“Does this mean you're going back to living a normal life?” Tess asked. “Rocking in your rocking chair and knitting little things for your great grandson?”
“My great grandson is already too big for little things. And the answer is, not quite. I still want to satisfy myself in one area. Who put the shellfish in the casserole and when did they do it?”
Tess sighed a long sigh and said, “I suppose you need my help.”
“I'd like to bounce some things off you. Could you get the pad you've been using to take notes on the case?”
Tess dutifully produced the lined, yellow pad and sat on her couch, ready to write.
I paced up and down her living room, trying to think. “Let's talk about the fire alarm because I have a feeling there is a link between that and the shellfish showing up in the casserole.”
“Unless Harriet put it in before she took it to the recreation room.”
“Okay, but let's not worry about that at the moment.” I didn't want to worry about it because I didn't know of any way of checking it. “First of all, how did the fire alarm get set off?”
“Carol said it was a false alarm. I guess we could ask her if she tracked it down.”
Talking to Carol was the last thing I wanted to do. “There are a number of fire alarm switches in the main building so it could have been set off at any one of them. By anybody. Including the person with the shellfish. You're still a member of the Housekeeping Committee, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Tess admitted.
“So you know Joe Turner.”
“Yes.”
“Could you talk to him about safety procedures? Ask him how the fire alarm system works and whether it's possible to tell which switch set it off.” I wanted to add that I would go with her to ogle Joe, but decided not to push my luck.
“You don't want much, do you? It's a good thing I like you.”
I stopped pacing and put a hand on Tess' shoulder. “You know you want to solve this as much as I do. I can tell you one thing. Ellen didn't set off the alarm. I remember I saw her using her cellular phone at the time the alarm went off.”
Albert was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, as my mother used to say. If you're not a farmer you don't want to know the story behind that saying. He had just come home from the university. I was making dinner, like a good housewife.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.
“I can't find Carol's beeper number,” he said. “I'm supposed to take her to the symphony tonight but we've called an emergency department meeting. She's not in her office and she's not at home.”
Of course I couldn't tell Albert about the suspicions Wesley and I had about Carol. I didn't want to be the one to do it, anyway, because he would say I was prejudiced against her. He would be right.
Albert doesn't have a pocket computer with names and phone numbers, or even an address book. He depends on slips of paper. He probably inherited his organizational skills from me, although I at least have an address book.
He finally found the correct slip sitting beside the kitchen telephone. I glanced over his shoulder at the paper as he punched in the number: 248-3186. I memorized it in my inimitable way: two, two-squared, two-cubed, the two lowest odd digits in descending sequence and the two highest even digits in descending sequence. After a pause I watched Albert punch in his home phone number and hang up. Five minutes later Carol called.
After a hasty dinner Albert dashed out, leaving me alone again. I washed and wiped the dishes, eschewing the use of Albert's dishwasher since there weren't many of them and I have never owned a dishwasher, myself. When I had finished I was faced with an evening with nothing special to do. In spite of making a show of moving ahead, with Tess and Wesley, I didn't have a plan for continuing the murder investigation.
I had possibly contributed to nailing Carol as an embezzler. I should be glad about that because with her gone I could probably return to Silver Acres. Still, it was too soon to award me a Nobel Prize for scam-busting. I pulled out my copy of Carol's code. Wesley had made his own copy on the machine at Silver Acres.
I looked at the number scribbled in the corner of the sheet. Was it a telephone number? I picked up the phone and punched it in. On the fourth ring I heard a hello from a voice I recognized. I waited for the hello to be repeated, to make sure. Then I hung up.
CHAPTER 25
The timing had to be perfect. I don't usually sweat very much, but my skin was clammy and I felt the kind of excitement I hadn't felt since riding on the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland many years before.
I waited outside the door to the recreation room as the bridge players strolled in. I greeted most of them. A few looked surprised to see me; Ellen didn't look at me at all. After she passed me and entered the room I surreptitiously followed her with my eyes. She picked up her table assignment from Wesley, just as we had planned, and went directly to her table. She placed her handbag on the seat of her chair, as was her custom, and stood talking to Ida, her partner.
I glanced at my watch; the time was three minutes past one. I got more nervous with each second. Maybe Tess couldn't be able to do her part. Wesley liked promptness, but he had said he would give me until five after one before he kicked off the activities.
It was important that we do this today because the bridge club had been cancelled for next week. The residents had received a notice that some renovation was going to take place in the room-something about the heating system. Joe must have been taking measurements for that last week.
I watched the minute hand creep around my watch dial. Four minutes past one. We would have to cancel the show for today. Like the king who wanted to control the tides, I wanted to control time. Then, just as the minute hand passed the six and started its inexorable climb toward the twelve my cell phone rang. Adrenaline surged through my body.
“Hello,” I said, softly, into the phone, my voice shaky. The noise of the talking inside the room and the fact that I stood outside drowned out the ring for the bridge players; only I had heard it.
“All systems go,” Tess said. She immediately hung up.
I walked into the recreation room and signaled Wesley, who was already looking at me, anxious to get started. He got everybody's attention by striking a coffee cup with a spoon and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Lillian has honored us by baking some of her famous apple pies. Let's enjoy them now while they are still warm.”
As I had anticipated, everybody moved toward the table on which the pies sat. They were purposely not sliced yet; Ellen, who had complimented my apple pie at our ill-fated lunch, grabbed a pie server. So far so good.
Nobody looked in my direction. Even so, I moved back outside the door and two steps down the hall so I was out of sight from the room. I punched Carol's beeper number into my phone. When the proper tone sounded I punched in the number from her code sheet. Then I quickly replaced the phone in my purse and entered the recreation room. I went to the table to help with the pies.
When a telephone rang a minute later I pretended to ignore it since it wasn't mine. Ellen raced over to her purse and pulled out her phone. I was close enough to hear her conversation.
“Hello…I didn't beep you…I don't know…I tell you I didn't do it…I won't…” She hung up without saying goodbye. She walked back to the pie table with a frown on her face.
“When Carol called Ellen in response to your beep she knew who she was calling,” Tess said. “She didn't hesitate or check to see whose number it was; she immediately called it. Her first words were, 'Why did you beep me?' She didn't even identify herself.”
“I'm glad I had you watching her. Was she suspicious when you barged into her office?”