Polly Dent Loses Grip (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (23 page)

Darren’s spit second passed and he pulled out a key and slid it into the lock on the door. Mitzi’s door. He motioned me in first, explaining as I squeezed past him. “Mitzi gave me her key. She wanted me to check on her.” He closed the door behind us and pocketed his key again. “She doesn’t trust the doctor.”

That again. I wonder if Dr. Kwan understood how much the residents distrusted him. Darren tilted his head at me. “I checked her meds. It’s the same stuff she’s always taken.”

He stopped in front of a closed door and tapped lightly before swinging the door open. In the dim light of a small lamp, Mitzi lay curled on her side, eyes wide open and staring.

“Don’t be scared. She looks like that sometimes,” Darren whispered.

With a gracefulness I hadn’t seen when he’d folded clothes, Darren tugged the sheet up around Mitzi’s shoulders, straightened the collar of her pajamas and smoothed the hair back from her head.

His tenderness touched me. This wasn’t a friend caring for a friend, this was a man caring for a woman he loved. Mitzi, despite her frailty, must have been younger than I’d originally guessed, which probably accounted for her spryness. And hadn’t he talked about her days of clarity with a certain wistfulness?

Darren’s body might be twisted, but his heart was straight as an arrow. He finished fussing over Mitzi and shuffled to the dresser where her meds were stored.

“You’re loving her, aren’t you?”

Darren froze, then stood tall and nodded. “I do. There’s ten years between us. Mitzi thought it was too much
,
and I didn’t press her because I didn’t realize how much I really cared until. . .” He closed his eyes and turned toward the dresser, hand hovering over an assortment of bottles and perfumes. He clutched at a prescription bottle, tears welling in his eyes. “When she moves to nursing I won’t be able to see her as much.”

Darren twisted the cap on the water bottle he’d picked up on our way into the cafeteria. He hadn’t said much on our trip down to the cafeteria. My heart broke for him. Nothing worse than being alone in a crowd
,
and the cafeteria was sure crowded.

Matilda sat at her usual table. She greeted Darren with enthusiasm before returning her attention to the meatloaf. Gertrude and Thomas rounded out the table. Gertrude didn’t seem to notice or care about Darren’s presence, merely sending him a rather hostile look before
she resumed
talking Thomas’s ear off. Thomas snuck in a huge smile and a polite hello before continuing his charade of listening to Gertrude.

“Let’s get up there and put on the feed bag,” I said to Darren, eyeballing the buffet and working my hand into my pocket for some money.

“I’m not hungry,” Darren mumbled.

Maybe our talk of Mitzi had upset him, but I doubted it. My thinking said it was the presence of Gertrude, and her meanness that had my boy in a case of nerves.

“You need to eat. You’re as scrawny as a toothless man eating chicken necks.” I yanked on a chair and pointed at the seat. “Sit. I’ll get you something.” As I traveled the path to the buffet, Sue Mie pushed in a little woman in a wheelchair, a man in a walker behind her. I sent her a nod.

“It’s almost quitting time for you.”

She pushed the woman up to a table and motioned a cafeteria attendant over, probably to get their food. Sue helped the man in the walker into a chair, then scooted the man’s walker back a little and pushed his chair in. “I not be here for you, Mr. Gerber
.
” Sue directed his line of vision to the smiling attendant headed their way. “Miss Nancy will help. I see you tomorrow.”

Ah. She was keeping up the charade of Asian CNA. When she turned and our gazes connected, I knew the time had come for me to eat humble pie. “Sure could use me a nice hot mocha. Got any place around here that serves them?”

 
Whatever she was thinking, she hid it well. Too well for my liking, but I had no choice.

“Coffee house down street. They close 6 p.m.”

When in fact they closed at 9 p.m. Translation: Meet me there at 6 p.m.

“Sounds good. I’ll try it.”

I left her and went over to the buffet, helping myself, glad to be finished with the hard part of the humbling. I spooned up a pile of potatoes and a nice chunk of meatloaf, drowning it all in gravy. Canned, if I didn’t miss my guess. I knew fake food when I saw it.

When I turned, two plates in hand, my eyes swept the room for Sue Mie. She’d already left, but then it was already past five o’clock.

I set Darren’s plate in front of him. He lifted his eyes to me without lifting his head. “Thank you.”

He picked up his fork and rolled a green bean around in some gravy before nibbling at it. I admired the fact that he managed the fork quiet well despite his tight hands.

Gertrude came up for air long enough from her monologue with Thomas to stab her meat loaf laden fork at Darren. “Why don’t you tell us what you think about Polly’s fall, Darren? Everyone knows how much you didn’t like her.”

Darren about choked on a piece of food. His eyes rolled to me. Pleading. Though I wasn’t sure what he was pleading for.

“Can’t imagine Darren not liking anyone,” Matilda offered. “He’s a good boy.”

 
Gertie wiped her mouth. “We need to keep an open mind, right, LaTisha? Isn’t that what you’re trying to do, make sure the whole incident was, indeed, an accident. Why even the most innocent could be guilty.”

We should be talking about you then. But I realized it wasn’t doing me any good to be thinking those words. “You got something to say about Polly? Being how you’re so hard after Thomas, I’m guessing Polly put a curdle on your plans.”

Thomas had the good grace to look only slightly bemused by my straight-talk.

Gertrude huffed. “I would never have hurt Polly. She was my friend.”

“You sure look mighty comfortable with her being cold.”

Gertrude’s eyes slipped over Darren, then quick-back to Thomas. She patted her beau’s leg. “Thomas tried to placate the old dear by giving Polly the attention she so craved.”

Another strained smile from Thomas. This man looked like he needed some Metamucil sprinkled on his beans.

“Seems to me Polly isn’t the only one craving attention,” Matilda jibed.

Gertrude’s lips tightened. “Thomas and I plan on marrying.”

Those words stunned us all into silence. Matilda was the first to recover. She laid her napkin on her plate. “His idea or yours?”

Gertrude’s lips tightened even more and her glance at Thomas practically screamed at him to say something. He sat placidly, the only sign of discomfort the sudden way he pushed his plate away. “We need to talk, Gertrude.”

He stood, ramrod straight, and made straight for the exit. Gertrude rolled upward and scrambled after him as fast as a locomotive could navigate an obstacle course of tables and chairs. Not that I have room to talk.

Darren sat stock still. “You made her real mad. She won’t forget that.” He was looking at Matilda, but I figured his words were for both of us.

“You think I’m caring about making her mad?” Matilda got to her feet with ease and braced herself against her cane, her gaze resting on Darren. “You don’t let others tread you down, boy. You hear me?”

“I’m much better at defending others,” he replied.

Something clicked in my mind. Mitzi. “Gertrude give Mitzi a hard time?”

“Sometimes. Mitzi loved her though. Loves her, I mean. I think it’s me Gertrude doesn’t care for. Not now anyway.” He wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.

“Time for you to be talking to me, Darren.”

He let out his breath in a whoosh, his eyes cruising around us to make sure no one was nearby. “I saw Polly in Thomas’s room the day she died. Saw your mother-in-law go into Thomas’s room by mistake. Polly was real shocked when she saw Matilda, but she had a key to Thomas’s apartment, so I wasn’t too surprised to see her in there.”

Not much that I didn’t know. By the looks of him, there was something else he needed to get off his chest. I waited as patiently as a three year old. If he wasn’t going to talk, I’d shake it out of him.

He took a long drink. “Polly told a couple of the residents about getting a threatening note. Everything made sense then. You see, I’d gone up to visit Mitzi one day and saw Gertrude sliding something under Polly’s door.”

Gertrude!

So the little love triangle was hairier than idle gossip.

I watched Darren hard for a minute, my mind clicking along. If this man knew love, he knew how to see it in others. “Thomas is a strange one.”

“He’s a good guy. He helps me keep an eye on Mitzi.”

That at least explained why he had a key to Mitzi’s apartment. “Do you think Thomas loves Gertie?”

Darren’s dark eyes latched onto mine. “No. I think he loved Polly.”

Chapter Thirty

When I headed forThe Nuthouse, I decided to take my cell phone with me in case Lela called. She would be arriving in Maple Gap anytime, and I wanted to hear how her visit with Sara went. I also needed to update her on our break-in, to put her mind at ease, even though Sara was the more important problem right now.

I turned my cell on and slipped it into my pocket. It did some beeping, which I ignored, until it buzzed real hard as I made my way out the front doors of Bridgeton Towers. The vibration of the phone in the pocket of my skirt sent every bit of cellulite on my right thigh into a frenzy. I dug it out, reading the Caller ID before answering.

“Lela, girl, you back in Maple Gap?”

“Sure am, Momma. Got in later than I wanted. There’s a message here from Chief Conrad saying something about the lab guy needs to know what he’s looking for on the T-shirt. He forgot to ask. That make sense to you?”

It did. I was afraid of that. No way was Lab Guy going to know what to look for if I didn’t narrow the field for him. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear at all.

“You get to see Sara yet?”

Silence. “Yeah. She’s so pale.”

I heard the tightness in her voice. Even my own started to tightening. “Her momma and I had us a good talk. You’ll cook for them for me, won’t you babe?”

“Sure thing. How’s Grandma?”

We talked during my walk to The Nuthouse, with me reminding Lela that her stay at our house was temporary and she needed to get her resumes out there, as well as an update on last nights break-in. I assured her the thing was related to a case I was on, which alarmed her even more. I did my best to help her see that Matilda wasn’t in immediate danger and poked at the fact that her visit home was going to be short. Right?

I’d already done Empty Nest Syndrome once, no way was I going to start taking chicks back into the nest when life slammed them. I’d worked hard to get used to having a hollow house, and the only thing I was after now was grandbabies. I made sure to remind Lela of that, too, before we hung up.

My phone jingled again. Once. I checked it and found a voicemail. From Chief Conrad. It was the same message Lela had just given me, so I deleted it as I stepped inside The Nuthouse, the cool air and coffee scent swirling around me.

Sue Mie sat in the same booth we’d talked in on our last visit, and bless her, she had another one of those marvelous mocha’s waiting for me.

She even pulled the table toward her before I began the task of wedging myself into the slot. “Least you could have done is got us a decent table. Not everyone’s so skinny they can turn sideways and disappear.”

Sue Mie slurped her cup of iced stuff and smiled. “I’m glad you came.”

I managed to crack a smile myself. “You going to share with me or not?”

“I was hired by Thomas Philcher.”

Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that.

 
“Specifically to look into the background of Polly Dent.”

“Did she suspect you were looking into her past?”

Sue Mie shook her head. “I don’t think so. Most of detective work is keeping your ears open and your mouth shut.”

How true.

I was glad to pull out the facts I already knew and wave them around a bit. “She’s the ex-wife of Thomas’s partner in his bank robbing days.”

“True. Manny Wilkins was the one to help me with that fact.”