Old Maid's Puzzle (13 page)

The teller walked past with a package, smaller than I thought nearly thirty thousand dollars should be. He handed the money to the manager, ignoring Gussie's outstretched hand.

"Please sit," the manager said to us. "Federal banking regulations require that we fill out this form."

Before she sat down, Gussie glanced out the large plate window that overlooked the parking lot. She pulled me close, turning her head away from the manager, and talking behind her hand.

"Do me a favor. Go and see if there's a yellow Taurus in the parking lot."

I'd already lost my place in line, and I still needed to get my cashier's check. "I can't."

Gussie pleaded, "I've been in here longer than I thought I would be. My ride should be here by now. I don't want him to leave."

I couldn't stop playing the dutiful granddaughter now. It would only take me a minute to look out the window for the car, then I could get my cashier's check.

But a line was forming again. I hesitated.

"Go," Gussie hissed at me. "I'll be out as soon as I can, but I don't want to miss Larry."

Larry? Celeste's Larry? Oh-oh. Maybe there was something going on between them after all.

I crossed to the big window. The parking lot was half-full, but no yellow Taurus. I went back to the desk. The bank manager had her head down, and Gussie was admonishing her for being slow.

"There's no car like that out there, Gussie," I said quietly.

She looked up, startled. "Well, he has to be somewhere. He's waiting to take the money..." She stopped, when the manager raised her head quickly.

Gussie changed tack. "He's waiting to take me to Redding."

"What's in Redding?" I asked.

The manager was listening intently, her eyes flitting from me to Gussie and back again.

Gussie sat up tall in the chair. Only her fingers gave away her uncertainty. She held them low in her lap so the bank manager couldn't see how they fluttered.

"Your cousin, dear. You remember. Jeremy."

"Of course, that cousin." I nodded as though she'd refreshed my memory. The bank manager relaxed in her seat, and returned to filling in the form.

My own work had to get done. "Gussie, wait for me. I need to get a cashier's check. I won't be long. I want to talk to Larry before you take off." I needed to make sure he knew what he was getting into, squiring Gussie around, with thirty thousand dollars in her tote bag.

Gussie returned to harassing the manager. I got back in a line that was now ten people long. Two tellers had shut down. I hopped from one foot to the other, anxious to get the line moving, but knowing I looked like a little kid who had to pee.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gussie walk toward the door, her bunny tote bag stuck under her arm. I called to her, but she ignored me. I was sixth in line now. I'd made some progress and wanted to maintain it. I craned my neck, twisted my body, keeping one foot in line and could see Gussie had settled on a bench outside the bank door to wait for Larry. I could just barely see the top of her head.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly two. I had to get the cashier's check and get to the post office by three. I had to stay in line.

My neck developed a crick as I tried to watch Gussie and the tellers at the same time. She stayed on the bench. People came and went without so much as glancing at her. She might be a sitting duck with all that cash, but the good news was that no one would think anyone who looked like Gussie would have that kind of money on her.

There were three people ahead of me. I'd moved forward to a point where I couldn't see Gussie anymore. I strained to see her, looking around the plus-size woman behind me.

"Would you hold my place in line?" I asked her.

She sighed, but agreed. Her purse was the size of a carry-on bag. A small dog poked its head out and yapped as I passed, causing my heart to trip hammer.

I took a couple of steps and could see Gussie still sitting on the bench. She seemed to be talking to herself. That was okay, acting a little nuts could be the key to keeping her safe.

I squirmed around again. The lady in back of me gave a noisy tsking sounds. "My grandmother," I explained. She rolled her eyes.

The logjam broke when two tellers returned from lunch. I stepped up and asked for the cashier's check.

Gussie had completely distracted me from the task at hand. I had to empty a bank account in order to buy these scissors. Money that I'd banked a year ago. Money that I'd vowed never to touch. Money that I wished I'd never come to possess.

Five thousand dollars, proceeds from my mother's life insurance policy.

NINE

I PAID FOR THE check and got out of the bank as fast as I could, but Gussie was no longer on the bench. Larry must have come for her.

Okay, one problem solved. At least she wasn't wandering the streets with all that money.

I stopped to fold the check neatly and put it in my back pocket. This check represented all the money I had. I was gambling, but the profit I could make from this was enough to give the store some breathing room.

I did a last quick glance around the parking lot for the yellow Taurus. There was one man at the ATM machine. Oh, crap. Tim Shore. The last person I wanted to run in to.

I turned away from the ATM, hunching my shoulders and moving quickly. Just seeing him made me angry all over again.

When I reached the street, I saw Gussie was on the sidewalk, walking away from the bank. Shit. She was going in the opposite direction from Quilter Paradiso. I couldn't let her walk the streets by herself. I sighed, and took off after her. She moved slowly and I caught up to her just past the pet store. A cat stretched in the window, pretending to ignore us.

"No sign of Larry?" I asked. "Where are you going?"

"I'll wait for him at home," Gussie said without breaking stride.

I swallowed a bit of annoyance. What about me? She could have waited for me. There was a fine line between independence and downright orneriness. Gussie was being ornery now.

Unless there was another explanation. "Maybe you were supposed to meet somewhere else?" I asked gently. My older customers were notorious for getting their signals crossed. Just last week, I had a woman in the store who was sure she was meeting her girlfriends at QP before lunch. When the friends showed up an hour later, full of split pea soup, it turned out they'd been waiting for her at the diner across the street.

Gussie considered. "No"

"Why don't we call Larry and see?" I tracked the cars that passed us. No yellow cars. I had visions of Larry waiting in the bank parking lot, her sitting at home. This could be a nightmare of missed opportunities.

We were walking past the post office. Vangie's offer of the envelope came back to me. Damn. That would have made this so simple. The sign on the post office said all Express Mail had to be out by 3:00 p.m. in order to be guaranteed for the next day. My trip to the bank was supposed to take only a few minutes. I sighed. First the run-in with Tim Shore in my parking lot, and now Gussie had cost me precious time.

"Let's call Larry," I said, pulling out my phone.

"I don't have his number, dear," Gussie said.

She didn't have his number? I knew what that meant. Men who didn't give out their number were usually married. Larry wasn't exactly married, but he was involved with Celeste. That rat was playing the women against each other. I'd have thought women in their eighties would be safe from fast men. Guess a guy was never too old to want to have his cake and eat it, too.

I held my phone in my hand. "How do you get in touch with him?"

"He calls me or stops by," Gussie said.

"Okay, let's check your message machine and see if he's had a change of plans."

Gussie looked at me like I was demented. "I don't have one of those."

Oh great, I thought. Was the Goodwill out of answering machines the day she went? How did anyone live without one? I chastised myself for having such a mean thought, but I had to get back to work. I couldn't let Gussie wander around with that much cash.

Maybe I could enlist one of her friends to take over for me. Ina was babysitting her grandson and I didn't have Pearl in my cell directory. Thumbing through, I saw I had one number we could use. I tried to be delicate. "Shall we call Celeste?"

Gussie growled, "Not a good idea. She doesn't know that Larry is doing this favor for me."

I gave up. I was walking her home. "Where do you live?"

"On Monroe."

Well, at least that wasn't far.

We turned into my parents' neighborhood, the Rose Garden. The homes here were a lovely mix of small apartment buildings, bungalows and large family homes. The neighborhood was an eclectic array of California architecture-Craftsman, Spanish, Tudor, Prairie. The steady hum of leaf blowers greeted us as we walked on the uneven sidewalks.

Halloween decorations were up here, too. A tree was decorated with hanging ghosts. In one upstairs window, a pair of stuffed legs hung out, as though the person had gotten stuck climbing out.

Gussie went up the walk of a pink stucco bungalow that seemed to lean toward its much larger neighbor. Her car sat in the driveway that was split with weedy grass. Scraggly geraniums in mismatched pots lined the concrete porch steps. A plant, maybe even the foxglove that Celeste had thrown out, sat on the top of a metal milk bottle container, next to a bright green ceramic frog. I was no gardener, but I could see why Celeste had pitched it. The main spine was broken, surrounded by little sprouts of new growth. I guessed, to Gussie, it wasn't ugly enough to throw out.

From the front door, we stepped right into a trashed living room. Panic hit me. She'd been robbed already.

A large pile of magazines had toppled out of their basket, leaving a slippery hazard. Beyond, I could see an overturned TV tray table that Gussie had been using as a surface to collect small quilt blocks she was piecing. Her tomato pincushion was full of threaded needles and a pair of silver folding scissors lay nearby.

"Should we call the police?" I asked, picking up the box cover to a thousand-piece puzzle.

She looked at me like I was nuts. "Why?"

I looked around the room and then at her. She was not upset, and picked her way through the clear path on the crowded floor. I realized with a gulp that this was the way she lived. "No, it's just that..." I stuttered.

Gussie laughed. "My creative clutter? Don't worry, you're not the first person to think my house has been ransacked."

I laid the puzzle lid on a card table to keep her from seeing my flaming cheeks. The half-finished puzzle looked like it would be a covered bridge scene when finished. I resisted the urge to linger and fill in a piece of fall foliage.

"I figure heaven will be nice and orderly," she said. "I'll probably hate it."

She moved aside a stack of quilt books that blocked the egress to the kitchen at the back of the house. "I'm a very visual person," she explained. "The minute I put something away, I lose it. So I keep my projects in sight. Believe it or not, I know where everything is."

I made agreeing noises, but inside I was flipping out. Every surface was covered. Quilted wall hangings fought for wall space with souvenir plates. Next to the window was a framed picture of two black silhouettes surrounded by a heart-shaped mat. The side views of a man and a woman, it was dated September 6, 1947, Niagara Falls, NY. No doubt from Gussie's honeymoon.

A dusty philodendron looped around the curtain rod. A sunbleached sand art in a terrarium shared a space with several African violets blooming in cracked tea cups.

Two cats tussled in the corner. They were fighting over a skein of purple yarn. I could see now that they were the reason for the toppled TV tray. The same yarn was twisted around the legs.

The smaller cat broke away and ran over my feet to beat Gussie into the kitchen.

I took in a deep breath. There was no question a woman lived alone here. There was no couch, only a threadbare recliner next to the TV table. A spindly dining room set was visible through the arch. No longer used for family dinners, the top was covered with fabric scraps like the ones she'd picked out of the garbage cans at the store.

Was this what I had to look forward to if I never married? Could my collection of pottery morph into this mishmash of old lady stuff? If I continued to haunt the online auction sites, it just might.

Looking closer, I was surprised to see that the fabric scraps had been sorted by color and size. A piece of paper on each gave the approximate dimension. Some of the fabrics had been cut into triangles, with the long corners nubbed, ready to be sewn. Maybe there was a method here after all.

Gussie moved quickly through the clutter, knowing just where to put her feet. I followed her.

The kitchen was better. The pale green countertops were worn and faded, but gleaming. Clean dishes were laid neatly in a rack next to the sink. Fresh oranges and a ripening tomato were in a bowl under the kitchen window.

Time was passing. I wasn't going to make it to the post office unless I got going. Maybe I should have Vangie meet me at the post office with the purchase order and the addressed envelope.