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Chapter 12
I walked home early that afternoon, too exhausted to spend one more hour in the funeral home. With the exciting discoveries about Anita's body, Patty Goyle seemed to have forgotten her fury at my decision to decline the position of permanent funeral director. I didn't tell her about my response to Herbert Plott. I simply allowed her to assume that he had convinced me to accept the offer.
I took the long way home and passed the school. Jeffrey hung from the monkey bars on the playground with another boy pulling on his legs. When I called his name his face lit up, and he released one hand and waved at me. Immediately he lost his grip on the bar and tumbled to the ground on top of the other boy's head. The girls were playing jump rope, and a few were seated on the ground in a circle, whispering secrets. Other children were competing to see who could go highest on the swing set. The world seemed right. I wanted to forget Anita Wagner and think about my grandchildren playing, think about Beau eating cucumber slices with that silly look on his face, think about Karen healing from her cancer.
When I walked in the door I heard her voice talking to someone upstairs. She must've heard the stairs creak as I walked up, because I heard her say, “Okay, honey. I love you too. See you soon!” Click.
Karen was tucked into bed with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts. There were crumbs on her nightgown.
“Was that breakfast or lunch?” I asked.
“Both,” she said smugly.
In my mind I was shaking my head and telling her how important it was to eat healthily, but I was learning to keep my opinions to myself. Instead I asked, “Who was that on the phone?” I assumed it was Rick.
“Daddy.”
“Daddy?” I retorted. So much for keeping my opinions to myself. “Is he coming here?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You said, 'See you soon.' So either he's coming here or you're going there. And I assume you're not hoofing it to Atlanta.”
Karen sighed a long, weary sigh. “He wants to come here, Mom. He wants to come for a visit to see the kids.”
I sat on the bed. It creaked. Beau slinked out from under the bed and jumped onto the comforter. I lifted the lid of the donut box, hoping for a chocolate-covered glazed one. The only two left were a French cruller and one with colored sprinkles on top. I frowned.
“Why do we buy these kinds? Nobody likes them.”
“The boys like the sprinkles,” she said. She picked up the cruller. My face fell.
“Uh, Karen! Really?!” Donut-stealing was the straw that broke my camel's back today.
She laughed. “Just joking, Mom. You can have it.” Beau sniffed it as she passed it to me.
“Well,” I mumbled between mouthfuls, “If your daddy comes to visit, I'd prefer to stay in a motel somewhere.” I fixed my beady eyes on her and added, “Or I can just sleep in the morgue.”
“Mom!”
“My turn to joke. But seriously, I'll stay somewhere else. I'm never sharing a bathroom with that man again.”
“Understood.” She nibbled on the crumbs in the donut box. So did Beau. “Besides, I don't think he'll come. He's threatened to about half a dozen times, and he's never done it.”
“Yeah, but I wasn't here before,” I replied, “and he might do it just to irritate me.”
“True.” Karen lay back on her pillows. Beau licked her hand and she didn't seem to mind. “So, how's the case of Anita Wagner going?” She was gloating that she'd discovered the identify of the body in my morgue.
“How'd you find out? It's not in the papers yet.”
“I know,” she answered, “and I wondered why. But I heard from a friend I used to teach with. Her sister has a friend who waits tables at the Stop-and-Go Diner. I think it's all over town.”
“Prob'ly so.” I polished off my cruller and wished for another. “It's fine. Not an easy situation with the family. She's supposed to be cremated, but --” I paused. “Her husband's not home yet. Not that that matters much.” I shrugged. “I still have a few loose ends to tie up.”
“Loose ends?”
“Well, for starters, I'd like to contact her family. I've only had one disturbing conversation with her husband, and a couple of equally disturbing conversations with her niece. She has a sister, a mother, and at least one cousin.” Then an idea occurred to me. “Speaking of which,” I asked Karen, “have you ever heard of the Gillespie family, here in town. Older couple who are now deceased, but there was a niece who lived here too. The Gillespies adopted Anita Wagner. I'd like to track down any family that live in Peace Valley.”
Karen's face took on a puzzled look, and then she said, “Actually, I think I do. Maybe. I was in a cancer support group for a while in the winter, over at the hospital in Clinton. I stopped going because it was too far to drive. But there was a lady in the group called Bobbie,” she said.
“Bobbie?”
“Yeah. Not sure what it's short for. Barbara maybe? Anyway, she mentioned once that she'd lived in Peace Valley, and she mentioned a family called Gillespie. But it might not be the same woman you're looking for.”
“But it might be.” I nodded. “What was her last name?”
“I don't know. We didn't give last names.”
“Oh, good grief.”
Karen stretched. “You should ask around town, Mom. Somebody's bound to know a woman named Bobbie.” She shoved the covers off. “Get up. I'm sore staying in bed all day. You wanna go somewhere?”
I was exhausted. But my daughter the cancer patient wanted to go somewhere with me. You don't turn that down.
“Sure! What'ya want to do? Get our toe nails done?”
She thought for a second. “Yeah, that sounds good. There's a salon over near the highway.” She stretched again. “I feel awful.”
“You need vegetables.”
“Yeah, probably. I also need to brush my teeth,” she said. “Ghastly breath.”
The Beauty You Nail Salon was a tiny place with one hair stylist, one nail technician, and one bossy man bustling around. They had two functioning massage chairs. Karen and I slid our crusty feet into the warm water, said “Ah!,” and squeezed each others' hands.
I was just drifting off into never-never land when Karen interrupted me.
“Psst!” she said.
“What?”
“You could ask them!” she whispered. The water gurgled in the foot basins, and some tinny Asian background music played softly, but otherwise the salon was silent as the tomb.
“Ask them what?”
“About Bobbie, of course,” she replied. “Maybe they know her.”
I stared at her incredulously. Really? A few folks from Thailand who don't speak English? Why would they know the mysterious Bobbie?
“Oh, all right,” Karen said. “I'll ask them.” So she did.
“'Scuse me, please?”
The woman looked up from scrubbing the bottom of Karen's left foot.
“Do you know a woman in town, in Peace Valley, named Bobbie?”
The woman tilted her head. “Boe Bee?”
“Bobbie. Yes. Do you know anyone called that? A woman?”
A smile spread across the woman's face. “Ah! Bah Bee! Yes, I know Bah Bee! She like gel nails. She come here for hair too. High light!” Then the woman's face fell and great sadness spread across it. “Except not now. Now no hair. Very sad.”
Karen nodded and looked at me. “She's lost her hair from the chemo. Yep, must be her!”
Karen spoke to the woman again. “Bobbie is a friend of mine. I have cancer too – sick too,” and she spoke a little louder as people do when trying to communicate with difficulty. “I want to find Bobbie. Do you know where she lives? Do you know her last name?”
The woman paused in mid-scrub. “Name. Last name … is … Deck Son.” She nodded. “Yes, Deck Son. Bah Bee Deck Son.”
Karen and I looked at each other. “There you go,” she said. “Easy Peasy. Now you gotta go find Bobbie Deckson, wherever she is.”
Copyrighted by M.K. Christiansen
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