She shut her mouth, not saying another word until poor Martha hurried into the dining room and slipped the old lady her teeth. Thelma turned, then turned back, giving them a big porcelain smile.
“Now, what’s all this I hear about you two finding a dead body?”
James said, “We’re hungry. Any chance for some of your soup?”
Thelma yelled, “Martha, bring two more bowls of your minestrone!”
She waved them to two seats across from her. She stared at Sally, who was no longer wearing her wig. “So you’re Amabel’s niece, are you?”
Sally nodded. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The old lady snorted. “You just wonder why I’m not dead yet. But I’m not, and I make sure I see Doc Spiver every day to tell him so. He pronounced me dead three years ago, did you know that?”
Quinlan did. He imagined everybody did, many times over. He just smiled and shook his head. He reached beneath the table and squeezed Sally’s hand. She went rigid, then slowly he felt her relax. Good, he thought, she was beginning to trust him. Then he felt like a shit.
Martha set two places in front of them, then served two bowls of soup.
“Martha always had men hanging around her, but they were rotters, all of them, They just wanted her cooking. What did you do with young Ed, Martha? Did you cook for him or demand that he go to bed with you first?”
Martha just shook her head. “Now, Thelma, you’re embarrassing poor little Miss Sally here.”
“And me, too,” Quinlan said and spooned some of the soup into his mouth. “Martha,” he said, “I’m not a rotter and I’d surely marry you. I’d do anything for you.”
“Go along, Mr. Quinlan.”
“A big man like you embarrassed, James Quinlan?” Thelma Nettro laughed. Sally was thankful she was wearing her teeth. “I think you’ve been around several blocks, boy. I bet I could take off my clothes and it wouldn’t faze you.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, ma’am,” Quinlan said.
“I’ll bring in the chicken parmigiana,” Martha said. “With garlic toast,” she said over her shoulder.
“She keeps me alive,” Thelma said. “She should have been my daughter but wasn’t. It’s a pity. She’s a good girl.”
This was interesting, Quinlan thought, but not as interesting as the soup. They all gave single-minded concentration to the minestrone until Martha reappeared with a huge tray covered with dishes. The smells nearly put Quinlan under the table. He wondered how long he’d have a hard stomach if Martha cooked all his meals.
Thelma took a big bite of chicken parmigiana, chewed like it was her last bite on earth, sighed, then said, “Did I tell you that my husband, Bobby, invented a new, improved gyropilot and sold it to a huge conglomerate in San Diego? They were hot for it, it being the war and all. Yep, that’s what happened. I know it made airplanes fly even more evenly at the same height on a set course than before. With that money, Bobby and I moved here to The Cove. Our kids were grown and gone by then.” She shook her head, smiled, and said, “I’ll bet that body was a real mess when you found it.”
“Yes,” Sally managed to say, reeling just a bit. “The poor woman had been thrown over the cliff. Evidently she was caught in the tide.”
“So who is she?”
“No one knows yet,” Quinlan said. “Sheriff Mountebank will find out. Did you hear a woman screaming, Ms. Nettro?”
“You can call me Thelma, boy. My sweet Bobby died
in the winter of 1956, just after Eisenhower was elected- he called me Hell’s Bells, but he always smiled when he said it, so I didn’t ever get mad at him. A woman screaming? Not likely. I like my TV loud.”
“It was in the middle of the night,” Sally said. “You would have been in bed.”
“My hair curlers are so tight, I can’t hear a thing. Ask Martha. If she’s not trying to find herself a man, she’s lying in bed thinking about it. Maybe she heard something.”
“All right,” Quinlan said. He took a bite of garlic toast, shivered in ecstasy at the rich garlic and butter taste, and said, “The woman was screaming close by, perhaps just across the way from Amabel’s house. She was someone’s prisoner. Then that someone killed her. What do you think?”