Witt’s mother sat, smoothed her thrift-shop-new, flower-print dress down over her knees, then sipped delicately at her thimbleful of sherry. “Yes,” she went on as if there’d been no break in the conversation, “what happened to that dear girl was a terrible shock.”
Murder. Terra firma at last, something Max could talk about without sinking into quicksand. “Did you know Bethany well?”
“Goodness no. I saw her the day she moved in, about two years ago, after some sort of terrible family tragedy, and today, the day she moved out.” She widened her Witt-like eyes. “If you could call being rolled away on a gurney a form of moving out.” Not that Ladybird Long had actually seen that. The detectives were still taking pictures, making chalk marks, or whatever detectives did and would probably be doing well into the night before Bethany Spring’s body was removed.
“Did she work nights or something?” Max asked to draw Ladybird out, though reticence didn’t seem to be one of the woman’s problems. She certainly didn’t have Witt’s penchant for shortened speech.
“No, no, no, she never, absolutely never, left the house at all. She had her groceries delivered, her mail dropped through the slot in the door, a gardener to trim her hedges. She didn’t even come out to call the cat. There’s that hinged cat door in the back. Of course, she had that courier boy, too. I believe she ran a courier service for housebound people.”
“Appropriate under the circumstances,” Witt muttered.
Max was agog. “Never? How could someone never go out?” The idea was amazing, frightening, even a little inviting. Too inviting. Cameron did say she was well on her way to being a recluse.
Ladybird warmed to the topic. “I asked myself that, too. I thought people died if they didn’t get sunshine. In fact, I believe I heard that on Maury Povich the other day.”
Max almost clapped. She’d been right. Ladybird probably never missed a day of him.
She had better things to talk about than Ladybird’s TV habits. Bethany Spring had certainly died, but lack of UV rays hadn’t been the culprit. Someone else had helped her to her final end. Someone she knew? “Who was the woman that found her? I think she must have lived on the other side of the duplex.”
Witt sat back in his chair, resting his beer on the arm, his gaze flicking between his mother and Max. She couldn’t be sure whether approval or forbearance sat on his lips.
“The woman who found her? Oh yes, the sister. Let’s see, her name is ...”
“Jada,” Witt supplied.
“Yes, Jada. She’s not very talkative. I think she’s afraid of old people. You know, fear of death”—her hands fluttered in the air—“that kind of thing.”
Fear of death? The girl, or woman, was on the verge of death herself if she didn’t gain a few pounds—nix that, a lot of pounds. She could have been an extra in a holocaust documentary.
Max didn’t ask how Ladybird knew all this, if Jada wasn’t prone to lengthy conversations with elderly neighbors. “So the two sisters each had a side of the duplex?”
Ladybird shook her head, a quick burst of energy that must have jiggled her brains. “Jada lives with the mother. Let’s see, her name is ...”
“Virginia,” Witt again provided, moving nothing but his lips.
His mother beamed. “You’re so good with names, my little sweetie-boy.”
Sweetie-boy? Max stared. Witt’s face didn’t even change color. He turned slightly, enough to look at her, then blew her a kiss. She didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, run screaming from the house, or jump his bones the minute they were alone.
His mother didn’t notice. “Yes, Virginia is her name.” She wrinkled her nose as if she smelled bad fish. “Never liked that woman.”
“You never liked Jada either, that’s why you conveniently forget their names.”
Max didn’t like the way he said the skinny waif’s name, nor the easy familiarity or the remembered touch of his hand on the ratty girl’s arm. She didn’t like the idea that maybe he’d known her before today, maybe he talked with her over the fence as he washed his mother’s shrubs ...
She definitely didn’t like the way those wayward thoughts crept in as if they were her own. Which they weren’t. Jealous and possessive she was not. That was Bethany Spring’s MO.
Max’s stomach rumbled again. She covered the sound with a polite cough, hand over mouth.
Ladybird went on, a finger to her lips. “I wouldn’t say I didn’t like them. The constant arguing just frazzled my nerves.”
Witt’s ears perked up like a dog’s, but Max asked the question. “Who was arguing with whom, and what did they argue about?”
Ladybird raised a brow, and there was no mistaking whose mother she was. “Quite the little detective, aren’t you? Witt said you were always sticking your nose where—”
“Mother.”
Mrs. Long turned, chin in the air. “She has a perfect right to know what you say about her, DeWitt.”
Max glared. “Yes, Detective, I have a perfect right.”
The poor man rolled his eyes and sighed. “The arguments, Mom.”
“Well, I didn’t really listen—”