Part 3 — Aunt Bevs List
The detective unfolded Aunt Bevs list and read the first name aloud. It said Ellis, and underneath, in her bold teachers print, Takes things. Darlene second. Watch her car.
The room did not erupt. It simply went quiet, in the way a family goes quiet when it hears something it already half knew. Darlene sat down in the front pew and held her purse. Ellis did not come back in from the lobby.
The detective explained what Aunt Bev had told him. For months, someone had been entering her house when she was at church or at the grocery store. Her pill bottles were shuffled, her checkbook shifted and a locked drawer opened. She suspected family, but she had no proof, and she was afraid to be wrong.
The deputies found the proof within a day. Ellis had been letting himself in with a copy of her key, taking cash from her bedroom drawer and signing a few of her checks. Darlene had driven him and used the keys to carry out her aunts jewelry. Nothing they took was worth a bus drivers lifetime of work.
Aunt Bev drove forty years of children to games and home again, and when it counted, she counted on someone to listen to her list.
The detective also settled the question of the body. Aunt Bev had passed away peacefully from her heart on the kitchen floor. Ellis, who happened to be there that night, panicked and carried her to bed before calling anyone, to hide that he had been in the house. The coroner confirmed she died of natural causes.
It was a terrible choice, but it was not a murder. Ellis was charged with theft, forgery, tampering with a scene and abuse of a vulnerable adult. Darlene was charged with theft and conspiracy. Both pleaded guilty and were ordered to repay every dollar.
The funeral went on. The pastor finished the prayer, and the band marched down the center aisle playing the fight song, trumpets and drums filling the little chapel. I have never heard anything so loud and so tender.
The gray cloth box was replaced by a handsome oak casket, paid for by the band alumni in an afternoon. A man in a wheelchair rolled up and laid his snare drum sticks on the lid.
I laughed at Aunt Bev at a hundred Thanksgivings, and I am ashamed. I think of that now whenever I see an old maid on Route 14, and I always stop and say hello.