Authors: Lorena McCourtney
I was trying to figure out how to get a jar of the cream off a top shelf when a commotion a couple of aisles away stopped me. I peered around the end of the shelves to see what was going on.
A stoop-shouldered older woman in baggy clothes and shoes run over at the heels was yelling at a clerk about ignoring her, and the clerk was looking at her as if she’d like to de-materialize her on the spot. In lieu of that, the clerk suddenly turned and stalked off. The older woman lifted the bottle of heartburn remedy in her hand as if she were about to hurl it at the departing clerk. I rushed up to see if I could calm her. I knew the feeling. I’d wanted to throw something at an unhelpful clerk a time or two myself. But it’s the kind of thing that gets you labeled senile and trucked off to an old-folks home.
“Hey, is everything okay?” I asked, even though I could see that everything obviously was not okay. “Can I help you with something?”
She glanced down at me. Even stooped, she was considerably taller than I am. Her blue eyes behind heavy glasses in cat-eye frames still sparked with indignation, but then she did a double take. “Ivy?”
I squinted up at her.
“Don’t you recognize me?” She sounded delighted now. She straightened to her full height and yanked off the glasses. “It’s me! Tammy. Tasha. I’m in costume.”
I blinked, backed off a step and looked at her more closely. Okay, underneath the padding, baggy clothes and gray wig, I could see a bare hint of the tall, youthful neighbor back on Madison Street. I asked the obvious question. “Why?”
“This is my new acting role! I wear all this padding on my body and putty-stuff on my face. To make me wrinkled and saggy all over.”
All I could do was again ask, “Why?” And point out, “This isn’t exactly a stage.”
“You don’t have to be on a stage to act. This is the role I told you about, the one that’s all hush-hush. Dr. Dennington is running an experiment to see how old people are treated differently than younger ones in the commercial world. She’s going to do a paper or book or something on it.”
“Maybe she intends to blackmail the stores that do badly. There are laws about age discrimination.”
Tasha blinked, appalled. “Dr. Dennington wouldn’t do
that.
She’s a wonderful woman.” Pause. “But she could, couldn’t she?”
“You could be wearing a video camera to record what happens. You can get miniature ones that look like a pen. Or even like a button that pokes through a regular buttonhole.”
“Ivy, what a devious mind you have,” Tasha scolded, even as fresh interest sparked in her eyes. “No wonder you found a body in your bathtub.”
I didn’t see the connection, but maybe I am a bit devious these days. Comes with the territory when someone is out to make roadkill out of you. “So why didn’t she just hire an older woman?” I asked. “
I
could tell her how we’re sometimes invisible and get treated differently.”
“Because she wants to see if the exact same person gets treated differently, depending on if she’s young or old. I came in yesterday as myself and got treated very nicely here. The clerk spent extra time checking to see if they ever carried a particular brand of pills for cramps. Then I came back like this today—” She held out her hands and I could see that even they were in disguise, with dark age spots painted on the skin and fingernails yellowed. “And the clerk kept waiting on other people instead of me, and, when she finally did get to me, she got all irritated because I wanted a specific laxative I pretended I couldn’t remember the name of. Dr. Denington said that was something an older person might do. And the clerk just made me so – so angry! Old people shouldn’t be treated differently. I had no idea.”
Welcome to the world of invisible LOLs.
“Well, you’re doing very well at it.” This, I realized, was what she’d been doing that first evening I arrived back on Madison Street, when I’d seen Eric and an older woman I’d assumed was his grandmother out walking together. Tasha had been practicing for this role. I gave her arm a squeeze. Her tense muscles still felt primed for action. She could have nailed that clerk. Maybe I should have let her do it. “I didn’t recognize you at all. I really thought you were an old woman.”
“Thanks.” Tasha replaced the heartburn medication on the shelf, rearranged her baggy clothes and went into her stooped-over stance again. “Okay, I’m off to the cosmetics department. I was over there yesterday buying mascara and eyeliner. The clerk was very helpful. Let’s see how she is today when I want to buy – what did blush used to be called?”
“Rouge?”
“That’s it.” The gleam in Tasha’s eyes suggested this clerk had better get it right.
“Try not to throw anything,” I advised.
“Okay. But maybe, if she’s really obnoxious, I could just, you know,
accidentally
stumble into her and knock her flat. We old people are so unsteady on our feet, you know.”
Hmmm. A technique I might keep in mind. “You’re a bit devious yourself, Tasha.”
We grinned at each other. She shuffled off to the cosmetics department, and I headed for the exit.
After I got outside I realized I hadn’t bought the pink hand cream after all, but I didn’t go back in. I shouldn’t be spending money on a non-necessity anyway. I was going to need more furniture.
I intended to stop at a grocery store, but there weren’t any parking spaces big enough for the motorhome, so I passed that up. But it made me think. Was it time to trade the motorhome in on a car, a nice little gas-efficient compact? I had, after all, made the decision to stay here. At least the semi-decision. I was buying furniture and garden tools. So I probably no longer needed a motorhome.
But getting rid of it would take away one more escape hatch. . .
***
I was still feeling uneasy about the encounter with young Zack Braxton in the furniture store when I headed out to the RV park to give Mac his new knife. By going into the store, had I let what Dix calls my mutant curiosity gene lead me somewhere I shouldn’t have gone? Maybe as soon as I left the store Zack had rushed upstairs to describe me to Dirk and Emily, and they’d mention to other Braxtons the odd fact that an old lady was suspiciously curious about the family and knew about a connection with Zollingers too. And then someone would hit on it.
That must be the old woman who nailed Bo at the trial!
I know what both Dix and Mac would say.
Back off.
But if we were going to tie the Braxtons to Lillian Hunnicutt’s murder, a hands-off approach wasn’t going to work.
I found Mac tossing horseshoes with a couple of senior-age guys. He introduced me and they invited me to join their game. I think they were just being polite and thought I’d politely decline, but I didn’t.
I have no idea why, since my coordination on most athletic endeavors equals that of your average garden slug, and I’d never even picked up a horseshoe until a few months ago, but on some days I can toss a horseshoe as if it were a guided missile. Other days, I can’t wrap that horseshoe around the target stake any more than I could hit the moon with it. What would today be? We made up two teams, RV park Bob and me on one team, Mac and RV park George on the other.
It took a few practice tosses to get a feel for this horseshoe pit, but then I hit two ringers in a row. Hey, one of my hot-arm days! My partner, in red-plaid shorts and a golfer’s hat, applauded, obviously surprised. My unorthodox toss, which makes the horseshoe somersault along the route, looks as if it couldn’t possibly work, so it surprises everyone when it does. Including me. Partner Bob got one leaner and then threw one that looked as if he’d been aiming at a stake just west of Texas. Mac threw a leaner and then a ringer, although it was iffy until they stuck a ruler across the two ends of the horseshoe, and it didn’t touch the stake. His partner made a couple of no-score throws, although they were close enough to measure.
“I feel like I’ve been pool-sharked,” Mac’s partner, George, grumbled when the game was over and he was on the losing side. He looked at Mac. “How come you didn’t tell us she could throw like a pro?”
Mac graciously didn’t mention my differing days of competence. “Just be glad Ivy isn’t a gambling woman or she’d have cleaned us out,” he said.
My partner Bob turned to me. “How about golf? We’re going out to the Sunland course tomorrow morning. Would you like to come along?”
He apparently assumed my talent for horseshoes translated into an equal competence at knocking a little white ball around, but I had to tell him that I might as well try to hit Pennsylvania with a peanut as get that ball into a hole in the ground. I kept to myself my personal and no doubt unpopular view of golf, that it’s about as interesting – and productive - as trying to catch flies with a toilet plunger. Though I suppose I might have a more positive view of golf if I were better at it.
With the impressive victory at horseshoes, my spirits lifted as Mac and I sauntered away from the horseshoe pit. I gave him the new knife, and he was delighted with it. I could even look at my encounter with Zack Braxton from a more relaxed perspective. He probably had no idea who I was and couldn’t have cared less. He’d probably been watching me there at the top of the stairs only to see if I was going to go squeal to Dirk and Emily about his sleeping on the job. He probably never even mentioned this snappy older woman to them.
I dodged the fact that there were a lot of optimistic
probably’s
in there.
I distracted myself by telling Mac on the way back to his motorhome about encountering neighbor Tasha and what she was doing in her old-lady costume, then asked him, “How did the research for your new article go?”
“Not great. Actually, I need to get your opinion on it before I go any further.”
“Oh?” We often discussed Mac’s articles, but I couldn’t remember his ever wanting my opinion on deciding whether he should actually do a specific article.
He’d left the air conditioning on in the motorhome, and the coach was delightfully cool. He poured lemonade into glasses and handed me one. We sat at the little dinette.
“The thing is, it isn’t an article I’m actually
planning.
Though I might pick up something I can use along the way,” Mac said. “What I’m thinking is that we need to get an inside track on the Braxtons and what they’re up to. They’re going to be suspicious if we just start snooping around and asking questions. However, if I ask questions as a magazine writer, we might make it work.”
“You mean, come right out and ask questions openly? Not sneak around?”
“Yes.”
That twitch I’d had in the Braxton’s furniture store re-twitched. “That’s getting into dangerous territory.”
“Exactly.”
We both contemplated the dangers for a lemonade-drinking couple of minutes.
“But we don’t have to deliver the killers to the police all neatly hog-tied, case solved,” I pointed out. “All we have to do is find out enough to convince them the Braxtons and Zollingers are solid suspects in Lillian Hunnicutt’s murder so they’ll start investigating.”
Mac nodded. “Good. I’m a little short on hog-tying experience.”
“So all we have to do is figure out an appropriate subject for an article. Something they’ll want to talk about.”
“Something that gives no indication of what we’re really interested in.”
“How about something to do with one of their businesses?” I suggested. A little uneasily I added, “I was in Braxton Furniture today. I met a young guy named Zack Braxton. He said Bo Zollinger was his uncle, and the store owner was Drake Braxton’s son.”
“You
talked
to him about the Braxton’s connection with murder?” Mac looked at me as if I’d just dropped a spider in his lemonade.
“It wasn’t an
in-depth
conversation.
He was kind of smart-alecky, and the subject of Bo’s imprisonment just kind of . . . came up.”
“Let’s stay away from Braxton Furniture,” Mac muttered.
Good idea. Although maybe they had store security photos of me and were even now e-mailing or Facebooking them all across cyberspace to other Braxtons and Zollingers.
“Actually, there isn’t any reason for you to go along when I ask questions,” Mac said. “I’ve always done interviews alone anyway. So—”
I didn’t get into an argument about my non-participation. I just ignored it. “How about looking into Braxton Enterprises?”
“Nothing on the internet about them. I looked this morning. And it’s too vague. We need a more specific, out-in-the-open subject.”
“How about those horses out at that country place where they were having the barbecue? They were quite elegant looking.”
“Elegant horses,” Mac repeated thoughtfully. “That might work. Do you know anything about horses?”
“I used to ride a neighbor’s horse when I was a kid. I can tell the front end from the back end.”
“Good. You’re the expert then.”
Chapter Twelve
So that was how we found ourselves driving slowly under the
Braxton
arch at the country place on Wednesday morning. Three horses with coats polished to a metallic gleam grazed on the other side of the white board fence. I’d call them
brown,
but there was probably some more elegant horsy term for the color. The horses really were elegant, even aristocratic looking, with sculpted heads and manes that looked as if they’d had a double dose of Miracle-Gro. The chubby ponies were in the same pasture, one of them teasing a larger horse by playfully nipping at a hind leg. Which the larger horse, apparently good-natured and tolerant of the smaller pest, ignored.
We hadn’t called ahead for an appointment. As Mac pointed out, better they didn’t have a chance to turn us down. Whoever “they” were. I wasn’t in full disguise. It’s easier to disguise a young woman as an old woman, like Tasha did, than the other way around. But I’d borrowed a floppy sunhat from her and some oversized sunglasses from Magnolia.
We drove on through the area where all the vehicles had been parked for the barbecue and around to the rear of the house. A young woman was working another brown horse in a circular corral between the red barn and sprawling white stable. A new-looking, oversized blue horse trailer stood alongside the corral. We parked and watched the willowy, pony-tailed girl as she guided the horse through a complicated pattern of circles and turns. She wore a protective helmet, but she sat the horse as if she were a princess in a rocking chair. Both horse and rider seemed to glide along. I was impressed. I’d always bounced like a ping-pong ball at anything faster than a walk on the neighbor’s horse. Although this horse seemed to have a smoother gait than the ones I’d ridden. At least that was what I told myself in defense of my past riding bobbles.