's never happy, certainly not with me." Despite her assertion, a pang of guilt ran through her.
"Who's he with?"
"That's Viv. She was one of Bernie's girlfriends. She, um, was kind of sad, so we thought it would be nice if Grumpa cheered her up."
Now Connor gave her a baleful look. "Right. And of course this has nothing to do with you two snooping around Bernie Reynolds's murder?"
Arie perked up. "So it was murder?"
Connor sighed. "The fingerprints on the gun don't line up with where they'd need to be if he had shot himself. I'm going to be interviewing his friends at the center in the next few days."
"Friends? Bernie Reynolds didn't seem to have a lot of friends. Not from what I can tell."
"Even better. But what I don't understand is what he was doing at the rec center in the middle of the night in the first place."
"He used to meet his women there. I guess it gave them privacy. They'd drink and dance and, um, whatnot."
"Whatnot, huh?" Connor grinned. "And did you say 'women,' plural?"
"Sure did. See, in the eighties-and-up age group, there are a lot more women than men. They fight over them like catnip."
"Well, that's something to look for
ward to. But let me guess: some of these women weren't happy about having to share?"
Arie gave him a "duh" look. "Of course not. But it seems like Viv, over there, was the most upset. The rumor is she was trying to buy Bernie's affection to the point that her finances were affected. Bernie supposedly dumped her a couple weeks before he died."
Connor's eyes narrowed, and he studied Viv across the room. "Dumped her for whom?"
"Nobody really knows, which is pretty strange. It's like they live in a fishbowl. Usually, everybody knows everything. Plus, as Grumpa pointed out, Bernie was the kind of man who would always have some woman on the line before getting rid of the old one."
"Makes sense." Connor nodded absentmindedly.
Arie smacked his arm. "'Makes sense?'"
He swung his delft-blue eyes back to hers and grinned again, his attention one hundred percent on Arie. "Well, to a certain type of man."
"What type?"
"The type who doesn't know what he wants from a woman—or from a relationship, for that matter." His eyes bored into hers. "The type who needs constant reassurance and makes the relationship all about him instead of paying attention to the woman's needs and desires. That kind of man."
Arie swallowed with a suddenly dry throat. "Oh. That kind."
The bingo caller—a vastly overweight middle-aged woman in a bright-red floral dress—stepped up to the microphone. A wire mesh barrel with a bunch of numbered balls sat at her dimpled elbow. She turned the crank, causing the balls to tumble. "All right, folks. Let's get started, shall we?" She pulled a ball from the barrel. "I seventeen." She repeated herself then briskly handed the ball to a helper, who put it in a special tray and punched the number into an electronic display. The caller was already pulling a new ball out. "B four. B fooour."
"Hey, you got that one," Connor said, tapping her card.
"What? Oh!" Arie grabbed for her marker but instead sent it skidding down the table, where it knocked over the ponytailed woman's troll and several other knickknacks before falling off the edge onto the floor.
"Hey!" The troll lady snatched at her talismans, trying to set them in order before the next number was called.
Scry Me A River: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (Blood Visions Paranormal Mysteries Book 2) Page 11
