Jeanne Glidewell - Lexie Starr 03 - Haunted Read Online Free PDF

parents. I can’t imagine how a mother could drown her own children in a bathtub, but it happens.
    * * *
    “Can you tell me what room Melba Sneed is in, please?” I asked the receptionist at the information desk. She had a phone in one hand and was pulling something up on her computer screen, using a wireless mouse, with the other. She looked harried and perturbed. She didn’t turn to look at me, and I wasn’t even sure she’d heard me.
    After gazing at her computer screen for a few more seconds, she sighed and replied, “Just a second.”
    She pulled up a new screen, ran her finger down a list, and said, “She’s in the psychiatric ward, room four-sixty-four, ma’am.”
    “Thank you.”
    I made my way to the elevators, wondering what I was going to say to Melba, particularly knowing how distraught she was following the news of her son’s untimely death. As I neared her room on the fourth floor, I could hear her shouting at a nurse. “I’ve got to get out of here! What’s the matter with you people? Get away from me, lady, before I have to hurt you! Let me talk to the warden!”
    I could hear the nurse talking slowly and soothingly to Melba as I entered the room. Melba was clearly not sedated today, at least not yet. The nurse looked at me and shrugged as if to say, “Good luck,” and then walked out of the room.
    “Melba,” I said, “I’m Lexie Starr. I’ve come to see how you’re doing. Is the staff here taking care of you adequately?”
    “Get the hell out of my room, unless you’re here to release me!” she yelled.
    “I just might be able to do that if you will answer a few questions for me.” I was lying, of course, but my words calmed her down instantly. This might be her ticket out of here, I’m sure is what she thought.
    “I was very fond of your son. Walter was temporarily working for us at the Alexandria Inn to earn a little extra cash.”
    “Doing what?” Melba said, with indifference in her voice.
    “We were hosting a haunted house at the bed and breakfast my partner, Stone Van Patten, owns, and Walter was portraying a vampire lying in a… er, in the, uh, well… lying in the parlor.” Oh my, “lying in a coffin” did not sound like an appropriate thing to say at a time like this. Fortunately she didn’t delve any deeper into what her son was doing lying in our parlor.
    “Well, whoever you are, I’m glad you are here. Go tell the warden I demand to be let out of here right now! And get me my lawyer while you’re at it. I think I might just have to sue somebody.”
    “Melba, dear, you are in the hospital, not prison. And I don’t think you have any need for a lawyer, at least not at this juncture,” I told her. “You were very shaken up after the news of your son Walter’s death, as anyone would be.”
    “That unappreciative scamp is no son of mine. If he were, he’d be here right now talking to the warden for me. I never could count on that sorry excuse for a son.”
    “But he’s gone, Melba. He suffered a tragic and untimely death yesterday. I’m sure he would be here if at all possible.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “By the way, Melba, do you know of anyone who would want to kill your son? You surely wouldn’t harm your own child in any way, would you? Do you know anyone who might have had a grudge against him?” I asked.
    “Oh, sure. Who doesn’t? I’m a little mad at him myself. Where is that boy, anyway? He should be here helping me. What kind of no-account son is he, anyway?”
    It was obvious Melba had a severe mental deficiency. Just how incapacitated was she? I wondered. Could she, in a moment of pure oblivion, perhaps, have done something dreadful to her own son? No, surely not. Once again I wondered how any mother could hurt her own child. I’d slash my own wrists before I’d harm a hair on Wendy’s head. And I’m sure the same is true of most mothers. Usually there’s no stronger bond than between a mother and her child. But there is always an