AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He chuckled. “Mum’s the word.” He pointed to the deck of cards on the table. “Are you playing?”
“No,” Eloise said with a sad sigh. “Just reminiscing. Everything changed so fast. Last week we were all here. Now…”
“Do you want to play a game with me?” Sam asked.
Both women shook their heads.
“I can’t,” Georgia said, her voice trembling. “Not yet. Maybe in a few weeks.”
“I understand.”
She patted his hand. “I know you do. Maybe we should go upstairs and start this movie night. Sitting here at this table is bad for my joints anyway.” She pushed herself to her feet, grabbing the cane she used only when she was in a lot of pain.
“I keep telling you to smoke some weed,” Eloise said with a shake of her bright blue head. She gripped her rhinestone-studded walker and clicked her tongue at Siggy. Obediently, Siggy followed her. “I do miss a good bowl,” she added with a sigh.
Sam choked on a laugh. “You don’t smoke here, do you, Miss Eloise?”
“Oh no, not here. No smoking allowed here, plus my lungs can’t take it anymore. But in my youth? I was at Haight-Ashbury, you know.”
Sam grabbed the grocery bag. “I did not know that. But I can’t say that I’m surprised.”
Georgia sniffed again. “Hippies. In your case, old hippies.”
Eloise frowned. “I was twenty-five in sixty-four. Not exactly an old maid. There were all ages there, not just teenagers. It was quite a time. The summer of love in sixty-seven and all that. I got married and moved to San Diego before it got really crowded and the police started cracking down. But I’d learned to like weed and wasn’t going to give it up.”
Sam loved these women. “Did you grow your own?”
“Yes. Never got caught, either.” Eloise plodded along to the elevator, her step noticeably slower, but she kept the chatter up. Sam thought it was mostly a show for Georgia, who kept giving her haughty glares.
“I take it that you didn’t smoke weed in your youth, Miss Georgia.”
Georgia lifted her chin. “I most certainly did not.”
“I do edibles now,” Eloise said as they entered the elevator. “I keep telling Georgie that she should try them, but she’s a prude.”
“I am not a prude, Eloise. You take that back.”
“I’m no liar, Georgia Shearer.”
“You shouldn’t pressure Georgia, Miss Eloise,” Sam said gently, trying to deescalate the argument. He was also very glad that he’d never accepted one of Miss Eloise’s homemade brownies. “It’s her business what she tries.”
Eloise pouted. “I know. But Frankie used to do edibles with me and now I have no one to share with.”
Sam gaped at her, ignoring the elevator doors which had just opened. “Frankie used pot?” It was legal, of course, but Frankie had always seemed so straitlaced. Ever the cop, Sam now realized.
“He did.” Eloise’s expression saddened again as she left the elevator, turning left toward Georgia’s apartment, Siggy at her side. “He learned to use it when Ryan was sick with cancer. Helped him sleep.”
“They didn’t find any in his apartment,” Sam said.
“No, they wouldn’t. He’d come to my place for his nighttime brownie.”
“Every night?” Sam asked.
“No, not every night. Only when he was stressed. He was pretty stressed the past few weeks.”
Sam nodded to the officer standing in the hallway outside Georgia’s room. True to his word, Navarro had given a guard to the people who’d been closest to Frankie and Benny.
Eloise stopped to bat her eyelashes at the man. “Aren’t you handsome?” she cooed.
