man about anything on an empty stomach.
“I need your advice, Kenny,” she said. “Will you take a minute and listen?”
“You’ve got until I finish what’s on my plate and have seconds.”
“There’s peach cobbler, too, if you leave any room.”
“Peach cobbler? With vanilla ice cream?”
“Chocolate ripple, even better.”
“Shoot.” He frowned. “Maybe not the best choice, that word.” Then he shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “So, what’s up?”
She figured she had just witnessed a miracle. As always, Ken had been reminded of the man he killed. Probably almost everything reminded him. But he’d pushed it away. Maybe the man’s guardian angel had finally woken up from her nap and was seeing to business.
“Okay, there are a couple of things.” She split another biscuit and ladled gravy on top. “First, on the Herb front.”
“You all still looking?”
“We are. We got the name of the woman Herb left his wife for, back when he was still Clyde Franklin. Gloria Madsen.” Ken knew the Clyde/Herb part of the story, so she didn’t explain again.
“So you got a name. Anything else?”
“Not really. But I got the feeling she was some piece of work, you know? Kind of a tramp, not above stealing anything she could get her hands on.”
“So you’re hoping I’ll run her name and see what I can find out about her later years.”
“It’s a real long shot. But it’s all we got right now.”
“It’s no trouble. Just don’t go telling everybody and their grandma what I’m doing for you.” His green eyes had an affectionate gleam, as if he really wasn’t sorry to help.
“I’ll write down everything I found out, which was precious little. But with luck, maybe she robbed a bank.”
“That would be great, wouldn’t it? Maybe she murdered somebody, too, embezzled from a big oil company, even worked on Wall Street.”
Wanda put her hand to her chest. “Maybe she was one of the top dogs at Enron. Or…a politician.”
“I can hardly wait to get started.”
They smiled at each other.
“So what else?” He dished up a second helping that was as large as his first. He had lost weight in the last months. She thought he was on the road to gaining it back tonight.
“Well, the situation at Alice’s seems to be deteriorating.” She told him everything they knew, not leaving out a bit of it. “So we’d like your advice. There’s no good way to watch out for Alice. Lee keeps her shut up in that cottage like it was jail.”
“Could he be right? Does she need the rest and quiet?”
“You tell me, Kenny. She’s got friends. She knows we care about her, and she, well, blooms when she’s with us. Take that away, and is she going to be better off? Does that work, staying away from people you love?”
She hadn’t meant to talk about them, but all roads seemed to lead there.
“Not that well,” he said after a moment. “This Lee Symington might just be up to no good.”
“Like what?” Wanda said.
“Elder abuse. Not that rare, you know. Old people can be a whole lot of work and trouble. Even the best caretakers have bad days and lose their cool.”
“It’s not like he’s changing bedpans. She cooks their meals and cleans.”
“What do you think’s happening?”
“He handles her money. He claims she has very little, that her investments went south.”
“A lot of people’s did.”
“What if hers didn’t? What if he’s robbing her blind?”
“You’d need more to go on for an investigation.”
“And if anybody started coming around asking questions, Mr. Lee Symington would know what was up. And that would make all our lives miserable.”
“Something tells me you have an idea already, only you were hoping I’d come to it on my own.”
“Granny cam. Can we put one in there without them knowing about it? Tracy’s the landlady. Would she have cause?”
He didn’t laugh her off. He just looked as if he was thinking. “You can’t record what they’re saying. That’s against the law unless both parties agree. But there’s no law in Florida that says you can’t watch them anywhere there’s no expectation of privacy. No cameras in the bedroom or bathroom, in other words.”
“You mean, we really can do it?”
“Can, but are you sure you want to? What do you think it’ll tell you?”
Wanda thought about that over another chicken leg. “Well, it won’t tell us if he’s embezzling Alice’s money. I guess all it will tell us is whether he’s threatening her physically.”
“I’ll get you some information on hidden cameras. You’ll be surprised how sophisticated they are. Her house