Rite of Wrongs (9 page)

E
IGHTEEN

Tuesday, 12:00 p.m.

“Kurt! Kurt! Come here!”

Kurt Hathaway moved his knight to queen’s bishop three on the chess board where he and Lester Washington were playing. “Be right back, Les. Need to check on Miss Dottie.”

“Yeah, yeah. You go on, you and your cock-blocking knight.” Lester continued grumbling as Kurt pushed his chair from the table in the common room, leaving the older man with a smile and a pat to his back.

He loved his job. He really did. He hadn’t thought he would after his service, but it seemed Baghdad had been the perfect training ground for the senior center. He’d learned patience he’d never had before, and a vigilance he didn’t think himself capable of.

He’d also learned to read people, to listen to people. To hear what they were really saying when they were unable to speak for themselves. Sometimes it was out of fear. Other times, like now, it was because they’d lost the ability to process what was going on around them.

He knelt in front of Dorothy Lacey’s chair where she sat facing the TV. Her eyes were unblinking as she stared at the screen. “What is it, Miss Dottie?”

She pointed and frowned. “I just saw Frank on the TV.”

“Frank who?” Kurt asked, glancing over his shoulder at the midday news.

“My boy, Frank.” Her hand was shaking now, her agitation clear. He looked toward the medical staff’s station and signaled for José Diaz, Dorothy’s nurse. “The TV woman said Frank was dead. Like Gina.”

Kurt looked back at the television and the footage from yesterday’s news. One of the owners of the Paisley Cricket had been found dead at his home. News crews circled like vultures, held at bay by the crime-scene tape. The back door of the investigators’ van was open, a tech loading up what looked like a stainless-steel tackle box.

The dead man’s name was indeed Frank. Franklin Weeks.

Hadn’t it been last week when Dorothy had seen another report that had left her upset? He was sure of it. She’d been bothered then, too, talking of the past before criticizing his eyebrow ring. Her confusion had been obvious, and he’d felt it best to distract her.

Had he been wrong?

He watched until the station moved to the next story and was pulling out his phone as José walked up. The nurse took hold of Dorothy’s wrist to check her pulse.

“What’s going on, Miss Dottie? Are you okay?”

Staring down at his keypad as he dialed, Kurt held off on completing the call. “She said she knew that dude on TV who was killed. I thought the cops might want to know.”

José frowned. “What did you see, Miss Dottie?”

“There. On the TV.” She jerked her arm from his grasp. “It was Frank.”

Setting his hands at his hips, José glanced at the TV as he spoke. “She said the other day it was someone named Gina.”

“It was. Now it’s Frank.” Still holding his phone at the ready, Kurt got to his feet. “I’ve never seen a daughter visit, and her son who comes, his name is Edward, right?”

José nodded.

“You think I should call? You think she has anything to tell them?” Kurt asked, his attention on José and not on Dorothy, who swung wide with one arm and slammed it into his midsection, causing him to exhale a loud
oomph
.

“Gina and Frank were my children. That’s what I can tell them. You call them now.”

Kurt hit “Send.” “I need to speak to whoever’s looking into the Gina Gardner and Franklin Weeks murders.”

N
INETEEN

Tuesday, 4:00 p.m.

“I’m Detective Miriam Rome. This is my partner, Detective Melvin Stonebridge.” Inside the lobby of the Caring Hands Senior Center, Miriam showed her badge to the receptionist who’d pulled aside the frosted-glass window. “We had a call from Kurt Hathaway about one of your residents. He said we should talk to her nurse. José Diaz.”

The middle-aged woman who could’ve been pulled straight from central casting—with her tousled gray bob and wire-rimmed glasses and pearl earrings—nodded and reached for her phone. “Let me page him.”

“Thanks.” Miriam walked toward the lobby’s black-leather club chairs where Melvin waited, not sitting but standing, as if he might catch something from the furniture and never see blue skies again.

“Smells like piss-scented pine cleaner in here,” he said, his hands in his pockets as he shuddered. “My end time comes? I’d rather take a bullet.”

“I’ll be sure Violet knows,” Miriam said, thinking it might not be a bad idea to make similar arrangements for herself. She hadn’t revised her will but once since she’d entered the academy. She doubted Augie would like getting stuck with her stuff.

The very idea of his having to go through her things with Thierry hovering . . .

It almost made her laugh out loud. It certainly made her smile, thinking about the two of them knowing more about her than even her family. She wondered if they’d fight over her collection of traveler’s notebooks, both wanting the Italian leather she’d always thought better suited for a man—

“What’s so funny?” Melvin asked, but she didn’t have time to answer.

Just then, the doors at the end of the hallway whooshed open. Miriam and Melvin met José halfway and made introductions. The nurse wore navy scrubs and black Dansko clogs, and was thirtyish, clean-shaven, and built. His hair was buzzed the length he would’ve worn in the military. She’d bet that he’d served. A medic, maybe.

Opening her notebook, she jotted a reminder to find out. Not that his background would have any bearing on the case, but she liked knowing everything she could about her sources.

“Thanks for coming.” José stood with his hands behind his back, his expression no-nonsense as he looked from Miriam to Melvin. “Dorothy’s fairly lucid today, but you’ll need to keep your questions simple.”

“Will we be able to rely on what she tells us?” Melvin asked.

“Yes and no.” The nurse’s shrug punctuated his nonanswer. “But it’s pretty clear when she’s talking about the present.”

After Miriam’s initial excitement at the possible link between the two murders, José’s assessment came as a letdown. “And you think what she’s saying about these two—”

“It’s been a mix,” was José’s response. “She’s definitely aware that what she’s seen on the news is happening here and now. I’m just not sure how she’s connecting the murder victims with the past. She keeps calling them her children, but as far as Kurt and I can recall—”

“Kurt Hathaway.”

“Right, sorry,” he said to Miriam. “Kurt’s her caretaker, getting her where she needs to be, making sure she’s comfortable. Anyway, neither one of us can remember a Franklin or a Gina visiting. And Edward, her son who does, is not the man in the news.”

“Anything else we need to know?” Melvin asked.

“Don’t agitate her. Don’t press her. You won’t get anywhere doing either.”

“Got it.” Having written down Edward’s name, Miriam clicked off her pen. “Lead the way.”

Once out of the sterile lobby and into the living quarters, Miriam felt less like she was walking into a bottle of bleach. The residential area smelled like sugar cookies—real ones—not candles or air freshener. The room into which they followed José was big, bright, and airy, the far wall nothing but windows covered in sheer yellow curtains that cast a sunny glow.

Dorothy Lacey was a large woman, not obese but tall and big-boned. For some reason, Miriam had been expecting a tiny little bird, fragile and capable of no more than a peep. Dorothy, if she were able to stand, would have been Melvin’s five feet eleven at least.

Her hair was white and short, a style that might’ve been described as a pixie cut, except there was nothing stylish about it. Whoever cared for her hair had only convenience in mind. Quick washes, no more than a towel to dry.

Her breasts, having no doubt once resembled a jutting ship’s prow, now rested on the pillow she held in her lap. She wore a loudly patterned muumuu in red and gold. The fabric covered her knees where she sat in her wheelchair, leaving her shins bare.

Her lower legs were encased in support stockings, her feet in nonslip socks. All of it, again, convenient. But she was clean. So were her nails and mouth, and she smelled of a sweet floral soap. She was, to Miriam’s liking, well cared for.

Now to hope she was equally as mentally pulled together.

José had rolled her to sit next to a small grouping of chairs and a sofa in the common room. There were TVs on two walls, each showing a different program, neither volume disturbing the other. Closed-captioning spelled out the dialogue on both.

Miriam perched on the edge of the sofa and opened her notebook on one knee, wondering if anyone focused on the screens had the awareness—or the eyesight—to read.

Wondering, too, as she clicked the end of her pen, if Dorothy was dependent on the wheelchair, or if again it was about convenience. And whose.

“Mrs. Lacey? My name is Miriam Rome. I’m a detective with the Union Park police. This is my partner, Melvin Stonebridge.” She gestured toward Melvin, who took a seat in the nearest club chair. It was a blue-and-green plaid. “How are you feeling today?”

The elderly woman looked from Miriam to Melvin and back, then said, “Okay.”

So far, so good. “Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”

“About what?”

Miriam took a minute to weigh her response. Should she remind the woman what she’d said to her caretaker? Or should she jump right in? The clarity in Dorothy’s eyes decided her. “About you having known both Gina Gardner and Franklin Weeks.”

Dorothy’s gaze narrowed. “Who told you that?”

Defensive. Not what Miriam had expected. She glanced down at her notes. “It was Kurt Hathaway who called us. He said you were agitated after seeing the news of their deaths.”

“That boy needs to mind his own business,” Dorothy said, looking as if she wanted to spit. “Anyone would be agitated seeing people killed and the news faces acting like it’s some big Broadway show.”

Miriam couldn’t argue with that. “Do you remember saying that to him?”

“Of course I remember.” She waved a hand, the encompassing gesture taking in Miriam and Melvin as well as José. “You don’t all have to act like I don’t understand what’s going on around me.”

At that, Melvin leaned closer and cleared his throat. “Do you mind telling us how you knew them?”

“They lived in my house for nigh on a dozen years,” she said, continuing to talk while Miriam wrote. “Both of them. After the state pulled them out of their own homes.”

The blip in Miriam’s pulse brought her head up. She counted to ten, holding the nugget of information close. “You were their foster mother.”

The older woman snorted. “I sure as hell wasn’t their babysitter, though I didn’t get paid much better than one.”

Miriam glanced up at José. He nodded as if reinforcing what he’d said earlier: Dorothy Lacey was having a good day. “Do you remember the last time you saw Gina? Or Frank? Or the last time you spoke to either of them?”

“I’d say that was 1979 for Gina, and”—she frowned and looked up as if referring to a calendar, the whites of her eyes red-veined—“1981 for Frank.”

Miriam still used her fingers to do that kind of math. “You seem very certain.”

“I
am
very certain.” Dorothy’s tone grew insulted, her voice coarse. Her hands began to shake. “I reared those children for the better part of their young lives. They left the only home they’d ever known when they were eighteen.”

“You didn’t stay in touch?” Melvin asked, his focus as keen as Miriam’s now.

Dorothy harrumphed. “They knew where to find me.”

Meaning she hadn’t known where to find them? Or she hadn’t cared where they were? “Were you aware they were both living in Union Park?”

“I was not. Though I figured sooner or later they’d come to some lousy end. Neither one of them was worth a shit.”

O . . . kay. “What about Edward?”

Dorothy’s gaze snapped to Miriam’s. “What about him?”

“He comes to visit you, so you obviously stayed in touch with him.”

“I gave birth to Edward. He may be stupid, but he’s not stupid enough to think not coming to see me is an option.”

If this woman had dementia, Miriam was in full-blown Alzheimer’s. She knew professionals who weren’t this sharp. “Were Franklin and Gina the only children you fostered?”

“I’d say that’s none of your business.”

It wasn’t like Miriam couldn’t find out on her own. And doing so in the next five days had just become a priority. “Tell us about your son, Edward, Mrs. Lacey. Where does he work?”

“I don’t see why that’s any of your business, either, but since you’ve got all those taps telling you everything everybody says . . .” She paused, snorted in disgust, then said, “Out to that big sporting-goods warehouse. The one with all the running shoes and hunting gear and such.”

“Does he have a family?” Miriam asked.

“A useless wife and two brats.”

“Do they visit, too?”

She turned on Melvin at that. “Why in the world would I want to see any of them? What have they ever done for me?”

That was when José stepped in. “Sorry, Detectives. I think it’s time for Dorothy to get some rest. How does some quiet time in your room sound, Miss Dottie?”

“You ask me that like I’ve got any choice,” she said as José leaned down to release her chair’s brakes.

Melvin shook the nurse’s hand as Miriam closed her notebook and stood. She shook José’s hand, too, then leaned down to Dorothy’s level. “Thank you for speaking to us, Mrs. Lacey. Please accept our condolences for your loss.”

“You mean Frank and Gina?” Dorothy held Miriam’s gaze without blinking, her eyes clear and sharp and mean. “That weren’t no loss. You want to hear about loss, we can talk about what those kids cost me. I ain’t never known a more ungrateful, conniving lot of—”

“Okay, Miss Dottie. Let’s get you back to your room,” José said, shaking his head as if in apology.

Melvin turned to Miriam. “Guess she wasn’t having such a good day after all.”

“Ya think?” Except Miriam wasn’t so sure that was the truth.

Back in the Yukon, Miriam shoved her sunglasses into place and watched the polarized colors on the vehicle’s hood dance in the heat. “I’m trying to imagine that woman about forty years younger and a mother.”

“I’ve heard dementia can cause personality changes,” Melvin said, letting the interior exhale most of its heat before slamming his door. “More agitation and aggression. Spitting. Cursing like a motherfucking sailor.”

Miriam tried not to laugh. Her partner wasn’t mocking Dorothy Lacey. Melvin didn’t have it in him to mock. But he knew she was going to fall into a funk if she thought too long about an interview that felt like a waste of time. They’d connected the victims by more than the verses. Yet something still felt off.

Sometimes intuition was a bitch. “She mentioned getting paid. Do you think that’s why she took them in?”

“I hear tell there are some who do,” he said, causing Miriam to snort at what they both knew to be an unfortunate truth. “Except she also said the kids cost her.”

“I wonder what she meant by that,” Miriam said as Melvin put the SUV into reverse and looked over his shoulder. “Time? Energy? More money than the state paid her? Other relationships? She could’ve lost friends, I guess. If she’d had any.”

“What I’m wondering,” he said, facing forward and shifting into drive, “is how many other kids she may have fostered. And how fast we can find them.”

“Yeah.” Miriam turned over everything they’d learned. “What do we know about her husband?”

“Nothing.”

“Then let’s go see her son.”

Melvin let out a loud huff. “The stupid one with the useless wife and two brats?”

“That’s the one.”