Mrs. Marsh didn’t answer the doorbell. I knew she was there; she had, in fact, asked me to come by. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I rang again and waited a full minute. Her arthritis might keep her from getting to the door in a timely manner. As I walked slowly back to my own apartment I wondered if I should be worried about her. She was eighty, after all. But she might have forgotten about our appointment. She might very well have fallen asleep and did not hear the doorbell. Mrs. Marsh was not extremely deaf but her hearing was no longer sharp, either.
In the end I decided to wait an hour. If she had dozed off that would give her time to wake up and call me first. An hour was a good amount of time to get my bathrooms cleaned. Putting in three straight twelve-hour shifts had seriously interfered with my domestic schedule. It was a puzzle how living alone most of the time I could still manage to make a mess of both of my bathrooms. I hate dirty bathrooms. But, a full hour set them right with some time left over for the kitchen. With a feeling of accomplishment I went to the telephone and rang Mrs. Marsh’s number.
She didn’t answer the phone and my uneasiness grew. I let the ringing go on for a while, wondering what my next move should be. This elderly neighbor and I had been casually friendly for about six months. It began when one of her towels escaped from her clothesline and landed in my patio. I returned the towel and stayed for a cup of tea. She fascinated me, not only because of her old fashioned hairdo and handmade sweaters, and not only because of her English accent and manners, but also because of her lifestyle which was an intriguing mix of the modern and the past. She hung most of her laundry outside, no matter how cold it was, and hung the rest to dry on a large wooden rack in her spare bedroom. She had her groceries delivered from the one grocer in town who offered the service, but she drove herself to the hairdresser and to church every week. The added expense of grocery delivery did not bother her at all, but she refused to indulge in such frivolities as an answering machine or new shoes. I was glad about the shoes. Her ‘40s and ‘50s style footwear on her tiny feet was another fascination. And, since there was no answering machine, it was now a certainty Mrs. Marsh was not at home or could not get to her phone.
I opted for caution over embarrassment. The lady had been perfectly fine when she waved her handkerchief at me the day before, but a heart attack or a stroke was certainly possible. I called the manager of the condo complex.
Barry found managing the buildings a suitable job while working on a night degree in computer science. He had that admirable quality of being able to study while being interrupted frequently. His voice was cheer itself as he listened to my concern.
“No problem, Mrs. Nimitz,” he boomed. With his clear, resonant voice, I thought again he was wasted on his chosen profession and should have been a radio announcer or a high school teacher instead. “I’ll grab the extra key and go over there to make sure everything’s okay. You want to meet me there?”
I did meet him at her front door. Everything was not okay. The front door was not locked. We found Mrs. Marsh dead on the kitchen floor. It was obvious to both of us she had not had a massive stroke or a heart attack, at least not initially. The side of her head was bashed in.
Two hours later the whole thing began to sink in. After saying, “my god, my god,” about a dozen times Barry had the presence of mind to call the police. He was also contained enough to tell them there was no question of needing an ambulance, at least for transport to the hospital, and I had myself together enough to draw from my nurse’s training and contribute to his explanation to the dispatcher on the line. The body was quite cold, and there certainly was no pulse. The unpleasant odor of old body elimination could not be ignored. Many people don’t realize to what extent the body relaxes when it gives up the ghost. When I looked back it surprised me we had not impulsively fled the kitchen, but neither one of us did. Of course Mrs. Marsh’s only phone was in the kitchen, but Barry did not know that, and I certainly was not thinking about it. With the murder mysteries everyone watches nowadays, you would think we would have fled the scene immediately. Perhaps we were in shock.
In mutual, unspoken, agreement, we did go into the living room to wait for the police. Barry ran his hands restlessly through his receding blond hair and repeated “my god” numerous more times, as he paced the room and watched the street out of the front window. I sat down numbly on an old loveseat, the back of it covered in one of Mrs. Marsh’s crocheted creations. My mind was fixated on the body of that elderly lady lying on the kitchen floor in front of the sink. She was wearing black slacks, I thought stupidly, and a blue knitted sweater over her white blouse. Her white hair pulled up on her head looked as neat as ever, except for the bright red mass of blood on the side. Her face had been turned away from me as I knelt down on the floor, and I couldn’t get up the courage to look at it. Perhaps I wanted to remember her face as it was alive, not frozen into whatever mask her death had placed it.
“I suppose I should call the home office,” Barry speculated miserably. “They’ll be wild something like this happened here. Nothing like this has ever happened here before.” He added as an after thought, “The poor old lady.”
“Yes,” I agreed inadequately. “Uh, why don’t you wait? The phone call to the home office, I mean. You can tell them more after the police have looked at things.”
He nodded and continued his pacing, his eyes glued toward the front window, willing the police to hurry. It took them about eight minutes; eight long minutes for both of us. The entire time I had this uncanny sensation of something just not being right. It seemed absurd. How could anything be right about someone being murdered? And how would I know? This was the first time I had ever seen a body at the scene of a crime. The experience did not give me any inclination to join the local police force or an ambulance crew, either.
Two policemen arrived initially, soon followed by two more, and two more after that. I noticed one of them was a woman. Over all they were polite and professional. I had only dealt with law enforcement on a very limited basis over my lifetime. None of it had soured me on the police.
They asked a hundred questions, some of which we could answer, and some we could not. I gave them a detailed account of my afternoon, beginning with my arrival on the deceased’s doorstep and ending with Barry’s 911 call. We assured them we had—or I had—only touched her arm and wrist to confirm no sign of life. I was able to provide them with the name of Mrs. Marsh’s local parish and the name of another neighbor who I knew she was friendly with, another elderly lady. As it turned out, Miss Carey was standing outside trying to get through the barricade already set up. The cruisers had drawn a small crowd and Miss Carey was wailing in her reedy little voice.
“Let me through! That’s my friend, Amelia, in there! Let me through!”
After I identified her they did. Then I had to stay put to give Miss Carey some temporary emotional support. Eventually the police got all the information they wanted, Barry went to call the owners of the buildings, and Miss Carey was placed from my care into the capable hands of the Reverend Southby and his wife, who arrived surprisingly soon after they were called by the officer in charge. I couldn’t remember his name.
That left me free to go home. It was almost six o’clock. Perhaps I was still in shock.
“What is wrong with you, Sally?” I hollered out loud into the air in my quiet abode. Now I was the one doing the pacing. It came to me that I wanted to talk to someone. It didn’t take me long to know who.
George answered on the first ring. That meant he was sitting by his computer.
“Hello, Sally,” he greeted me heartily. “How long you been back?”
“About three days.”
“Joel doing okay?”
“Joel’s fine.” Joel was my three-year old grandson, the light of my life.
“Are you all right?” George is perceptive. If I do not go on at length about Joel when given the opportunity I am obviously not myself.
“Well, not exactly. That is, I’m all right, but Amelia Marsh isn’t. She’s an elderly woman I knew here in the condo unit and she died today.”
George expressed the appropriate condolence. The sentiment was of the “that’s too bad but these things eventually happen to all of us” variety, so I added, “She was killed. Someone bashed her on the head.”
“What!” Now George was fully awake. “I thought that place you live in was safe and respectable! What’s the story? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m not sure, really,” I said slowly. “Do you have time? I think I need to talk to somebody.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Eaten? No. That’s been the last thing on my mind.”
“Well you have to sometime. Why don’t you meet me at Cliff’s? It should be quiet there on a Wednesday night. You can tell me all about it. Are you up to driving, or should I come get you?”
“I am perfectly able to drive,” I said tartly, “this is upsetting, not debilitating.”
He replied in kind to my acid tongue, said he would meet me in thirty minutes, and hung up.
Cliff’s is a bar and grill with food good enough to draw the Sunday lunch crowd after church. The bar is closed then, of course. It was open now but only moderately busy, and separate enough from the dining room to make a quiet supper with conversation possible. I saw George’s truck as I pulled into the parking lot. He waited for me at a table in the corner. The dining room was less than half full, for which I was grateful. Having our conversation overheard did not seem like a good idea.
Dear George. He had already ordered my decaf coffee. No doubt a glass of wine or brandy would seem like the thing to most, but I drink very little and certainly not when I have to drive home. George knows that.
“Ah. Thank you.” I took a grateful swallow of the very good coffee. “No sailor back in port swallowing his first whiskey appreciates that drink more than I do this right now.”
“Yeah, you always did like your coffee,” George agreed with a grin, “especially after a stressful day. His grin disappeared, “And speaking of a stressful day ….”
I persuaded him to wait until after we ordered. My appetite had improved a little. I ordered a broccoli and cheese baked potato and kept my face passive when George ordered a double cheeseburger and fries.
“Not a word out of you,” he ordered. “I have been eating broiled chicken and all my vegetables all week. I need a break.”
George was fifty-three, with a broad chest, a small spare tire, and the height to carry it off. He had made certain concessions to age, cutting back on his smoking and his fried foods being two of them. Privately I was glad he had not become a guru about the whole thing.
George is, very simply, my friend. Only it is not so simple. We have never been intimate, nor will we be, although no doubt there are people who don’t believe that. The people who do matter know better. George grew up with my late husband, Michael. He was the best man at our wedding. Michael made a career of the Navy and we moved five times in his twenty year hitch; not a bad record for being in the service. George went home after his four-year commitment and attended the local community college, where he met and married one of the instructors. Michael and George managed to stay in touch. After he was discharged, Michael and I moved our teenagers to within just sixty miles of where he had lived as a child, in part because there was a good job waiting for him there. It was a coincidence, really, that George and his family happened to live nearby. We socialized once in awhile, but George’s wife, Jill, was not interested in a strong friendship. I never cared for her either, which dampened things. Michael and George went fishing or camping together at least once a year, sometimes taking their sons with them. They seemed to enjoy themselves more with these all male outings and I didn’t blame them.
After twenty-four years of marriage, George’s wife left him for a man eight years her junior. She was forty-eight. My own husband seemed able to comfort him and to say or not to say the right thing when no one else could.
Two years later my Michael was hit head on by a semi careening out of control on an icy road. After all of my family and friends had left to deal with their own grief and get on with their lives, George was just, somehow, there. The first time he called to make sure I remembered to change the oil in my car. Three weeks later he called again to ask if I needed anything at all. I gratefully ran some legal technicalities past his orderly mind, sparing me the need to bother Michael’s elderly father or the lawyer I found difficult to deal with. And so it went. No pressure, no sense of a friend of my deceased husband wanting to be more, just a kind man wanting to be there for the wife of his best friend.
Eventually my grief eased and the months passed. But I felt no need to find another man, still don’t. Getting to know George in a different way than I had before, it saddened me to realize how much he had loved his wife and how devastated he was when she walked out. Twice he dated someone for a short while, but now I sensed he had stopped trying to find a replacement. Knowing where we both stood made for a very comfortable relationship, sort of like having a brother, but not quite. I have two brothers so I know.
While waiting for our food we sipped coffee and I told George about my afternoon, or tried to. It still seemed unreal. Even as I backed my Cavalier out of my garage and into the street, the bright yellow tape blocking off Mrs. Marsh’s condo and the lights of the police cars parked in front had seemed like a movie scene or a dream.
George vaguely remembered me mentioning Mrs. Marsh to him before.
“Handsome old lady I think you said. Terrible, a nice old woman shouldn’t be safe from a robbery in her own place.”
“That’s it!” I exclaimed. “That’s part of it, anyway. Part of what bothered me.” I set my coffee mug down with a thump. “There was nothing touched in that place. Everything was in order. It looked like someone just marched in there, whacked her on the head, and marched out again.”
George looked at me quizzically. “I don’t suppose you know if your sweet little old lady had any enemies?”
I sighed. “You sure wouldn’t think so. Her life was right out of Mayberry, so typical of a serene old lady. But about six visits over the last six months would not qualify me as a historian on her life.” I picked the mug back up and toyed with it contemplatively. “But you know, George, she was vague about certain things.”
“Such as?”
“I’m thinking about family. Her husband has been dead for about ten years. Nothing odd there. He just got old. As a matter of fact she said he was ten years older than she, so they both died at about the same age. Anyway, she spoke about him from time to time and she had a couple of photos in the living room of the two of them. But she didn’t talk about anyone else very much. There were no recent photographs of anyone.” I thought back. “There was one picture where they were with another couple she told me they were very friendly with for years while they lived out east. They all looked middle-aged in the picture, in their fifties or so.”
“Did you ask her about any family?”
The server came with our order and I waited until she left before answering.
“Once I did. It just seemed a natural thing to do, it fit in with whatever we were discussing. I asked if she had any children. She said no, but there was a pause first that struck me a little at the time. I had forgotten that until now. It was the second or third time we visited. It left me feeling like she did not want to discuss relatives and I never brought it up again. If you had asked me then, my impression was that perhaps she had lost a child.”
I took a break from my narrative to eat. The potato was tasty and George munched his burger with great satisfaction. Obviously my affection for Mrs. Marsh was not strong enough to take away my appetite for long. The sadness was there all right, but not the gut wrenching agony experienced with Michael. I lost twelve pounds after Michael’s death.
“Any idea what she wanted to talk to you about?” George asked finally, finishing his last French fry.
“None at all. She gave me no hints. I was on my way to work and she caught me as I was leaving.” I remembered her now, calling to me over the wooden fence as she waved her lacy handkerchief. “She never asked my advice on anything before, really, except on a pie she made for the church bazaar or the color she chose for crocheting a blanket. I got the definite impression this was a more serious matter.”
A new thought hit. “George,” I said slowly, “you don’t suppose the police include me in their suspects?”
“Why? Did they tell you not to leave town?”
“Very funny. No, they didn’t. But surely they noticed the same thing I did, about the place being all in order. There aren’t very many suspicious deaths in this town but there are quite a few robberies. Don’t you think they must wonder if she was in the kitchen talking to someone she knew?”
My companion leaned back in his chair and gave a contemplative sigh. “Seems like they would. Can people come and go without being seen?”
“Pretty much so. Her condo is set up almost like mine and you’ve been to my house. If anyone is standing right in front of the door you can’t see them from either side. The unit across the street seems empty all day long. I don’t think the people who live there get home until after five.”
“And the back? Refresh my memory.”
“Very private. About ten feet beyond our patios is a high fence, six feet I guess, judging from my own height. There’s a walking path on the other side and beyond that the park, beyond that Harris Street.”
We sat silent for a moment, each with our own thoughts. If someone had left the Marsh apartment through the kitchen door, crossed the patio and jumped the fence, they would have come out on a quiet residential street where someone might or might not notice. If they had gone back out the front the same was true. They could not be sure of not being seen.
“You might hear from the police again after they’ve done some of their investigating.” George broke the silence. “After all, you’re the one person she wanted to see today and you were a neighbor. But,” he added quickly, no doubt because of the look on my face, “no offense, Sally, but a quick background check on you will eliminate you from the list of possible killers.”
“That’s okay. I am not ashamed of leading an essentially boring life, although it seems to me there have been plenty of murderers who were supposed to be nice, ordinary people so your theory doesn’t completely wash.”
George sighed contentedly, his plate totally empty except for the pickles. My own was not as clean as I have never learned to like the potato skins. I have been chided for that several times.
Our server returned to clear the table. “Anyone for dessert?” she asked cheerfully, “or something else to drink?”
“No more coffee for me,” George said with finality, but he added wistfully, “care to share a piece of cheesecake, Sally?”
He grinned happily when I agreed to eat a few bites if he ordered it plain. We lingered comfortably over the dessert and moved on to familiar topics. George got the usual earful about the antics of my three-year-old grandson, whom I adore, and who seems to adore me back. It is a wonderful relationship. George always seems to enjoy hearing all about it, which only eggs me on. We went on to discuss whatever was happening with his son, Robin, and my own two children. No current crisis brewing with our kids at present—at least none we were yet aware of, as they all lived at least two hundred miles away—so we had peace for the moment there.
George groaned and laid his fork down for the final time.
“Are you finally full?”
“Yes indeed. I can be happy on what’s in my cupboard for at least a week.”
I smiled at him. “As long as the bakery on Hawthorne keeps you supplied with your sausage biscuit and fills your coffee mug every morning on your way to work.”
“It would be hard to survive without that,” George admitted, never one to lie. “You know,” he went on, drawing me suddenly back to the scene of the crime, “maybe whoever was in that house did rob it, but took something no one noticed yet. What if they or he or she went after some jewelry or something else small?”
“You are living proof not only women can flit back and forth between subject matter,” I said reprovingly, “but you may have a point. If that’s so it must have been someone she knew and allowed to come in, because like I said there was no sign of a struggle.”
We threw George’s latest idea around for a few more minutes but suddenly I was too weary to think about it anymore. My suitcase had just been put away on Sunday when the hospital called begging me to work an extra shift. Instead of a night to relax after romping with Joel and the five-hour drive home, I gave in and went right to work. Now it was Wednesday. I had slept four hours after the last shift. My world had been haywire ever since.
“Time to throw in the towel, George, at least for now,” I said. “Tomorrow’s another day and the police may come up with something. Right now my bed sounds very attractive.”
As we got up to leave he asked if I was afraid to be alone next door to the scene of the crime and I honestly assured him I was not. Deep down in my gut I was sure whoever had ended Mrs. Marsh’s life was not on a rampage against our condo unit. I couldn’t say why, but my instincts told me whoever murdered my neighbor had been after her alone. But why?
It was dark outside as we left the building and in gallant old-fashioned courtesy George walked me to my car. “Money!” he shouted. “Maybe the old girl was secretly wealthy and kept her cash close by.”
“If so,” I said dryly, “I hope she did not leave me anything in her will. Then I am on the list of suspects.”