Read Online Half-Price Homicide by Elaine Viets - Free Book Online Page A

questions. She may sometimes open her eyes and look at you. She may be agitated if she’s roused. But she probably won’t come back.” He assured the family Dolores was in no pain, but she had little hope of recovery.
    Helen arranged for Catholic sisters to come by once a week and pray in her mother’s room. A priest gave Dolores the sacrament of the sick (which her traditional mother would have called extreme unction). Helen asked parish priests in Florida and in St. Louis to say masses for her mother’s recovery.
    Arranging these small comforts for her religious mother had given Helen a sense of peace and some hope of reconciliation. Her late father had called Helen “my little firecracker” and enjoyed her spirit. Dolores saw her daughter as dangerously rebellious. Helen tried hard, but she could never please her mother. Taking care of her mother in her final illness was Helen’s last chance to be the daughter Dolores wanted.
    Helen visited her mother every two or three days in the nursing home. She would sit in the tall turquoise chair by her mother’s bedside and talk as if Dolores could really listen. Helen had read somewhere that some patients in comas could hear what people around them were saying. Helen told Dolores only news that she would want to hear.
    Dolores’s nursing home roommate was Ruth, a seventy-five-year-old who’d had a stroke. She, too, was unconscious. Ruth’s daughter, Muriel, looked like a hen with a perm. Muriel fussed around the room each visit, then turned up the television so loud it should have awakened the residents of the nearby Lauderdale cemetery.
    “Mama loves her television,” Muriel insisted as she ramped up the volume. Helen flinched at the blasting soap opera. Ruth didn’t move. Neither did Dolores.
    Helen turned off the set as soon as Muriel left. It stayed off until Muriel’s next visit. Neither woman mentioned this silent battle over loud noise. Muriel must have visited her mother this morning. Helen could hear the TV blaring from the courtyard.
    She stopped by the nurses’ station and checked in with Maria, the brown-skinned Jamaican nurse. “How’s Mom?”
    “The same, Miss Hawthorne.” Maria’s island accent made Helen think of vacation beaches and rum drinks with paper umbrellas. “The doctor is making his rounds. Would you like to speak to him?”
    “Yes, please,” Helen said. “I’ll wait for him.”
    “It shouldn’t be long,” Maria said. “Dr. Lucre is only three rooms away from your mother’s. I’ll tell him you are here.”
    Dolores had the bed with the view, though she’d never seen it. Her window overlooked the courtyard with the palm trees, pots of red impatiens and jolly smokers. The room’s walls were painted pink, Dolores’s favorite color. The corkboard on her side was covered with homemade cards from her grandchildren, Allison and Tommy Junior.
    Helen clicked off the blaring television and studied her mother.
    She could hardly find Dolores’s frail body in the tangle of lines, tubes and plastic bags. Dolores’s skin was yellow and her eyes were ringed with dark circles. Her chest barely moved under the hospital gown.
    She had only a few feathery wisps of white hair. Dolores had worn a brown wig for nearly twenty years. Helen had had the wig washed and styled. It waited on a stand in the closet.
    Dolores’s hands were crossed on her chest, as if she were already dead.
    “Hi, Mom,” Helen said, and kissed her mother. No movement.
    Helen tossed out the dying flowers she’d brought last week, and filled the vase with fresh water and pink carnations. She sat down and took Dolores’s small, bruised hand in hers, carefully avoiding the IV line.
    “I hope you’ve had a good week, Mom. I’ve been working. I like my job. Kathy and Tom send their love. Your grandchildren miss you. Allison asks for Grandma all the time. Kathy is shopping for Tommy Junior’s school supplies. I can’t believe school will be starting