Twisted Reason (13 page)

As he punched in the code, he was not aware of the little lady standing patiently beside him. He did not realize she slipped out the door with him until a staff member shouted out, “Marie is out, again.”

A small army emerged from the lockdown unit and other parts of the building. They mobilized to surround Marie. Each one of them moved slowly and talked softly. Marie dodged about as if seeking escape from the closing net. Finally, a male aide got close enough to her to offer her his arm. She gave him a coy smile and slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. “My, my, Miss Marie, it’s a fine day for a stroll, isn’t it?” he cooed as he led her back through the doors.

Ted apologized profusely to David and Jenna.

“No harm done, sir,” Jenna said. “You were obviously moved by your experience in there and your mind was on other things. It’s understandable – the lockdown unit is a powerfully sad place.”

Lucinda wanted to visit at least two more facilities that afternoon but wondered if she should take Ted back to the Justice Center first. They climbed into the car but Lucinda didn’t turn the key in the ignition.

Ted didn’t say a word, didn’t look in her direction and gave no indication that he was aware that she hadn’t started the car. She waited two minutes, then three. Finally, she broke the silence. “Ted. Ted.”

Ted shook his head and looked over at her.

“What is it?” she asked. “What bothered you so much back there?”

Ted hung his head and shook it slowly from side to side.

“C’mon, Ted. Spit it out.”

Without lifting up his face, he turned it in her direction. “I – I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know what bothered you?”

He inhaled deeply and straightened his spine. “It’s not that. I know what bothered me. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Is it your dad, Ted? Is that what it’s about?”

“Yeah, I just realized that I’ve been in denial. He’s worse off than I thought.”

“How? What happened?”

“I call him nearly every day, Lucinda. Most days he says, ‘Hi there, son. Long time since I’ve heard from you.’ He’s slipping. And I saw his future in that lockdown unit and it tore me apart. I really do need to get up there and the sooner the better.”

“You need to talk to Ellen tonight.”

“Yeah, that’ll be fun.”

“What, Ellen and your dad don’t get along?”

“Oh, heck, that’s not it. The two of them get along better than I often get along with either one of them. They love each other. When Ellen was in the psychiatric hospital, he drove down here to visit her every month.”

“Then what is it?”

“In there, I realized I need her help with Dad and I’m afraid she won’t be willing to give it to me.”

Eli Kendlesohn spoke to the funeral home and made arrangements for his mother’s body to be transported back for her service and burial. He agreed to meet the man on the phone the next morning to select a casket and take care of other details including the financial matters.

Rachael walked into the room in the middle of his conversation. When he returned the receiver to the cradle, she said, “Why are you going to all that trouble and expense?”

“Rachael, what do you mean? We can’t just leave Mother at the morgue and pretend she didn’t exist.”

“Don’t be an ass, Eli. What I mean is: why are you wasting all the money transporting her body and buying a casket?”

“What do you want? You want me to bring her home in the trunk of my car and bury her in the backyard?”

“Oh, God forbid!” Rachael snapped. “You’d spend every moment you were home, moping by her graveside. If you hadn’t been so attached to that batty woman, we could have sent her away months ago and not have to deal with all of this now.”

“But we do have to deal with it, Rachael. And it
will
cost money. There is no way to avoid that. But, don’t worry, there’s no need for you to curtail your spending habits.”

“Of course it will cost money, but it doesn’t need to take that big of a chunk out of your inheritance. Call them back. Tell them you changed your mind. Have her cremated in Norfolk and they can ship the ashes back here – or just dump them in the ocean.”

“You are heartless!” Eli exclaimed.

“Heartless – not hardly. I’m sensible. Practical. Something you, with all your fancy business titles and Italian suits, never have been. Speaking of practical, have you called the life insurance company yet?”

“Okay, Rachael, you want practical. How’s this? There is a double stone where my dad is buried and the spot next to it – already paid for – is intended for my mother. The marker is even engraved with her name and birth date – all it needs is the date of her death. Some of what might have been my inheritance was spent on that tiny piece of property and the plaque – we sure wouldn’t want that to go to waste, would we?”

“You’re ridiculous, Eli. Bringing her back here for burial is just throwing good money after bad. It’s a waste. And I expect your darling sister won’t want to pay any of the expense and yet will expect a share of the estate.”

“Of course, she will. She is entitled to half of it and she’ll get it.”

“Oh, fine. We sacrifice our freedom, our privacy, our everything to give your mother a place in our home. Your sister? She flies in for an occasional weekend and then whisks off to some remote corner of the world to have fun and adventure. Now she expects to be paid for being so negligent?”

“Negligent? Fun and adventure? She’s doing her job, Rachael. She’s an international news correspondent. She can’t do that from down the block.”

“Well, what she does is a lot more fun than slipping into the yoke of your father’s business and working yourself to an early grave. She didn’t stay here for that now, did she?”

“But I wanted to take over the business; she didn’t. I’m glad she didn’t. I’m glad she’s got a job she loves. I’m glad she’s not saddled down with someone like you,” Eli said.

“How dare you?”

“Please, don’t say another word. I’m going to the cemetery to visit Dad. Then I’ll drive around for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Of course, Rachael did not heed his admonition to be quiet. Her voice followed him to the garage and into his car. He switched on the radio, turned it to a jazz station and tuned out her voice.

But he couldn’t tune out thoughts of her.
Maybe that’s why a homicide detective came to our house? Maybe they think we had something to do with mother’s disappearance and death? I know I didn’t. That leaves Rachael. And quite frankly, nothing she would do could surprise me.

Twenty-One

Lucinda had requested a list of disgruntled former employees from all three facilities she visited that day. She was delighted to see that River’s Edge had already sent a fax and one of the others had emailed a response.

She did a background check on the five names and discovered that one was in prison – and had been for nearly a year; another was in Iraq working for a private security firm for even longer –
God help the Iraqis
– leaving her with three people to interview. She printed out the most recent addresses for all of them and left the office less than twenty minutes after her arrival.

She stopped first at the home of Bobbi Reynolds. It was a small but well-kept brick rancher. The sixty-year-old woman who greeted her at the door could have been described in exactly the same way.

When Lucinda asked about her departure from River’s Edge, she said, “It was my supervisor. She and I never saw eye to eye on anything. I really thought that some of the folks in the lockdown unit would be fine for a short visit off the grounds. I took one woman to a shoe store – on my own time, mind you – and she picked out a pair of walking shoes. She said it was the first time she’d had a pair that fit right in two years.

“My supervisor didn’t think that was appropriate – didn’t care how happy I’d made the woman. She fired me the moment we walked back into the unit.”

“Do you often buck rules?” Lucinda asked.

“Only when they don’t make a lick of sense.”

“Does that happen often?”

The woman laughed. “Yeah, haven’t you noticed?”

Although Lucinda agreed with her, she didn’t let the other woman know. “How far would you go to break a rule you didn’t think made any sense?”

“What do you mean? Give me a fer-instance.”

“Okay. Let’s say you were still working at River’s Edge and you thought one of the lockdown residents did not need to be there. Would you help that person escape?”

“There were a few folks that didn’t seem like they needed to be there a good part of the day – but then they’d have their bad moments, usually in the late afternoon, early evening. We called it sun-downing. But I don’t recall anyone that I was certain didn’t belong there at all.”

“But what if you did?” Lucinda pushed.

“I never thought about that. But, yeah, I guess if that were the case and I’d tried the proper channels without getting any result. Particularly if that old bat supervisor said, ‘It doesn’t matter what
you
think’ again, I might help a person like that escape. It kinda seems unlikely to me, though. But why are you asking – did something happen at River’s Edge?”

“No. No. Just trying to cover all the bases on some missing elderly.”

“Nice story but I know you’re lying. I saw your badge it said ‘homicide’. Just what are you doing? Somebody died, huhn? And they’re trying to pin it on me?”

“No ma’am, no one is trying to pin anything on you.”

“Okay, right. I don’t think I should talk any more without a lawyer. I think you should leave.”

Lucinda walked out of the house without objection but when she slipped into her car, she put a little star by Bobbi Reynolds’s name.
Two possible suspects – and both women. I can’t imagine Rachael Kendlesohn picking Bobbi Reynolds as a partner in a conspiracy but neither one of them could have delivered Edgar Humphries’s body without help.

At her next stop, she found a man in a wheelchair. He told her he was angry when he was let go for not being able to do his job any longer. He said he even uttered some nasty remarks that could have been taken as threats. “But, as you see,” he said with a shrug, “they were right. I was no longer capable of doing the job. Just six months later and I can’t even get around on my own.”

The third former employee, Jeremy Stanford, was the one who Lucinda saw as the most troublesome of the bunch from the start. He got canned for drinking on the job, had been picked up twice for driving under the influence and he had shown up drunk at his former place of employment on a number of occasions – once they had to call the police to get him to leave.

She pulled up in front of a Cape Cod house where the lawn was covered with matted down tall plant material, gone to seed. The winter’s snowfall was the only reason the weeds weren’t poking up higher than the chain-link fence. A mockingbird perched on the rim of a dry bird bath singing a long, heady tune filled with sounds borrowed from multiple birds. When Lucinda opened the gate, he looked in her direction, bobbed his tail twice and flew off. She walked up the sidewalk thinking about the snakes, rats and other things that could easily be hiding in the mess on either side.

She rang the doorbell but got no response even though she could hear the blare of a television. She knocked on the door lightly but that didn’t seem to stir anyone to action either. She beat on the door with her fist and it creaked open. She called out his name.

The only response she heard sounded like a strange series of animal snorts and snarls. It was hard to hear over the loud noise of squealing wheels and car crashes from the TV. She yelled out again. The animal noise choked off, then started up again, sounding like someone struggling to breathe.
Should I call for back up?
Nah, could be nothing. But, then again . . .
She pulled her gun as she stepped across the threshold. She flattened her back against the wall by the archway to the other room. Leading with her gun, she curled around the edge of the wall, her good eye darting into every corner.

At first, it appeared to be an empty room – the only movement was the wild, unrealistic, car chase on the large screen on the opposite wall. Then she saw toes sticking up on the raised footrest of a recliner.

She shouted, “Police. Raise your hands in the air.”

The only response was another grunting, snorting animal sound, which she now recognized as a particularly loud snore. She sighed. Keeping her gun at the ready, she circled around the recliner until she had a full view of the occupant.

An empty bottle of rum was canted sideways in his lap. Dr.ool slid down one side of his mouth. Black bristles sprouted on a pale white chin. She moved closer but the smell drove her back. He stunk of rum and sweat and dirty feet. She slipped her weapon back in the holster.

“Sir,” she shouted. “Wake up, it’s the police.”

His body jerked, his lower lip pulled to one side and bleary eyes squinted in her direction. “Wha – wha – wha – I din do nuffin, occifer. Jes’ mindin’ m’own bidness.”

“Does anyone else live here with you?”