W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone 23)

“Because once I neutralize the danger, that’s the end of it.”

“What are you, a hit man?”

“What’s the matter with you? I don’t hurt people for any reason. I’d never do such a thing. Any rate, I don’t think this is something we should discuss on the phone. Why don’t we find a place to meet? That way, we can pursue the matter in private and see if we can reach an agreement.”

There was a long silence and Pete waited it out.

Finally, tersely, the good doctor said, “Where?”

21

I followed Alice as she crossed the back porch and went down the wooden stairs. Lolly sat in a shady spot under a cottonwood tree on one of two metal lawn chairs. These were duplicates of the ones I remembered from the scrim of yard in the trailer park where I’d lived with Aunt Gin; metal back and seat, supported by a continuous bend of U-shaped tubing, which gave the chairs some bounce. The finish here was chalky from sun exposure, but the chairs were otherwise in great shape. Between the two, there was a metal table resting on three legs.

The larger part of the backyard was given over to a vegetable garden, densely planted and still producing; cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and two kinds of squash. The beds were bordered with dark green kale and bright orange marigolds. The roses along the fence had been pruned to short, blunt sticks.

Alice said, “Lolly, this is Kinsey. She’s a friend of Terrence and Evelyn Dace. They lived next door to you and David on Daisy Lane. Do you remember them?”

“Oh, yes. It’s so nice to see you again,” she said, and then looked at her cousin, waiting for the next cue.

Alice said, “I’m going to bring you some lemonade. You can tell Kinsey about the garden.” And then to me, “Lolly designed the beds when she first came to live with me and now we work awfully hard to keep them in shape. I’ll be right back.”

She returned to the house, leaving me alone with Lolly, who looked every bit of her eighty-six years; big-boned and gaunt with wide shoulders and a wide, sloping bosom that disappeared at her waist. Her eyes were buried in soft folds. The dress she wore was cotton with an old-fashioned faded floral print in blues and pinks. She wore opaque beige stockings and sandals with thick straps. She had a colander in her lap and she was shelling peas, though the results were a jumble of torn and broken pods with the occasional spill of bright green. Once in a while she looked down, puzzled by the sight, but unable to correct for the error in play. Her expression was probably one she’d settled on for most occasions; pleasant, but with a fixed quality, like someone traveling in a foreign country, unacquainted with the language and therefore hoping to avoid conversation.

She flicked an anxious look toward the back door and then leaned close. “Who is that woman?”

“Your cousin, Alice. Your mother and hers were sisters.”

Lolly’s expression was anxious. “Alice is young. That woman’s old. She moved into my house and now she’s bossing me around. What right does she have to give orders?”

I felt myself detach from reality for a quick reassessment. My neighbor Gus had fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous caregiver who operated in this same manner, discounting complaints and suggesting psychological problems where there were none. If Gus told anyone how mistreated he was, the listener’s natural inclination was to write him off as a mental case. For all I knew, Lolly was telling me the truth. At the same time, if Alice was indeed a stranger taking advantage of an elderly woman, she wouldn’t have allowed me to see Lolly in the first place, would she have?

“I just met her,” I said. “I called and asked if I could visit and she agreed.”

“I’ve never seen her before in my life. Have you?”

“Not until just now,” I said. “Do you remember Terrence and Evelyn Dace?”

“Of course. Are you a friend of Evelyn’s?”

“No, but I talked to her children, Ethan—”

“Ellen and Anna,” she said, filling in the family tree.

I was thinking, good, we’re back on track. “Do you remember the name Karen Coffey?”

“Oh, yes. She went missing in February and they found her days later stuffed in that culvert, not two miles from Daisy Lane. She’d been raped and strangled with a cord. I felt so bad for the family. They were members of my church.”

“You have a good memory.”

“Do I?” she asked, and then, hesitantly, “Have you seen my daughter, Mary?”

“I don’t know Mary. I wish I did,” I said. “Were you at Terrence and Evelyn’s house the night Karen Coffey disappeared?”