Page 12 of Death on Riddle Road
“—and the dog park.This time of year, with all the leaves gone, its green roof sticks out.”
I often spotted the roof during our visits to the dog park, but had another association with it.
“Kentucky Manor?That has hospice, too?”I knew it had independent living, assisted living, and memory care units.During the first murder Clara and I looked into together, we’d met a friend of her grandmother who was a resident and we visited her now and then, always with a dog or two.We limited our visits to the occasions when the dogs had mostly worn themselves out at the dog park yet hadn’t picked up half the mud in the county.
“Uh-huh.It’s sort of isolated in that wing off the back — the side closer to Stringer.It even has a separate entrance that faces Riddle Road.”
“Riddle Road,” I repeated.
“Uh-huh,” she said absently.
I’d had previous occasions to point out this county’s propensity for strangely named byways to Clara, but since she never found them odd, I passed up this new opportunity.
I had another source for information on the origins of North Bend County’s strange street names, but I wasn’t inclined to ask Urban Parhem.
For reasons.
He was, in essence, the North Bend County Historical Society, though officially it existed as a separate organization and even had its own tiny building.Without Urban, I doubted it would continue to function, however, and I’d have missed out on a lot of local history.
But he’d withheld information when we — Clara, Kit, and I — looked into a death at the local B&B before Christmas.
So had Fern, an octogenarian I knew from the Beguiling Way Yoga Studio.
Now, I realized that withholding wouldn’t affect my relationship with Fern.
That was because I more than half expected Fern to withhold information, if not outright mislead, if it suited her.
In a way, it was part of her...well, notcharm.That’s far too sweet for Fern.More like herappeal.The way an astringent vinegar can be just what a recipe needs, I had no expectations of good behavior from Fern.
But Urban...
I mean, hehadtold me of his past connections to people involved in that inquiry.Eventually.Though not until, in fact, Fern told me to go talk to him and he knew I couldn’t be put off.
The upshot was, if trust hadn’t been broken, it sure had been stretched.
We’d talked — briefly — afterward, but not since.
So, popping into the Historical Society building to ask how Kentucky Manor, where someone had been murdered in the hospice wing, came to have an address on Riddle Road would feel...awkward.
Clara, unencumbered by such considerations, continued, “Then, after talking with that neighbor and before I went to Shep’s Market, I stopped by the post office and Ruby told me what she knew.”
Ruby Zweydorf ran the post office, as well as being a hub for news and gossip.
“Derrick Dorrio’s death was about to be accepted as natural, but one of the hospice staff insisted it wasn’t and got the sheriff’s department called in.Ruby said the hospice administrator was fit to be tied over that.Especially because Kentucky Manor wanted to keep it real quiet that Derrick Dorrio was there at all.Thought they’d slip him in, let him die peacefully, then bury him quietly, with no one the wiser.Of course, with him being murdered, there was no chance of that.It was all over town right away.”
Presumably the hospice administrator’s desire for secrecy was because having a murderer — even a dying one — in the next room wasn’t a selling point for families searching for peaceful hospice care for their loved ones.
“I mean, they’re used to people dying — they have to be, don’t they?— but the idea of someone beingmurderedthere?From everything I heard, the administrator wasverklempt.”
Clara must have been watchingSaturday Night Livereruns again with Mike Myers’ Coffee Talk sketches.As far as I knew, that was her only contact with Yiddish slang.
“But Ruby said the person telling her about it also said the staff member wouldn’t budge on requiring an investigation.”
“What made the staff member suspect it wasn’t a natural death?Was he shot or stabbed or—”
Clara shook her head.“I don’t know.But you’d think if he’d been shot or stabbed no one would resist calling the sheriff’s department in, not even an administrator worried about the place’s reputation.”
“Right.That’s something we’ll need to dig into.What else do you know about Derrick Dorrio’s death?Mamie must have told you something.”
