Page 97 of Summers at the Saint
Traci sat back down, but the old man’s hand had grown colder.
Alberta placed her fingertips on his wrist. “He’s with Jesus now.” Gently, she pulled the sheet up over her patient’s face.
Traci had known that her father-in-law’s death was imminent, and she hadn’t been sure how she’d feel about it. He’d been civil to her while his son was alive, but had made no secret of his growing antipathy toward her in recent years.
In moments of weakness, she’d told herself she’d feel nothing at his passing. But that wasn’t quite true. She didn’t feel grief. More like pity. He’d been such a vigorous life force, but in the end, cruel Parkinson’s had reduced him to nothing more than a bitter, scheming shadow.
She picked up her phone to switch off the music, but the next song had Sinatra in a distinctly blue mood that seemed appropriate for the moment, singing about the wee small hours of the morning. So she lingered at the old man’s bedside until the song was almost over, until Alberta touched her arm.
“Mr. Ric just called. He’s at the gatehouse.”
“I’m gonna leave,” Traci said, standing and hugging the older woman tightly.
“Thank you for being here with him,” Alberta said. She began clearing away the photos.
CHAPTER 47
It was still drizzling, so there was no planting to get done that morning. Whelan was dumping bags of cedar mulch into the planting beds on the first traffic circle after the main gate when an ambulance sped past, lights flashing, no siren.
He turned and watched, and then, his curiosity piqued, he jumped in the cab of his work truck and followed, at a safe distance.
About a mile down the main road the ambulance turned onto a residential street bordering the golf course, and then it made another turn, at the end of which was a broad cul-de-sac.
Whelan paused at the stop sign and watched while the ambulance slowed and then backed down the driveway of Gardenia Cottage, a handsome single-story stucco bungalow.
There were three cars parked at the curb in front of the house, and a sleek black Porsche parked in front of a two-car garage. A man in a dress shirt and tie stood near the front door, shielded from the rain by a pink-and-white-striped Saint golf umbrella.
Two attendants hopped out of the ambulance and the man walked over to speak to them. After a minute or two, they went around to the rear of their unit, pulled out a gurney, and leisurely rolled it into the house in a way that suggested they weren’t there on an emergency mission.
The man with the umbrella didn’t follow the EMTs inside. Instead, he paced back and forth outside, talking animatedly on his cell phone.
Whelan pulled out his own phone, found the website for the county tax assessor’s office, and tapped in the home’s address, which was 267 Golfview Lane. According to county records, the home was owned by Fred Eddings.
Could umbrella guy be Ric Eddings, Traci’s brother-in-law? It seemed likely. He’d seen photos of Ric, but the guy’s face was obstructed by the angle at which he held the umbrella.
Whelan was a little worried that Eddings or whoever it was would wonder why one of the Saint’s landscape trucks was parked a few hundred yards away, but he needn’t have been concerned, because umbrella man was oblivious to everything except his phone.
After thirty minutes or so, the front door opened again and the EMTs slowly wheeled out a stretcher containing a zippered body bag.
An older woman with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing pink scrubs, followed the attendants out of the house. Just before they put the gurney on the lift, she stepped up and lightly patted the body bag. Then, she nodded at the attendants and stepped aside. The man with the umbrella walked over, and raised it over the older woman’s head, not touching her, but standing silently. This time, when the ambulance pulled out of the driveway, there were no lights and no siren.
The weather report wasn’t promising. Scattered thunderstorms for the rest of the day and into early evening. His supervisor had already sent the rest of the crew home with instructions to report back in the morning, but Whelan lingered, puttering around the landscape barn, cleaning, inspecting, and putting away equipment until noon, when he finally gave himself permission to knock off.
Whelan found Mike Sullivan’s work number through his LinkedIn profile.
“I was wondering if I’d hear from you again,” Sullivan said. “After you left the other day, I put your question on my family’s text chain.My sister Courtney is five years older than me. I’d forgotten that she was pals with those girls at the pool too, especially these twins who were from Birmingham. Emily and Jessica. Courtney and Emily swapped email addresses and wrote each other for a while after summer was over.”
“Great. By any chance, does she still have their contact information?”
“Nah. Courtney thinks those girls’ last name was DeRosa, but she’s not positive. My brother Brian was sixteen that year, and he had a summer job, so he only came down weekends while the rest of us were at the Saint for the whole month.”
“Did he know the girls?”
“Not really. Brian was kind of a nerd, not into girls. But he was into cars. He says it was a totally sick red ’Vette. Let me put you on speakerphone and I’ll read you what Brian says was the exact model.”
A moment later, Sullivan was back. “Okay, he says it was a C4-ZR7, whatever that means. Probably a ’99. He also said the guy who drove it was an a-hole. And just between us, I love my brother, but he can be an a-hole too. So for him to call a guy an a-hole? Well, trust.”
Whelan was scribbling notes while Sullivan spoke. “Hey, man, this is great. Really helpful stuff. You’ve got my number now, right? So if you think of anything else, will you call?”
