“None at all.” Nan chuckled. “Just all of it.”
As it was, the three of them finished off the breakfast goodies, Doreen keeping Nan and Richie from sparring too much, and asked her to keep the animals at her little suite while Doreen talked to the residents. And then, with her list of names, Richie led Doreen to the common room and pointed out three of the people he’d mentioned. And Doreen headed to the first one, sat down beside Maude, and introduced herself.
The woman looked at her in delight. “Oh, I was so hoping you’d come,” she stated.
“And why is that?” Doreen asked cautiously, not sure, as these would all be questions about the rift between Maude and her grandmother.
“Because I don’t think you understand just how bad your grandmother is,” she snapped in a severe tone. “I really do think you need to smarten up to her ways.”
“Ah,” Doreen replied, as she massaged her temples, realizing just what her day would be like. “And I suppose you have some concrete evidence of some problems?”
“Oh, absolutely.” And then Maude went on a lengthy discourse of all the things that she had deemed to be wrong with Doreen’s grandmother. Not that there wasn’t something about her grandmother that rubbed others the wrong way because, of course, Doreen could see how her grandmother had probably irritated an awful lot of people. But it would be nice if somebody had more than just ill will involved.
By the time Doreen got through that diatribe with that Maude woman—and then the other two in that same common room—it was obvious that Nan was not well loved by any of them and that these three women were all best friends. When Doreen asked specifically about anybody hurting Nan and if they had seen anything, almost verbatim, the three of them basically said the same thing: that they hadn’t seen anything, but they did certainly understand the sentiment.
Her grandmother could be very irritating, and it was all they could do to stand to be in the same room with her. So, if somebody had hurt her grandmother, well, this trio certainly understood that. But, no, they hadn’t seen any likely suspects and hadn’t done it themselves.
As Doreen studied the three ladies, with their pencil-stick-thin arms and the frail looks to them overall, Doreen realized that, with her grandmother, if she had been sitting there quietly or even snoozing, could they have knocked out Nan? Granted, it’s not as if much strength was required, especially when the prey was just completely unaware. Plus, the EMTs and Mack had both confirmed that Nan had no defensive wounds.
Yet the thought of any of these three women doing something like that to Nan didn’t fit. And maybe it’s because they were so skinny and scrawny that it looked like they couldn’t lift even a poker to smack Nan over the head with or at least to hit her hard enough to render her unconscious.
Heads were still notoriously hard, even if they were on older people. By the time Doreen had finished talking to those three, she asked one of the ladies if she knew where to find Patsy Simmonds.
“Oh, Patsy.” She shuddered. “You should find her in the billiards room. As if there weren’t enough people here at Rosemoor who have problems, but we’ve got Patsy too.”
“And what’s the problem with Patsy?” Doreen asked.
“Everybody knows what girls like that are like,” she snapped, with an ugly sniff.
Doreen was fascinated at this insight into the small community where her grandmother lived because, of course, it was just a sample of what the real community, or rather the larger community, around Kelowna was like too. But it was a part of the community that Doreen rarely dealt with on this level.
As she wandered toward the pool table area, it took a bit to find it. But finally, after asking somebody else for assistance, she did. And there was, true enough, one little lady with—and then Doreen stopped, studied her, realized that she was lean and short, but the hat? The hat got to Doreen. It was like what she’d imagined a bookie hat would be, from the movies.
The woman looked up at Doreen, and Patsy’s gaze narrowed, as if seeing her as a mark, and she motioned Doreen into the room. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she said, “I’ll be gentle.”
At that, Doreen had to laugh. “Well, I won’t be playing with you,” she noted, “because I wouldn’t know one end of a stick to another.”
At that, the other woman rolled her eyes. “Wow. How is it nobody has anything to do with the best sport in the world?”
“It’s not anything I was ever exposed to growing up,” she replied honestly. “And, by the same token, some things are just, you know, easier for others than what we would expect.”
The woman looked startled and then shrugged. “Life’s what you make it, but you’re probably too young to understand that.”
She winced. “Maybe. But believe me, I’m getting older by the day.”
And, for some reason, that struck the other woman as absolutely hilarious. And she went off in peals of laughter. “Oh my, you’re a pistol, aren’t you?”
Another phrase Doreen had never really understood. “I’m Nan’s granddaughter.”
At that, the other woman nodded. “Of course you are. I heard you were out wandering around, talking to people.”
“Somebody did attack her,” she noted gently. “So obviously I want to find out who did.”
“And what will you do then?” she asked, eyeing her carefully. “Because, you know, this place is full of misfits.”
“Until yesterday, I hadn’t realized just how much that was true,” she admitted. “I would like to think that my grandmother is safe here.”
“Ah.” Patsy nodded. “Well, I hadn’t considered that, but she’s as safe as the rest of us.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Well, if somebody was trying to hurt her, they could have done it in many ways. So you have to look at the why of the timing and the why of the location.”
“Well, the location’s because it was private, and nobody would see the attack. But anybody could have seen her attacker coming and going.”
“Not really,” Patsy replied, “because the other thing about Nan’s place is, she has a ground-level patio, and they could have just stepped onto the patio, hit her, and left.”
At that, Doreen looked at her in astonishment, and then a knowing gaze came into her eyes. “You know something? Now that makes more sense. I couldn’t quite figure out how anybody or why anybody would bother doing that because surely, with everybody wandering up and down the hallways at all hours of the night and day, surely the person would have been seen. But what you’re saying is that an outsider had a great getaway.”
“So, in that case, I revise my opinion. You’re not as dumb as you look.” And having delivered that coup, she returned to her pool stick and the balls on the table.
“So does that mean you have any idea who might have done it?”
“Nope, sure don’t,” she said cheerfully. “If you’re looking to see if I did, I don’t have any reason to.”
“I heard that you and my grandmother don’t always get along,” she noted cautiously.
“In a place like this, nobody always gets along.” She gave a shrug of her shoulder. “Cramped surroundings, not enough air for a lot of us to breathe all the time,” she explained. “Lots of personalities coming and going—some of them, ones who you wish would go—but it’s always the good ones who seem to go early,” she muttered. “And that’s just too bad. But, for the rest of us, we’re here for the duration. This is a one-way portal here.” She put down her stick and stared at Doreen. “And you have to remember. All of us know that. We don’t get out of here. This is a life sentence.”