She didn’t acknowledge my existence, so I closed the distance and repeated myself. Still no response.
“Is she okay?” Addison asked, approaching the foot of the bed. “Should we get a nurse?”
Before I could answer, a nurse walked in. “Hello,” she said, eyeing us. She looked familiar, but she was older than me and I couldn’t remember her name.
“Hi. I’m Dylan James and this is Addison Allen.We’re here to interview Ms. Long about her stolen jewelry,” I explained.
“I heard you were back and poking around,” the nurse replied, elevating the upper portion of Ms. Long’s bed. “This one won’t be able to tell you much, though. Her dementia has taken a turn for the worse. She hasn’t done anything but mutter the past couple days.”
“What’s she saying?” Addison asked.
The nurse shrugged.“Hell if I know. Ms. Long, it’s Nurse Helen. I’m gonna give you your medicine now. I need you to take this all, okay?”
When Ms. Long didn’t answer, Helen took a bottle of pills out of her pocket, compared them with the bracelet around Ms. Long’s wrist, and popped the cap. Addison and I watched as she put two pills on the elderly woman’s tongue and helped her wash them down with a drink of water.Then she evened out the bed again and left.
“Now what?” Addison asked, looking at me.
My body had been tortured today, but I still had a little spirit left in me. Determined to kill it, I said, “Let’s go see Grandma.”
“Lead the way,” Addison said, and waved her hand toward the door.
“God, you two stink to high heaven,” Grandma said when we walked in. Then her eyes widened as she looked overAddison’s attire. “Is that one of those bondage get-ups? You know we don’t allow thatFifty Shades of Greybusiness here, right?”
“Grandma!” I gasped. “How do you know about Fifty Shades?”
Addison giggled.
“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad. You know I don’t read that filth. I caught Brandy watching the movie at the nurses’ station late one night. That girl.” She shook her head disapprovingly.“Scandalous. You know she won’t tell anyone who the father of her child is?”
“Brandy has a kid?” I asked.
“That explains those hips,” Addison mumbled.
“Yep. He’s almost a year old now. Rumor has it one of the town big shots is the father. Married, to boot. Figure he must be pretty well off to pay for her boob job.”
“Wait, Brandy got a boob job?”
“You really couldn’t tell?” Addison asked.“Honey, there’s no way those are real.”
I’m sure the two of them were only trying to be helpful, but conversations like this one had me seriously doubting my life choices. After all, what business did I have becoming a private investigator when I was apparently the least observant person on the planet?
“Any idea who Brandy’s baby-daddy is?” Addison asked, scooting closer to Grandma.
“I don’tlisten to gossips,” Grandma said. “But if I did...I’d bet it was either Dicky Jones or Marty Coldwell.”
My jaw dropped.
Addison read my expression and asked, “Should I know those names?”
“The first one’s the district attorney, and the second one’s the county judge,” I answered.
Addison whistled. “Dylan, your home town drama is soap opera quality.”
“You’re tellin’ me. Why do you think Ileft?” Then I remembered why we’d come to see Grandma in the first place. “Getting back to the subject at hand...we stopped in to see Ms. Long. What happened to her?”
Grandma’s eyes turned sorrowful. “Martha was doin’ well until about a month ago. Doc said the dementia got her. They been upping her prescriptions but if you ask me, they seem to be makin’ her worse.”
“It’s like everyone in herehas dementia,” Addison observed.
I filed that little piece of information away, thanked Grandma for her time, and Addison and I headed out. We had a lot of video footage to go over and I still needed that bath.
