I went back to making sandwiches.
“Yes, three o’clock is perfect. Goodbye.”
I turned around. She’d set the receiver down in front of her, so I went over and walked it back to the wall phone. Then I finished making her sandwich. I wondered if I’d done enough that she’d give me the promised thousand dollars.
I mean, I could just write myself a check. She hadn’t been able to pay any bills for more than a month. If I were her, I would have let them slide. But not my Nana Cole. No, as soon as I could understand what she was saying she told me where the checkbook was and that I should pay her bills. That I should go ahead and sign her name. Apparently, it’s not forgery if someone tells you to do it.
And that would be the problem with my writing myself a check. She hasn’t told me to do it.
When I was finished with the sandwiches—complete with potato chips and pickles—I turned around and saw that she’d already fallen asleep in her chair. As quietly as possible, I slid her sandwich in front of her (leaving the soup to get cold on the stove) and took mine upstairs to my room.
Not that I ate it. Honestly, I wasn’t that hungry; my stomach was a little off and my head had begun to ache. And… for some reason I couldn’t figure out, my right eye had begun to twitch.Our bodies are such weird things. They seem to be under our control and then, well, they’re just not.
Even before I got to the top of the stairs, I had my flip phone out and had scrolled through to Opal’s number. When she picked up, I said, “You didn’t tell me you were with Carl the night Reverend Hessel was killed.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“So, what did you do?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“What time did he come over?”
“Also, none of your business.”
“You’re behaving very suspiciously.” I mean, she was, right? Hessel’s stepson was a much better suspect than a phantom burglar or a violent Christian-hater.
“Fine. He came over around eight-thirty.”
That’s when I remembered that exactly when Reverend Hessel was killed was fuzzy. All I knew for certain was that he’d died Thursday night a week or so ago. Ivy had said he died around nine, but she’d also said Detective Lehmann didn’t want to give her information so maybe that wasn’t exactly right.
Seeming to sense my confusion, Opal supplied, “Reverend Hessel died between eight-fifty and nine-twenty.”
“How do you know that?”
“Detective Lehmann called me to verify Carl’s alibi. That’s what he told me.”
Something wasn’t right about that, but I wasn’t sure what exactly. It just felt wrong. It was weird that Lehmann had told her at all.Andthere was something else, too.
“What about Ivy? Did he verify her alibi?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me that. You know you really shouldn’t be doing this? People could get hurt,” she said and then hung up.
That was odd. Why did she get upset when I challenged Ivy’s alibi? Did she know something she didn’t want me to know?
Since Nana Cole was sleeping, I figured I could risk one little Oxy, just to take the edge off. All right, maybe I took two. But honestly, I wasn’t getting much of a buzz on less than three, so it didn’t matter.
My bedroom was last decorated when my mother was a teenager. I kept my stash stuffed in the back of a drawer in her French provincial desk. And when I say stash, I mean the lovely orange prescription bottle of the nearly thirty 10s I’d managed to save up from my biweekly visit to Dr. Blinski, who Nana Cole had insisted I see. He was a godsend.
All I had to do was remember to limp on my way into his office. I’d tell him how much my ankle still hurt, then he’d examine my nose for a moment or two.
“It’s healing quite nicely,” he’d said on my first visit.
“What do you mean, nicely? There’s a gigantic gully where the bridge of my nose is supposed to be.”
“That’s where your nose hit the steering wheel and I wouldn’t call it a gully, I’d call it a dimple.
He wasn’t fooling me. Yes, dimples were desirable. But not between your eyes.
