Leftover Dead (30 page)

A large, relatively new facility, the Lake Tullahoma Senior Living Center served as both a nursing home and an assisted-living facility. Wanda Nell eyed the place with curiosity. The grounds were immaculate, and there were a few people sitting out on the porch, smoking and enjoying the morning sun.

Mayrene nodded and smiled at them as they approached the front door. Inside, she went straight to the desk to sign herself and Wanda Nell in.

“Morning, Darlene,” she said to the young black woman behind the counter. “This here’s my assistant, Wanda Nell.”

Darlene smiled at Wanda Nell.

“It’s down this way,” Mayrene said, leading Wanda Nell down one of the side corridors. “They have a little room set up like a beauty shop. All I have to do is bring my own scissors and so on. Everything else is here. There should be a sign-up sheet on the door, so we’ll know who’s coming and what they want.”

Sure enough, there was a sheet taped to the door. Mayrene pulled it off and handed it to Wanda Nell before unlocking the door with the key Darlene had given her.

Wanda Nell scanned the list. Five women and two men had signed up for appointments. Her eyes widened when she saw that Evangeline Connor had signed up for eight-thirty. Her heart began to pound a little.

Would she be able to find out anything? She followed Mayrene into the room, thinking ahead to the challenge of dealing with the meanest woman Ernie Carpenter had ever known.

Mayrene’s first appointment that morning, a small woman named Miss Roberta Simpson, proudly told them she was ninety-nine. She also informed them she was looking forward to turning a hundred in less than three months. She had walked into the room with the aid of only a cane. Wanda Nell hoped she would be in that good of shape when she was sixty, much less almost a hundred.

While Mayrene worked on Miss Simpson’s thin hair, Miss Simpson chatted the whole time. She was lively, and when Wanda Nell asked her what her secret was for such a long life, Miss Simpson laughed and said, “Not minding my own business and eating right, dear. I’ve always been interested in everyone and everything, and I always eat sensibly. Stimulate the mind and feed your body right. That’s all it takes.”

By the time Miss Simpson was finished, Wanda Nell had almost forgotten about Evangeline Connor. When Mrs. Connor wheeled herself into the room, however, Wanda Nell felt her heart start to flutter. One look at the face of the thin, elderly woman in the wheelchair was enough to make her head start to ache. She had never seen anyone with such a sour expression. “Like all she’s ever done was suck on lemons her entire life,” Wanda Nell’s mother might have said, and Wanda Nell would have agreed.

“Why, Evangeline,” Miss Simpson said, her voice warm enough to melt butter. “Are you having your hair done today? How nice.”

Mrs. Connor stared at Miss Simpson. “I thought I smelled something old when I came in here. Why don’t you just go along, and let us get on with it?” She wheeled past Miss Simpson, barely missing the older woman’s feet.

Miss Simpson merely smiled. “One of the joys of being as old as I am, ladies, is being able to tell someone like Evangeline here to go to hell and then sleep easily at night, knowing it’s a forgone conclusion.” She turned and left the room, leaving Wanda Nell and Mayrene trying very hard not to laugh their heads off.

Another look at Evangeline Connor, however, sobered them both pretty quickly. “Good morning, Miz Connor,” Mayrene said. “Nadine couldn’t come today, so I came in her place. This here’s Wanda Nell. She’s going to be helping me.”

“I remember you,” Mrs. Connor said in a grudging tone. “As I recall, you’re competent at least.” Her gaze raked Wanda Nell up and down. “And what are you going to be doing?”

“I’ll be happy to shampoo your hair, if you’d like,” Wanda Nell said. That was what she and Mayrene had agreed upon. Wanda Nell couldn’t style hair, but she could do any shampooing that was necessary.

Mrs. Connor sniffed. “I suppose it will be all right.” She thrust out a bag she had been holding in her lap. “Here’s my shampoo. It’s the only thing I use. My scalp is very delicate, and I can’t tolerate rough hands. I hope you know what you’re doing.” Her tone indicated she might well be taking her life in her hands.

“I’ll be very gentle,” Wanda Nell promised, though the longer she was around the woman, the harder it was going to be to resist the urge to drown her and be done with it.

Suppressing such thoughts, Wanda Nell helped Mrs. Connor out of her wheelchair and into the chair in front of the sink. She turned on the water and adjusted the temperature before easing Mrs. Connor’s head in the proper position for washing. She took every care to be gentle and, to her surprise, Mrs. Connor didn’t complain once. She still looked like she was sucking on a lemon, but when Wanda Nell finished, she said, “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

Wanda Nell responded with a strained smile. She and Mayrene worked together to get Mrs. Connor from the shampoo chair into the one where Mayrene would work on her hair.

Once Mrs. Connor was settled, Mayrene asked her what she wanted done. Mrs. Connor responded by saying, “I don’t need my hair cut today, so don’t think you’ll be able to charge extra for that. I just want it rolled and styled. You can style it, and if I don’t like it, you’ll have to do it over.”

“Sure thing, ma’am,” Mayrene said. “I’ve got an idea of what will be perfect for you, and it’ll make you look even younger.” She winked at Wanda Nell over Mrs. Connor’s head. Wanda Nell turned away for a moment.

When she turned back, Mayrene was busy putting rollers in Mrs. Connor’s hair. Catching Wanda Nell’s eye, Mayrene nodded. “So, honey, what did you think of Hattiesburg? Wasn’t it the first time you’d been there?” She smiled at Mrs. Connor in the mirror. “Wanda Nell and her husband just got back from down there.”

Mrs. Connor sniffed, but before she could say anything, Wanda Nell spoke. “Oh, it seemed like a real nice place. And we met some interesting people down there. In fact, one of them said he lived here in Tullahoma about fifty years ago.”

“Really?” Mayrene said. “That was a long time ago. I was only about four or five.” This time she winked at Mrs. Connor in the mirror. “And I bet you weren’t much older than that, were you, honey?”

From the expression on Mrs. Connor’s face, Wanda Nell figured the old woman couldn’t make up her mind whether to be flattered by the years deducted from her age or offended by Mayrene’s referring to her as “honey.”

“Well, I wasn’t around then,” Wanda Nell said, her tone apologetic. “But this man we met said he wasn’t here all that long, although he did know some people here. Now, what was his name?” She pretended to think for a moment. “It was Howell, and he had some kind of unusual first name. What was it?” She paused again. “Parnell. That was it. Parnell Howell.”

Wanda Nell had been watching Mrs. Connor’s face in the mirror as closely as she dared, and from what she could see, Mrs. Connor didn’t react when she spoke Howell’s name. She simply looked bored.

“I don’t think I know any Howells,” Mayrene said. “I guess his people weren’t from around here.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Wanda Nell replied. “I’m pretty sure he was originally from Hattiesburg.”

“And what, pray tell, was so interesting about this man?” Mrs. Connor asked, her irritation obvious. “He sounds like a complete and utter nobody to me.”

“He married a girl from here,” Wanda Nell said, trying to figure out what Mrs. Connor’s reaction meant. “She passed away some time ago, but I do know they had a daughter. I believe he said his wife’s name was Margaret Lewis.” Again, she watched Mrs. Connor carefully, but still the woman didn’t appear to react.

“She sounds like a nobody, too. I don’t know any family named Lewis in Tullahoma, and if I don’t know them, they’re not worth knowing.”

Mayrene, her back to the mirror, rolled her eyes at Wanda Nell. “I don’t know any Lewises either,” Wanda Nell said, trying hard to keep her tone mild. “The really sad thing about it, according to Mr. Howell, was that his daughter, his only child, was murdered, right here in Tullahoma. Thirty-one years ago. Isn’t that awful?”

Mrs. Connor’s eyes narrowed, and she stared hard at Wanda Nell’s reflection. “I remember that,” she said. “They found some little tramp naked on the football field at the high school. They never did find out who did it, as I recall.” She sniffed. “People like that, though, what are you going to do? If that girl had been raised by a decent family in the first place, it wouldn’t have happened to her.”

“So you think she deserved what happened to her?” Wanda Nell said, and this time she couldn’t suppress the anger in her voice.

“Don’t speak in that tone to me, missy,” Mrs. Connor said. “I said nothing of the kind. You bleeding hearts are all the same.” Her tone was nasty and mocking. “That girl was obviously doing something she shouldn’t have been doing, sneaking around with Lord knows who. And somebody killed her. That kind of girl attracts bad men, and then they pay for it.”

“I see,” Wanda Nell said. Her head throbbed, she was so angry. She made herself take a few deep breaths, and as she began to calm down a bit, she started thinking. Was Mrs. Connor being deliberately provocative in order to distract her? Or was it just her natural meanness coming through?

Wanda Nell wasn’t sure, but she decided to probe a little further. “I think it’s just terrible that they never found out who killed her. It almost makes me think there was some kind of cover-up going on. Probably some rich man wanted to get rid of that poor girl, and he paid off somebody and walked away from the whole thing.”

“I bet you’re right,” Mayrene said as she jabbed a bobby pin into one of the rollers on Mrs. Connor’s head.

“Watch it,” Mrs. Connor said, her face twisted in irritation. “That hurt.”

“Sorry,” Mayrene said with a sweet smile. “I’ll be more careful.”

Mrs. Connor glared at her in the mirror for a moment, but then she turned her attention back to Wanda Nell. “You might have something there. I hadn’t thought about that. The sheriff we had back then was an incompetent fool who couldn’t find his way out of his house unless someone showed him. And he’d do anything for money.”

“I wonder, then, if there was some rich man in town who could have done it?” Wanda Nell said, staring at Mrs. Connor’s reflection.

“I can think of a couple of men. It certainly wasn’t my husband, if that’s what you’re thinking. He would never have been involved in that kind of thing.” She frowned. “Now what was the girl’s mother’s name? Something Lewis, I think you said?”

“Margaret Lewis. Does that ring a bell?”

Mrs. Connor hesitated before she spoke. “No, it doesn’t. Like I said, I don’t know any Lewises here, and never did. Now can we change the subject to something less distasteful?”

Taking the cue, Mayrene started chatting about hair-styles. While they conversed, Wanda Nell sat and thought. She would swear that Mrs. Connor had lied when she said the name Margaret Lewis didn’t ring a bell. Some kind of memory had surfaced, Wanda Nell was sure of it. The question was, what? What had Mrs. Connor remembered?

There wouldn’t be any use in trying to talk to her any further about it, Wanda Nell decided. Mrs. Connor had put an end to the subject, and that was that. Mayrene had Mrs. Connor under the dryer a few minutes later, and Wanda Nell was able to talk to her friend without fear of Mrs. Connor overhearing what they said. Just to be certain, they moved as far away from the dryer as they could.

“She knows something,” Wanda Nell said. “Did you see her face when she asked about Margaret Lewis again?”

“I did. And you’re right, she was sure lying at that point. But what do you think she knows? The rest of the time she seemed like she was telling the truth.”

“It wasn’t until I said that about it being a cover-up, with some rich man involved. That’s when she really started to think about it. And you know what? I think she remembered that a girl named Margaret Lewis worked for some rich family in town.”

“Do you think it could have been her family?” Mayrene asked.

“I don’t know. I think if it had been, she might have had more of a reaction. I think she remembered that Margaret Lewis worked for someone else.”

“Like the Dewberrys?”

Wanda Nell nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I think maybe I’ll go talk to Darlene at the reception desk, and see if I can find out where Mr. Dewberry’s room is. Then I’ll try to get in to see him, I guess.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Mayrene said. “Darlene’s a nice girl. If you ask her real polite, and tell her he knew your daddy or something, I’m sure she’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“Good,” Wanda Nell said. “I’ll go check it out.”

She headed back down the hall to the reception area. Darlene was on the phone when she approached the desk, but she smiled at Wanda Nell and nodded. When she finished her conversation, she said, “Can I help you?”

“I sure hope so,” Wanda Nell said. “I got to thinking about whether I knew anybody who lived here, and then I remembered that somebody my daddy used to work for is here. He was always real nice to my daddy, and I thought I might stop by and say hello to him.”

“That would be real sweet. A lot of these old people don’t get much company, and I know most of them would welcome a visitor.” She chuckled. “The problem is getting away from them. Some of them can talk your ears off. Who are you looking for?”

“Mr. Dewberry. Mr. Jackson Dewberry.”

“Oh, him. Well, he has his good days and his bad days. Most of the time he knows who he is and all that, but sometimes he’s totally out of it. My cousin Lauretta works in his wing, and she tells me all about it.”

“I see,” Wanda Nell said. “Well, do you think it would be okay for me to stop by and see him?”

“I guess so, but hang on a minute.” Darlene consulted the visitors’ book. “Actually, now might not be the best time.” She made a face. “His daughter is here. She probably won’t stay long, but while she’s here, I sure wouldn’t try to talk to him.”