The End of the Pier by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page B

friend of an aunt of hers knew someone who’d gone to see her. Or so Charlene said.
    But no one could find out what she was doing in La Porte, going back and forth, and sometimes staying overnight at Stuck’s rooming house near the end of Main. There was much speculation about whether she’d been called in by Miss Ruth to pay personal visits to Miss Ruth’s crazy Aunt Simkin. Shirl, who was never hard-pressed to mind her own business, still felt “funny,” she said, about asking Dr. Hooper why she came through town.
    It was, Maud supposed, because Dr. Hooper was a psychiatrist, and people who’d never read about it or been to one (as Maud had while she was married) thought they could read your mind and probably suck your soul out of your body. The way Shirl talked about them, leaning on the counter, moodily smoking a cigarette and polishing a glass, head doctors were about as safe to be around as mass murderers or that Boy Chalmers fellow who they said had murdered Nancy Alonzo and done the same thing to those two women in Hebrides. She threw down the towel and shuddered. It hardly bore thinking about.
    So she went back to thinking about Dr. Hooper. Maud would watch Dr. Hooper’s flickering glance at Shirl or Charlene and wonder if perhaps she could see what was going on in their minds.
    It was Maud who always waited on Dr. Hooper and who always saved back a piece of lemon chiffon pie if they were running short. It was true that Shirl made the best pies of anyone around except for Jen Graham, who ran the hotel over in Spirit Lake, and this particular pie was especially popular: the filling was a pale cloud of whipped-up lemony filling, and the crust was melt-in-your-mouth baked meringue. That Shirl had begged the recipe off Jen Grahamand then started claiming the pie was her original creation, just about everybody knew, although Shirl thought it was a deep, dark secret and a real sleight-of-hand performance on her part to wheedle a recipe out of Jen. The Rainbow’s big white pie boxes were always carted away by customers after eating a slice of lemon chiffon for dessert. So they often ran out of it. Even Chad loved it, and he hated lemon pie.
    Dr. Hooper was in the Rainbow Café the third weekend of every month, Fridays and Sundays, eating her pie and drinking her coffee, and often writing a postcard or two, sometimes a letter. It always amused Maud to watch Mayor Sims maneuver around behind Dr. Hooper, leaning back and staring down his nose in his attempt to make out what she was writing. Dr. Hooper always caused a mild stir, probably because she was their mystery woman. Her appearances in La Porte and the Rainbow were as dependable as the turning of day into night.
    It was Dr. Hooper herself who had finally, some months ago, started a conversation. She had asked Maud what school her son attended. It had so surprised Maud that Dr. Hooper knew she had a son, Maud had slopped coffee into the saucer when she was refilling the cup.
    Dr. Hooper said, “I heard the owner”—and here she looked off towards Shirl—“talking about him. She seems to think very highly of him.” Her smile was slow; she seemed to deliberate before every action, and she looked serious even when smiling. “That’s unusual,” she added, before going back to cutting through her wedge of pie.
    Maud held the coffee pot aloft, thinking the statement mysterious, inscrutable, just the sort of non-small talk she’d expect from Dr. Elizabeth Hooper, if she ever spoke at all. Dr. Hooper certainly wouldn’t go in for “Well, we’re getting weather,” as Sonny Stuck had said that day. Still, to introduce the subject of Maud’s own son was a pretty heady subject for conversation.
    Forgetting specifically what she’d asked, Maud answered, “Well. . . thank you.” Then, feeling foolish with that response, she’d gone on: “I mean . . . why