Mary Bliss looked up when the waitress approached. “White wine,” she said quickly. Hayslip laughed and ordered a beer.
“You probably think I’m an alcoholic,” she said, putting the menu aside. “Maybe I am. All I know is, after an hour with Meemaw, I need a drink.”
“Has she always been like that?” Hayslip asked. He took a roll from the bread basket and offered it to her. She waved it away.
“Like what? Foulmouthed? Mean? Or just senile?”
“The nice word for it is feisty,” Hayslip said.
“I’m afraid I’m not in a very nice mood,” Mary Bliss said. “It’s awful, I know, but I’ve gotten so I just dread spending time with her.”
“Then why go?”
“She’s my mother-in-law,” Mary Bliss said. “Erin’s grandmother. With Parker gone, we’re her only family. Fair Oaks is a very nice nursing home—it should be, for the amount of money we pay them, but you know how nursing homes are. If a patient doesn’t have family looking out for them, they let things slide. The sheets don’t get changed, they don’t get bathed properly, and they don’t eat right. Those nurses know I’ll be there every Wednesday, and I drop in other times too, so usually, Eula is very well cared for.”
“She’s pretty nasty to you,” Hayslip said. “Is that part of her senility, or whatever they call it?”
The waitress was back with her chardonnay. Mary Bliss took her glass and took a sip.
“I was never what you would call Meemaw’s first choice to become Mrs. Parker McGowan,” Mary Bliss said. “In her eyes, marrying me was definitely a step down for her only son.”
Hayslip poured his beer into a glass. “What was her objection?”
“The usual,” Mary Bliss said. “We were too young. I was from a broken home. And from Alabama! God, that was really unforgivable.”
“Does she really believe Parker’s alive?” Hayslip asked.
Mary Bliss set her wine glass carefully down on the table. “That’s what she says. She insists he’s alive, on an island somewhere. Cavorting with native women.”
“Sort of like Gauguin?”
“I doubt my mother-in-law knows who Gauguin is,” Mary Bliss said. “The doctors say it’s part of her dementia. She also insists she’s going to appear in a revival of Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway. And in the meantime, she can really be very unpleasant.”
“And yet you still keep visiting her, cooking for her, seeing after her.”
Their food arrived. The waitress set a chef’s salad down in front of Mary Bliss and a hot roast beef sandwich in front of Matt Hayslip. He attacked his food immediately. Mary Bliss watched, her appetite suddenly vanished.
“I feel guilty,” she said quietly. “She’s old, and she’s unhappy. She hasn’t made any new friends at the nursing home, and her old friends have either died or stopped visiting her. I guess I go because I’m afraid someday I’ll be like her. Old and alone.”
“You’d never be like her,” Hayslip said. “Look at all those people who came to Parker’s memorial service. They didn’t come for Parker, not really. They came for you.”
She speared a piece of lettuce with her fork and nibbled at it.
“You’re a good person, Mary Bliss,” Hayslip said. “People want to help you. They want to be around you. Is that so hard for you to believe?”
“You don’t know me very well,” Mary Bliss said, uncomfortable under his steady gaze. She thought of excusing herself to go to the ladies’ room, but then what? Where could she hide from this man who would not look away from her?
“I know you better than you think,” Matt said. “I’m a cop, remember?”
“I thought you were retired,” Mary Bliss said, alarmed again.
“You leave the job, but it doesn’t leave you,” Hayslip said. “I guess that’s why I’m so intrigued with your financial problems. Admit it, aren’t you the least bit curious about where all that money went?”
Her temper flared. “Curious? I don’t have time to be curious. I’ve got a daughter to raise, and a house to run, and no money to do it with. My problems may be some kind of elaborate jigsaw puzzle to you, but it’s no game to me, Matt. Parker’s gone. That much I know. The money’s gone too. I don’t need somebody solving unsolvable puzzles for me. I need for the insurance people to pay my claim, and let me get on with my life.”
She set her fork down on the table and it clanged against the glass top.
He looked up, obviously surprised by her outburst.
“Hey,” he said, “it’s not a game. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just thinking, maybe I could look into things for you. I read the police report from the Mexican authorities. I even checked the weather and the tide charts for that day. And I was wondering about that boat the hotel rented you. How seaworthy was it? It was a relatively calm day that day, according to the reports I read. Seems to me, a wave shouldn’t have smashed it up that way. Maybe the hotel is at fault, maybe they’re legally liable for Parker’s death and your head injury.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Mary Bliss said, her face stony. “It happened. He’s dead. The money’s gone. And I don’t have the time or the resources to hire lawyers and investigators to run around to Mexico and chase after a lost cause.”
Matt reached across the table to grasp her hand, but it was too late. She was standing up, reaching for the pocketbook hanging on the back of her chair.
“I’m sorry,” Mary Bliss said. “I’m not hungry. I guess you’d better take me home.”