Chapter Ten
I walked into Mike’s hug at the airport, and though I returned it, it wasn’t the joyous homecoming I’d anticipated. I could not let go of Mrs. Glenn, her fears and now her injuries.
“Kelly, I bought steaks for dinner. The girls are excited about seeing you, and they know what’s happened but they don’t seem to be dwelling on it. They aren’t thinking about anything except having their mom back home. Keisha will stay for dinner, and Claire said she’d join us.”
I looked at him and knew why I loved him.
I did indeed have a joyous homecoming. The girls were all over me, each trying to out-talk the other to tell what they’d done while I was gone. Keisha sat with a look of amusement. “I don’t think they were bored,” she drawled, “but they did miss their mom.”
They didn’t even ask about Nana, which I thought I’d have to start working on, pumping up their excitement for her arrival. Instead, they wanted to give me a tour of the house. Mike’s king-size bed was now in my room, his various cooking appliances crowding my counters—we’ll have to work on that, I thought—and his exercise machine in one corner of the bedroom.
“I still haven’t found a place for my computer,” he said, almost plaintively. We’d have to work on that too.
Dinner was fairly festive until the conversation turned to Mrs. Glenn. “She’s conscious,” Mike said, “and her son and daughter are both here, staying in her house. They’re distraught, of course, and convinced they have to get her out of this neighborhood. They already told her they were going to sell the house, and she told them she only wanted to deal with you.”
So much for Tom Lattimore!
“What hospital?” I asked.
“Baylor All Saints.”
“I’ll go first thing in the morning.”
I was exhausted and grateful that Claire did the dishes and Keisha got the girls ready for bed, while I unpacked, took a shower, and settled myself in. It was unsettling, however, to see Mike’s toiletries sharing the counter space in the bathroom, his toothbrush in the holder—all the little things. It had, I realized, been a long time since I’d lived with a man.
Keisha left, saying she’d see me after I went to see Mrs. Glenn, and Claire called over her shoulder as she left that she’d be in to fix breakfast at seven—Mike looked alarmed at that! The girls wanted to sleep in the big bed.
Mike gathered them into his lap and said, “We’re going to start this thing out right. Do you hear thunder or see lightning?”
“No.”
“Is there anything else frightening you?”
“Well….” Em tried to draw it out. “Mrs. Glenn?”
“Em, nobody is coming near this house while I’m in it. We’ve got good locks, a security system, and me. You’re safe. Now go crawl into your own beds, and your mom will come kiss you goodnight.”
“You, too?” Em asked.
“Me, too.”
And that’s just what happened. The girls went to bed, Mike opened a beer, I kissed him once quickly and headed for bed myself. Much later, when he came to bed, I was sound asleep, but I heard him whisper, “Welcome home, Kelly.” Sometime in the night he took me in his arms and showed me just how glad he was that both of us were at home in the same house…and bed.
****
Of course, next morning Mike slept while I got ready for the day and saw that the girls ate the oatmeal Claire fixed. “We like scrambled eggs better,” Maggie complained.
“You can’t eat eggs every morning,” Claire said crisply. “It’s not good for you.” She put fresh blueberries in the oatmeal, along with butter and sugar. After the girls tried it, they decided they liked it a lot.
I got them off to school and went to Baylor, which was just around the corner from the school. Mrs. Glenn had a private room, where she lay looking pale and tiny against the white pillows and amidst all the monitoring equipment around her. She slept soundly.
A woman sat in the visitor’s chair, thumbing through a magazine but looking up when I came in. She rose and held out her hand, “I’m Sheila Jackman, formerly Sheila Glenn.” At maybe mid-forties, she let herself go a bit in the weight department but her hair was fashionably cut and her polyester pants suit about as stylish as polyester ever gets. She was polite, straightforward, and, as I discovered, a bit angry.
When I introduced myself, she said, “This should never have happened. I wish you’d told us before. She says she talked to you.”
I nodded. “She did, and I tried to reassure her because she really didn’t want to leave her house. She was strongly attached to it because your father bought it for her, all those years ago.”
“Well, of course, but he had no idea what would happen to the neighborhood. Bob and I should have gotten her out of here a long time ago.”
“She didn’t want to go,” I said simply, “and I don’t feel it’s my right to barge into other peoples’ lives. I helped as much as I could, going by to reassure her, sending the neighborhood policeman, getting her an air conditioner to replace that swamp cooler”—Sheila rolled her eyes at that—”but I couldn’t order her to move, nor could I demand she give me your name and address.” I thought about Mike telling me I am not responsible for the world, and yet, here I felt that I was.
“I guess so.” Sheila relaxed a bit and sat on the foot of the bed, indicating that I should take the visitor’s chair.
“Is she…did she recognize you?” I asked hesitantly.
“Oh, yeah, she seems to have all her faculties—or as many as she has had of late. But she’s in no condition to live alone. I’m taking her to Midland with me. Bob lives in New York, and Mom doesn’t need to get out of Texas and into that cold weather.” She paused. “How soon can you sell the house?”
“I don’t know. It’s a redo, of course”—she nodded—”and I’ll have to walk through and see what it will take. Maybe give you an estimate tomorrow?”
“Sure. I’ve got an extra key, and as you well know, there’s no alarm system. Bob will be in and out, but I’ll tell him you’ll be by.”
“I…I sometimes buy and renovate houses myself. I did one just down the street, which is how I came to know your mom at all. I’ll see if her house is a possibility. My carpenter is about through with a job he’s doing now—a house we’re renovating to move my mom down from Chicago.”
She looked astounded. “What?” It came out louder than she expected. “You’d move your mom into this neighborhood?”
I nodded. “Yes. This will be solved soon.”
Sheila’s loud squawk must have awakened her mother, because she asked softly, “Sheila, who’s here?”
I went to the bedside. “It’s Kelly O’Connell, Mrs. Glenn.” I took her limp, soft hand in mine. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“I knew…I knew he was watching me. I tried to tell you.”
“Yes, you did. Did you see him? Hear him say anything?”
“No. One minute I was in my driveway, getting out of the car after church, and the next I woke up lying on the ground with an awful headache. Somebody must have seen me and called the ambulance. I don’t even know how long ago it was.”
“Just one day,” I told her, “and the police are doing everything they can to find the person who did this.”
“I’m lucky, I know,” she managed. “The other two women died. But I didn’t. And now I’ve got Sheila and Bob to take care of me.”
“You’re going to be just fine,” I said, while thinking to myself,
and probably miserable in some nursing home that Sheila will put you in.
“I have to go now, but you rest and try to get better. I’ll be back.”
“Thank you, dear, and you will get a good price for my house, won’t you?”
“The best I can,” I said, grinning.
As I left, I motioned for Sheila to follow me. She came out in the hall, and I asked if the police questioned her mom yet.
“No, she hasn’t been strong enough.”
“Think she is now?”
“It’s up to the medical staff. If they say so, it’s okay with me. I want this person caught.”
I stopped at the nursing station, asked, and the doctor in charge of the floor said one detective could see her for no more than ten minutes. I’d call Buck Conroy as soon as I got back to the office.
****
I dialed reluctantly. I knew what I was about to hear. When he answered with “Conroy here,” I put on my most self-assured voice and said, “It’s Kelly O’Connell. I’ve just come from visiting Mrs. Glenn, and the doctor says she can talk to one detective now for a brief time. I guess that’s you.”
“And what,” he drawled, “were you doing visiting her? Meddling in my case?”
My conscience was clear when I said, “Nope. She’s a friend of mine and it was only natural that I’d visit her out of concern. Her daughter was there. They’re a bit angry that no one, including me, took her fright seriously enough.”
“That’s fair,” he grumbled, “except if we took the fear of every elderly woman in Fairmount seriously, we wouldn’t have time to do anything—like sleep, eat, pee, or make love.”
I didn’t think he needed to have added that obvious reference to Joanie. I didn’t hear from her, but I assumed that romance was still on—if it weren’t, she’d have called. I remembered when Conroy asked how Mike put up with me. I should ask him how Joanie put up with him “Well, do what you want,” I said stiffly and hung up the phone.
“Are we in a snit?” Keisha asked, with a grin.
“Buck Conroy makes me so mad. He could have thanked me for finding out that Mrs. Glenn is able to talk to him, but he got all snide.”
“Let it go,” she said philosophically. “He’s just a jerk. And don’t let him pull Mike’s chain anymore.”
“Easier said than done,” I commented.
An hour or so later, Ralph Hoskins called, all chatty and calling me by my first name. “Kelly? Ralph here. I just wondered if you’d been able to find out any more, especially about Mrs. Glenn. Has she been able to talk to the police?”
I hesitated. “No, but she will today. She’s still in the hospital but much stronger.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said heartily. “I hoped she could give us some helpful information—like a voice or something.”
“No. She says she didn’t hear or see anyone. How’s your door-to-door canvas going?”
“Slowly,” he replied. “The people who are at home during the day and are able to canvas are elderly ladies who are afraid themselves, and at night when I have couples who will go out, many people won’t answer their doors. In truth, we haven’t found out much. I’m terribly discouraged about the situation.”
“Yes, I am too,” I said. “I don’t want yet another attack. My own mother is moving down here in a couple of weeks, and I’m nervous about that.”
“Really? Where will she live?”
“On Adams Avenue,” I said, and then, for some reason, added hastily, “She’ll have a caretaker with her.”
“Oh! Is she elderly?”
“No, but she’s uncertain about staying in this neighborhood alone.”
“One can’t blame her,” he said sympathetically. “Give me the address, and I’ll see that our neighborhood watch pays particular attention.”
Even as I gave him Mom’s new address, something made me uncomfortable. Kelly, you’re reading too much into everything. So Mike doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like Claire either. That doesn’t mean either of them are villains.
****
Mike and I spent the next two weeks getting used to living together. I rather liked it—he cooked, he helped clean up, he was great. Of course a lot of nights, he was on duty, and the girls, Claire and I were in our usual routine. There were nights when Mike came home to find the girls curled around me in my bed, and he carried them, one by one, to the bed, loving them, talking reassuringly but firmly, and they pretty much accepted that.
The night there was a huge thunderstorm with loud rumbles everywhere and lightning flashing all around us, he actually invited them into our bed, and they slept contentedly between us.
Although he didn’t talk much about it, Mike apparently took a lot of ribbing about his new living arrangements from the cops in his station. When Conroy called one day after his non-productive interview with Mrs. Glenn, he mentioned it, so I asked Mike about the conversation that night when he came in late—I was now in the habit of going to bed shortly after the girls did, so I could wake up and be halfway sensible when Mike came home.
“They’re just jealous,” he said shortly. “I don’t let it bother me. But no one ribs Conroy about who he goes home to at night. He’d flatten them.”
