Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (35 page)

“She said she’d be glad to do it,”
he
said, startling
her
.
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized he’d come back into the room.

“
That’s
great
.
Tell Olivia I owe her one,”
she
said
.
“Thank you.”

He
grinned sheepishly
.
“Anything I can ever do for you, you just ask me,” he said, wringing the dishtowel in his hands
.
“You can always count on me.”

“I appreciate that
.
Thanks again
.
Well,” she said, turning toward the door, “time to go to work
.
I’d better hurry.
I don’t want to be late my second day.”

“Oh,
could you wait one second?” He
hurried
across the room and
came back with a postcard in his hand. “
I almost forgot to give you this,”
he said, reaching out and
handing it to
her
. “There were two of these in
the mail the other day
. I guess I picked up yours by mistake.
I’ve been meaning to give it to you.
”

She
took the card and, assuming that it was
junk mail,
an advertisement
of some sort
or
more
voting information, she dropped it into her purse. “Thank you
, Lawrence
. You’re an angel.”

As
she
pulled the door shut behind her, she didn’t hear
him
whisper, “No, Annie, you’re the angel.”

Chapter 3
4

OLIVIA GRABBED HOLD OF THE RAILS
on each side of the bathtub and hoisted herself up so that she was sitting on the platform
,
which
she’d had built years ago
.
Only her feet and
the calves of her
legs remained in the water
.
For the next
couple of
minutes, she sat there, thinking about the trips to Lake Cumberland with her father when she was a little girl
.
She remembered how she would
take off her shoes and socks,
roll her pant legs up to her knees and sit on the edge of the dock, dangling her feet in the cool water
.

Those were wonderful times, she thought
.
Every summer, Papa would rent the same cabin and we’d spend days, just the two of us, fishing, swimming and hiking
.
She smiled
.
We used to go for long walks through the woods and Papa would tell me stories of when he was a boy
.
I especially enjoyed hearing about
how he spent every summer
staying
with relatives in
Dresden,
Germany
, where
my
great-grandparents were born
, where our roots were
.

Her father had told her that, at one time, Dresden was referred to as “the Florence on the
Elbe” because it was one of the world’s most beautiful cities owing to its architecture and art treasures.
His descriptions of the picturesque town
,
which was located in a valley on the left bank of the Elbe River, of the Ore Mountains, looming
in the distance
to the north of the city and of Dresden Castle, were
so vivid that he
made them come alive for
me
, she remembered. A
lthough I’
d
never been there, I felt like I had.
I always dreamed of going
one
day
, she thought
,
but I had to wait
because Papa had promised to take me when I was older
. So, every year, we went to the cabin.

That’s when he taught me to shoot, she remembered, picturing the empty tin cans her
father had lined up on the stone wall at the rear of the property
.
She could almost hear his voice, “Now, Livvy, plant your feet firmly,” he would say
.
“
Gut! Now s
quare off your shoulders, extend your arms
and take a deep breath
.
Und
squeeze
the trigger
.”
I actually got to be pretty good, she thought
.
Papa was a good teacher
.
We had so much fun together back then
.

She
sighed
.
Come on, old girl, she told herself,
time to get a move on. S
he used both hands to lift first one leg and then the other over the side of the tub
.
Those days are gone, she thought, remembering how, after her accident,
so much
had changed
.
Papa and I never went
to the lake again
and my dream of visiting Dresden never came to pass
.
She reached for a towel and quickly dried herself
.
As she struggled to put on her long terry cloth robe and cinch it around her waist, she called out to Lawrence.

Within seconds, he was there
.
He pulled the stopper up to let the bathtub drain and carried
her
to her wheelchair just outside the bathroom door
.
“I think you’d better go on a diet,” he said as he lowered her into the chair
.

It was their standard joke. As always, she replied, “No, I think maybe you better start
working out.”

“Yeah. Right,” he replied, grinning. He turned to go back into the bathroom to clean the
tub and straighten up.

She
wheeled herself to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. I don’t know what
I’d do
without him, she thought. Lawrence is such a good son. How many mothers are as lucky as I am?

As she brushed her long, white hair, she admired the fragile porcelain
figurine
s
, produced near Dresden, Germany in the
early to
mid 1800’s,
which
decorated the shelves on both sides of her vanity mirror.
Each
lady
was
enclosed in a glass case to protect the delicate
lace
adorning
her
fancy
,
crinoline dress
.
More remnants of the past, she thought
,
as she
finished brushing
her hair
and twisted it into a roll
, securing it
with a large silver barrette high on the back of her head
.
Then, she
rummaged
through
her dresser drawers
until she
found the clothes she wanted to wear
.
It took her several minutes to get dressed.

When she finally came out of the bedroom,
she
remembered Ann’s visit and the fact that she had agreed to give candy to the trick-or-treaters
that night
.
Oh no, she thought, Tina was going to do the séance tonight
.
How could I have forgotten that
?
I’ve been looking forward to talking to Jeremy for so long
.

Lately, though, she realized, I’m starting to be a little skeptical
.
I wonder if Tina might be taking advantage of me, stringing me along
.
I‘ve paid out an awful lot of money to her and she still hasn’t contacted Jeremy
.
It’s taken her a long time to
“get to know you better so that I can be more
in
tune
with
your
spirit,” as she
told me
.
What if she’s a fake
?
What if I’ve spent all this time and money for nothing? She sighed.
Oh well,
she thought,
I promised Ann that I’d give out the candy
tonight
and that’s what I intend to do
.
A promise is a promise
.
I’ll have to call and cancel the séance
.
I can always reschedule the appointment, if I decide to
.
I think I would like to give Tina one more chance
.
I’m not ready to give up on contacting Jeremy yet.

She rolled her wheelchair into the living room and went straight to the phone. Lawrence was
lying on the sofa, reading the newspaper
.
Briefly
, she considered asking him to give out the candy but then she remembered his plans for the weekend
.
No, I can’t take that away from him, she thought
.
Going to those coin conventions a few times a year is about all he really has to look forward to.

She picked up the receiver and dialed.

* * * *

Lawrence pretended to read the newspaper as he listened to his mother’s end of the
conversation with her psychic
.
So, David won’t be home tonight, he thought, rubbing his chin
.
That means that Annie and the kids will be home alone
.
This could be the perfect
chance
for me to get close to her
.
Maybe she’s so fed up and angry with him that she’ll look at me in a new
light. Maybe she’ll realize that I’d be a much better husband to her than David is.
Maybe I can convince her that that’s true.
As Olivia hung
up the phone, he sat up on the sofa and turned to face her.

“
Why
don’t you call Tina back and tell her you’ll do the séance tonight?”
he
asked
.
“I can skip the convention
.
It’s no big deal.
There’l
l be another one in a
few
months.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, son
.
I won’t ask you to do that
.
It’ll be good for you to get away for a couple of days
, talk to other people, see different sights, do something for yourself for a change.
You work so hard around here.
You deserve a break from your old mother
.
Anyway
, I really didn’t care for Tina’s attitude and her tone of voice when I told her
.
Actually, she was downright rude
.
‘A little more notice would have been nice, Olivia
.
I cancelled other plans to do this for you, Olivia.’”

“Is that why you didn’t reschedule for another night?”
he
asked.

“It is,” she replied, nodding her head. “And, I’m starting to wonder how good Tina really is.
I’m beginning to think she might just be a gold digger and I don’t want to be one of
those
naïve
old women that you read about in the paper who falls victim to some con artist’s
scam and loses all her money
.
You know what they say, ‘there’s no fool like an old fool.’”

“No one in their right mind would call you ‘an old fool
,’”
he
said, grinning, “so, if you want to do the séance, you should do it
.”

She
smiled
.
“No
.
The more I think about it, it might be a good idea for me to do a little checking up on Ms. Butreaux before I schedule anything else with her
.
I should have done it in the first place
.
Oh well, live and learn, I guess.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” her son said, “but, if you change your mind, I’d be more than happy to stay home.”

He
picked up his newspaper and held it up in front of him, once again pretending
to
read
.
I guess that’s that, he thought
.
He knew from the expression on his mother’s face that
there was no use pushing the issue any further;
she wasn’t about to change her mind
.