Scarlet Nights: An Edilean Novel Read online

  So Mitzi had taken a job at a retirement home full of patients with relatives who paid a lot for the care they received. Maybe Mitzi had only been looking for jewelry, but she’d hit a gold mine with Prudence Walker.

  “After that night, Hazel and Prudence were best friends,” the nurse said. “For over a week, Hazel neglected all our other residents to spend time with Pru. I should have stopped it but things were so quiet here that I didn’t. I still didn’t realize it was Hazel causing the turmoil. I thought the peace was due to Pru staying in her room, so I was glad to spare Hazel’s work for that calm.”

  “What did they do?” Mike asked.

  “Talked. Pru’s door was kept closed, but we heard them chattering away endlessly. I know they read all the letters from your sister because we had to get the box out of storage.”

  “Did Hazel say what they were talking about?”

  “No, not really. Oh! Yes, I remember. One time at lunch she said that she found some little town fascinating. It had an unusual name.”

  “Edilean, Virginia.”

  “Yes! That’s it,” the nurse said.

  Mike figured that Hazel/Mitzi had read the letters to learn about Sara who, through her aunt’s will, owned the lost paintings. At the time the will was written, there’d only been the small watercolor of the purple ducks that hung on Sara’s wall. Mike wanted to kick himself for not paying attention when Sara told him that Stefan wanted that painting. At the time, Mike had been so enamored of Sara that he’d overlooked a clue that was right in front of him.

  “And my grandmother died a few days after the incident with the TV?”

  “Yes,” the nurse said. “She died in her sleep, and the next day a tearful Hazel quit. She said she couldn’t bear seeing the people she loved die.”

  Mike wasn’t sure—not yet anyway—but he thought Mitzi had probably murdered his grandmother. After Mitzi had obtained all the information she needed from Prudence, she got rid of her so she couldn’t tell anyone what had gone on between them.

  “Would you e-mail me a copy of Hazel’s employee photo?” Mike asked. “I’d like to see it.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Newland,” the nurse said. “And please keep me informed of what happens.”

  He told her he would, gave her his e-mail address, then hung up.

  Next, Mike called Tess and asked her to start the paperwork of exhuming their grandmother’s body. They needed physical proof that she’d been murdered. “And do you have any of the letters Grans sent you?”

  “All of them. I thought that someday you might want to see them.”

  “Not me, but if the letters mention a nurse named Hazel, the AG will be very interested.”

  If it could be proven that Hazel Smith was Mitzi Vandlo, and if the body showed evidence of foul play, it meant that she could be tried for murder. At last, Mizelli Vandlo would be charged with something more onerous than fraud.

  Minutes later, the nursing home e-mailed Hazel’s security photo to Mike’s phone. Curious, he studied the picture, noting the big nose and the small, lipless mouth. Mitzi wasn’t any better-looking now than she had been back in 1973 when she’d conned Marko Vandlo into making her his third wife. While it was interesting to see an older photo of the woman, he didn’t remember ever having seen her in Edilean. As he stared at the picture, he wondered what she’d look like if she finally had a nose job.

  He called Captain Erickson and quickly told him what he’d discovered and asked that the IT guys work on Mitzi’s photo. “I want to see what she’d look like if she had about half of that nose cut off. Maybe we’re seeing her every day and don’t realize it.”

  “We’ll get right on it, and, Mike, good work.”

  “Think it’s good enough to get me a desk job? My wife wants me to stay home.”

  Mike could almost see the captain smiling. “Yeah, I think we can arrange that. Along with a promotion and a pay raise.”

  Mike groaned. “Just don’t put me in charge of the rookies.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking of doing. I’ll send the photo as soon as the guys get it done.” He hung up.

  Mike got in his car and drove straight to the fairgrounds without bothering to shower and change. He’d been gone too long, so he knew Sara would start asking questions—and she’d see too much.

  “Poker face, Newland,” he said as he checked his mirrors, but no one was following him.

  It was hours after Mike left the apartment that Sara made her way through the crowded fairgrounds and walked into her mother’s tent. In front were long tables covered with produce and food the people who made up Armstrong’s Organic Foods had spent weeks preparing. This year Sara hadn’t helped, but next year she would. Maybe by the next fair she’d be expecting or would have a newborn in her arms. She and Mike hadn’t talked about children, but then, they hadn’t talked about much of anything serious—except the case.

  She brought herself out of her reverie to look around. Her mother and two sisters were inside the tent, all of them wearing the medieval costumes Sara had made for them in previous years. Sara’s had a dark green velvet bodice and a plaid skirt that was said to be the old McTern tartan. Her sisters wore blue and burgundy, and her mother’s costume was in shades of brown and yellow. “The colors of the earth,” she’d told her daughter when Sara made it.

  The inside of the tent was full of boxes and baskets of fruit. Coolers of cooked food were stacked high. Her mother said that even though it was a fair she refused to serve unhealthy food.

  “She just rolls the fruit in batter, deep fries it, then coats it with sugar,” her doctor-father said. “Perfectly healthy.”

  Sara thought she needed to send her father to Joce for a tarot card reading so he could hear what sarcasm really meant.

  Sara was still standing by the tent entrance when her mother, a crate of cantaloupes in her arms, saw her. She smiled, but that expression turned to a smirk when she saw the faint redness on her daughter’s neck. Sara had covered it with foundation and powder, but the red still showed.

  Ellie instantly knew what it was. “Ah, whisker burn. That takes me back. I remember the time your father and I—”

  “Mother, please!” Sara said.

  Laughing, Ellie left the tent.

  “Wait until you have your first kid,” her sister Jennifer said. “You’ll be totally grossed out by the stories she tells you.”

  “The sex sagas are my downfall,” Sara’s other sister, Taylor, said.

  “Dad delivering you on a mountaintop didn’t do you in?” Jennifer asked.

  “No. It was the details about Mom and Dad’s Scarlet Nights in Mexico. Even Gene turned red at that one.”

  Sara was blinking at her sisters. For the first time ever, they were talking to her as though she were, well, like she was a grown-up woman.

  Jennifer had a box of fruit pies in her hands, and she seemed to understand Sara’s puzzlement. “Didn’t you realize that Mother considers you a virgin until you’re married? That’s why she’s not told you any of her sex stories.” She left the tent.

  Taylor had three boxes of cookies. “You’re lucky to have evaded her spicy little tales for this long.” She followed her sister out.

  Sara stood looking after her two sisters in shock. She was still standing there when Mike came in.

  “Your mother sent me in here to get a couple bags of potatoes. And why the hell are your relatives asking me so many questions about my beard? I meant to shave, but—” Pausing, he looked at her. “Are you okay?”

  “My sisters were nice to me.”

  “Sisters are supposed to be nice.”

  “Not mine.”

  Mike picked up a fifty-pound bag, slung it over his left shoulder, then squatted down to get a second bag. When he had one over each shoulder, he walked back to Sara. “So what did they say to you?”

  “They said my mother is going to tell me sex stories.”

  “I know I didn’t grow up here, but, Sara, isn’t that a litt