The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Book One (8 page)

“Yes, you’re quite right, sweetie. I don’t
get around so good, you know.” It was true. Mrs. Griffiths was bent
over a walker, making slow progress down the interior walkway of
the mall. “But I need new shoes, and Eddie can’t buy those for
me.”

“Eddie?”

“He does most of my shopping. Although, I
may have to make other arrangements, you know.”

“Why is that?”

“Eddie took the money I gave him for my
groceries and bought a gift card for himself and put it on my bill.
Can you imagine that?”

“Have you reported it?”

“Oh, that’s being taken care of.”

“By?”

“Why, Josephine and her gang.”

“Her gang?”

“You know. Lillian and . . . well,
I can’t remember the other two ladies’ names.”

“Would they be Myrtle and Edna?”

“Why, yes, sweetie. I believe they
would.”

When we returned from the mall, I had a
break until late afternoon when I was taking a group out for
dinner. Since Josephine wasn’t present for the mall activity, and
she wasn’t signed up for the dinner, I decided to visit and ask for
an update on what she and “the gang” were doing about Eddie. I
picked up a master keycard, just in case.

When there was no answer to my repeated
knocks, I unlocked Josephine’s door and stuck my head around the
jamb. “Josephine? It’s Devi.” I waited a moment and called out
again, but there was still no response.

I slipped inside and closed the door. I had
no business doing that. My agreement with Josephine did not include
solo visits, and I knew it.

Taking a breath to settle my nerves, I
walked over to the painting and, for a time, lost all sense of
where I was. Then the sound of a door slamming nearby made me
realize the risk I was running.

I opened the door and peered down the hall,
breathing a sigh of relief to find it empty. Slipping out, I pulled
the door shut as quietly as I could, fingers crossed that no one
had heard me knocking earlier. In the activities center, I found
the four poker ladies were in their usual spot and in the middle of
a game.

I walked up to the table. “Josephine, I need
to speak to you. When you finish this hand, perhaps?”

She shrugged. “I planned to fold. Might as
well do it now.” She laid her cards down, got up, and followed me
to my office.

I ushered her in and closed the door. “I
found something in my desk drawer this morning, and I thought you
might know how it got there?”

“If it was a bag of receipts and affidavits,
I put it there.”

“Why?”

“I needed a hiding place that wasn’t my
apartment.”

“This is about Eddie Colter. Right?”

Josephine nodded. “He admitted he’s taking
the money, but he claims it’s because he needs it to pay for his
daughter’s medical treatments.”

“You confronted him?” I considered it a
terrible idea. Eddie is six three and nearly two hundred pounds,
most of it muscle.

“I didn’t think it was wise,” Josephine
said. “But Myrtle and Bertie insisted.”

“Does Eddie know you have the evidence?”

“He knows one of us has it. Lill thinks
he’ll be searching for it. That’s why we hid it.”

“And he claims to have a sick daughter?”

“That’s what he said. But I have my
doubts.”

“Did you know he’s Mr. Souter’s nephew?” Mr.
Souter, the manager, was someone else I avoided.

“That explains a lot.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Aside from the shopping, with its obvious
opportunities, Eddie doesn’t seem to do much. And I’ve overheard
the other aides complaining about it.” She chewed on her lip. “You
know, the daughter question concerns me.”

That surprised me. I had Josephine pegged as
unlikely to be swayed by emotional considerations. After all, she
refused to speak with her own son.

“Is there any way we can check if he has a
daughter?” Josephine said.

I thought about it. Then I remembered the
list of names and addresses I’d been given since it was my
responsibility to send out get-well, birthday, and Christmas cards.
I turned on my computer, and after a search, pulled up the
file.

“I’m checking the staff listings,” I told
Josephine. “Eddie doesn’t claim either a spouse or any
children.”

“You have his address there?”

“Yes.”

“We could take a little field trip, see
where he lives?”

I thought about it. Although it probably
wouldn’t answer the daughter question, I was curious to see where
he lived. I wrote down the address, then brought up MapQuest.

Brookside is in a northern suburb of
Cincinnati named Montgomery, and Eddie lived about five miles
farther north in a town called Mason. I printed out the directions,
then looked at Josephine who was sitting, waiting.

“I have a couple of hours free. Shall
we?”

Josephine didn’t hesitate. “Let’s.”

We arranged to meet at the back door in five
minutes. That gave Josephine time to tell the others she was going
out and to pick up a jacket from her apartment.

I signed out, saying I was accompanying a
resident to an appointment, and drove around to the back door to
meet Josephine. I handed her the directions to keep us on track,
but it was a simple matter to find Eddie’s place.

And it took only a glance to know that,
unless he had roommates or an undeclared domestic partner with a
job that paid considerably more than a job at Brookside did, there
was no way he could afford this place. I certainly couldn’t.

“Did you see the sign?” Josephine said. “It
says this is an adult community. I believe the translation is, ‘If
you have kids, don’t bother trying to live here.’”

“Are you sure?”

“There’s the rental office,” Josephine said,
pointing. “Why don’t I find out?”

Before I could respond, Josephine was out of
the car and walking briskly toward the designated unit. She
returned after twenty minutes, looking quite pleased with
herself.

“It’s exactly as I thought,” she said,
clicking her seatbelt. “Megan says they even frown on kids visiting
overnight. She asked how I’d heard about the place, and I said that
a friend of mine knew someone who lived here and told her how nice
it was. Of course Megan asked me the resident’s name, and I said I
thought it was Eddie something. ‘Eddie Colter?’ she said, and I
could tell she was smitten. She’s a plain little thing. I doubt
Eddie knows she exists. She knows all about him, though.”

Josephine handed me a brochure. I glanced at
it to find I was correct in thinking I couldn’t afford an apartment
here.

“Eddie lives alone, but he has frequent
female visitors, much to Megan’s obvious distress. I said my friend
mentioned something about him having a daughter who was very ill,
and Megan said my friend must have confused Eddie with someone
else, and I said that it was entirely possible I was the confused
one, since I’d never met the man. Then I made my excuses, and here
I am.”

We grinned at each other.

“So you’re pretty well convinced there’s no
sick daughter,” I said.

“No, I don’t believe there is.”

“And clearly Eddie is living beyond his
means.”

“It appears so.”

“What do you want to do next?”

“I think we should go to the police,”
Josephine said. She stopped and frowned. “I didn’t want to say
anything, but when I went back to my apartment for my coat, I could
tell someone had been inside. And the staff know not to come in
when I’m not there.”

I cleared my throat, trying not to sound
guilty. “How did you know?”

“Whoever it was, was neat about it. But my
things had been moved.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, I
thought Josephine had some way of telling when her door was opened,
like in spy novels. But I hadn’t moved anything. So
. . .

Oh my God
. Eddie? Perhaps searching
for the receipts?

The thought of what could have happened if
I’d walked in on Eddie in an empty apartment made me shiver.

“He might not be satisfied with searching,
you know,” Josephine continued. “He knows I helped collect the
evidence, and he also knows neither Lill nor I believed his story.
He might want to stop us from talking to anybody else.”

“You think you could be in danger?”

“We’re both old ladies. Would anyone be very
surprised if we died in our sleep?”

I considered Josephine too young to die in
her sleep. But Lillian was old enough it might be plausible, so
Josephine did have a point.

~ ~ ~

Although my interacting with the police was a very bad idea, I
drove Josephine to the Montgomery Safety Center where the police
station is located. I would have been happy to wait in the car, but
Josephine insisted I go in with her. Reluctantly, I did so.

We entered through the public entrance to
find ourselves in a small anteroom. A woman sitting behind glass,
bulletproof no doubt, asked us our business. I let Josephine do the
talking, although I was the one carrying the evidence.

“We’re here to report a crime,” Josephine
said.

“What kind of crime?”

“A burglary. Or maybe it’s a robbery. At any
rate, it’s a theft.”

The woman directed us to open the door to
our left and take a seat, saying an officer would be with us
shortly. A lock release buzzed, and I pulled the door open on a
small conference room with a table and chairs, wishing I could
usher Josephine and the bag of receipts inside and escape.

We sat down, and within a couple of minutes,
a police officer came through the door carrying a notebook.

I concentrated on my breathing, trying to
tamp down a feeling of irrational panic. I was safe and anonymous.
I was simply the companion of the person here to make a report.

The officer introduced himself as Detective
Darren McElroy, and we told him who we were. He took his time,
shaking our hands and then sitting opposite us and opening a
slightly battered notebook to a fresh page. That gave me time to
calm down enough to notice the air of quiet authority he’d brought
into the room with him. I had the fanciful thought that if I were
in imminent danger, I would want this man protecting me.

Although that air of competence was unusual
and made him immediately appealing, he wasn’t otherwise remarkable,
except perhaps for the fact he had very short hair and was
clean-shaven. Fortyish was my guess. I wondered if his friends
called him Mac. He looked like a Mac.

He wrote our names, double-checking the
spellings, along with the time and date, and we watched him do it
in silence. Then he looked up and asked our business. I had a sense
he was weighing and measuring us, and I sat up straighter and
folded my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t be tempted to fidget.

I let Josephine do the talking, and she did
a creditable job of laying everything out in a logical fashion with
little embellishment. She also added to her report of Eddie’s
thefts the fact that the son of a recently deceased resident and
the daughter of a second resident who’d been moved to the memory
unit had subsequently discovered valuable items missing. That was a
surprise to me, since I’d heard nothing about either loss.

Occasionally, the officer interrupted
Josephine’s account to check on a name or ask for more details.
Throughout, he took careful notes. Although I was watching him do
it upside down, I could see his handwriting was as neat and precise
as his demeanor and grooming.

I wondered what his wife was like, and
whether he had any children. I could easily picture a skinny
towhead with hair as short as his, begging him to play catch. But
then I noticed he wore no wedding ring. Did that mean he was
single, or did he simply not wear it at work?

I shook my head in confusion at the
direction of my thoughts since I’d given up checking out guys some
time ago.

“As far as you know, this Eddie,” he stopped
and looked at his notes, “Mr. Colter, never stole anything from you
personally?”

Josephine nodded. “That’s correct.”

“And I take it that’s true for you as well,
Ms. Subramanian?” He looked at me with eyes that were more aware
and probing than I preferred.

I also nodded.

“Then why are you two reporting this rather
than one of the victims?”

“I’m not reporting. I’m just here to give
Josephine . . . support.” I’d almost said
a ride
,
but decided that sounded too disengaged.

“The majority of the
victims
,”
Josephine said, “are elderly. They have difficulties getting
around. Which is why Eddie does their shopping.”

I shared a moment of amusement with
Detective McElroy at Josephine’s assertion that the victims were
elderly. As if she wasn’t. Then I recalled watching her put a
standard-shift Mazda Miata through its paces on Sunday, and the
intelligent and wide-ranging conversation we’d shared at dinner.
Josephine might have enough gray hairs and birthdays to be
classified as elderly, but the label clearly didn’t fit.

“If I were to speak to these other ladies
and this gentleman who were present for the confrontation with Mr.
Colter, would they back up what you’ve told me?” the detective
asked Josephine.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You see, Eddie
told this cock-and-bull story about having a sick daughter, and I
think Myrtle believed him. She was ready to give him more money,
not take this accusation any further. And Bertie does whatever she
tells him.”

“What about the others you say he stole
from?”

“They were all angry about it. But I don’t
know how they’ll react if they believe Eddie was doing it for a
sick child.”

“You’re certain he doesn’t have a
daughter?”

“He might, of course. But she doesn’t live
with him, nor does she visit, according to the rental agent at his
apartment complex.”