“I’ll bet she did take a lot of time sweet-talking them-and finding out if they had any retirement income,” he said.
“And how sick they were,” said Frank. “Tammy had access to all the client records in the places she volunteered.”
“That’s incredible, and scary,” said Diane.
Ben grunted. “You don’t say? It was her own private shopping mall.”
He went on to tell Diane how Tammy offered Norma Fuller a room in her home-actually Slick’s house-for nominal rent of fifty dollars a month. She told Mrs. Fuller she could help her get back in good health again. All she needed was the right kind of care and to be in a situation where she could save her money.
“Mrs. Fuller told us that the room was nice enough. It had freshly painted walls, a bed with a pretty bedspread, a chair, even a small TV set-that didn’t get any reception, but did have a DVD player. The room had a small attached half bath with a sink and toilet. Mrs. Fuller had asked about a shower and, get this, Tammy told her she could get just as clean taking sponge baths, and she could do it herself and be more independent. Tammy told her that the thing the shelters didn’t tell people was that if the shelter found she couldn’t live independently, they would put her in a state-run nursing home, where she would have to live on a ward with a bunch of other people, male and female, all of them strangers.”
“I imagine that was frightening for her,” said Diane.
“It frightened her. She bought into Tammy’s wellness program,” said Ben. “Tammy fixed her food and brought it to her room. When Mrs. Fuller complained about the small amounts, Tammy sweetly showed her a study that said people with low calorie intake live longer and are generally healthier.”
“Tammy had an answer for everything,” said Frank. “She even gave Mrs. Fuller old Shirley Temple movies and vintage comedies to watch. I imagine she got those really cheap DVDs you can get at discount stores. Tammy told Mrs. Fuller that laughter is good medicine, and in places like shelters, people don’t get enough laughter.”
Diane shook her head. “She had a little health plan all worked out. What did Mrs. Fuller think of it?” she asked.
“She actually liked it. She said Tammy was nice to her,” said Frank.
“Are we talking about the same Tammy Taylor I met at Slick’s?” said Diane. “The backwoods bitch from hell?”
“Apparently she has many different sides to her personality,” said Frank. He grinned. “Tammy occasionally brought Mrs. Fuller a puppy to pet from Slick’s dog pens. She told her it would lower her blood pressure to play with a puppy.”
“Mrs. Fuller said the barking dogs made her nervous, and the puppies were a little too frisky,” said Ben. “But she went along.”
“It sounds to me like Tammy developed her health plan from women’s magazines she got at the supermarket checkout,” said Diane.
“I think she did,” said Frank. “But there was enough surface credibility to convince Mrs. Fuller that Tammy knew what she was doing.”
“What about living way up in the mountains on a dirt road?” said Diane. “Didn’t that bother her?”
“At first, but Tammy told her to give it a chance. Before long, she’d be out helping with the chores,” said Frank.
“Tammy could make a good argument that she meant well,” said Diane.
“Maybe, and maybe not,” said Ben, raising a hand over his notes and pointing a finger as if at Tammy herself. “Mrs. Fuller said that at night Tammy brought her hot chocolate and it made her sleep well,” said Ben. “Tammy told her it was the milk. I’m wondering what was in the chocolate.”
“Oh, my,” said Diane.
“That’s not all,” said Frank. “Every morning she gave her a health drink. Mrs. Fuller said it was a fiber drink-to keep her digestion healthy. She’d had them before, but the taste was a little different from what she was used to and she felt jittery during the day. I think Tammy gave her an over-the-counter fiber drink and spiked it with an energy drink. They would have similar citrus tastes. The energy drink would act to offset the feelings of weakness that would result from the deficient calorie intake. But with Mrs. Fuller’s high blood pressure, it would be dangerous.”
“For someone with precarious health, you don’t have to shoot them to kill them,” said Ben. “There’re a lot of things you can buy at the grocery store that’ll do the job just fine. Take a little longer, but harder to detect. It would look like natural causes.”
“What kind of impact did it have on her health?” said Diane.
“Not good. Like I said, we interviewed her in the hospital. Her blood pressure was through the roof and she was malnourished.”
“Is she going to be all right?” Diane asked.
“The doctors think so. She’s elderly and, like I said, her health is precarious. But she has genuine help now.”
“What happened the night of the storm?” asked Diane.
“She hadn’t drunk her cocoa,” said Ben. “She said she was feeling nauseated that day and the milk made it worse, so she was awake. She said the storm was frightening and the roof started to leak in her room. She heard the tree fall and said Slick rushed out to take a look. After that, she told us, things got hectic around there. She heard Tammy and Slick rushing around, arguing with each other. Slick issuing orders about the dogs and for Tammy to do what she could about cleaning up the tree. He said he would come back and move the big logs. Mrs. Fuller heard him say something about Tammy needing to make sure she got all the pieces. Mrs. Fuller thought that meant the tree.”
“We guess he meant the bones,” said Frank.
“Mrs. Fuller said she finally got to sleep, but several hours later she heard voices outside. That was when you and Deputy Conrad got there,” said Ben. “She went out on the porch to see what was going on and Tammy shooed her back inside.”
“The next morning,” said Frank, “they loaded her into the truck and told her they had to take her back, that a family emergency had come up.”
“Mrs. Fuller protested, especially because, earlier in the week, Tammy had taken her to the bank to change her account and have her Social Security check direct-deposited to a joint account in both her and Tammy’s names. Tammy had convinced her that what she was going to do was teach her how to budget her money so that she could afford an apartment and be independent. She told her that with the money she saved by living with them, she would have a nest egg before she knew it,” said Ben.
“How did Tammy explain putting her own name on the account?” asked Diane.
“Tammy said it would make it easier for her to put a little money in Mrs. Fuller’s savings account, help pay her bills, and get her medicine for her if Tammy’s name was on the account too,” said Ben. “And that’s where we can get her.”
“The morning they took Mrs. Fuller back to the shelter, Tammy refused to go by the bank to change the account back to the way it had been. She said she would do it later,” said Frank. “Norma Fuller is worried about her money. She doesn’t remember which bank they went to and she doesn’t have the checkbook. And remember, she knew Tammy as Tracy Tanner. Mrs. Fuller doesn’t know how to get in touch with Tammy. She doesn’t really know where Tammy took her in the mountains. Tammy gave her the fictitious name of some town she made up. She’s afraid the shelter is going to put her on a ward in a nursing home. She is a very frightened woman.”
“We spoke with a friend in the GBI and we think we have enough to classify this as an Atlanta crime and require Sheriff Conrad to cooperate.”
“Leland Conrad is going to hate that,” said Diane.
“He can hate it all he wants,” said Ben. “He is about to be forced to do his job.”
They spent the remainder of the evening talking about a recent trip Frank and Ben had made to Nashville to find an embezzler who was stealing in order to fund his ambition to become a country music star. The two of them had Diane laughing so hard it hurt by the time Ben was ready to leave.
Tammy had been right about one thing: Laughter was good medicine. Diane was back to her centered sense of peace by the time she got in bed and cuddled up against Frank.
