Lucy patted my arm. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
Forty-two
By the time Lucy and I got home it was nine-thirty P.M.Half a bottle of wine was left, and soon there would be none. I made a fire and we sat on the floor in my living room, drinking.
Mike O’Malley was Lucy’s new hero and she inundated me with questions about him that made me think she was more interested in him than she’d let on. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t mind. Maybe that was the real reason Mike and I had never gotten together. Maybe we weren’t meant to. I was still thinking about Kevin Brookfield.
The phone rang as it had a few hours earlier.
“Don’t answer it,” Lucy said. “I’m not getting into that wig again!”
It was good advice. I’d had enough drama for one day. I let the call go to voice mail and only jumped up when I heard the small, tentative voice leaving a message. I pushed the speakerphone button so that Lucy could hear.
“Mrs. Warren?”
“Oh, you are there. I thought it was a machine.”
“It was a machine, ma’am. I just got to the phone late. How are you?”
“I’m well. Thank you for asking, dear. I thought you might like to know Jeff has regained consciousness. He’s expected to make a full recovery.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I played along. “I’m so glad to hear it, I was worried.”
“He did lose his position with that trucking company, but his uncle Lou may be able to get him his old job at the post office. I expect he’ll call you himself once he gets those tubes taken out and is on his feet again.” Only a hard pinch on the forearm stopped Lucy from making faces that were guaranteed to crack me up while I was talking to the old woman.
“Will he have any lasting health issues?” I asked. I had to keep her on the line until I could ask her some questions without appearing insensitive to her son’s condition.
“Well, I guess you don’t drive a truck into an overpass without shaking up your noggin a bit. He was unconscious for a few days, but they told me not to worry because it was induced-I think they called it-until the brain swelling went down.” Jeff Warren really did have the worst luck. Next she’d be telling me that one of his ex- wives was back in the picture, looking for a big insurance payoff.
“Mrs. Warren, do you remember, we were talking about the Donnelley family. Do you by any chance, know what happened to Eddie Donnelley?”
“Of course, dear, everyone knows that.”
And she would have told me the last time we spoke except I was too impatient and cut her off-that’s what I got for interrupting a sweet old lady.
I had thought it unlikely Eddie Donnelley would have changed much after twenty years in prison, but he did have a jailhouse conversion. Of a sort.
“Folks in town thought it was all that time in prison,” Mrs. Warren said, “but maybe not. People’s natures are their natures. That’s what I saw on CNN or HBO-one of those new stations.”
I thought of Ellis Damon. Maybe Lucy had been right after all. “Did he get religion?” I asked.
“Oh, no, dear, Donnelleys always had that. His mother used to have the priests over for lunch once a week. No, that wasn’t it.”
Conversion, indeed. Or perhaps transformation was a more appropriate word. Eddie Donnelley was now Edwina Donnelley.
According to Helen Warren, rumor had it Eddie planned to use the drug money he’d stashed away for his sex change operation once he got out, but the money was never recovered, so he was making do with hormone therapy and drugstore cosmetics. Some assumed Monica had stolen the money. Others thought Kate Gustafson took it, until her suspicious death. Still others suspected a fourth partner who’d never been arrested. Mrs. Warren was in the latter camp.
“Any idea who that might have been?” I asked.
“Oh, it was so long ago. Coach Hopper got a lot of flack. People said he should have known what was going on. But how can you blame him-our team had a good record that year. Still, folks did blame him. The school never renewed his contract, and he moved away. Ohio, I think. He tried to stay in sports but had a hard time getting another coaching job because of the drug scandal. Last I heard he was a sales representative for an athletic supporter company, in Ohio, I think. Did I say that already?”
I didn’t expect Helen Warren and I to have the same taste in men, but I had to ask. “Mrs. Warren, would you say Coach Hopper was an attractive man?”
“Well, now there’s somebody for everybody, dear. Hop was pleasant looking, but he did have one unfortunate facial feature. I wonder he never had something done about it. I guess he didn’t care and it didn’t seem to keep the ladies away.”
Her own son had a cleft lip and that didn’t hurt his chances with the opposite sex.
“Was it a broken nose?” I held my breath until she answered.
“Well, I don’t really remember his nose, dear. It was something else entirely. I hate to point out anyone’s physical flaws. After all, we’re all God’s creatures-but Hop really did have a nasty set of choppers.”
Forty-three
The next morning, Lucy hated to leave, but she’d already been out of the office two days researching her fugitive story, which she’d been doing on spec. “Text me the minute you hear anything,” she said, clutching the bag with the wig.
After I dropped her off at the train station, I drove to the Springfield police department. The same desk sergeant I’d met when Grant Sturgis and I were brought in was on duty. I made it sound like a personal matter.
“Sergeant Stamos. Is Mike O’Malley here? I’d like to speak with him.”
“He’s on patrol. I can get a message to him to call you. That okay?”
(I had to remember this new strategy the next time I was in the police station.) It had to be. I gave the desk sergeant my cell number and turned the phone on; then I headed for the Paradise.
Babe welcomed me with a big grin. “You’ve had a busy couple of days, haven’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
Mike O’Malley and Kevin Brookfield had already been and gone-though not together. “Brookfield thinks you’re cute but crazy,” Babe said. “I told him he was right.”
“He’s got a nice smile, don’t you think?” I said. Babe confirmed that Kevin Brookfield had beautiful teeth. This was good news for the single women in town, and, what the heck, I was one of them, wasn’t I?
“You are a little crazy, aren’t you?”
The night before, in her quiet, methodical way Mama Warren had given me Coach Hopper’s dental history. The poor man had had teeth like a broken comb. At some point he’d gotten cut-rate implants and they all got infected and had to be pulled. The last time she saw him, he just had nubs. “Like candy corn,” she’d said, “that had been sitting out in the rain.”
“Oh, you know who called,” Babe said. “She tried you on your cell, then called here. The bulletin board is one thing, but if you expect me to take messages, too, I’m going to have to start charging you.”
Babe slipped me a piece of paper. It was a number in Massachusetts where Caroline said she could be reached until 10:00 that morning. I looked at the clock-9:45.
Babe tossed me the key to her office so that I could talk to Caroline in private. Again it stuck, but I finally got in, then dialed the number she’d had given me.
“Blue Willow Bakery.”
For a moment I wasn’t sure who I should ask for-Caroline or Monica.
