Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 05 - Trouble on the Doorstep (20 page)

I figured she had realized that I not only wasn’t going anywhere, I couldn’t even get up quickly.
“Take your time,” I said, figuring with her lack of impulse control that any sudden decision would be bad for me.

“I don’t have a lot of time.
I have to meet my maid of honor by six o’clock. I mean she was my maid…You shut up!”

This is surreal.
She was contemplating how to kill me and would then meet a friend for dinner. My head was facing right, which was away from her. I let my eyes travel over the ground near me. It was flat, strewn with dark brown leaves, and very cold. My guess was that no one would see me from the path if I were lying down. There were several good sized sticks, one maybe two inches in diameter, but I’d never get to them, even if I could stand up.

“You shouldn’t have kept looking!”
She was crying quietly now. “You should have, like, minded your own business.”

Where have I heard that before?
“That’ll be my first New Year’s resolution,” I said. When she didn’t say anything, I asked, “What made Eric mad?”
Are you crazy? Don’t ask her anything!

She gave another loud sniff.
“See, they weren’t going to do all the work, just some, and get people to do the rest. So they were, like, managers. There didn’t need to be two managers. We could have made all that money for us.”

“But he and Steve were friends, weren’t they?” I asked.

She ignored my question. “He kept saying he’d think about it. But I saw on his email that he and Steve were meeting outside of Silver Times, and they were going to take a bid in.” Her tone became almost pleading. “See, I just wanted to talk to him one more time. That’s why I drove up to Ocean Alley that day. To talk. Just to talk.”

Through a pain haze it dawned on me that she might be saying that rather than talk, she had killed Steve.
That doesn’t make sense. She was so upset about Eric’s call that day. She was crying on the porch
.

“Did you get to see them?” I asked.

“Well, sort of. I mean, I didn’t mean to. I just saw Steve by his car…” her voice trailed off.

Omigod.
She did kill Steve
.

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it,” I said.

“Well, I wouldn’t do it
now
. I mean, I shouldn’t have done it. But I saw him and I was just so mad at Eric, and it was all because of Steve.”

“You can probably tell the police it was an accident…”

“I’m not telling them anything!” She started to cry again.

It was really cold on the ground.
I was starting to shake a little, which didn’t help the pain in my wrist. “I know you didn’t mean it,” I said.

Her tone became one of a child bargaining with a parent to stay up ten more minutes.
“I thought if I just talked to Eric, he’d understand. He’d know I didn’t mean it. He’d still love me.”

“I bet he would have understood,” I said, my eyes fixed on a spider that was crawling on a leaf about six inches from my face.

“Well, he didn’t.” She was angry again. “See, his parents called me and said he was okay, and they said they told him I’d been with you.” She blew her nose. “I know how he thinks. If I went there to hide he would, too.”

“So you went over to the Cozy Corner?” I asked.
I didn’t understand where she was going with this, but if she didn’t get there fast I might pass out from the pain.

“He let me in.
The paper said I came in a window from the basement, but that’s just how I went out.”

“I bet he was glad to see you,” I said softly.
If Pooki saw Eric before he died, maybe she saw the killer, too. No, she couldn’t have. She would have told the police. I was hurting more all the time, and I was starting to get dizzy just thinking about this.
How can I get away from her?

“He kinda was, but he had a bunch of stupid questions.
Really stupid.” She stopped for a moment. “He said he’d been thinking for a couple of days. He didn’t even
call
me!”

I waited.
When she said nothing, I asked, “Could you answer the questions?”

“I said they were stupid!”
She stopped, then adopted a sulky tone. “Besides, he, like, figured it out. If he just didn’t care about Steve, everything would have been okay.”

I still didn’t get it.

“If it was just Eric doing the work, we’d have had a lot of money,” she repeated. “There wouldn’t be anybody to split it with.” Her tone was almost pleading, as if she wanted me to agree with her. “They couldn’t get any of the really big Sandy contracts, the company was too small. But people knew them in Ocean Alley.”

Then I got it.
But I wanted to be sure. “You were the one who was, uh, with Eric when he died?” My voice was a lot higher than usual.

She sniffed loudly.
“It was an accident.”

Uh huh.
Anytime you stick a knife into your husband’s chest, it’s an accident
. “I’m sure it was.”

“You shouldn’t ask!
You’re just like Eric.” She stood and moved back toward me.

“Except I won’t tell anyone,” I said, trying to think quickly.
“I didn’t really know Steve or Eric. Why should I care?”

“Because, like Scoobie said, you’re minding other people’s business.”

I’d have to talk to Scoobie about what he said when other people were around. “I’m done with that. No one else has to know.”

“They don’t?”
She didn’t say anything for several seconds, but then spoke in an accusatory tone. “You’d tell.”

“I don’t have any proof you did anything.”

“I liked those knives,” she mused. “They were a lot better than the ones we got for wedding presents.” She seemed to realize what she had said and sat back on the trunk and started bawling, very loudly. “And I even had to throw away my running shoes!”

This gave me some hope.
There had to be someone outside who would hear her crying. Maybe she realized this, because she started gulping and sniffling, trying to stop.

“You know, if you go to one of the houses you could knock on a door and say I fell…”

“Who’s there?” A man’s voice seemed to be coming from the walking path. It had a reedy quality and kind of sounded familiar.

“No one!”
Pooki said.

“Are you hurt?” the voice asked.

“I’m hurt,” I yelled.

“Shut up!”
Pookie kicked me in the left hip, and I screamed in pain.

“Honey,” the man yelled.
“Call an ambulance! The police, too!”

“Nooooo.”
Pooki’s howl was really loud.

I raised my head and turned to look at her, the first look since she’d tripped me.
Her face was all red blotches and tears. “Pooki, just walk away. You can still walk away.”

She stared at me.
“I’m running.” And she turned and ran parallel to the walking path, and then turned after a few meters and ran into the woods.

I DIDN’T FIND OUT until later that night that Hank Bauer had been walking from the assisted living building over to the independent apartments to have dinner.
He had seen us go into the woods and not come out. He had not seen Pooki trip me, but there was not much reason, according to Hank, that anyone would stay “in the damn cold woods.”

When we didn’t return to the path he had pushed his walker toward us.
He could hear raised voices, and thought one of us was hurt. No one was really with him, he wanted whoever was yelling to think he wasn’t alone.

I was going to owe Hank Bauer a really big favor.
No doubt he would be sure to tell me that.

“I can’t believe you went to meet her without calling me,” George said.

“This is Jolie, remember?” Ramona said.

I opened my eyes.
I was still on a gurney in the emergency room and my arm was in a huge brace that was fastened at the top, just above my elbow. I vaguely remembered getting a shot just above my wrist so they could “manipulate it a bit.” It hurt hugely.

“Where’s Scoobie?” I asked.

“Back here,” he said.

He didn’t get up.
I figured he was mad at me.

“Is it today?” I asked.

George frowned. “They said you didn’t have a head injury.”

Good.
He cares
.

“But she’s had really good drugs,” Ramona said.

“You should have called,” George insisted.

“Why would I think she’d go after me?
All we did was go for a damn walk.”

“A walk,” he said.
“A walk.”

“Two points for comprehension,” Scoobie said.

Maybe he’s not so mad, either
.

“Why would she try to hurt you?” Ramona asked.

The privacy curtain opened with a shriek of metal on metal. “Out of here, Winters,” Morehouse said.

“Hey, I didn’t ask,” he said.

“All I did was go for a walk,” I looked at Morehouse. “Where is she?”

“With Tortino and Dana at the station.”
He looked at George and jerked his thumb behind him.

George walked out rapidly.
The hand I could see had a clenched fist. Ramona followed him, and I heard Scoobie stand.

Morehouse looked at him.
“You know anything?”

“Not really,” Scoobie said.

“He was the only one who thought she was nuts,” I said.

“I said ditzy.”
He gave my foot a squeeze on the way out.

Morehouse pulled a plastic chair to the gurney and sat, so he was only about eight inches from my face.
“You really know how to pick ‘em.”

“I hate it when you say that.
Besides, she picked me.”

“Whatever.
What happened?” He took a pen and tiny note pad from his breast pocket.

“She tripped me, and…”

“Start at the beginning,” he said, not harshly, but firm.

“Um, which part?” I asked.

His expression said he thought I was being a smart aleck, and then he almost smiled. “Today. How did you end up with her?”

I explained the phone call, and that I had tried to talk her out of going to Silver Times, but Pooki was insistent.

“Angry insistent?” he asked.

“Confused as much as angry.
I figured if she went out there by herself she’d throw a fit and maybe even get hauled out of there by you guys. I kind of felt sorry for her.”

“We found both your cars there.”

“Yep. She offered to pick me up, but I said I’d meet her there.” I shut my eyes and opened them again. “When we met out there, she got cold feet. Or acted like it. She said she wanted to go for a walk to calm down.”

“She don’t know calm,” Morehouse muttered.

“We got onto the path not far from some of the duplexes, and then she said she saw a cat in the woods and ran off the path.”

“And you followed,” he said.

“I started to say a cat could take care of itself, and she said it had kittens, and it’s going to be cold tonight…” My words were getting a little slurred.

“You need a doc?”

“It’s probably the medicine. I’m okay.”

“You got a funny definition of okay,” he said.

“You want to keep talking?”

“Go,” he said.

“When I got to where she was she kicked me hard and I fell forward. If I hadn’t done this,” I glanced toward my wrist, “I could have run away.”

“Broke something?” he asked.

“It was a really loud crack.”

“Hmm.
That’s all?”

“She kept her foot on me for awhile, then I guess she figured I couldn’t get up.”

“That’s all?” he repeated.

“She said…”
I stopped. “This is going to sound really strange, but she said she planned to kill me in the woods, and then say we got mugged.”

“What drugs are you taking?” Morehouse asked.

“No idea. I’m not delusional. She said it was because I’m tenacious.”

Morehouse grunted a laugh.

“Did she tell you about Steve and Eric?”

“Whaddya mean?”
His tone was sharp.

“She said Eric was mad at her, so when his parents told Pooki they heard from him and they told him she had gone to the Cozy Corner she went…”

“What?” He jumped up.

“Sergeant.”
The curtain had slid open. It was my least favorite nurse, the one Scoobie and I had previously called Nurse Rachid.

“Yeah?”
He gave her a cool look. I figured she and he had clashed before.

“You’ll have to leave the yelling at the police station.”

He stared at her for a couple of seconds, and said, “I’m sure you can handle all of it here.”

She gave him a look of irritation and shut the curtain.

He sat back down, so he could look at me directly. “You confused or what? Did Pooki actually say she was there? Did she see anyone else come in?” he asked.

I thought for a few seconds.
It sounded like he didn’t get that I thought Pooki was saying she killed Eric. And we hadn’t even talked about Steve. “She said it would have been okay if Eric hadn’t asked about Steve, or something like that.”

“That don’t make much sense,” he said, looking up from his notebook.

I stared at him. “I’m pretty sure she meant she killed Eric because he figured out she was the one who hit Steve. Oh, and she said she went out the basement window.”

He looked startled, and then thoughtful.
“She don’t even look big enough,” he said, almost musing to himself. “It
was
a smaller size running shoe.”

“She kicks hard.
And she’s a jogger.”

I watched him process this for a bit.
“The knife didn’t go in that deep. It hit the aortic artery.” He stopped. “That’s not something you tell Winters.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“Are you sure about what you heard? Everyone says she was nuts for her husband,” Morehouse said.

“I know what I heard,” I said.
“Whether it was the truth or not, that’s your job to figure out.”

“You were in pain.
Could you maybe have been halluci… imagining?” he asked.

“Maybe you are,” I shot back.

He gave me a look of irritation. “When Tortino took your statement after Eric got stabbed, you said that he said he didn’t recognize the car that hit Steve, or the driver.” Morehouse said this as an accusation.

“Good memory.”
I closed my eyes, then opened them. “I’m not sure, but I think she pretty much told me the reason Eric didn’t show up for a few days was because he’d been thinking. My bet is he guessed Pooki was driving.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”
He pushed back his chair and left.

I kept my eyes closed, thinking.
Eric said it was a dark car and that he couldn’t tell if the driver was a man or woman. Surely he would have recognized his wife. The convenience store clerk had to be wrong in thinking Eric really looked at the car.

“Jolie?”
It was Scoobie.

I looked at him, and then behind him.
“You by yourself?”

“George went to file a story.
I guess he figured out what you did, because he said to tell you he won’t compromise you.” He smiled for a second.

“So, he’s not really mad?”

Scoobie shrugged.

“Where’s Ramona?” I asked.

“Sgt. Morehouse gave her Harry’s cell number.
He wants her to call Madge.”

“Nuts!
Hey, how come he has Harry’s cell?”

He said Madge called him a few days ago and made him swear to call if anything else happened.
I guess Harry did something to his phone so it works overseas.”

“He did.
Boy, she’ll be really…Oh! There were guests coming tonight.”

“That was hours ago.
Ramona let them in. I gave her my key.”

“Good thinking.”
I closed my eyes. “I’ve got to get home.”

“The guests went to dinner, and then I’ll be there.
Hospital said you’ll be pretty sore until they can put a pin in your wrist.”

“What?
Nobody’s putting metal in me!”

“I guess it’s up to you if you want to let it flop around.
Be kind of hard to take the dogs for a walk.”

I half-opened my eyes.
“You can walk them.”

“I’ll pick their poop up from the back yard for a couple of days, but that’s it.”
He settled into the chair Morehouse had just vacated.

“How am I going to make the muffins?”
Aunt Madge would really be mad if I gave guests store-bought muffins.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Scoobie said.

“It’s part of her advertising, that they get all homemade breads and muffins.”

“You’re being a little self-absorbed,” he said, gently.

“How do you figure that?” I snapped.

“Steve and Eric are dead, and Pooki’s parents may have as much as lost her.
Muffins aren’t so important.”

That stopped me.
Leave it to Scoobie
. “Did anybody call Bill Oliver?”

Scoobie shook his head.
“Not that I know of. I haven’t really heard details except that Pooki broke your arm and said she wanted to kill you.”

“There’s a lot of that goin’ around.”
Morehouse waved a hand as he came back in and Scoobie stood up.

“Can I stay?” Scoobie asked.

“Where’s George?” Morehouse asked.

“The paper,” Scoobie and I said together.

“Yeah, well you’re almost her family. Just don’t go spouting off to George.”

“Did you talk to Pooki?” I asked.

“Tortino said she’s mostly crying and asking for her meds.”

“Your basic insanity defense,” Scoobie threw in.

“You wanna go back to the lobby?” Morehouse asked.

Scoobie shook his head.

“What do you mean meds?” I asked.

Morehouse looked at me.
“Even I know she had that bipolar stuff. Couple times ambulance had to get her at the high school. She’d be crying all day and stuff.”

“Huh.
I never knew that,” I said.

“Musta been one of those times you minded your own business,” Morehouse said.

“That’s because you were only here in eleventh grade,” Scoobie reminded me.

Morehouse looked down at his notes and back at me.
“What exactly did she say today?”

I went through what I remembered, all the time wishing I could just take a nap.

“So she never actually said she killed anybody.” Morehouse said this as a statement.

“Not in so many words,” I said.
“I don’t know how often she climbs out Aunt Madge’s basement windows, though.”

“There were a couple prints on the window cell that weren’t in any database.
No reason hers woulda been. Now we have a reason to get hers.” He stood. “I hope this teaches you a lesson.”

I was still opening and shutting my mouth when Morehouse closed the curtain on his way out.