A Draw of Death (Helen Binney Mysteries Book 3) (5 page)

Thoughts of dead bodies and a violent killer running circles around Homicide Detective Hank Peterson were hardly conducive to sound sleep, so Monday morning Helen might have forgotten that she'd promised to visit her friends at the Wharton Nursing Home if the Clary kids hadn't come zipping up the gravel driveway at the prearranged time, a few minutes before 10:00.

The space outside the garage where Tate usually parked was empty. On the way home from Rezendes's house yesterday, he'd warned her that she might not see him in his studio much this week. He was planning to stick close to his niece for a while, to make sure she wasn't harassed by Hank Peterson or anyone else involved with the murder investigation.

Both Jay and Zee were free to drive her since the work at the Rezendes mansion had stopped for the time being. With the two of them in the front, Helen was relegated to the back seat of her own car. At least there she could think without interruption. She had the nagging feeling she was missing something again, but she had no idea what it could possibly be. She had her cane, her yarn bag, and her phone with a security app on it. What could she have forgotten?

She hadn't come up with any answers by the time she entered the nursing home's lobby and picked up the pen to sign in as a visitor. Grateful that at least she hadn't forgotten her own name, Helen signed the guest register before heading down the hall to the activity room.

The Wharton Nursing Home had once been the home of a millionaire, back in the golden age of entrepreneurs when vacation "cottages" were actually magnificent mansions. Newport, Rhode Island was famous for this type of cottage, but Wharton had been a similar, but lesser-known summer playground for the rich, and it still boasted quite a few opulent homes.

When the town acquired this mansion, it had completely gutted the second and third floors to turn the space into a maze of tiny, bland and sterile rooms for patients. Only the first floor, with the administrators' offices and other areas open to the public, retained much of the original grandeur. What had once been a sprawling ballroom that ran the full length of one side of the building was now an activity room for the ambulatory residents and their visitors.

Betty Seese and Josie Todd could usually be found in a pair of wingback chairs at the far end of the room, next to a massive fireplace. It was only November, but western Massachusetts was experiencing an unusually early and cold winter this year, so there was a small but cheery fire in the hearth. The women had rearranged the chairs so Josie, the older and thinner of the pair, could be closer to the heat from the fireplace while Betty was far enough away that she didn't roast.

Helen dragged a chair over next to Betty where it was still a bit too warm, but at least was out of the direct blast of the fireplace. Betty had just cast on about six inches worth of stitches to start what appeared to be a scarf in a bright yellow yarn that contrasted sharply with the black sweater and pants she habitually wore. Josie, on the other hand, was crocheting a chemo cap out of a neon-bright variegated yarn that still managed to disappear against her equally colorful clothing: a lime green sweatshirt over a hot pink turtleneck, with jeans in a yellow as bright as her friend's scarf.

Helen opened her yarn bag to remove the chemo cap she'd been working on since last Thursday. At the moment, it was only a band, about 2" high, in a lovely shade of green. It had taken her at least ten hours of total concentration to get that much done. On the plus side, it looked reasonably good. She'd finally gotten into the meditation-like rhythm of it, and she felt confident it would pass Josie's inspection.

Josie peered at it, blinked, and said, "Oh. Em. Gee. You've finally got it."

"You were right about just needing to be patient and getting lots of practice." Helen would never be as comfortable with the crochet hook as Josie was, or as Betty was with knitting needles, but she could at least complete a hat that was head-shaped now, with no obvious holes, lumps, or loose ends.

Betty glanced at a piece of graph paper that apparently contained her hand-written pattern for the scarf and then said, "Did you bring the yarn you're donating to Charity Caps Day? We've had a few volunteers mention that their stashes were running low."

Helen sighed. "I knew I'd forgotten something this morning." She'd bought a large bag full of yarn to donate, and she'd meant to bring it with her today. Fortunately, since most of what she'd wanted had to be special-ordered by the shop, she'd arranged for it to be delivered directly to the nursing home. She should have had the rest delivered too to make sure it didn't end up lost somewhere in her cottage. "I don't know what's wrong with me this week. I think it's just insomnia, but if I don't get some good sleep soon, my nieces are going to be locking me up in a dementia ward."

"Forgetting a single errand doesn't come close to true dementia," Betty said. "We've seen what really happens. Like one of the residents here who keeps trying to disassemble the radiators. He used to be a plumber, and he can't process the fact that he lives in a place with a room as grand as this, so he thinks he's here on a job. The staff have to keep an eye on him, since the steam radiators get so hot they're dangerous. He doesn't always check whether they're working before he starts trying to unthread the vent. Even your over-protective nieces couldn't think you're anywhere near being in his condition."

"If I do get that bad, at least I'll have my crochet to keep me occupied." Helen forced down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her at just the idea of someday, far in the future, losing her usually sharp mind. "Unless I forget how to crochet."

"Forgetting isn't always that bad," Josie said. "You remember Billy, right? He's the guy who recently got engaged to the woman he thinks is his childhood sweetheart, except of course she isn't. He's forgotten pretty much everything between high school and his ninetieth birthday. You should see how happy he is. He doesn't remember his first wife, who was horrible to him, or all the losses he's experienced over the years. He's perfectly happy living in the moment."

"I wouldn't want to lose all the years of my marriage," Helen said. "I don't exactly miss my husband, but the time with him wasn't bad. I wouldn't be the same person without those memories."

"Worrying about it will just make it worse," Betty said in her reassuringly no-nonsense tone.

"I really hope you don't lose your mind any time soon," Josie said. "If you do, who will keep the Wharton Police Department from bungling all the major crimes here in town? As long as you're doing their work for them, it's a win/win situation. They get to lock up the bad guys, and you get the mental challenges to keep your brain functioning at peak capacity."

"I'm looking for a different kind of challenge," Helen said. "I'm done with investigating crimes. It's too dangerous. I've started volunteering at the library instead. That should keep me busy, and they can use my event-organizing skills."

"We heard about the Rezendes speech," Josie said. "We were hoping you could get him to come here and talk too. Before he died, I mean. I've never been all that into zombies."

"It wasn't your fault," Betty said. "The speech going wrong, I mean. Or the murder, of course."

"Yeah, Rezendes was a jerk," Josie said. "The granddaughter of one of the residents here is the broker who sold him his new home in Wharton, so we got to hear all about what a jerk he was to her. The only thing she liked about him was that he paid cash for the house, which made for a fast closing. Other than that, she said, Rezendes lived up—or down, I guess—to his nickname: the Purple Pig of Professional Poker. And not because he was all cute and round like a piggy bank. Well, he was kinda round in the belly, but not so cute."

"We found an online source for all the reality shows he starred in and got the nursing home to let us stream them." Betty paused to check on the progress on her scarf. In the last few minutes she'd already done more stitches than Helen could do in an hour. "He was definitely a male chauvinist pig. Insisted that women couldn't play poker. But he'd take their money, both at the poker table and in his classes on how to play like the pros. It's not surprising someone killed him. Probably a woman who'd heard one too many dismissive comments from him."

"Maybe you can explain something for me," Helen said. "He seemed to have an obsession with the color purple. His clothes, his food, even the trim on his house."

"It's the only color he ever wore," Josie said. "Everything. Right down to his boxers. Had it written into his contracts with the reality shows. They couldn't make him wear anything that wasn't purple. Apparently it's intended as a reminder that he's the royalty of the poker world. Like back in the Middle Ages, when only the royal family was allowed to wear purple."

"I guess that makes sense." In the warped, out-of-touch-with-reality way that most reality shows seemed to display.

"So," Josie said. "Are you going to figure out who killed him? Unless someone was standing over the corpse shouting, 'I did it—I killed Vic Rezendes because he cheated me at poker,' you know Hank Peterson will never arrest the right person."

"I think I'll leave this one to the professionals. I'm busy with my volunteer work at the library, and now I need to find another speaker to make up for Vic skipping out on his speech."

"You could be the speaker yourself," Josie said. "Especially if you solve another major crime. I bet a lot of people would want to hear about that."

"I've always preferred to work behind the scenes, not directly on the stage," Helen said. "Besides, Tate has already reminded me it's none of my business, and my nieces will get anxious if they hear I'm even thinking about looking into another death. They're already acting odd, and I'd rather not send them into a panic."

Betty and Josie both suddenly became totally engrossed in their needlework, staring at their fingers as if they were rank beginners, just learning how to knit and crochet. Most of the time they could work with only an occasional quick glance at their hands, and their current projects weren't any more complicated than their usual work. Betty's scarf was simpler, in fact, than the caps she usually made.

They knew something about why Lily and Laura were acting so strange. What were the four of them hiding?

Before she could figure out where to start with the interrogation, Betty said, "Oh, look. Here comes Geoff Loring. Is he still afraid to be seen talking to you?"

If he hadn't been before yesterday, when he'd seen her leaving the scene of a murder he hadn't wanted to report on, he probably was now.

*   *   *

Geoff caught sight of Helen and immediately started to make a U-turn in the middle of the activity room.

Josie called out, "Don't you dare run away, Geoff Loring. Come over here right now, or you can forget about ever again getting any leads on stories from us."

Betty and Josie were well known for having the best gossip in town, generally embroidered a bit in the interest of good storytelling but based upon at least a kernel of truth. Geoff was good at ferreting out that underlying bit of real news and building an upbeat, happily ending feature story around it. In his stories, no one ever died, disappeared, or suffered the slightest of injuries.

Geoff hesitated, clearly torn between his fear of somehow catching a murder story from Helen, and his need to keep his main news sources happy. He sidled over to the fireplace, snagging a straight-backed chair on the way. He set it down as far as possible from Helen, with the back facing Betty and Josie. He straddled it as if the wooden back of the chair could protect him from association with Helen.

Too bad Detective Peterson didn't take her as seriously.

"She won't bite you," Josie said.

"And if she tries," Betty added, "we'll protect you."

"Laugh all you want," he told them, "but every time I see Ms. Binney, someone ends up dead. One of these days, it's going to be me." 

"Vic's already dead, so the damage is already done. You should be safe for a while," Josie said. "For now, we just want to know more about Vic. Did you get to interview him before, well, you know? Before he made front page news?"

"He was supposed to talk to me after his speech on Saturday." Geoff dared a quick glare at Helen. "But then he left early, so it didn't happen. I was really looking forward to it too. I'd never interviewed a real live celebrity before."

Betty raised her eyebrows at him. "So, what are your normal subjects? The ones who live here? Unreal celebrities? Not entirely alive? Z-list, perhaps?"

"I didn't mean that," he said quickly. "It's just that the mania for television celebrities makes interviewing one a reporter's fantasy. Not that it isn't hard to write something new about a celebrity, but I think I could have really nailed that piece. Now we'll never know."

"You got to write about his death, though," Betty said. "It was the front-page story."

"Hush." Geoff looked around the room frantically. "You weren't supposed to know that. I gave the by-line to one of the other reporters who added the background information."

"You know we have the best sources here," Josie said. "Hank's uncle told us you were the one who really wrote it."

"All the Petersons have big mouths," Geoff muttered under his breath.

"So, what did you see at the crime scene that you left out of the official story?" Betty said.