He cleared his throat, confused. What the hell was happening? Couldallthis food be laced with laxatives? “This is very—”
“Oh, shoot,” she said, her hands on her hips. “I forgot the shortbread! If you could give me one minute.” She was already shuffling his way, moving in the same path around Donny’s things that he’d taken, only she didn’t seem to have to think about it at all. “I’ll be right back. Marian, start telling him about the bathroom faucet!”
Then it was quiet again, he and a stranger named Marian Goodnight staring at each other across a countertop of casseroles and the width of an apartment he thought no one wanted him in.
“Mrs. Goodnight,” he said. “It’s nice to mee—”
“I’d sure like to know how you got that permit so fast,” she said, abandoning the fussing she’d been doing with the food. She had a voice like his third-grade teacher—loud, insistent, permanently disappointed. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows over the gold frames of her glasses.
For a second, he raised his hand to his face, as though to push up his own, but then he remembered he hadn’t worn them.
Which was a choice that had nothing to do with Nora.
Honestly, the look Marian Goodnight was giving him was pretty intimidating, but it was at least less confusing than the meal delivery. Clearly there was a good cop/bad cop situation playing out here, so he relaxed his shoulders, tucked his hands into his pockets, and prepared for battle.
“I know someone,” he said, smiling.
Marian narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s Chicago for you, isn’t it? Who’d you have to murder?”
He blinked. “What? No one.”
She looked him up and down, her lip curling. “It’d be easy for you, probably. You and all your . . .medicines.”
Man! This lady was mean. He sort of liked it.
“I have not murdered anyone.”
She sniffed. “We’ll see.”
He pressed his lips together, though he wasn’t sure why being accused of a felony made him want to laugh for the first time today. Either way, whatever Mrs. Salas had meant about the bathroom faucet was information that was not going to be forthcoming, because Mrs. Goodnight went back to completely ignoring him, opening Donny’s fridge and refilling shelves that Will had only finished cleaning out a half hour ago.
Within minutes it was perfume and chat again, Mrs. Salas back with a tin of what she told him were mantecaditos, the lid already off when she’d walked back through the door. “Have one,” she’d said, practically shoving a cookie into his face, and he wondered if maybe he was about to get murdered.
But as he chewed it—crisp and buttery, and not a bad way to go, if it came to it—he started to realize something else was afoot.
Mrs. Salas didn’t just have ten thousand pounds of food; she also had ten thousand questions and ten thousand topics of conversation. She had to know what kind of doctor he was and what hospital he worked at and whether he’d ever watched a show about a dermatologist who pops pimples all day. She had to show him the leaky bathroom faucet, the one Donny had reported at the last building meeting he’d been to, and the one that Will would need to reschedule the plumber for. She had to tell him about the tiny storage door in the front bedroom closet, in case he hadn’t found it himself yet. She had to ask if he’d found a pair of red-handled scissors she’d let Donny borrow last month, or if he’d want a box of Donny’s mail she’d been keeping.
No, this wasn’t murder.
This was something more . . . complicated.
This was filling up Donny’s apartment with things, when he’d come to clean it out.
This was filling up Will’s time with conversation, when he’d come to be quick.
This wasn’t easy.
This was sabotage.
It didn’t stop with the food.
Barely a half hour after his first guests left, there was a knock at the door, and this time, it was drink.
Homemade drink, to be specific, made by a middle-aged man named Benny who lived on the second floor and had a small home-brew operation. He brought Will a growler of something called American Wheat Ale, along with a special glass for Will to try it in. Food eventually got involved again, because Benny had heard that Marian made a potato casserole, and would Will mind if he had a few bites? Ten minutes later Benny was sitting in Donny’s brown recliner with a plate of cheesy bacon potatoes and then the husband of Mrs. Salas arrived, and wouldn’t you know he’d like a few of those mantecaditos? But he also had something to drop off, a handheld vacuum cleaner of Donny’s that he’d repaired, and sorry for Will’s loss, a real shame for everyone, but this handheld was now as good as new, and he’d leave it right there on the coffee table if that was all right.
Will thought he caught a break in the late afternoon, a lull that lasted almost a whole hour, but when there was another soft tap on the door he had to bite his cheek so he wouldn’t shout in frustration. For once, there was no one on the threshold, but there were three houseplants, one with a note tucked between its fat, bright green leaves.Dear Dr. Sterling, it read, in a tiny, neat cursive.I took these from your uncle’s apartment after he passed and have looked after them since. I have written instruction cards for each one, and taped them to the pots. I hope they will thrive in your care. In sympathy, Emily Goodnight.
A third-string player, obviously, since she could’ve taken up a ton of his time delivering those instructions with the same kind of robust, detail-driven attack all the other residents had arrived with. He’d never had a houseplant in his life, and also took ludicrous offense at the fact that Donny had. He was already thinking about people at work he could hand them off to, but before he’d gotten the last one inside he heard the sound of footsteps in the stairwell.
