An Affair to Dismember (26 page)

Grandma sat at the table, her chin resting on her hands.

“It’s a blind day, dolly. I can’t see a thing. I don’t know which way to go, and I don’t know which way will go at me. I feel lost and helpless.”

Grandma’s blind days, when her third eye went dark, were few and far between. They only occurred maybe twice a year, but when they hit, they hit hard. Normally a strong force, Grandma turned into a terrified mush.

“I’ll shoo out the Second Chancers, and then I’ll call in Bird for an emergency brush-out,” I said.

Grandma’s hand shot forward. “No! Maybe today her car gets in an accident, or her brush misses and blinds me for good. I don’t know. I don’t know. Anything could happen today.”

“Fine. I won’t call Bird,” I said.

“I’ll brush your hair,” Bridget said. “I’m already here, and I’ve never blinded someone with a brush before.”

I kicked out the Second Chancers, and we got Grandma cleaned up and dressed for the day. It didn’t take long before we were all sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and eating bacon and eggs and toast.

Spencer ate five eggs and four slices of toast. I lost count on the bacon. Lucy and Bridget watched him eat every morsel with their tongues hanging out.

“I love a man with an appetite,” said Lucy.

“Uh-huh,” said Bridget, and broke out into giggles.

“How are you feeling, Bridget?” I asked.

“Wounded. Not physically but psychically. No offense, Zelda. How are you, Gladie? You actually saw what happened. I didn’t see a thing.”

“I was sort of unconscious, but it was gory.”

Bridget pounded the table. “My priest. My spiritual advisor.” Her voice cracked. “I told him all my deepest,
darkest feelings, and he almost shot me. I’m having a crisis of faith.”

“Darlin’, I didn’t know you ever had any faith to lose,” Lucy said.

“It was my one weakness.”

“It wasn’t a weakness,” Grandma said. It was the first we’d heard from her in an hour. “Everyone needs a foundation. Roots to hold them firm to the ground. Religion is good that way. Centers you. Focuses you. Makes you think outside of yourself and lets you see the beauty and grandeur around you. Wait. Scratch that. I shouldn’t give any advice today. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

Bridget sighed. “I have to rethink everything now. I need a good cause to settle into. I wish we had a Greenpeace office in town. Sucks that we’re landlocked.”

“Gladie, if it’s not too difficult for you, tell us who you think murdered the old priest and why,” Lucy said.

I took a sip of coffee. “He may have been an old priest, but he used to be a member of Randy Terns’ gang. They robbed banks. He faked his death. I saw the tombstone, but I heard from another lying priest that he was really alive. I tracked him down to the confessional. Finding out he had become a priest threw me for a loop, though. I didn’t expect that.”

“Oh, lawd. Holy Charleston and Savannah! You can’t write this stuff!” Lucy tossed back her hair. Her face was flushed. She tapped her cheek with her finger. “All the gang members are dead. Murdered.” She put her hand up. “I know, Mr. Policeman, only one is murder for sure. But what are the odds? Three dead in such a short period of time?
Pow. Pow. Pow
. Cannes is buzzin’ louder than bees by a honeypot. We have never seen the like here. Dead old men, piling up by the side of the road. It’s like a war zone or something. Guns. Guns! And now we have no idea who the murderer or murderers
are. It could be anyone. You can pick any of the crazies across the street. Any of them could’ve done it.”

“But Peter and Christy were in the pokey,” Bridget pointed out.

“That’s right!” Lucy said. “Peter and Christy, the two craziest, have an alibi. Oh, Zelda, dear, you picked a bad time to be blind. Did you pick up anything about the Terns before today? Was your antenna twitchin’ in any particular direction before?”

“I know love, not death,” said Grandma. “If they had a crush on someone, I would have known. But they’re losers, the lot of them. Not a good apple in that bunch.”

“What about Father Lawrence, the lying priest who’s still alive?” asked Bridget.

Spencer cleared his throat and gave me a warning look. He didn’t appreciate all the talk about an active case, but I ignored him.

“Spencer spoke to Father Lawrence,” I said. “He knew about Chuck Costas’ past but thought he had turned over a new leaf, and he was trying to protect Costas’ anonymity. He said Costas was scared. He had been approached by somebody. Threatened. He thought I was a troublemaker, stirring up things best left untouched.”

“Smart man,” Spencer muttered.

I kicked Spencer under the table, but he didn’t flinch. He looked over at me and smirked.

“He was definitely freaked out,” I said. “I can attest to that. I wonder who made him so scared? Who could scare a hardened criminal?”

Bridget gasped. “He could have just been trying to protect his secret, his past. It could have been a simple threat, like telling his flock he was a hardened criminal.” Sometimes she could make a lot of sense.

Grandma decided to stay in the kitchen all day. Bridget decided to stay with her, and Lucy decided to
stay with Bridget. I needed to rest, but Spencer was hovering, even though he swore that he never hovered and certainly wouldn’t hover over me no matter how much hovering I needed. “Hovering over you with a baseball bat, a Taser, and a pack of wild dogs to try to control you, maybe,” he said.

So Spencer mainly paced the house with his cellphone attached to his ear, chastising various members of his department, occasionally glancing my way to make sure I hadn’t been the cause of any more death or havoc in his town.

My claustrophobia was overtaking my exhaustion. Since Grandma thought Ding-Dongs might hasten her recovery, I snuck out of the house when Spencer wasn’t looking to go on a Ding-Dong run.

Once outside, I threw my car keys up in the air and caught them. Freedom. It had been a while since I’d spent any time alone, driving my own car with the wind in my hair. Suddenly I felt refreshed, ready to take on the world. Or at least to buy an unlimited supply of sugar and carbs.

I opened the car door with a loud creak and noticed Betty across the street. She stood on her front porch, smoking a cigarette. She was dressed in polyester pants and a rayon top. Her hair was extra bouffant. She studied me while she inhaled and blew out long columns of smoke. I hesitated. A little wave from me would be polite, I supposed, but just looking at the Ternses’ house gave me an anxiety attack.

Betty crooked her finger at me.

“Come on over,” she called. “It’s quiet at the house. It’s just me and Cindy. Rob is busy watching a game.”

I tried to think of an excuse. What was I scared of? All the crazies were gone. Besides, I had a niggling little curiosity that wouldn’t leave me alone. I shut the car door.

“It’s good to see you, Gladie. I heard about what happened to you. Glad to see you’re fine. Can you spare a minute? I’d like to talk to you.”

I deflated like a balloon. “Sure,” I said, following Betty into her kitchen, where she lit up, again. Soft television noises came from the other room.

“I was thinking about what I told you yesterday,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that. Consider it forgotten.”

“I don’t want to forget it. I want to explain myself. It’s about time I talk to someone. I haven’t been forthcoming in many years. Randy wouldn’t let me, of course. I always bowed to Randy’s desires.”

There was a heaviness about her that reminded me of another woman I had met recently. If Betty had been forty years younger, wearing cotton clothes and with a black eye, she would have been Sarah from the battered women’s shelter.

“Betty, was Randy cruel to you?” I asked.

“I didn’t see it that way. I thought he was protecting me, keeping me in the house all the time, isolating me from the world. I thought he had my best interests at heart.”

“But you’ve changed your mind?”

“No, never. Randy loved me, no matter what anybody has to say. That horrible woman was manipulative, capable of anything. A truly evil woman.” She leaned forward. “Gladie, I think someone hurt Randy. I don’t think he slipped,” she whispered.

I sighed. Like her wardrobe, Betty was behind the times. She was spouting old news, and I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm. I was tired of Randy Terns and his damaged head. Betty put out her cigarette and blew her nose.

I patted her arm and murmured something encouraging.
“Betty, why do you think someone hurt Randy?” I asked.

“Weren’t you listening?” she asked, slightly irritated. But she was interrupted by Cindy, who walked in, opened the refrigerator, and poured herself some apple juice.

“Pennies,” she said, noticing me.

“Leave Gladie alone,” Betty snapped. “Can’t you see we’re talking?”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Sure, Cindy. I must have some pennies in my purse, somewhere.”

But I didn’t, and Cindy wasn’t interested in dimes or nickels.

“I have pennies,” said Betty. “Gladie, would you be a dear and get me my purse? It’s on my bed in the bedroom at the end of the hall.”

I walked down the hall at a snail’s pace. It was odd to experience such quiet in the Ternses’ house. Every room was immaculate. No sign of a crazed drug addict on a rampage or group arrests. Betty had tidied the evidence. Peter’s holes in the walls were gone, too. There was a sense of
all done
with the whole Terns drama.

But it was an illusion. The walls were patched up, not painted. In fact, the whole house needed to be painted and updated. It was clean but run-down. It seemed all done, but it wasn’t. It was a sad house.

No wonder Betty was sad. She lived in a sad house, and her children brought her nothing but aggravation. It was a relief to have them gone. I hoped Betty could find peace and a sense of closure.

I brought Betty’s purse back to her.

“Thanks,” she said. “Cindy wandered off, again, though. I’ll give her the pennies later.”

I took my seat at the table.

“You know what?” she asked. “I know I invited you
in, but I forgot I have to run to the pharmacy. Would you pardon me?”

I stood. I was relieved from my head to my toes. I had unconsciously been clenching my jaw, and now I released it, leaving a residual headache. My purse wasn’t where I left it in the kitchen.

“Cindy must have it,” said Betty. She rushed off to find her.

Rob wandered in and went to the refrigerator. “Hi, Rob,” I said. His head whipped around in surprise.

“Oh, hi there, Gladie. What’s up?”

“I’m on my way out. Cindy’s got my bag somewhere.”

Rob nodded. “Yeah, Cindy does that. She’s been a little out there ever since the accident when she was a little girl and she was home with Mom, and she fell out of the high chair. Hey, you know what? It was right about where you’re standing.”

I took a step to the right. I didn’t have a lot of good luck in Betty’s kitchen. Rob opened a bottle of beer and wandered back to his game without saying goodbye. A moment later, Betty returned, holding the purse out to me.

“Let me know if anything’s missing,” she said, and ushered me out of the door with a flourish.

Spencer was waiting beside my car.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked when I arrived at Grandma’s driveway.

“She asked me to go in,” I said.

“And you went in? Are you kidding me?” he repeated.

“How could I say no?”

“I think the word is the same in at least twenty languages. You could have shaken your head. You could have wagged your finger from side to side. You could have stuck your tongue out at her. She would have gotten the picture.”

“Not everyone has your charm, Spencer.”

“How is Mrs. Terns?” he asked.

“She thinks Randy was murdered.”

“Oh, God.”

“I didn’t say much when she brought it up. Are you proud of me?”

“I’m having your trophy engraved this very second,” he said.

I pointed to my car. “I have a Ding-Dong run to go on for my grandmother.”

“You’re not allowed to drive. You have a concussion and you lost consciousness. You are grounded until your checkup next week.”

“I am perfectly fine. I can drive a few miles for medicinal Ding-Dongs.” I rummaged in my purse for my keys.

“It’s not my opinion. It’s the law. You’re not allowed to drive.”

“What’s this?” I pulled out a handful of letters and papers from my purse. “These aren’t mine. Cindy must have put them in there.”

Spencer took a paper from the top of the stack and read it aloud: “ ‘Randy, if you don’t leave your wife, I’ll kill you.’ ”