Part 9 (1/2)
Brenda clucked her tongue. ”Are you listenin' to yourself, girl? We're the ones packin' and bringin' them their food, right? Now, I ain't no college professor, but I can put two and two together and figure out how easy it would be to stir a little somethin' into the mashed potatoes.”
”I need to figure out what that something is, but my experience with drugs doesn't go past Robitussin.”
”Go see Mr. Crosby's son, then,” Brenda suggested as she merged into the next lane without using her signal. ”That's why the boy's in jail. Probably knows more about drugs than anybody in Richmond. Just wasn't smart enough to figure out he was sellin' heroin to an undercover cop.”
”Jail?” Cooper swallowed hard. She tried to envision the members of her Bible study sitting across from a convicted drug dealer in an attempt to elicit information from him. Not one of them seemed fit for the job at hand.
”But if you're gonna go, you'd better take somebody,” Brenda advised as she pulled into the Door-2-Door parking lot. ”And you'd better pick wisely. Those prison boys don't see many women and that Crosby boy might wanna talk to you about things you don't wanna talk about. You hear what I'm sayin'? Take someone with you.”
”I hear you,” Cooper replied aloud. In silence, she prayed, Lord, can you send me someone who can interrogate a man wearing an orange jumpsuit?
8.
For sighing comes to me instead of food;
my groans pour out like water.
Job 3:24 (NIV) Brenda dropped Cooper off at Door-2-Door's side entrance and sped off to attend a fall festival at her church. After replacing the black cooler beneath one of the lengthy stainless steel counters in the kitchen, Cooper located her friends. All six of them were contentedly snacking on ham and cheese biscuits and Costco cookies in the volunteer lounge.
”How'd it go?” Jake asked. ”You look a bit green around the gills.”
”Not green. Pink.” Trish eyed Cooper's flushed neck and handed her a cup of water. ”Maybe you're dehydrated. You got back later than everyone else, too. Did you and Brenda have a really long route?”
Cooper accepted the water and looked around the lounge. The other volunteers had left for the day with the exception of Eugene. He was sprawled out on two folding chairs in the back of the room munching on a biscuit. An empty chair in the adjacent row served as a table for his can of Pepsi and a paper napkin piled high with chocolate chip cookies. A comic book was open on his lap and the young man laughed heartily as he ate and read.
”I think one of the clients on my route was drugged,” Cooper announced in a low voice as she took a seat among her friends. ”A man named Mr. Crosby.”
”Oh, I've heard about him,” Trish said dismissively. ”Isn't he a little batty?”
”A bit,” Cooper agreed. ”But I'm not talking about how he acted. When we first saw him, we actually thought, well, that he might be dead. He'd been sitting in the same chair for twenty-four hours and he was still sitting there when Brenda and I went inside. The poor man has no memory at all of what happened to him.”
Quinton helped himself to a handful of cookies and offered one to Cooper. ”Lots of older folks have memory issues. Mr. Crosby probably just forgot to go to bed and fell asleep in his chair. Why do you think he was drugged?”
Cooper lowered her voice even though Eugene was clearly absorbed in his comics. ”Fell asleep for twenty-four hours? No.” She shook her head. ”He was really upset about something that was taken from his house. I don't know what it was and he wasn't really making sense. He kept repeating how his secret had been stolen.”
Holding up a finger to stop Trish from interrupting, Cooper continued, ”It's clear that Mr. Crosby is wired differently than the rest of us, but he was thinking straight enough to be bothered that he had lost a whole day and that someone took an object from his bedroom.” She broke her cookie in half and stared at the crumbs on her lap. ”Brenda's delivered to this man before and she says he's never had problems with his memory. And I'm no doctor, but Mr. Crosby just acted, you know, doped.”
”I trust your instincts,” Nathan stated loyally. ”How did Brenda react?”
”She was amazing,” Cooper replied. ”She revived Mr. Crosby by tossing water in his face, changed his clothes, got his lunch ready, and tidied up the house within fifteen minutes. Thank G.o.d she was there.”
”Thank G.o.d is right,” Savannah agreed.
”She's also the one who suggested he'd been drugged and she was mighty mad about it,” Cooper added.
”So Brenda's probably innocent, unless she's a great actor,” Bryant said.
”I think we need to have a little chat with Lali,” Jake said, his strong arms folded across his chest. ”We gotta have all the facts if we're gonna be of any help to these folks.” He tossed a napkin into a garbage can several feet away. ”Time to storm the castle, folks. Who's with me?”
When Anita heard about the impromptu meeting between Lali and the Sunrise Bible study members, she insisted on being present. Cooper began by telling Lali about her delivery to Mr. Crosby and her concern that his physical condition was related to the thefts, and possibly the deaths, that had occurred with other Door-2-Door clients over the past few months. Of course, she also had to confess that she had inadvertently eavesdropped on two of Lali's conversations.
”I'm not concerned that you overheard us talking about the thefts,” Lali let Cooper off the hook gracefully. ”I'm concerned about Mr. Crosby. You say that the last thing he remembers is being visited by one of our volunteers?” Lali's dark eyes were liquid with worry.
”He remembers working a crossword in the newspaper as he waited for his lunch to be delivered,” Cooper replied. ”He doesn't actually recall eating lunch, but an empty tray was in his garbage can.”
”Maybe we should get a hold of that tray,” Savannah suggested softly. ”If something was mixed in his food . . .”
Lali covered her face with her hands. ”I just can't believe it!” She then pushed back a strand of glossy blue-black hair and smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt, as though gathering strength to face the truth. ”Okay. This is what's going to happen. Anita and I will contact one of our nurse pract.i.tioner volunteers and all three of us will visit Mr. Crosby this afternoon. If the medical professional believes Mr. Crosby was drugged, my next step will be to contact the police. I'm sure they'll know how to proceed.”
Jake, who restlessly drummed his fingers on the conference table, suddenly pushed his wheeled chair backward. ”This whole thing should be easy enough to deal with, ladies. Just find out who delivered Mr. Crosby's food yesterday and you've got your man.”
Lali shook her head. ”We can't accuse one of the volunteers without proof. Besides,” her voice grew heavy, ”the volunteer sign-up sheet from yesterday is gone. Someone took it or threw it out or who-knows-what.” She was clearly disturbed about the missing doc.u.ment. ”The bottom line is that it never got filed, so short of asking everyone who volunteers here, I have no record of who drove where.” She sighed. ”The Sat.u.r.day crew is fairly regular, but the weekday volunteers change all the time.”
”That's the truth,” Anita said. ”We'd be on the phone all day asking folks, and if someone was guilty, they wouldn't tell us what we'd want to know anyhow.”
”All I can do is review every detail with the police and allow them to conduct their investigation as they see fit. I'm sorry you've been exposed to all this.” She gestured at a handful of manila folders.
Anita rose and placed a protective hand on Lali's shoulder. ”Thank you all for coming to talk to us, but please don't repeat details about the missing items or Mr. Crosby's state of health to anyone. Every single one of our clients will suffer if we lose volunteers or if funding dries up because of harmful gossip. We hope to see you again next weekend.”
Her tone made it clear that the meeting was over, but as soon as the group stepped outside, Trish gestured for everyone to gather around her car.
”We're not going to spread rumors about what's happening here, but I don't think we should just drop the subject, either,” Trish declared firmly.
”Let's give the police the benefit of the doubt,” Savannah suggested. ”If there's any evidence of misconduct, they'll find it.”
”And if Lali still thinks the clients might be at risk, we could implement Plan B,” Nathan said.
”What's that?” Jake asked.
”Hosting a potluck,” Cooper replied. ”So we can get to know the volunteers working on Fridays and Sat.u.r.days better.”
”Excellent idea! I'll call around and see where we can rent a s.p.a.ce for our social event,” Trish offered. ”Just in case we need to throw this thing together at the last minute. I'm thinking one of the community centers would do nicely. After all,” she grimaced, ”I don't want a thief and potential murderer running around inside my house. See you in church tomorrow!”
As the Bible study members dispersed, Nathan walked Cooper to her truck.
He opened her door with a smile. ”So how's that pair of kittens we saved?”
”Grammy found homes for them right away.” Cooper avoided meeting his eyes, still mortified over how their last date had ended. ”A little girl down the road had to put her cat to sleep last month and she was feeling real lonely, so the timing couldn't have been better. 'Course, I don't know if the cats are going to be happy about being called Bella and Edward.”
Nathan laughed. ”You're always full of surprises! I'll see you in the morning.”
Cooper waved good-bye and then drove home in a funk. She knew Nathan was busy preparing the Big Man site for its upcoming launch, but she had wanted to return to the way she had felt during their last date before it had been interrupted by the discovery of the stray cats.