Alex Harris 00 - Armed

could remember the man had worn a white shirt with a wool vest over it, even to the dinner table. He had an endless supply of bowties and they supplied a bit of color in a wardrobe that consisted of mostly browns. He and my grandmother, who died ten years earlier, had been wonderful grandparents, but Sam and I always had a thing for Meme, and vice versa. Grandpa had been more stern and reserved and it wasn’t like him to make a fuss or stir up trouble.
    I pulled into the driveway of Mills Pond, and a few minutes later greeted the day manager. “We just don’t know what got into him,” Mrs. Pritchard said as we wound our way through an endless corridor. “He just up and decided to take some bird feed and go fill all the feeders in the gardens. We didn’t even know he went out until he stopped to fill the one right outside of Lucy McDermott’s room. When she pulled open her blinds her screams brought us running.”
    “I don’t understand.” I quickened my pace to keep up with Mrs. Pritchard. “Do you have bird feeders in the woods?”
    We arrived at a door leading out to the snow-covered gardens. Mrs. Pritchard pushed open the door and ushered me outside and down a path. At the bottom of the path she stopped and pointed to a spot between two large firs.
    “There. I’ve got to warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.” A small smile formed on her lips and I turned from her and looked toward the woods.
    “Samantha!” my prim and proper grandfather shouted from the woods.
    I peered through the snow-laden branches and let out a shriek. Lawrence Harris stood with a bag of birdseed clutched tightly against his chest. He stood buck naked except for a pair of boots that looked like women’s and a bowtie knotted snuggly around his most private part.
    I put my face in my gloved-clad hands and groaned. “Jesus.”
    No matter how old you are, the sight of a family member of the opposite sex naked can traumatize you like nothing else. Thank God for my mother who came to my rescue arriving at Mills Pond about ten minutes after we managed to get Grandpa Lawrence settled back in his small apartment. The sight of his naked body mesmerized me in a horrifying way.
    Grandpa had always been very thin. Thin doesn’t look so good when you’re ninety and the skin is loose and saggy and your coloring borders on pasty. Add to the fact that he was also a prude. Or so I thought. Maybe Grandma Harris kept him reined in all those years and now he felt free to be himself.
    I gladly relinquished sentry duties to my mother who held grandpa down while the nurse removed the rubber band holding the bowtie to his anatomy—so snuggly, in fact, that it had cut into the skin and caused bruising. Yuk.
    I picked up a sandwich on my way back to the factory and ate quietly while mentally working on my list of suspects—a welcome diversion from the past hour.
    “‘There are a lot of lies going around…and half of them are true’,” I quoted. “But which ones, Winston? Who should I believe and who should I not?”
    Reaching into my purse for my notebook I pulled out the latest paperback in a series of farm mysteries Millie had loaned me. This one, The Skull Beneath The Combine , looked particularly gruesome. I tossed it back in my purse and pulled out the notebook turning to a blank page. I wrote Dolly and started to erase it but then reconsidered. I realized with a jolt that Dolly might have cleared her husband in my eyes, but she had managed to put herself on the suspect list. Dolly as good as admitted she had been jealous of Mrs. Scott’s relationship with her husband. Maybe those feelings never went away and if she found out Mrs. Scott arranged to meet William at the restaurant, perhaps she had been overcome with jealous rage. I reluctantly wrote the word jealousy under the motive column I added and mentally banged my head against a wall.
    “Argh. I’m supposed to be eliminating suspects not adding.”
    Next I wrote Andy’s name. Under the motive column I wrote none —that I had come up with so far. Andy seemed fond of Mrs. Scott and grateful she arranged his schedule to accommodate his courses. Next to Ruth’s name, I also reluctantly wrote the word none and then reconsidered. Ruth mentioned a client Mrs. Scott had been attracted to, but hadn’t Ruth also been attracted to the man? She didn’t appear to be jealous, but then I didn’t know Ruth well enough to decipher whether she was a skilled liar. In the column marked alibi,