“Oh no, no, no. You can take the bags out of the basket for me and put them on the counter.”
Max emptied the basket, watching Ladybird from the corner of her eye for evidence of massive bleeding. The chopping done, Ladybird held each piece in succession between her palms. No wonder she called them thin-sliced; she mashed them down to size.
“Now you can unpack everything. If you wouldn’t mind, of course. I have to thaw the bread.”
Max did so. Three boxes of All-Bran Cereal. Three bags of dried prunes. Two bottles of prune juice and one of powder laxative.
“Must keep regular, you know,” Ladybird commentated.
Two Salisbury steak TV dinners. Two Mexican burrito. Two chicken pot pies. Four Hungryman turkey dinners.
“Witt likes turkey the best,” Ladybird went on, setting down a piece of bread and picking up another.
In the next bag lay the tomatoes, a resealable plastic sack of baby carrots, four overripe bananas, and five extra vegetable bags.
“You never can tell when you’re going to need extra bags, my dear. You can put them in that bottom drawer.”
Max pulled out the indicated drawer. It was crammed with neatly folded bits of aluminum foil, wax paper, plastic bags, and the trays meat came packaged in.
“Those are good for packing tarts and cupcakes for the church bake sale.”
Max eyed the empty baby wipe boxes.
“I sometimes like to eat my lunch in the park, and you can fit a sandwich, an apple, and a cookie all in that one little box. So convenient. You can put the plastic grocery bags in there.”
With her chin, Ladybird indicated a brightly colored fabric tube with identical bags sticking out the end. Max gathered the empties and shoved them into the tube.
“Thank you. You’re such a good girl. Witt always tells me I’m harboring dreaded diseases by keeping that stuff around, but I do wash them after each use, you know.”
Thank God. Max had been a bit worried. “I have full confidence in you, Ladybird.”
The little woman set the last piece of semi-thawed bread on the counter and opened the cupboard above her for the canned salmon. The top two shelves, which were out of her reach, were empty. “You’re nothing like Witt’s first wife, you know.”
The hackles on Max’s neck rose, and for a person not usually at a loss for words, she hadn’t a clue what to say.
“She would never have put away my grocery bags. She’d have thrown them out. Such a waste. She even wanted Witt to put me in an old folk’s home. Can you imagine?”
Ladybird reached into a drawer for the can opener, flexed her fingers, then started to undo the can, pinching her lips with the effort.
“I can do that while you cut the cucumber and tomatoes,” Max offered.
Ladybird beamed. “Oh, thank you again. It’s the arthritis. To think that bitch used my poor joints as an excuse to try to—” She stopped when she saw that Max’s jaw had almost hit the countertop at the sound of that word. “Well, she was a b-i-t-c-h, you know. Witt and I have called her that for so long, I can’t even remember her real name any more. Debbie or Daisy or Doodoo or something.” She waved a hand. “You’d call her a bitch, too, if you met her.”
Max was sure she would. She already had a low opinion of Debbie Doodoo. However, there was something a bit unnerving about such a tiny, grandmotherly lady using bitch so easily.
Together they made the small snacks and carried them to the table where Ladybird proceeded to slice the crusts off and cut the sandwiches in quarters while she prattled on about Witt’s ex. It was a most delightful one-sided conversation which, Max decided, she’d be sure to needle Witt with at the first opportunity.
“She wanted him to become a lawyer. More money. The way that woman spent money, he’d have needed it.” Ladybird gestured wildly with the knife in her hands, scaring the bejesus out of Max, who leaned to the side in the nick of time. “She said a lot of police officers made the transition. She just didn’t know that Witt hates school. Always has. It was enough to get himself through junior college and the police academy. Oh my, all those years of classrooms to be a lawyer? He’d have ended up blowing her away with an AK47 before he ever passed the Bar.”
In mid-bite, Max almost choked. Ladybird thankfully put the knife down and went on as if nothing had happened.
“It’s not that he’s not smart. He’s quite the scholar actually, reads and reads, knows something about everything. He just hates being confined inside all the time.”
Max remembered all those bookshelves in Witt’s house. Though with all the other things on her mind at the time—like solving a murder—she hadn’t had time to peruse the contents.