Polly Dent Loses Grip (A LaTisha Barnhart Mystery) (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

“It had better be good. Real good.”

Hardy did a little happy dance in front of the recliner in Matilda’s apartment, where I sat recovering from our dash back to
M
omma’s room. If the chair hadn’t felt so good, and my legs not burned quite so badly, I might have made it into the bedroom. Without him. And locked the door. That’d teach him.

He perched on the arm of my chair practically shaking with excitement. “Old Chester looked scared. He was standing out there, probably waiting to make sure we were good and gone before he continued what he was doing.”

He paused, that tormenting look coming over his face.

I frowned hard, ready to give him a good tongue-lashing, when Matilda’s bedroom door creaked open.

“You giving my daughter-in-law trouble, Hardy Barnhart?”

Now how’d she know that? “Did we wake you up, Momma?”

Her cane pounded the floor as she stumped over to the small sofa and sagged down into it. “Couldn’t sleep. Then I heard you two and knew Hardy was making mischief.”

It’s one of the reasons I love her so much. She thinks like I do and smells trouble a mile a way. I thought my intuition was sharpened by having raised seven babies, but Matilda was proof it only took one child to hone a momma to razor sharp.

Hardy slunk
ed
over to the sofa and took up residence next to her. Matilda patted his cheek. “Now you be a good boy and start talking.”

“Fast,” I added.

He leaned forward. I braced myself, waiting for the rip of material that announced the seam of his pants had done and given up the ghost. Nothing. Must be the polyester.

“It was the treadmill. All that screeching was the treadmill being pushed along the concrete.”

“What treadmill?” This from
M
omma.

Hardy explained about the treadmill swap we suspected, while I made some mental notes. Sue Mie would be able to get into that storage room better than me. I’d have to get a message for her to look and see if the treadmill was still there or not. I also wanted to know if it was normal for them to dump the platter of baby powder into the trash every night.

Sue Mie put me right on the trail the next morning. Since it was only eight o’clock in the morning, I’d remained in my robe, stirred myself up a mocha, and put my mind to the mystery. So much still to do.

My cell phone rang, and Sue Mie’s voice whispered across the line. She’d come in early to sneak a peek at Polly’s records and found one major thing. Heart problems. Suspected heart attack and prescribed Digitran about two months previous. High cholesterol. She weighed
a hundred
pounds and was five feet seven inches.

“Any form of digoxin can be fatal if the dosage isn’t right,” her whispers became frantic. “I only had a glimpse of things before a nurse came in. Tell your lab guy to look for digitalis. I’m working on getting you a key to that storage room, too. We’ll meet tonight.”

Digitran. Digoxin. Digitalis. Foxglove? I needed a computer. . .the
I
nternet. . .a library. . .somewhere to research all this.

I made the call to Chief Conrad so he could relay the message about Polly’s heart condition, but his reply didn’t encourage me any.

“I can tell him, but you know this is going to take some time, don’t you, LaTisha?”

“You sayin’ more than twenty-four hours?”

“Probably more like a week, tops. If you don’t have that much time, you should look it up on the
I
nternet or see if you can find some books in a library on poisons.”

I snapped my cell phone shut after asking about
C
hief’s wife, stuffing down my disappointment. A week. Tops. Lord, I need some help here.

Hardy must have slid his heels to the floor, because next thing I knew he was padding over to me, looking all warm and tousled in his pajamas and stocking feet. “You looking a little crazy there.”

“Lot’s going on.” And as much as I wanted to go down to the library, I also needed to poke around a bit more, maybe visit Mitzi Mullins and see if she had any more poetry.

Hardy stretched out in a chair beside me, hands across his belly. The picture of contentment. I stared down at his toes, wiggling happily in his thick white socks to the tune of some song he had stirring in his head.

“What you think you’re doing?”

One eye popped open. “Enjoying the moment.”

I huffed
.
“We need to get moving. Lot’s to do today.”

“You first.”

“Where’s
M
omma?”

Hardy’s toes stopped dancing. “Probably sleeping late after last night.”

“She’ll miss breakfast.”

“No she won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” He closed his eyes again. “Heard from Lela?”

“She called yesterday, told me she’d visited Sara.”

Hardy’s answer was to slide his hand across to mine and grab it tight. “What you flapping at me for?”

I puffed out a breath. I squeezed his hand. “Guess I owe you a pie, huh?”

His eyes crinkled at me. “I’m losing count. Now talk.”

I was worried about the whole Polly Dent thing. Thomas, Gertrude, Dr. Kwan, Sue Mie, Otis and Louise Payne. . . “I want to go home.” And that was the naked truth.

“Um-hm.”

“I miss being there.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “What else is going through that mind of yours?”

I closed my eyes tight, lower lip quivering, busted wide open by his simple statement. He read me so well. “What if the doctor says what I don’t want to hear?”

“You’ll deal with it. Same as you taught our babies. ‘Life happens, get used to it.’”

“You’d be happy to hear I’m dying?”

“Naw. But seeing as only the good die young, I’ve got nothing to worry over.”

I reached out and touched him on that one. He sat up straight and rubbed his shoulder, playing the injured innocent, all the while his expression full of pure badness.

“Well if that’s so, the Good Lord won’t be issuing you an invitation either.”

“Compassion gets me in
.
”
H
e nodded. “He’s loving me for loving you when no one else would.”

“Well love me enough to get yourself down to the library and research Digoxin.”

He screwed his mouth up. “Did you just cuss?”

“Di-gox-in. It’s a poison from the
f
oxglove plant.”

“Why not just ask a nurse or a doctor?”

I pushed myself up from the sofa. “If I was wanting everyone to know what I was doing, I would.”

“You want research
.
”
H
e hopped to his feet and saluted me
.
“I’m your man.”

“You sure are, baby. You sure are.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

First thing I wondered was whether Otis Payne worked on Saturdays. I was sure his secretary didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing overtime. Being married was secretary-duty enough for me. Truth be told, secretarys’ are nothing more than babysitters. Which is one of the reasons I’d lambasted Lela when she’d quit college for her “dream job” of being assistant to someone else. But I got to let her grow up and learn the hard way.

But stewing over Lela wasn’t going to get me those maintenance records any sooner.

I skimmed a hand over my hair, balling it up in a clip until I could get back to Maple Gap and Regina’s magical fingers on my scalp.

I slid one of my favorite dresses over my head and rooted around in our suitcase for a new pack of pantyhose. Brought along in case I got to walking and my legs got to rubbing so much that my body overheated and the nylon stuck to my skin.

I snapped the waistband of my sky blue dress into place. None of those stiff, unforgiving, non-elasticized waistbands for me. I needed my dress to expand and contract on cue.

As I was headed out, Hardy came into our bedroom all fresh and dewy from the shower and wrapped in his robe with a lemon yellow towel on his head. “You’re looking wider than the great blue sky.”

I smoked him with my eyes
.
“And you’re looking like lemon soft-serve with that towel on your head.”

“Sweet as an ice
cream cone.”

I snorted and looked down at the floor. “Well, Mr. Ice
Cream cone, you’re dripping.”

I left Hardy mopping up his mess and began mapping out my mission. First off, find out where those maintenance records are kept. Second, investigate that back hallway if I could figure out a way to get into it. I’d stop in for a visit with Mitzi Mullins first, since she was on this floor.

I wasn’t too surprised to find Darren with Mitzi, but the fact she answered the door made my heart swell with excitement for Darren. The boy beamed at me, a book spread in his lap. Mitzi didn’t say a word, but went straight over to the empty chair next to Darren and sat down.

“Back in operation
.
” I beamed back at him.

“She’s really good.” Darren handed the book over to Mitzi, who held it for him, though she didn’t seem lucid enough to really know what she had.

Darren glanced at Mitzi, who toyed with the material covering the armrest, then back at me. Darren seemed to be hoping for her to say something, his smile wilting when Mitzi remained quiet.

Darren got to his feet and motioned me to follow him. I wondered what the boy was up to. He led me into Mitzi’s room and to the dresser that held her medication bottles.

His bent fingers uncurled to grab the bottle. “When I came to see Mitzi yesterday, I noticed a
new prescription bottle, same as the old one
.
”
H
e held both up for me to see. “It seemed strange for Dr. Kwan to give her another one when the old bottle still had capsules, so I did my own little investigation.”

I watched as he popped the lid on the old prescription bottle and emptied out the contents onto the dresser. Capsules, broken in two. Empty.

“She’s supposed to take one of these a day, and I’m sure she was, but empty capsules don’t help anyone.”

“The new bottle has full capsules?” I asked even as I took the new prescription from him and unscrewed the cap. Sure enough, these capsules were all full.

“Pills and bottles all in a row, Polly knew about the foe
.
”

At the sound of the voice, Darren and I turned quick-like. Mitzi stood in the doorway.

He went to her, hand on her arm. “Why don’t you sit back down?”

She looked past him though, eyes on me. “Missus knows his secret and will hide it too, if only the subject will remain taboo.”

My mind churned around the possibilities as Darren patted Mitiz’s arm. “Who is missus?”

“Life isn’t all love and fame, some of it is filled with pain.”

Darren didn’t seem to know what to think, but I sure had a mind full. Her first line was revealing. Polly knew about the pills and bottles and about the “foe.”

“Who did you see, Mitzi?” I asked, hoping she’d reveal more. “Who is it you want me to catch?”

Mitzi didn’t even flinch. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

I crept around the part of the first floor open to the assisted living residents waiting for something to jump out at me. A lady sat at the front desk. Normal. The library was open but the posted sign indicated closing time on Saturdays as noon. Hardy was nowhere to be seen. I glanced at the clock on the wall and found out he had exactly two hours to get his nose in a book before the doors locked. Maybe he’d gone to the library in town. I took the time to check the parking lot for Old Lou. The Buick sat in the same spot I’d left it.

Where was that man?

Someone tapped on my shoulder. “You missin’ me already?”

I twisted around to face his grinning self. “What you doing trying to scare me stiff?”
Never mind how I managed to miss seeing him sneak up on me. He delighted in harassing me.

“You were stretching your neck awful hard at those elevators.”