Twenty minutes later we parked behind the Rangeman SUV and walked into my parents’ house. Grandma was at the dining room table, working on her bucket list.
“Let’s see what you’ve got here,” Lula said, sitting next to her. “Whoa, a trip to Antarctica. That’s a good one. Although I heard the penguins are real stinky.”
I didn’t see my mother in the kitchen.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“Grocery shopping. That’s why I’m sitting in the dining room. If someone busts in the back door again, I have more time to run out the front door.”
I poked around in the fridge and found a container of leftover chicken salad.
“Anyone want to share this?” I asked.
“I had lunch,” Grandma said.
“I had a pizza at the mall before I ran into you-know-who,” Lula said.
I got a fork and ate the chicken out of the container. “I want to talk about the keys, again,” I said to Grandma. “You married Jimmy. You had to know all kinds of things about him.”
“I guess so. It happened pretty fast. It was like love at first sight, except it happened after sixty-three years.”
“How did he feel about the keys? Was he worried about losing them? Did he offer to show them to you? Did he have a special place for them when he was in his apartment?”
“He didn’t talk about the keys,” Grandma said. “Other people talked about the keys. Not actually talked about them. Just that Jimmy was the Keeper of the Keys. And everyone knew that it was a big deal. I guess I got the feeling that Jimmy usually had the keys with him. So, they must have been small. Like regular keys. And if they thought he passed the keys to me as he was dying, they would have to be small and on a key ring.”
“But he didn’t pass them to you. And the keys weren’t on him when he died. He had a wallet with credit cards and cash. That was it,” I said.
“How about the ambulance people?” Lula asked.
“I was with him when they took him away,” Grandma said. “I didn’t see anybody take any keys from him.”
“Okay,” I said, “let’s go at it from a different angle. If you were Jimmy, what would you do with the keys when you were on vacation in the Bahamas?”
“If it was me, I’d hide them in my underwear drawer,” Grandma said.
“Yes, but suppose you were Jimmy.”
“Jimmy could be real crafty,” Grandma said. “He was clever. He might even put them someplace that was booby-trapped.”
“In his hotel room? In his condo?”
“His condo. I’m thinking he didn’t take the keys with him. We were going for just a couple days, and it was one of those last-minute decisions. He might not even have thought about the keys, what with all the other stuff going on.”
“What other stuff?”
“He had to get more male enhancement pills. And he wanted a haircut. And he had to get the plane tickets and the hotel room. Jimmy didn’t have a bunch of young wiseguys like some of the other La-Z-Boys. He didn’t have a personal assistant or anything. He did everything himself. Even when it came to work, I’m guessing he mostly just we
nt out and killed people.”
“Did that bother you?” Lula asked. “Most people don’t like people who kill people.”
“I didn’t think about it until after he was dead,” Grandma said. “It’s not like he took me out on a date and talked about whacking people. I went out with a butcher once, and all he could talk about was sawing cows apart and chopping the heads off chickens. It was awful. Jimmy and me played gin rummy and went to the movies. It was nice. Besides, it wasn’t like he killed random people. He was a respected professional. He had a real good reputation.”
“Have you been to his condo since he died?” I asked Grandma.
“No. It’s not like I moved in. There wasn’t anything of mine at his place. And I knew his sisters went through it right away. I figured they took what they wanted. There wasn’t really anything I wanted. I was going to wait until the lawyer made it official and the condo was mine before I took a look at it.”
“Do you have a key?” I asked her.