Chapter 8
Walker didn’t stay for lunch. Lindsey tried to pretend she wasn’t disappointed, but she was no good at lying to herself. It was just that Walker seemed so different around Myron. Sure, he scowled and moped and it didn’t look like he said much—although even she had trouble getting a word in edgewise with Myron. But he also smiled and laughed a little. As he was leaving, Myron shook his hand and pulled him in for a hug, whispering something in his ear and giving him a gruff kiss on the cheek.
Apparently Walker was capable of behaving in a way that encouraged warm feelings in others, after all.
And Lindsey’s Curiosity Radar went into overdrive.
Detective Lindsey was not a side of her personality that she was especially proud of. Not ashamed, exactly, but Detective Lindsey had gotten her into more trouble than she cared for. For example, finding out her sixth grade teacher’s orthopedic shoes did not hide a prosthetic leg after all. Or that her prom date was not a cross-dresser; he was just carrying around another girl’s underwear.
“How is your lunch, Mr. Harris?” she asked, just as she would have asked any other resident. No big deal.
Myron ran his fork through a white blob on his plate. “These aren’t real mashed potatoes, are they?”
Lindsey knew they were mashed cauliflower, because even though the residents were full-grown adults, some guys just didn’t want to eat their vegetables. Besides, she had tasted them before they came out of the kitchen. They were pretty good.
Slathered in butter, they weren’t bad.
Better than dessert, anyway. But she had never been a real big fan of Jell-O with fruit cocktail in it.
Lindsey rearranged the napkins on the table. “I saw your friend Walker was here.”
“Shame he couldn’t stay for lunch.” Myron picked up a forkful of “potato,” let it fall back on his plate. It plopped.
“Yes, but at least he got to see you get into a cat fight with Mr. May.”
“Call me Eugene!” Eugene yelled from his table across the room.
“He started it!” Myron pushed his plate away, pulled his Jell-O closer.
“I’m pretty sure you were the one threatening him with a book, Mr. Harris.”
“Call me Myron. And that wasn’t a book. That was a mystery with cats in it.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with a cat mystery?” Gladys asked from across the table.
“Have you ever met a cat? If a human was killed, the cat wouldn’t give a crap. The cat would just sit on the furniture and stare at the dead body until someone else came in to feed it.”
“Mr. Harris—Myron—be nice. Remember what Doug said?”
“Never judge another person’s reading taste. Which is bullshit. Pardon the language.”
“Well, the whole thing made you miss a lunch date with your . . .” She waved her hand, waiting for Myron to fill in the blank. “With your Walker.” She cringed.
Myron sighed and looked a little guilty. “He’s good to me, that boy.”
“You really look forward to the Bookmobile, so I was just surprised to see your . . . Walker visiting.”
“Yeah, he takes me out to lunch and walks me. It’s the least he can do after he ratted me out to my daughter.”
“Ratted you out? What did you do?”
“I fell a few times. So what? Nobody ever died from falling a few times.”
That wasn’t true, but Lindsey wisely kept her mouth shut. She knew Myron’s health condition. He’d had a series of mini-strokes that left little damage, in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless prevented him from living completely independently. He’d lost some mobility on his left side, leaving him with a small limp and a hand that could not grip. Stairs were pretty much impossible unaided.
And he was forgetful. Not about big things, like people’s names and the relative merits of the major American writers of the twentieth century. But his bluster had made it hard to spot that he was constantly leaving the stove on, forgetting to shower. He was vulnerable, and he was just unwell enough to be dangerous.
He also refused to leave Willow Springs. That was why his daughter moved him to Shady Grove.
Lindsey hadn’t met his daughter, Darlene, yet, but she’d spoken to her on the phone. She was quiet and sounded very sweet, and expressed mucho gratitude for the care Myron was receiving. And she expressed mucho mucho guilt that she couldn’t get down to see him more than once a month, if that. But she lived on a small farm and it was over two hours away when the roads were good, which they often were not, and she had three boys and . . . Lindsey had heard many excuses from family members about why they could not visit their parents once they put them in a home. But as she spoke to Darlene, Lindsey found it difficult to maintain the hardened heart with which she usually listened to these excuses. She knew that Darlene called her father every morning once the kids left for school, and every night after dinner. She saw in the guest book that Darlene did in fact come down almost once a month. But Myron had insisted on Shady Grove, and Darlene knew he would be well taken care of.
By Walker.
Lindsey gave her head a mental slap. Of course. The neighbor. The duplex with the stairs. Walker ratted him out . . . because Myron lived next door to him. Myron was the gardener. Myron was the guy who’d lived in her apartment before.
Small world.
Small town.
So, if Myron used to live next door to Walker . . . No, she shouldn’t grill a poor old man just to get information.
“How long have you known Walker?”
Myron shrugged. “Since he was a kid.”
To Myron, everyone under the age of sixty was a kid. “That’s a long time.”
“Eh, I lost track of him after he moved away with his no-good father. But he came back to town and bought the house I was living in, and he didn’t kick me out so he could . . . what’s that called? Toss it?”
“Flip it?”
“Yeah. He didn’t toss me out just so he could flip it. There’s another guy in town who does that. But not Walker.”
“Walker seems . . . nice,” Lindsey gently finished.
Myron laughed. “He ain’t a junkyard dog, but only barely. But he’s a good kid. He takes good care of me.” He cleared his throat.
“Well, he seems to like you. So he’s clearly insane.”
Myron smiled. “Nah, he ain’t got a real family so he has to put up with me.”
Lindsey’s beeper went off. Mae Mitchell needed her afternoon meds. Lindsey paused, then quickly unpaused in horror. No matter how good the gossip was suddenly getting, digging up dirt on her landlord, who apparently was capable of human emotion after all, was not more important than making sure people’s blood sugar was okay. Even though it’s getting good, she thought, as she hurried over to Mae.
He sniffed along the side of the road. The road itself actually smelled really good, but last time he explored that, he almost got run over. Not fun. And he already knew that those cars were much faster than he was, although sometimes he still liked to try to catch one.
Still, next to the road there was plenty of grass, and a while back, he smelled a deer. He never smelled deer in the yard, not since the old guy planted all that stinky green stuff.
But he wasn’t just here to smell the deer, even though he sort of lost track of his mission every time he picked up the scent. No. No matter how good the deer smelled, it was more important that he find out where those two were going every day, and to make sure they really came back.
Sometimes they’d go in separate directions, which made it tough. He could never decide which one to follow, and he would get so tired running around in circles that he would just go to sleep under the porch. But today he decided to follow the lady. And then—the guy showed up! Maybe they were going to the same place after all!
Which meant they would come home together. Which meant he had to hurry. He didn’t know why he had to hurry, but suddenly he just felt like he had to RUN.