The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,47
old woman who wants a little attention.”
She looked him in the eye. “Thank you for your time, Detective. I’m sorry if I seemed upset. It has been a difficult day.”
She turned and walked quickly away. Gil watched her get into her car and leave. He felt like he had just lost an argument with his wife.
Lucy left the police station and drove straight back to Scanner Lady’s house. The yellow crime-scene tape fought against the wind. The deputy posted at the front door looked bored as he talked on his cell phone. Lucy parked down the street and walked to the house next door to Scanner Lady’s. She knocked and an old face peered out the front door.
“Hi. You’re Claire Schoen, right?” Lucy asked. She had called the newspaper and gotten one of the interns to look up Mrs. Schoen’s name in the cross directory, where all you needed was the address or phone number and got the resident’s name. “My name’s Lucy Newroe. I was one of the medics who came to help your friend Mrs. Burke.” Lucy felt her name being chiseled on some gravestone in hell. An hour ago she’d been ready to tell Gerald that she was quitting the fire department, and now she was using it to con an old lady.
“Oh, yes,” Claire Schoen murmured as she opened the door wider, letting Lucy into a living room designed in Southwestern Tourist Shop—pink, howling coyote bookends and a kiva. Lucy counted seven chile ristras hanging from the ceiling. A fake Navajo rug on the wall clashed with the geometric designs on the couch. Lucy thought the color of the brown carpet probably was called cinnamon mesa or chocolate petroglyph.
Mrs. Schoen blended into the scene with her cowboy boots, broom skirt, and checkered vest. An elderly Dale Evans. With a touch of alcohol on her breath and smeared, bright pink lipstick. Old-lady-colored lipstick.
They sat down on the geometric couch with Mrs. Schoen twisting a Kleenex in her hands and occasionally dabbing at her eyes. Lucy guessed her to be about seventy. Mrs. Schoen was drinking a brown liquid from a coffee cup, but Lucy was sure that it wasn’t coffee.
“How are you holding up?” Lucy asked.
“Like hell,” Mrs. Schoen said. “The police asked me if I heard anything last night but I didn’t hear a thing. I wish I had; maybe I could have done something. I would have given that robber a piece of my mind. I just saw Patsy yesterday and she felt fine.”
As if getting murdered has something to do with your health, Lucy thought.
She nodded. “So, tell me about Mrs. Burke.” Lucy hadn’t been a reporter in more than a year, but she asked open-ended questions out of habit.
“We were going to go to Hobby Lobby today to get her a job. And tomorrow we were supposed to get together with a bunch of blue widows and play bridge like we always do.”
Lucy was nodding and saying things like, “You don’t say?” at places where she thought it was appropriate.
Mrs. Schoen started crying again. “Why would someone hurt Patsy? She was just an old lady. She would have let the robber take whatever he wanted. That goddamn asshole.”
Lucy tried to hide a smile. An old lady who cursed and drank. Maybe that would be Lucy in fifty years. As Mrs. Schoen continued to talk, Lucy considered how to broach the real reason why she was there. She was too tired to be truly devious, so she decided just to switch the subject. Maybe Mrs. Schoen in her grief-and-alcohol-induced haze wouldn’t notice.
“When I was in Mrs. Burke’s house, I noticed a police scanner.”
“Oh yes, she loves to listen to that thing, bless her heart.”
“Why did she have it? It’s an odd thing to have around.”
“She likes to have it for background noise. I never understood why she doesn’t just turn on some music, but it’s her business.”
“You know, I have a friend who has a scanner and calls up the newspaper whenever she hears anything interesting.” Which was a lie.
Mrs. Schoen jumped in excitedly. “Patsy does that, too.” Lucy let out the breath she’d been holding. “She loves to call the newspaper about something she hears and see if it’s in the paper the next day. She just crows and crows about it when that happens, bless her heart.”
“Do you know how often Mrs. Burke would call the newspaper?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once a week or so. It depends on what she hears.