Eclair and present dange.., p.6
Éclair and Present Danger, page 6
“Actually, I think it’s a pretty clever idea.” His smile opened wide, bringing with it such an intense dimple sighting she actually had to hang on to the ambulance’s bumper for support. “Not something I would have thought of, but then again no one has ever accused me of being creative—”
“Oh, c’mon, boss, don’t sell yourself short. You got Stan to shut his mouth last week by making up some disease he was in danger of contracting if he didn’t.”
Greg’s face reddened slightly, and Winnie turned to see who was speaking.
“Hey, I remember you!”
She racked her brain for a name to go with the five foot six red-haired man, but she came up empty. “I’m sorry, you look familiar but . . .”
“I’m Chuck. Chuck Rogers. I was one of the EMTs on the scene yesterday. How are you holding up today? I know that had to be quite a shock to your system.”
And then it clicked. Chuck had been the one who’d sat her down on Bart’s front porch the previous evening and checked her vitals. She’d been so consumed by sadness and shock and fear over finding the elderly man’s body that many of the peripheral details of what came next were fuzzy at best.
“Wait a minute.” Greg jumped down from the back of the ambulance and looked from Winnie to Chuck and back again. “You were the one who found that body last night, Winnie?”
She closed her eyes against the memory of Bart’s sock-clad feet . . . Bart’s spindly legs . . . Bart’s navy blue shirt . . . and, finally, the navy blue throw pillow atop Bart’s face—a memory that had risen to the surface of her thoughts many times over the past twenty-four hours only to be shoved to the side in favor of her sanity.
“Winnie?” She felt Greg’s hand on her arm and willed herself to focus on that, instead. “Are you okay?”
Breathe in . . .
Breathe out . . .
Breathe in . . .
She looked down at the drawing of her IV icing bag and waited for the excitement over her new business idea to return and help deflect the horror of finding Bart’s body. But it didn’t. “I thought I was,” she finally said. “But I think maybe I’ve just been fooling myself.”
He slid his hand behind her and gripped the back of her arm. “Why don’t you come into the lounge with me and sit for a while. You’re looking a little pale.”
Chuck closed the back of the ambulance and then flanked her on the other side for the walk across the bay. Thanks to the interior wall that provided a visual of the ambulance at all times, Winnie could see that the lounge held a large metal table, a few comfortable recliners across from a wall-mounted television set, a refrigerator, a sink, and a stove.
“Welcome to our home away from home,” Chuck said at the door before excusing himself to speak with Stan up front.
When he was gone, Greg ushered her over to the most intact-looking recliner and stayed at her side as she sat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t on duty last night when all of this happened.”
Desperate to stop the trembling in her hands, Winnie tucked them underneath her thighs. “I don’t know how you do what you do,” she whispered. “I—I wouldn’t want to see someone like that ever again.”
“We all have our job to do, Winnie. But most of the time, we get to people before it’s too late. That’s why I do what I do.”
“I just don’t understand why someone would hurt anyone, let alone an elderly man. I mean, what kind of threat could he have possibly been?”
Greg lowered himself onto the recliner closest to Winnie’s and propped his elbows atop his thighs. “I wish I could answer that, Winnie. I really do. But sometimes the world just doesn’t make any sense. All we can do now is let the police department do its job and hope their efforts lead to justice.”
“I hope so.” She pulled her right hand out and used it to stop the sudden bounce in her legs. Why now? Why was Bart’s death just now starting to bubble to the surface?
“Was this man a relative of yours?” Greg asked.
“No. He lives—I mean, lived—across the street from me, and he was my friend. He and his late wife, Ethel, were my friends.” Closing her eyes, she tried to block out her final memory of Ethel and the promise she’d made to the woman. Little did either of them know at the time that Winnie would only have to make six peach pies for Bart . . .
“Ahhh, I get it now,” Greg said. “You live on Serenity Lane.”
“Meaning?”
“What Renee said at your bakery yesterday morning makes sense now. You know, the part about the mutiny of old people. Serenity Lane is where the elderly in this town seem to live.”
“Which is why I chose to live on Serenity Lane in the first place. I’ve always been more comfortable with people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.” She peered at him through parted lashes and then looked away, the intensity with which he studied her more than she could take at that moment. “Most people find that weird.”
“It’s different, I’ll give you that, but it’s also kind of telling,” Greg mused.
Her gaze ricocheted off the blackened TV screen and back to Master Sergeant Hottie. “Telling? Of what?”
“Of the kind of person you must be.”
She felt the lump making its way up her throat and did her best to swallow it back down. “I don’t understand.”
“So many people our age and younger seem to write older generations off. The fact that you don’t speaks to a sort of patience and tolerance that isn’t necessarily the norm, you know?”
“Patience and tolerance?” she echoed.
“Those are the best words I can think of right now.”
Unsure of what to make of his word choices, she hurried to set the record straight. “My life is richer because of people like Ethel and Bart.”
“And obviously they feel the same. That is how you got your ambulance in the first place, yes?”
Her ambulance . . .
The reason she was there with Greg in the first place . . .
“Yes, the ambulance and the cat were left to me by another former neighbor, Gertrude Redenbacher. Only Gertrude died the way we’re meant to die—of old age.”
He nodded and then brought his chin into his waiting hands. “So how’s the cat? Lovey, right?”
“She hates me.”
“Oh, c’mon, she doesn’t hate you. She’s probably just trying to adjust to a new environment and a new face.”
“She has no problem with Mr. Nelson’s face. Or Bridget’s face. Or Renee’s face. Or even your face yesterday,” she said. “Just mine.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
There was something about his words, combined with the slight rasp to his voice, that sent a tingle up her spine and made her eternally grateful she hadn’t brought Renee. If she had, those three words would have had Renee shopping for bridesmaid attire.
Unsure of what to say in response, Winnie stood and wandered around the lounge, her thoughts vacillating between her surroundings and the man still seated on the recliner watching her every move. She took in the pair of soda cans on opposite ends of the table with a stack of playing cards between them, the upside down paperback novel (a thriller) wedged into a corner of the tattered couch, the mug of coffee grounds (sans water) seemingly forgotten atop the single laminate counter along the far wall . . . “Don’t mind the mess,” he said from over her shoulder. “I work with slobs.”
“You should see my place right now. It looks like a bomb went—” She stopped, mid-step, and pointed at a corkboard on the other side of the room. “Why do you have a picture of Bart’s house in here? Is that because of yesterday?”
“Bart’s house?” he repeated as he, too, rose to his feet and joined her beside the tan-colored board with its brightly colored tacks and various flyers and business cards.
She removed the tack that held the picture in place and began to read the detailed description of the home she saw from her front porch every morning as she left for work and again every evening as she shared dessert and tales of her day with Mr. Nelson. Two lines into the flyer, she heard herself gasp. “Wait a minute. This says Bart’s home is for sale! I—I don’t understand. I just found him yesterday.”
“I don’t know who put this here, but I can sure find out.” Greg opened the lounge door, poked his head into the bay, and whistled. “Chuck? Stan? Can you guys come in here for a minute? I want to ask you a quick question.” Within seconds, Chuck (the redhead) and Stan (the balding middle school girl) were standing beside the corkboard. Chuck gave a passing glance to the flyer Winnie handed him and then passed it to Stan. “Yeah, I know about this. Pinned it to the board myself yesterday afternoon. Still trying to decide if I want to—”
“Yesterday afternoon? As in before I saw you?” She heard the shrillness in her voice and worked to soften it as she saw Chuck nod and then exchange a confused glance with Stan. “Where did you get this?”
Stan handed the flyer back to Winnie. “A friend of mine stopped by as I was finishing up lunch and asked if he could run off a few flyers on our copier. He only ran off ten so it wasn’t a big deal. When he was done, I offered to hang on to two here at the station to help get the word out. I pinned one to the bulletin board in the lobby for the public to see, and asked Chuck to put the other one in here in case any of the crew is looking to buy a new place.”
“But that house wasn’t for sale!”
“According to Mark it was.” The jingle of a bell somewhere outside the lounge had Stan gesturing toward the door from which he’d just come. “Oh, sorry, but I gotta get back to my desk. Duty calls.”
At Greg’s reluctant nod, Stan headed back out of the lounge.
“Mark?” she said, whirling around to face Greg. “Mark? Who’s Mark—”
And then she knew.
“Winnie?”
Mark Reilly. Ethel’s son.
“Winnie?”
Had Bart conceded to the sale? Or was Mark proceeding ahead on his own despite the wishes of his stepfather?
A click off to her right snapped her back into the moment, and she realized Chuck was no longer in the room.
“Do you want to sit down again?”
She looked up from the flyer as a different, far more disturbing scenario began to play out in her thoughts. “Is there a way to know how long Bart had been dead before I found him?”
“Sure. The autopsy will be able to tell us that. But, even before that report comes in, rigor mortis can get us pretty darn close to time of death.”
“Would Chuck know if that had started to set in?”
“Sure.”
“Could you call him back in one last time?” she asked. “So I could ask him?”
Greg shifted from foot to foot, his gaze never leaving her face. “You sure you want to hear this?”
“I don’t want to,” she whispered. “I have to.”
Chapter 8
It was a beautiful evening.
The kind of evening capable of relaxing even the most tightly wound nerves.
Unless, of course, those nerves had been wound to the breaking point by the kind of details no one should have to hear about a friend or loved one.
“What’s got you so distracted this evening?”
Winnie traced her finger around the top of her glass and weighed her options.
If she told Mr. Nelson and Bridget what she’d learned from Chuck, she risked getting them upset over Bart’s murder all over again. Then again, if she could use them as a sounding board, maybe they could hand the man’s murderer to the police with a great big bow tied neatly on top.
“Probably that iced tea of yours, Parker.” Bridget pulled her hand from the top of Lovey’s head and repositioned herself against the back of her favorite wicker chair. “Did you even put iced tea mix in the water?”
“What’s that, Bridget?” Mr. Nelson shouted. “You want more iced tea?”
Bridget raised her gaze to the porch ceiling, rolled her eyes, and muttered something under her breath about men and stubbornness. While Winnie couldn’t make out each and every word, she got the general gist.
Winnie guided Mr. Nelson’s confused eyes to her ear. “Turn up your hearing aids, Mr. Nelson.”
He stuck his finger into first his left, and then his right ear. When he was done, he turned back to Bridget. “Do you want more tea?”
“No!”
Waving their neighbor off with a flick of his hand, Mr. Nelson focused his attention back on Winnie. “What’s on your mind, Winnie Girl?”
“Mark put Bart and Ethel’s place up for sale.” There. She said it.
Bridget snapped forward in her chair so fast, Lovey aborted the liftoff attempt that would have landed her safely in the elderly woman’s lap and, instead, scurried in the opposite direction. “Bart’s body isn’t even in the ground yet!”
Pushing her glass into the center of the tiny table between herself and Mr. Nelson, Winnie patted her lap in the hope that Lovey would come over.
Lovey simply looked at her and hissed.
“True. But he was dead . . .”
Bypassing her offer, Lovey jumped onto Mr. Nelson’s lap as the man leaned forward, eyes wide. “What makes you say that?”
“I—I just know, that’s all.” She knew she was being evasive, but she wasn’t sure filling in details was advisable, either.
“How do you know this, Winnie?” Bridget persisted.
“I saw the flyer. I spoke with the person Mark gave it to before I’d even found Bart . . . but after he was dead.”
Lovey turned herself around in Mr. Nelson’s lap and then settled herself against his stomach. “But if you hadn’t found him yet, Winnie Girl, no one could have known he was dead.”
“No one except the killer,” Bridget said, her voice dripping with irritation. Then, to Winnie, she said, “What do you know?”
“This is off the record, Bridget. I’m not law enforcement.” When she got the nod of agreement she was seeking, she continued, the nature of her words bringing a hesitancy to her voice she wouldn’t otherwise have. “According to Greg Stevens and one of the EMTs—”
“Greg Stevens?” Mr. Nelson parroted. “Who’s that?”
“Master Sergeant Hottie.”
She smiled at Bridget and then continued, all momentary amusement disappearing rapidly. “Rigor mortis tends to set in after about three to four hours. A body will reach full stiffness, if you will, at about twelve hours. Bart was nearing full stiffness when I found him yesterday evening.”
It was Mr. Nelson’s turn to look at the ceiling while Bridget closed her eyes and wrapped her hand around the tiny gold cross that dangled from a chain around her stubby neck.
“I’m sorry,” Winnie said, pushing back her chair and making her way over to first Bridget, and then Mr. Nelson. “I shouldn’t be sharing this with you. It’s too much. Too soon.”
Bridget held fast to her cross but opened her eyes to look at Winnie. “No. Bart was our friend. We want answers.”
At Mr. Nelson’s slow nod, Winnie returned to her chair and continued. “Even without the results of Bart’s autopsy, we know that it’s likely Bart was killed sometime between eight and nine o’clock yesterday morning.”
“I was eating breakfast,” Bridget mumbled. “I’ve been having this thing where it feels as if my throat is closing in on itself, and I was focused on making sure not to choke . . .”
Mr. Nelson’s brow furrowed in thought only to release as he returned to petting the cat. “I think I was out back, readying the garbage to go out. Or maybe here, playing chess.”
“Did you see a car parked outside Bart’s?” Winnie asked, sitting up tall. “Any sign of someone going in or out of his house? Any unusual people? Sounds?”
“Can’t say that I did.”
Bridget snorted. “Not that Parker would hear anything, anyway, when he’s staring at that chessboard of his . . .”
Anxious to avoid a fight, Winnie took up where she left off, her suspicions and fears finding their way into their most articulate form yet. “I guess I’m wondering why—if Bart was killed between eight and nine and I didn’t find him until ten hours later—Mark was running off house flyers at lunchtime for a house he didn’t own . . . but Bart did.”
Lovey’s head popped up over the edge of the table at the sound of Bridget’s gasp. “He knew his stepfather was dead because he killed him! I knew it! Why, I’ve been saying that man was up to no good for years, haven’t I, Parker?”
Mr. Nelson tried to keep Lovey from jumping down, but the cat, having been disturbed from her lap-induced slumber, was having none of it.
Without waiting for Parker’s nod, Bridget continued, her excitement tempered by a resigned sadness. “From what Ethel told me, Mark was just shy of two when she met Bart, and Bart accepted and loved that baby as if he was his own. What a kick in the head it is to know that none of that mattered in the end.”
“Bridget, I can’t say for certain that’s—”
“He couldn’t wait another year or two until nature ran its course? He had to help it along by suffocating the only father he’d ever known?”
“Bridget. Please. This is just a theory. It will be up to the police to see if it has any merit.”
“Did you take it to them?” Mr. Nelson asked as he struggled to his feet and followed Lovey around the porch, stopping every few steps to look across the street at Bart’s home.
“No. Not yet.”
When he reached the end of the porch, he leaned his cane against the railing and shuffled himself in a half circle until he was facing Winnie and Bridget. “Now that you mention this rigor mortis thing, I saw something strange yesterday afternoon. Before you came home from work, Winnie.”
“Oh, Parker, please,” Bridget moaned, dropping her head into her hand. “This is not time for one of your silly little stories or jokes.”
A flash of something resembling hurt zipped across Parker’s face just before he locked glances with Winnie. “What is it, Mr. Nelson?” she asked, over a second, louder moan from Bridget.
“I was here on the porch, sitting in that seat you’re sitting in right now.”
