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Grandma Iris was waiting for me in her new jacket with the reflective stripe on back. Buddy gave me a slobbery hello and then stood at the door wagging his entire back end in anticipation of our walk. We walked outside into the cooling darkness.
“How are you doing today?” I asked her.
She gave me a suspicious look. “I’m fine.”
“I’m glad.” I let out a sigh of relief. “We were worried about you?”
“We? Who’s we?”
“Well, me. And Maxwell.”
“You told Maxwell about my personal business?” She stopped and put a hand on her hip. “Kelly Marie Bordeaux, that was private.”
“Sorry! I didn’t think...”
“No, you didn’t.” She scowled and picked up the pace.
We walked along in silence for a minute. Buddy, as though sensing the tension, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and whined at us. I knelt down beside him and rubbed his velvety ears.
“I’m sorry, Grandma Iris,” I whispered into Buddy’s sweet face.
“Aw, come here,” Grandma Iris said. She plucked at my sleeve and I stood. She enveloped me in a hug.
“I didn’t know it would upset you so much.”
“At my age, you can’t afford for people to be talking about you. Next thing you know they’re putting you in a home.”
“I would never.”
“I know. But you can see why I’d be a little touchy.”
I nodded. She gave me another little squeeze and we walked on.
“Now. What’s new with the investigation?” Grandma Iris said, changing the subject.
I knew I should wait until I’d talked to Maxwell about it first, but the news about Fremont calling Shirley was too good to keep to myself.
“You’ll never guess who I had as a customer tonight,” I said. “Fremont Cunningham. The real one, not the dead guy.”
“Not the dead guy? Good, I thought you might be talking about a haunted café, and nobody needs that.”
I laughed. “Grandma Iris, do you believe in ghosts?”
“No, but if you insisted they were real, I might have to try to start believing.”
We let Buddy sniff a tree trunk with the intense thoroughness of his kind. He gave a little woof of satisfaction and we moved on.
“Do you know what he told me?”
“What who told you?”
“Fremont.”
“Oh, it’s Fremont now, is it?” Grandma Iris gave me a nudge with her elbow. “And him single. You could do worse.”
“It’s not like that!”
“Oh, there goes my chance at a famous grandson-in-law. What did he tell you?”
“He told me why he was late.”
“Oh?”
“Car trouble, mostly. But more important, he said he called.”
“Called who? The triple-A?”
I lowered my voice. “He called Shirley Morris.”
“He did? Then why did that woman not hold off before having an impostor call the bingo jubilee games?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it. If she knew he wasn’t the real thing, why go through with the charade? And did she kill him?”
“Oh, this is juicy. Do you think she did it?”
“I don’t know yet. But knowing he was a fake could give her a motive. Do you think she had it in her?”
Grandma Iris thought for a minute before answering. “She’s been a thorn in my side for a long time, but I wouldn’t have expected her to turn out to be a murderer. I know everyone has their breaking point, but to kill a man over money? I wouldn’t have thought it of Shirley.”
We walked along, mulling that over and letting Buddy sniff every passing leaf and branch. I trusted Grandma Iris’s judgment, but I also trusted what Fremont had told me.
“What if he dialed the wrong number?” I suggested. “He could be telling the truth about calling, but actually spoke to someone else.”
Grandma Iris nodded eagerly. I got the feeling she didn’t want her old nemesis to be an actual murderer.
“Should we ask her?” I said.
“No, she’d be too offended by the question. Oh, I wish I still had her phone.”
“If you had her phone, then you’d have gotten that call, so it wouldn’t be relevant,” I reminded her.
The night had reached full dark, with a few stars peaking through the remaining leaves of the trees overhead. The streetlight at the end of the block was dark, and I realized we were almost at Shirley’s house.
Grandma Iris realized our location at the same moment. “We need to get our hands on her phone.”
“I don’t think our hunch would be enough for Maxwell to get a warrant.”
“I didn’t say anything about Maxwell. I said us.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s her house right there. We could break in.”
“Grandma Iris! I’m not letting you break into anyone’s house.” My voice had dropped to a whisper too.
She looked crestfallen.
“But you could be the lookout.”
Her eyes lit up. “Are you going to break in?”
“Hopefully I won’t have to really ‘break’ anything, maybe a door will be open.”
Grandma Iris grinned at me. “Let’s go!”
After a quick discussion, we were ready. I went around to the back of the house. Shirley’s back door wasn’t open, but it also didn’t have a deadbolt. I rummaged in my pockets and located a pallet knife. I slid it between the door and the frame, and in seconds I had popped the button lock on the doorknob. The door opened for me and Shirley’s darkened mudroom beckoned.
I tiptoed into the kitchen. By the glow of the digital clock on the microwave, I could make out the room. Every surface was spotless, without so much as a dish left by the sink or a crumb by the toaster. Every magnet on the front of the fridge was lined up and precisely straight.
I pushed through the swinging door into the dining room and got lucky. Shirley had a charging station set up on the buffet. Lined up at right angles were a laptop, an eBook reader, and a cell phone. I grabbed the phone.
I was about to look at the call log in the phone app when a frenzy of barking started in the next room. Sparky!
I froze, hoping our plan would work.
On the front lawn, Buddy gave an answering volley of barking. The two dogs gave an operatic performance of bark and counter-bark.
“Sparky, that’s enough!” Shirley called from the bedroom. “Sparky!”
Sparky and Buddy continued their chorus.
Knowing I didn’t have much time, I opened the call log. I scrolled to the night of the bingo jubilee and took out my phone to snap a photo. I could compare the numbers and times later.
Just as I captured the photo, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but my finger was already on the screen from the photo app and I answered it.
“Hello?” a voice buzzed out of my phone speaker. I held a hand over it to try to muffle the sound. “Hello?”
“Is someone there?” Shirley called from the next room.
I shoved Shirley’s phone back on the buffet and scrambled out of the dining room, through the kitchen and mudroom and outside. I ran around the house and joined Buddy and Grandma Iris. Buddy was still barking with enthusiasm.
“Come on,” I stage whispered.
Grandma Iris and I scurried down the street. If it had been me holding Buddy’s leash, he’d have planted all four paws and stayed to bark. But for Grandma Iris he trotted along, tongue lolling out.
“Hello? Anyone there?” squawked the forgotten phone in my hand.
“Goodness sakes, Kelly, did you steal her phone?” Grandma Iris said.
“No, this is mine.” I held it up to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hello? Kelly?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is Nicole. Maxwell’s fiancée.”
My breath caught. I didn’t know they were engaged. “Uh, hi. What’s up?”
“Maxwell told me about the bingo jubilee and how worried everyone is.”
“Oh?” I suddenly felt a pang of insight into what Grandma Iris had meant when she said she didn’t like people talking about her.
“I want to help.”
I paused. “You do? How?”
“I’m a web designer. I thought we could put up an online fundraising page for the bingo society.”
I put my hand over the phone again and relayed the idea to Grandma Iris.
“That’s a good one, very modern and up to date. Tomorrow is a bingo society meeting, we could bring it up then.”
I told Nicole to come to the meeting and bring her fiancé, then hung up. Depending on what I found out from Shirley’s call log, I could have some news to share at tomorrow’s meeting too.