Ali paused. “She has arthritis, right?”
Athena nodded.
“Elderly folks are often easy targets for druggies looking for stashes of narcotics. The problem with that is that after I spoke to Sheriff Olson, I also spoke to the deputy who responded to her 911 call. Deputy Severson said there was no sign of rifling or attempted burglary, and that Betsy could find nothing missing from the house—including checking her supply of medications, which were right there on the kitchen counter. In other words, we can disregard the idea that whoever did this intended to rip off her meds.”
“What does that leave?” Athena asked.
“Jealousy, maybe?” Ali asked. “What about her love life?”
“Gram’s love life?” a disbelieving Athena asked. “Are you kidding?”
From her expression, it was clear that Athena had never considered the idea that her grandmother might have a love life.
“Older people can fall in love, too,” Ali said gently. “Maybe Betsy is caught up in some kind of love triangle.”
“No,” Athena said, shaking her head. “Not possible. I can’t imagine Gram doing such a thing.”
“We have to find out,” Ali said. “You’ll need to ask her.”
“Me?” Athena asked faintly. “Why me?”
“Who else is going to do it? Right now you and I are the only ones who have Betsy’s back and are taking her concerns seriously. To find out what really happened up there, you’ll probably have to go there. You’ll need to find out what’s going on in your grandmother’s life and who her friends are, including any possible love interests. Maybe Sheriff Olson is right. Maybe she has reached a point where she needs more help than she’s willing to accept. And if it turns out she is having mental difficulties, you may be the only one who can help her make whatever arrangements are deemed necessary.”
“I’m not a detective,” Athena objected. “I wouldn’t have any idea how to go about doing something like that.”
“You’re Betsy’s granddaughter,” Ali said. “You don’t have to be a detective to ask those kinds of questions. In fact, it’s an obligation, and you’d be remiss if you didn’t. Which brings us to yet another possible motive.”
“What’s that?”
“Greed,” Ali answered. “As in, follow the money. How well off is your grandmother?”
Athena shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess. I mean, we’ve never really talked about her finances. It’s not my place.”
“Again, if someone tried to murder her and the authorities are brushing it off, it’s your place now. For instance, is her home paid for?”
“I’m sure,” Athena said, “and what’s left of the farm is paid for, too. Gramps owned a lot of land around Bemidji, land he sold off years ago. What we still call ‘the farm’ is really just a house on twenty acres. It’s not a real farm, not the way it used to be.”
“Has she ever seemed hard up to you?”
“Not at all,” Athena said. “Never. When Gramps was alive, he bought a new car every other year, and he always paid cash. He bragged that he never bought a car on time. After he retired, he and Gram took long road trips every year, driving all over the country, sometimes for as long as a month or more at a time. That stopped after Gramps died. That’s also when Gram stopped getting a new car every other year, but that was her choice. It wasn’t because she couldn’t afford it. She said that she did so little driving on her own that she didn’t need a new car every time she turned around.”
“Tell me about your parents,” Ali pressed quietly. In the years she had known Athena, she had said little about her parents. Ali knew Athena was estranged from them, but both Athena and Chris had been guarded about supplying any details. Now, however, the ground rules had shifted in Ali’s favor. To help guide Athena through this current crisis, Ali needed more information—the backstory that Athena had previously been reluctant to share.
Athena’s eyes filled with tears. “You remember when Chris and I went to Minnesota?”
Ali nodded. She remembered it well. She remembered hoping Chris would be able to help mend whatever fences needed mending.
“What happened?”
“You don’t know my mom,” Athena said. “We’ve never gotten along, ever. When I was little, she wanted me to wear dresses and play with Barbie dolls. I wanted to wear overalls and hang out with Gramps. When I’d go stay with them, he’d let me sit in his lap and drive a tractor. Mom was appalled. When it was time for college, Mom wanted me to go to the University of Minnesota and join the same sorority she belonged to. She made it clear that if I didn’t do things her way, she and Dad wouldn’t pay a dime of my schooling costs.” Athena paused. “Mom’s not big on unconditional love.”
“I guess not,” Ali agreed.
“The problem is, I’m not big on being bossed around, either, so we’re not exactly a good fit. When I told them I’d choose my own school and that I had no intention of joining a sorority ever, Mom said that was it. If I wasn’t going to do things the way she and Dad said, then I was on my own as far as schooling was concerned. I’d have to pay for it myself. That’s when I joined the National Guard. That was a place where my early tractor driving with Gramps came in handy. I trained in a transport unit and ended up getting deployed to Iraq where I got blown up by an IED. I came home like this,” she added, glancing down at her prosthetic arm and leg.
Ali nodded. “I know about that. I also know that your grandmother came to visit you at Walter Reed while your parents didn’t.”
“Yes,” Athena said bitterly. “Their position was that I’d made my own bed and now should lie in it.”
There are conversations mothers-in-law are allowed to initiate and ones they are not. Taking a deep breath of her own, Ali stepped into uncharted territory. “Tell me about your first husband,” she said.
When Chris had first mentioned that he and Athena were dating, Ali had been concerned that not only was Athena six years older than he was, she had already been married and divorced.
Athena sighed and squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Jack and I met in basic training. He was from Minneapolis, where he had been an all-star quarterback in high school. He was used to being a big deal. He joined up for the same reason I did—to get some help going to school. My dad’s a dentist, and it was ironic that I fell for a guy who wanted to go to dental school. By joining the National Guard he hoped to get through school without accumulating a crushing amount of debt.
“It was a first relationship for both of us. You remember that old song with the line ‘we got married in a fever’? That was us. We were in lust, not in love. We eloped right after basic training. I’m sure Mom thought we were pregnant. We weren’t. What surprised me, though, was that the moment my parents met Jack, they adored him, my dad even more than my mom. I think Dad saw Jack as the son he never had.”
“Did you love him?” Ali asked.
“Jack?” Athena shrugged and paused for a moment before continuing. “I cared about him, but what I felt for him isn’t anywhere near what I feel for Chris. I can see now that I married Jack more to get back at my folks than anything else, and the whole thing blew up in my face. It turns out, karma is like that. Jack just graduated from dental school. The plan is that he’ll gradually take over my father’s practice so Dad can retire. And that’s what hurts more than anything—the idea that my parents would choose an ex-son-in-law over their own daughter.”
Athena paused again and seemed to be thinking about what to say next. “I can see now how wrong it was for us to rush into marriage. We were both too young. He wasn’t ready to settle down; he still wanted to sow some wild oats—which he did, by the way. We ended up in different National Guard units. Mine deployed; his didn’t. I found out he was cheating on me with Janice before I even shipped out. Jack started talking divorce while I was still in Iraq. He had me served with the papers while I was deployed, and the divorce became final while I was in Walter Reed. I didn’t fight it because by then a divorce was what I wanted, too. Still, it blew me away to think that he and Janice were already married and expecting a baby before I got out of rehab and made it back home to Bemidji.”