Lie of the Needle (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (12 page)

The house was even more hostile and soulless than I remembered.

Just hurry up and get this over with, Daisy.

I ran up the stairs and into the master bedroom to where the window faced the street. I looked out across the rows and rows of houses that all pretty much looked the same, trying to see what Alex might have spotted from his vantage point. Who was he spying on? Cassell? Or someone else?

A board creaked. I held my breath, but there were no more sounds. No human footsteps, anyway. Perhaps it was the tortured ghost of Roos, still trapped in this hellish place.

I gritted my teeth. Well, if it was, he wouldn’t want to scare me. I was here to try to find out who did this to him.

I went out of the house through the front door, turning the lock on the doorknob and pulling it shut behind me. I drove over to the parallel street in the development and glanced up at the house I estimated to be directly across from the vacant one.

Sally McIntire was standing at the uncurtained bedroom window, staring out with a numb expression on her face, wearing nothing but a bra and underpants.

T
hat afternoon, I called Ruth. Maybe I’d been too hasty to judge, and maybe there was a good explanation for the encounter I’d witnessed in town. She sounded receptive on the phone, so I told her I’d come over after work and bring dinner.

Joe was taking a jewelry-making class on Tuesday nights. Recently he’d gotten into making miniature dollhouse furniture, and apparently this would help improve his skills. He said he’d grab something to eat at home before the class.

I picked up a broccoli-and-cheese stromboli from Pop’s, together with a green salad and a couple of iced teas.

When Ruth answered the door, I had to stifle a gasp. She looked like she’d been crying for hours. Her perfect eyeliner had run down her face, making her look like one of those Pierrot clowns with crosses for eyes, and her hair was sticking up as if she’d run her fingers through it a thousand times. I set the bag down on the foyer floor and folded her into my arms.

“Oh, Ruth, I’m so sorry about Stanley. This must be such a terrible time for you.”

“It’s not that—I mean, it
is
—but something else has happened. Something even more terrible.”

She was shaking so badly that I helped her into the expansive light-filled living room and onto one of the silk chairs near the fireplace. The room was so massive that there was space for three couches in the center, each holding rows of perfectly primped pillows in a muted mix of yellow and cream plaids and florals. A square glass coffee table holding a Chinese vase and a stack of oversize books sat on a pale yellow wool rug, and sage-and-white striped silk drapes adorned the tall windows.

I knelt down in front of her and took her hands in mine. “Ruth, what is it? For God’s sake, what’s happened?”

“I’m ruined. Completely ruined!” She sank her head back against the chair. “Oh, Daisy, I’ve been such a foolish woman. So gullible.”

Was she talking about her reputation? Had someone else besides me seen her in town?

“Look, Ruth, I don’t quite know how to say this, but are you referring to the man you were walking with in Sheepville the other day? I—um—couldn’t help but notice you.”

She nodded miserably. “He wasn’t just my lover, he was my financial planner. Edward Flint. The creep who’s run off with most of my money!”

Her lover?

I got up, painfully, my knees cracking as I did so. Wow. If she did kill Stanley for his money, the irony was that now it was gone.

“And that’s not all,” Ruth moaned. “I invested the Historical Society’s money in the same damn fund.” She broke down sobbing again.

“What?”

Now I had to sink into a chair. Ruth was a brilliant fund-raiser, and we’d entrusted her with the treasurer duties. “Are you
sure
the money has disappeared? That there’s not just some accounting mistake?”

Ruth nodded miserably. “I’d recommended Edward to my friends, too. This afternoon I got a call from one of them. He was getting a bad feeling that something was not quite right about the quarterly reports, and so he went over to Edward’s place to talk to him. It was completely cleaned out. His office, too. And, of course, all of our accounts. We called the police, but who knows if they’ll ever find the creep? He could be in Nicaragua by now. The last time I saw him was that day in Sheepville.”

I closed my eyes briefly as I tried to control my anger, my disappointment. She needed my love and support now, not recrimination. “I need to let the members know,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”

With an effort, I stood and walked out into the foyer, where I made a call to Eleanor that we had to have an emergency meeting of the Historical Society, and gave her a brief rundown of the catastrophe. She said she would round up as many members as she could and meet me at Ruth’s house. I also left a message for Joe with the news, saying I might be home late.

I walked back into the living room. Ruth hadn’t moved from her prone position on the chair. “Ruth, the society members should be here soon. Are you hungry? I brought some dinner.”

She shook her head of spiky hair. “Sorry, but I don’t feel like eating. You go ahead if you’d like.”

“I think I lost my appetite, too. How about an iced tea?”

She wiped at her eyeliner-smudged cheeks. “Actually, I’d rather have some coffee.”

“Come on, let’s go into the kitchen.” I put an arm around her, led her into the kitchen with its long stainless steel table, much like a prep station in a restaurant, and handed her a box of tissues. I put the stromboli and salad away in the fridge that was already packed full of food. Probably leftovers from the shivah.

Stanley had been an enthusiastic cook, and this addition to the house was a real chef’s kitchen. In contrast to the rest of the elegant old house, it was super modern, with light cabinets, yards of gleaming stainless, tons of gadgets, a commercial stove, and two dishwashers.

The coffee machine itself was a fabulous affair, capable of producing cappuccino and espresso as well as regular java, and I stared at it for a moment to figure out its bells and whistles.

“That’s when I first realized something was wrong with Stanley,” Ruth said as she watched me grind some Kona beans. “He was standing in front of that coffeemaker one Saturday morning, just staring at it. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he couldn’t remember how to do it.”

I glanced over my shoulder at her.

“I was in denial for such a long time. I told myself it was just senior moments. I mean, we all have those, right?”

“Oh, sure,” I said as I filled the filter. “Heck, I often go upstairs and then wonder what I went up there for.”

“It’s so hard to wrap your mind around the fact that things have changed, and they’re never going to get better.
He’s
never going to get better.” She plucked another tissue out of the box and wiped at the streaks under her eyes. “It’s the shame, Daisy. It takes so long for you to get past that, to say you need help, and by then it’s too late.”

A troubling thought popped into my mind. Joe was often forgetful and sometimes did quirky things. Should I be watching him for subtle signs? I took two blue china mugs out of the cupboard and hunted around for the sugar.

“Stanley and I did everything we could. We did exhaustive research on the disease, we got him the best doctors, the best medicine. Because he’d worked for a pharmaceutical company, he was still in touch with people who were on the cutting edge of research. He even tried an investigational drug that kept him stable for a while.”

I sat at the table across from her. “Did he know what was happening to him?”

“Yes—that’s the awful part about Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t take away your intelligence. He said he could feel himself changing bit by bit, like another tiny piece of his brain was being pared away. He started using the wrong words for things because he couldn’t remember the right one. We made jokes of it, because it was easier to laugh than cry.”

On the wall next to the steel baker’s rack behind her, I could see a black-and-white photo of Stanley standing with his research team as he accepted an award for his latest breakthrough.

“Some days he seemed so rational that I’d lull myself into a false sense of security, and then one day I found him out in the garden, because he couldn’t find his way back inside. From our own garden! After that, he became afraid to leave the house.” Tears fell from her eyes.

I wanted to comfort her, but I sensed that it was more important to let her talk. The coffee finished brewing, and I took some milk out of the fridge.

“He’d go into his office every day, as if he was still working. I guess he felt like he was doing something useful, but all he did was rearrange his books and leave them scattered over the floor. It drove me insane. I’d yell at him, and he’d look at me with fear in his eyes. Finally I realized that all I could do was go with the flow and give him my love and my kindness as much as I could during that long good-bye.”

“Like dogs do. Live in the moment, I mean.”

Ruth gave me an odd look. “Yes, I suppose so.” She took the mug of coffee from me and drank it black. “And of course, the sex was the first thing to disappear. The medication shut that side of our life down immediately. That’s when I met Edward.”

I squirmed on my chair. How long until everyone from the Historical Society got here?

I couldn’t exactly condone Ruth’s transgression, but I’d learned over the course of my almost six decades on this earth not to judge people too harshly. She’d had a heavy burden to bear, and it must have been a lonely and painful existence for her to watch her beloved husband fade away. Could I really blame her for seeking a little romance and attention?

She stood up and went over to the French doors that led out to the garden. “There was one violent episode. We’d recently changed his meds, and suddenly he lost it and came at me with a knife.” Her back was toward me.

“My God, Ruth. I can’t believe it. Stanley was always such a peaceful, gentle man.”

She sighed. “He didn’t remember it, but
I
did. Then he became convinced that giant lab rats were taking him out of the house in the middle of the night, testing drugs on him. You wouldn’t believe the gruesome things he told me. That they removed his eyeballs and put cameras back in where his eyes had been so the rats could watch what I was doing to him.”

Ruth wrapped her arms around herself, and I could see the sharp angles of her shoulder blades.

“It was like his brain scattered in all directions. We adjusted the medication and he became docile again, but then he went into a dark place where I couldn’t reach him anymore. He was absolutely terrified. Nothing I could say would reassure him. God, he didn’t even know who I was.”

She came and sat back at the table and drained her coffee in one gulp.

“Oh, Ruth, that must have been so hard.”

She nodded. “I had to keep reminding myself it was the disease talking. I guess if I was in a place where I didn’t know anyone or where I was, I’d be scared, too.”

I saw for the first time just how much she’d had to deal with. I knew that Alzheimer’s was a terrible disease, not only for the person afflicted, but perhaps more for the families involved, but I hadn’t visualized what life was like day-to-day. Now I was ashamed I’d ever suspected her of murder.

“Ruth, I wish I could have helped you more. You could have leaned on me, and your other friends.” Although as I got up and poured us some more coffee, I reflected that I would probably have been the same way. Trying to control everything myself and too proud to ask for help.

She trailed the spoon through the bowl of sugar, making dunes of white crystals. “I pictured Stanley and me spending the rest of our lives together. All the times we shared, those trips we took. Now it was only me that remembered them. And the bad experiences do a great job of replacing the good memories.

“If you think about it, Daisy, that’s all we are: a collection of memories. Once that’s gone, who are we? Other people live in ours, whether living or dead. In turn, our actions and words take up a place in their hearts and minds. Alzheimer’s is so cruel because it steals them. The great memory thief.”

I desperately searched my mind for some stories of our time together. “Hey, remember that dinner we had out on the patio that one summer? When Joe and I came over and we cooked steaks and lobsters on the grill?”

Her mascara-smudged eyes brightened a little. “Oh, what a feast that was. What a great evening. Joe even made a tarte tatin on the grill for dessert. That was amazing.”

“And Stanley always made the best coffee,” I murmured.

Ruth gave me a sad smile. “I begged the doctor for better medicine, more medicine, to prolong his life as long as possible. The doctor asked me what it was exactly that I wanted to prolong. That’s when I realized how selfish I was being. I had to watch my husband slowly fade before my eyes, like a Polaroid photo in reverse.”

I pictured Joe’s well-built body wasting away, the anguish I would feel if he didn’t know who I was. My eyes were brimming now, and I grabbed a tissue out of the box. “Jeez. I’m supposed to be comforting you. Not doing a very good job, am I?”

“Yes, you are. It’s such a relief to finally tell someone.” She sighed heavily. “Life has been so manic. I missed my friends. I missed my
life
. I was looking forward to some peace, some sense of control again. And now this.”

A few minutes later I was relieved to hear a knock on the door. I hurried to answer it, and Martha and Eleanor came rushing into the house, followed by Debby Millerton, the librarian, and Annie Sparks, who owned the herb shop. I led them into the kitchen, where Ruth dissolved into tears again at the sight of the members of the Historical Society.

“My God, what have I done?” she wailed. “I’m so sorry, everyone. I’m so embarrassed.”

They crowded around her, making murmurs of condolence and reassurance, while Ruth moaned and kept repeating how sorry she was. Above the babble, I noticed Eleanor hanging back, white-lipped and silent. I drew her into the living room.

“E, are you mad at Ruth?” I whispered.

She ran a hand through her hair. “Yes. No. Oh, hell, I don’t know. I’m just as mad at myself, I suppose. As president, I should have had better procedures in place. There should have been two signatures required on checks, that type of thing. But it seemed as though Ruth was so good with money, and I trusted her . . .”