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The Delirious Detective

Ciara M. Blecka

    “What the devil?” Octavia slammed down her grilled pineapple margarita and angrily put out her Virginia Slim in the crystal ashtray on the side table. She turned her purse upside down and out fell her hot pink tube of lipstick and a few scratched loser lottery tickets along with a slim travel perfume and a compact. But no stray cash. She looked through her wallet again. There was a smudge of what looked like dirt on the smooth leather but it was otherwise empty. “I could’ve sworn I had forty dollars in here.”
    “¡Ay, caramba! that cat is in the cabinets again, Missus Bibaud,” Maria shouted from the kitchen, peeling Lucky from her perch in the pantry above the refrigerator. The cat clawed and hissed at her. “Mierda! Another hole in my scrub top,” she moaned. The slinky black cat flicked her tail and jumped down agilely out of Maria’s arms onto the marble island where she pranced between a bowl of fruit and a pile of fine china that Maria had set out in preparation for Octavia Bibaud’s daughter-in-law and grandson coming to visit that afternoon.
    “Nevermind, dear,” Mrs. Bibaud called out from the living room. “She won’t hurt a thing.” She took a sip of her margarita and settled back in her powder blue armchair. It wouldn’t do to worry. It never did. She might be dead tomorrow anyway. She’d lived nearly ninety years. So what was forty dollars?
    The C.N.A. muttered to herself, but kept on cleaning.
    Lucky sauntered into the living room and jumped up on Octavia’s lap. The old woman scratched her on the chin and she began to purr. “You are a lucky lady, aren’t you?” Octavia said to her feline companion. “And so am I. For the most part, anyway.” She plucked a cranberry cat treat out of a plastic container poised prominently on a lace doily on the side table and fed it to Lucky. It was shaped like a little star. A little star for the light of her life.
    The cat jumped off her lap at the sound of banging on the front door. “I’ll get it,” Maria said and hurried to answer before whoever it was shook the whole foundation of the building.
    “I need to talk to ya’all about the rent,” said a very large angry-looking black gentleman, pushing past Maria and into the living room. He loomed over Octavia, shaking a handful of crumpled yellowed envelopes in his balled fist.

    “Who are you?” Octavia demanded. “And why are you in my house? Harrumph. The nerve of some people!”
    “Octavia,” he said evenly. “You know who I am.”
    Octavia lit another Virginia Slim and blew smoke in his face. “I most certainly do not.”
    He waved the smoke away and coughed a bit. “I am Deion Brown. Your landlord.”
    Mrs. Bibaud shook her head. “I don’t have a landlord. My husband and I own this house. We’ve lived here all our lives. With the children.”
    “Mrs. Bibaud,” Deion said gently. “Your husband is dead. He died twenty years ago.”
    Octavia nodded and her cigarette seemed to totter in her grasp, but she said nothing. She merely stared into space, and in a few moments, her eyes fluttered closed and she began snoring softly.
    Mr. Brown shook her shoulder. “I’m here about the rent,” he shouted. “You haven’t paid it in three months. I’m going to be blunt: I’m going to have to evict you.”
    “I’ve paid it,” Octavia insisted, snapping back to reality. It seemed her dementia floated in and out, sometimes glossing over her eyes like cataracts and sometimes clearing like a fine mist in the heat of the morning.

    “Your checks have all bounced,” Deion said flatly.

    The old woman jumped to her feet, suddenly as agile as Lucky. “I have money in the bank. I’ll prove it. My finances are all in order. I have a pension, you know. I was a detective. And my husband’s life insurance policy pays out. I am not a squatter.”
    “Maria manages your finances, doesn’t she?” Deion said quietly.
    Octavia snatched up her purse and rummaged around for her checkbook. Again, there was a knock at the door. But this time Maria was at the far end of the house vacuuming and did not hear the polite tapping on the glass.
    “Excuse me, Mr. Brown,” Octavia said. “That will be my grandson.”
    “By all means,” Deion said, taking a seat on the floral-print loveseat. The heat of the afternoon was oppressive and humid and a downpour had started. The weather in Naples always seemed the same. Hot. Rain. Deion had rented Mrs. Bibaud this condo for five years now with the hopes that she would die soon and leave a little stash of money under her mattress for his cleaning crew to find. He knew her to be more than a little senile and flush with money. Instead, she was clinging to life with a vice-like grip and skipping out on her rent so she could sip liquor and play the slots. Or so Deion assumed.
    “Grandma! I brought your favorite.” The hale young man at the door held out a decadent chocolate soufflé which wobbled treacherously in its ramekin as he balanced it in one arm while balancing a heavy schoolbag in the other.
    “Exton just got out of class,” his mother explained. “We came here straight away.”
    “You are a gem, my dear boy,” Octavia gushed, “Coming all this way!” She ushered the boy and his pinched-face mother in under the elegant transom with a sunburst stained glass window above them.

    “The house smells like cats and cigarette smoke, Mother,” her daughter-in-law said curtly, folding her arms in front of her chest, her designer handbag dangling from her shoulder prominently, long fake hot pink fingernails tapping impatiently against her bicep.
    Before Octavia had a chance to retort, the door flung open without even the courtesy of a knock and in strolled a handsome buxom nurse with a rolling suitcase full to bursting full of meds and paperwork. A flyer for the Bahamas was half sticking out of the front zipper. She wore a pair of glasses low on her nose with a golden chain round her neck. Her legs were impossibly thick and she walked with a slight limp, carrying a three-pronged metal cane. She had wispy blonde hair and sharp green eyes and she narrowed them at the odd crowd gathered in the living room. She pulled out her thick folder of files labeled with a sticker that said in dark black ink CONFIDENTIAL and scrawled something in it with a black gel pen. She snapped it shut. “Having a party, Octavia?” she asked.
    “Oh, am I?” The old woman seemed surprised at herself. She seemed to notice the drink in her hand for the first time and took a long swallow. “It must be my birthday.”
    Deion cleared his throat. “I’m here on business, not for pleasure, I’m afraid.” He thought it best to remind them all he was still here.
    “What business might that be?” the nurse asked, turning her sights on the landlord.
    “Mrs. Bibaud owes me a large sum of money. For rent,” Deion sighed, tired of the charade.
    “Let’s serve that soufflé,” Octavia boomed, grasping her grandson’s shoulder. “Before it deflates, yes? Mr. Brown, I have my accounts in my purse. I’ll be glad to go over it with you in the kitchen.”
    “Very well,” Deion relented, rising from his comfortable couch and following her into the kitchen where she fumbled with the flatware and sloshed her drink and lit more cigarettes, drawing out the affair as only an elderly woman could.


    “That Maria. So irresponsible,” the nurse chided, giving the home health care worker a dirty look as she completed that afternoon’s charting at the far end of the kitchen island. The other woman flinched, but said nothing. “I knew she’d muck up the records.”
    “The records are impeccable,” London—Octavia’s daughter-in-law—announced. Everything is in order. Or at least it appears that way.”
    Octavia rummaged through her bag. “But my debit card is gone. My checkbook may say I spent my money correctly, but someone took the money straight out before the checks could be cashed.”
    “Who do you think might have done that, Mother?” London asked caustically, fishing out a handful of lottery tickets.

    “I didn’t buy those,” Octavia insisted. She yawned and covered her mouth with her veiny papery hand.
    London tossed them in the air in frustration. They fluttered to the ground in a flurry of cold hard accusation. “You’re having one of your episodes again, aren’t you?”
    Octavia started making herself another margarita. “I don’t have ‘episodes,’” she said. “Do you think Charles will want a margarita?”
    “Your husband is dead!” London said, exasperated. “Your drinking and gambling is out of control. You don’t know where your husband or your debit card is because you are losing your damn mind. This is foolish. No one is stealing your money. You are stealing from yourself.”
    “It couldn’t be true,” Octavia objected pitifully. “I know the money was there.”
    London turned to Mr. Brown. “I will pay her overdue rent. Just so that she doesn’t get evicted. And I’m going to go down to the bank and get her finances squared away, whatever overdrawn fees she has and find out what her financial situation looks like right now.” She turned to her son. “Exton, you stay here. Make sure your grandmother doesn’t get in any more trouble. Do you hear?”
    “Yes, Mom,” he said, already chowing down on his soufflé and seemingly oblivious to the weight of the situation.
    “No. Trouble,” his mother repeated.
    Exton shrugged and grinned with too much teeth. “No trouble, Mom. Would I lie?”
    “I hope not,” London said. “Not to your mother.”
    “Scout’s honor,” Exton said, holding up one hand.
    Within a few minutes, the only people left in the condo were Exton, Octavia, and Nurse Charlotte. And Exton knew how to charm Nurse Charlotte.
    “Have a piece of soufflé, Charlotte,” he said sweetly.
    “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. Her double chin waggled.
    “But you must. Before it deflates,” he insisted.
    “Well...” she said, “I guess one piece won’t hurt.” She dug in with fervor.
    “That’s the spirit!” Exton cheered her on.
    Octavia was wringing her hands and clucking her tongue in despair. “I swear I didn’t gamble away the money, Exton. I couldn’t have! Could I?”
    “I believe you, Grandma,” he said, trying his best to reassure her. Truthfully, he didn’t trust any of these healthcare workers. They seemed sweet—too sweet. Sweeter than soufflé. And it was time to powder them with some truth sugar. “You should eat your soufflé. It’s getting cold.”
    Octavia ate hers daintily and prettily like the proper lady she was. However, Charlotte dug into hers like a miner digging for gold. Pretty soon there was chocolate smeared all over her face.
    “You have some...a little schmutz...right here,” Exton told her, trying to indicate the offending areas as politely as possible.

    Embarrassed, Charlotte quickly wiped the chocolate from her face with her hand. “I’m such a clutz,” she said, blushing. “I’m always getting chocolate everywhere! I’m a chocoholic, but boy, what a slob.”
    “Who do you think stole your money, Grandma?” Exton asked, choosing to ignore the nurse. He’d never cared for her anyway. She was too cheerful and wanted too much to be included as part of their family.
    “I am hard at work on the case, Exton,” his grandmother said. “There’s always clues. If you look hard enough.”
    “Well, it’s clear who did it,” Charlotte interrupted.
    “Oh?” Exton said. “Who?”
    “Maria Perez. The nursing assistant. She’s poor so she needs the money. And she manages Octavia’s accounts. She’d have access to the money. Why wouldn’t she do it?”
    “Yes, why wouldn’t she?” Exton said carefully. “So we have two suspects. Grandma and Maria...But what about you, Charlotte?”
    Charlotte looked completely affronted. “Me? What about me? Why would I steal Octavia’s money?”
    “Don’t you have a trip to the Bahamas coming up?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “Would be nice to have some extra cash to fund that, wouldn’t it? Drinking mojitos on the beach.”
    “I think I’ll go get us some milk to wash all this chocolate down with,” Charlotte said, quickly rising and hobbling out of the living room on swift but slightly unsteady feet.
    “Does she seem suspicious to you?” Exton asked his grandma.
    The old woman set her plate of soufflé down on the loveseat beside her. “Perhaps,” she said absently. She continued to sift through the piles of scratched off lottery tickets as if they might jog her memory.
    “Can I have a cigarette, Grandma?” Exton asked. He thought a smoke might help him think. His mother would never approve, of course, and would probably think the two of them were conspiring to get in some kind of dissolute dilemma, but she would be happy when she found out they had solved the crime and cleared Octavia’s name.
    “Yes, just one I suppose,” she agreed, reaching for her handbag. Lucky jumped up on the loveseat beside her, stepping in the souffle and tracking chocolate pawprints on the fine fabric. “Oh, you rascal,” she said, giving him a stroke along his sleek black back. “You’ve soiled the settee.”
    “Febreze?” Exton suggested.
    “Wait a moment. Exton,” Octavia said, pulling her smooth leather wallet out of her purse. She sniffed at the smudge of dirt that still stuck to the back. “Chocolate,” she announced.
    “Chocolate?” Exton wrinkled his nose in confusion. He reached for his own cigarette and lit it. Sometimes his grandma was very senile, he thought.
    “Charlotte said she is always sloppy whenever she eats chocolate.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, it looks like she smudged some chocolate on the edge of my wallet when she stole my debit card.”
    Exton exhaled a wall of smoke in wild surprise. “You were a detective, weren’t you, Grandma?” he marveled. “Charlotte was the one who put those lottery tickets in your purse, too, wasn’t she?”
    Octavia smiled. “Dollars to donuts.”
    “How can we prove it, though?” Exton wondered. He slumped back in his chair and sighed. He propped his cross-trainers up on the antique glass-top coffee table. “We need more concrete evidence.”
    “Evidence of what, darling?” Octavia said, taking another sip of her margarita. She lit a Virginia Slim and stared out the window at the hummingbirds on the feeder. “Did you see? It stopped raining.”
    Exton shrugged. He absolutely did not know what to say. Charlotte returned to the living room with the glasses of milk and Octavia waved hers off.

    “But it’s good for your bones, Mrs. Bibaud,” Charlotte insisted. “Your osteoporosis.”
    “Porosis-shmorosis,” Octavia grumbled. “I’ll drink what I like. And I don’t like milk. Take these dishes away. The cat has tracked crumbs all over the furniture.”
    “I’ll see that Maria takes care of it,” Charlotte assured her, and then over her shoulder she said, “I’ll be giving you your meds shortly. I put them on the cart.” She left the room carrying the dishes and her plump file folder. Plump, like her, Exton thought, and just as mysterious.
    Exton wasn’t sure what to do. It seemed his grandmother had forgotten all about the money and the lottery tickets, and he wasn’t even sure anymore that she hadn’t gambled her fortune away. He didn’t want to think dementia had stolen his grandmother from him, but how could he argue with her glossy eyes or the out-of-tune humming of the song they had played at her wedding? Exton had heard her hum it many times before. She always hummed that tune when she thought his grandpa was still alive. And now her glossy eyes had closed and she was napping on the loveseat, her chin on her chest, snoring almost in that same old-fashioned tune.
    Exton was startled out of his thoughts when there was a loud crash. Octavia was even startled awake. Exton put out his cigarette and turned to see that Lucky had been at it again. This time she had knocked the pill bottles off the med cart. She jumped down and scampered off, rolling on the floor and clawing at Octavia’s expensive Oriental carpet.

    “Don’t worry, Grandma,” he said. “I’ll get it.”
    “Oh my,” she said. “What a mess.”
    Exton bent down over the pill bottles strewn haphazardly across the hardwood floor. There was his grandmother’s blood pressure pills, her calcium pills, her cholesterol pills...and a bottle of Benadryl? “Grandma?” he said, picking up the bottle and inspecting it. It was half-full and didn’t have any kind of prescription on it. It was just a large generic bottle with a plain label.
    “Yes, dear?” Octavia seemed distracted again, fiddling with her compact and lipstick.
    “Do you have allergies?” he asked her.
    “Why, of course not, silly,” she said with a laugh. “Why would I have allergies? If I did, I wouldn’t own a cat.”
    “Hmm.” Exton took this same medication, but he hadn’t been aware that his grandmother was on it. He knew her med list; he and his mother had rushed Octavia to the hospital the other week when she had fallen in the shower. Luckily, she hadn’t broken her hip. But they had had to give the doctors her med list. Benadryl hadn’t been on it. That seemed very suspicious to Exton. Very suspicious indeed. Exton opened the bottle and shook a couple of the long pink pills into his hand. They were 25 mg tablets. He heard the tap-tap-tap of Charlotte’s cane and quickly shoved the pills back in the bottle and dumped all of the pill bottles back on the cart. He leapt back into his chair and tried to appear casual.
    “I did notice the rain stopped, Grandma,” he said breathlessly.
    “Oh,” Octavia said, blotting her lips with a tissue. “So it did.”
    Charlotte emerged into the living room carrying a glass of water and her infamous file folder. She had a pen behind one ear and her glasses were riding low on that long pointy nose of hers. She had a sphygmometer draped across the side of the med cart and a stethoscope around her neck. “Time for your medication, madam,” she said.
    “Oh phooey,” Octavia said, closing her compact with a click. “I’m perfectly healthy.”
    “And the medication is what keeps you healthy,” Charlotte reminded her.
    “I thought it was an apple a day that did that,” Exton joked, pulling out his phone and playing a game to pass the time and look less suspicious.
    “No, that’s what keeps the doctor away,” his grandmother said.
    “Yeah,” Exton said, rolling his eyes. “By keeping you healthy.” He watched carefully as Charlotte dispensed the medicine. She gave Octavia two of the pink pills. Fifty milligrams. He began researching the drug on his phone. What reason would Charlotte have to give his scrawny grandmother such a high dose of the allergy medication? What he found astounded him. Benadryl was a medication that made dementia worse. It was also an OTC medication, so Charlotte never expected to get caught dispensing it to his grandmother. Of course she had been trying to make Octavia’s dementia worse. By doing that, Mrs. Bibaud would never be able to know whether or not she had been gambling or if someone had actually stolen her money.
    Still, Axton had to prove Charlotte had been the one to put the lottery tickets in his grandmother’s purse. But how could he do that? He heard a scratching sound then, like Lucky was clawing at some papers. He turned to see the black cat pawing at Charlotte’s file folder that she had left abandoned on the coffee table. That was it. It was confidential. The receipts had to be in there. Exton had to steal the file folder. While Charlotte was taking his grandmother’s blood pressure and her back was turned, he slid a similar folder out of his backpack and carefully replaced it face down with the real one. Hopefully in her haste, Charlotte wouldn’t notice the difference. At least not until it was too late. Exton slid Charlotte’s confidential folder into his backpack.
    “Well, I’m all done for the day,” Charlotte announced, gathering up the meds and the fake folder. Exton held his breath, waiting for the hammer to fall, but it never did. He had pulled off the little switcheroo. His mother would be back soon and they could present all of their proof. Charlotte would be under arrest and his grandmother wouldn’t be getting evicted.

    “Grandma, we did it!” Exton exclaimed, pulling the crumpled receipts out of the file folder as soon as Charlotte had closed the front door behind her. “We solved the case. You weren’t gambling your money away.”
    “Certainly not,” Octavia said.
    “And you’re not taking Benadryl anymore,” Exton told him.
    “I never did,” she said.
    “No, she never did, Exton,” Charlotte said, standing in the open doorway, glaring down her nose at him. “And neither will you. Not ever again.”
    Exton swallowed hard. “Charlotte,” he said, dropping the folder. “What are you going to do to me?”
    “I’m going to make sure you never tell anyone about any of this,” she said menacingly, stalking towards him, her cane click-click-clicking as she took each step. Exton jumped up from his chair and tried to swing his backpack at her, but she grabbed it in midair with surprising strength and whipped Exton around, swinging him right through the plate glass window. They were four stories up. He screamed, and then was heard no more.
    “What did you do to my grandson?” Octavia gasped.
    “What grandson?” Charlotte asked. “Your grandson was never here.”
    “Oh, yes,” Octavia said, settling back on the loveseat and closing her eyes. “That’s right. He lives in Tampa with his mother.”
    “That’s right,” Charlotte soothed. “Now, I’m done with work for the day, so I have to go home now. But, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
    “All right, dear,” Octavia said, starting to doze.
    Charlotte bent down to pick up her file folder when Lucky sprung on her, digging her claws into the nurse’s back. She hissed and snarled, her fur standing on end. Charlotte twisted and twirled, trying desperately to pry the cat from her body. She tripped on her cane and wobbled, losing her balance, and then tumbled out the same window she had tossed Exton.

    The commotion jolted Octavia awake and she noticed the broken window. “Oh, dear,” she said, drawing close to the window to peer out. Several stories beneath, she saw Exton had landed safely in an awning and was unharmed, though stunned. Lucky had landed on her feet as well. As for poor Charlotte...her weight had been too much for the awning to bear.

    “What a mess,” Octavia said to herself.
    When all was said and done, Exton helped himself to a piece of deflated soufflé. “I think Charlotte’s hopes of becoming a master thief have been deflated as well,” he said, taking a big spoonful of chocolate.
    “I’m afraid you’re right,” Octavia agreed.
    “Wasn’t that a great adventure we had, Grandma?” Exton wanted to know.
    “Lord knows I never have adventures,” his grandmother said. “Only episodes.”

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