Page 39 of Too Old for This

The smell is the same. Old wood and steeped tea mixed with pine cones and a hint of mold. I’d know my living room anywhere.

I try to lift my arm. It doesn’t budge. I try to stand up. Same thing. My arms and legs will not move.

It takes a minute to realize I’m tied to one of the dining room chairs. A rope is wrapped around my middle, binding me to the chair and pinning my arms at my sides. My ankles are tied with a second rope.

I twist and move, trying to get free. The rope cuts into my skin, making me wince, but I don’t stop.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Norma says. She is sitting in my recliner.

“What did you—”

“I didn’t poison you. Just something to knock you out for a little while.”

She wants me to be grateful. I want to spit on her.

No daylight peeks in through the curtains, which means it’s still dark outside. I haven’t been unconscious for the whole night. I look down and inspect the ropes. She brought these with her. They aren’t mine. Norma planned this long before she knocked on my door.

“I’m not crazy,” she says.

Norma is a lot of things right now. My brain is struggling to grasp them all. A grieving and desperate mother, yes. Crazy, also yes. The important question is how crazy.

Perhaps I pushed her a little far. The note was too much, or the second phone call might have done it. The Mommy thing could have pushed her over the edge.

Or maybe she jumped off the sanity cliff all on her own.

“Ms.Dixon,” I say, “let’s talk about—”

“What did you do to Plum?”

“I didn’t do anything to her.”

She wags her finger at me. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare deny it.”

Norma pulls a cigarette out of her bag, lights it with an orange Bic, and looks around for something to use as an ashtray. She zeroes in on a glass trinket bowl. The room fills up with that noxious odor.

Please don’t smoke in my house.

“It took me a while to figure out what’s really going on.

” She leans forward in the recliner, close enough for me to smell her breath.

Tobacco with a hint of garlic. “But it finally dawned on me that you’re at the center of everything.

It’s like one of those graphs you see in the movies, like when they’re going after the mob and they have everyone on a board with pins and strings. ”

“The…mob?”

“The big boss is in the middle, and everyone else is connected to him. The whole thing looks like a web. That’s you.”

“Me?”

“Everything that’s happened always comes back to you. Plum’s disappearance, the bruise on her temple, Cole being blamed, even the death of Kelsie. You’re the only one who connects them all.”

While I appreciate the big-boss compliment, she is only half right. Norma has collected the pieces but can’t see how they fit together. “If you could listen for one second, I can clear this up.”

“I’m not done.” She holds up Plum’s file, the one I kept stuck in the recliner. “Why do you have this?”

Her eyes are blazing. I’m tied to a chair, but she’s the one filled with rage.

Deep breath. Calm voice.

“Your daughter gave that file to me. She wanted me to understand what kind of show she was making.”

“Docuseries. She was making a docuseries.”

“Yes. Thank you for correcting me.”

“I’m supposed to believe she just left all this information here with you?

” Norma doesn’t wait for an answer. She opens the file, licking her fingers to thumb through each page, pausing to read out loud.

“?‘A police department source said that Lorena Mae Lansdale is the only suspect in three murders. And that she is,’ quote, ‘?“one of the most dangerous killers we’ve ever seen.”?’?”

That’s from a Spokane newspaper article. My lawyer used the same quote when he explained to the city how much they were going to pay me.

When she turns the page, I move my hand, pulling the leg of my slacks up an inch. Maybe I can get to that paring knife in my pocket.

Norma jabs her finger at the page. “Here. ‘The Spokane Police Department no longer considers Ms.Lansdale a suspect in the murders of Paul Norris, Marilyn Dobbs, or Walter Simmons. All three cases are open investigations.’?”

“Yes, I was cleared by the police. I was never arrested.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re innocent. And it doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth about Plum.”

She has come full circle, traveling forty years in one sentence. It’s rather impressive, actually. But I don’t think a compliment will make her untie me.

Norma closes the file and pulls the handle on the chair, tilting it upright.

“What are you going to do to me?” I ask.

She stands up, towering over me. Her small eyes are a brownish green color. Moss surrounded by mud. She looks around the room like she’s searching for the answer. If the situation was reversed, I know what I would do to her. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

Norma looks down at my hand. I’m still trying to get to my pocket.

“Don’t bother reaching for the knife,” she says. “I found it while you were taking a nap.”