by Sue Grafton
I continued running for ten blocks and then turned around, tuning in to my surroundings as a way of taking my mind off my heaving lungs. The chilly predawn air felt good. The sky had turned from charcoal to ashen gray. Nearing the end of my run, I could hear the early morning freight train rumble slowly through town with a muted blast from its horn. Dinging merrily, the signal gates came down. I waited while it passed. I counted six boxcars, a tank car, an empty livestock car, refrigerator car, nine container cars, three hard-top gondolas, a flat car, and finally the caboose. When the train was out of sight I continued at a walk, using the last few blocks to cool down. Mostly, I was happy to have the run out of the way.
I skipped my shower, figuring I might as well stay grungy for the housework to come. I rounded up rubber gloves, sponges, and assorted cleaning products, all of which I tossed in a plastic bucket. I added a roll of paper toweling, rags, laundry soap, and black plastic trash bags. Thus armed, I went out to the patio, where I waited for Henry. There’s nothing like the danger and the glamour of a private eye’s life.
When Henry appeared, we went over to Gus’s place. Henry did a walkabout to assess the situation and then returned to the living room and gathered up the many weeks’ worth of newspapers scattered on the floor. For my part, I stood assessing the furnishings. The drapes were skimpy and the four upholstered pieces (one couch and three easy chairs) were encased in dark brown stretchy slipcovers of the one-size-fits-all variety. The tables were made of a chipped laminate veneer meant to look like mahogany. Just being in the room was discouraging.
My first self-assigned task was to search Gus’s rolltop desk for his address book, which was tucked in the pencil drawer, along with a house key with a round white tag marked PITTS.
I held it up. “What’s this? I didn’t know Gus had a key to your place.”
“Sure. That’s why I have a key to his. Believe it or not, there was a time when he wasn’t such a grouch. He used to bring in the mail and water my plants when I went off to Michigan to visit the sibs.”
“Will wonders never cease,” I said, and returned to the task at hand while Henry carried the stack of papers to the kitchen and stuffed them in the trash. Gus’s financial dealings were well organized—paid bills in one pigeonhole, the unpaid in another. In a third, I found his checkbook, two savings account books, and his bank statements bound by rubber bands. I couldn’t help but notice the amount of cash he had in his accounts. Well, okay, I studied the numbers carefully, but I didn’t take notes. There was close to two thousand dollars in his checking account, fifteen thousand in one savings account, and twenty-two thousand in another. This might not be the whole of it. He struck me as the sort of fellow who stuck hundred-dollar bills between the pages of his books and kept untouched accounts in a number of different banks. The regular deposits he made were probably Social Security or pension checks. “Hey, Henry? What’d Gus do for a living before he retired?”
Henry stuck his head around the corner from the hallway. “He worked for the railroad back East. Might have been the L&N, but I’m not sure in what capacity. What makes you ask?”
“He’s got a fair amount of money. I mean, the guy’s not rich, but he has the means to live a lot better than this.”
“I don’t think money and cleanliness are connected. Did you find his address book?”
“Right here. The only person living in New York is a Melanie Oberlin, who has to be his niece.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and call?”
“You think?”
“Why not? You might as well put it on his phone bill. Meanwhile, I’ll start on the kitchen. You can take his bedroom and his bath as soon as you’re done.”
I placed the call, but as is usually the case these days, I didn’t talk to a live human being. The woman on the answering machine identified herself as Melanie, no last name, but she wasn’t able to take my call. She sounded pretty cheerful for someone who told me at the same time just how sorry she was. I gave a brief account of her uncle Gus’s fall and then left my name, my home and office numbers, and asked her to return the call. I tucked the address book in my pocket, thinking I’d try again later if I didn’t hear from her.
I toured Gus’s house as Henry had. In the hall, I could smell the fug of mouse droppings and perhaps a mouse corpse of recent vintage trapped in a wall nearby. The second bedroom was filled with an accumulation of unlabeled cardboard boxes and old furniture, some of it quite good. The third bedroom was devoted to items the old man evidently couldn’t bring himself to toss. Bundles of twine-bound newspapers had been stacked head-high, with aisles laid out between the rows for easy access in case someone needed to get in and collect all the Sunday funnies from December of 1964. There were empty vodka bottles, cases of canned goods and bottled water sufficient to withstand a siege, bicycle frames, two rusted lawn mowers, a carton of women’s shoes, and three stingy-looking TV sets with rabbit-ear antennas and screens the size of airplane windows. He’d filled an old wooden crate with tools. An old daybed was buried under jumbled mounds of clothing. An entire set of green-glass Depression-era dinnerware was stacked on a coffee table.
I counted fifteen ornate picture frames laid up against one wall. I flipped the frames forward and peered at the paintings from above, but I didn’t know what to make of them. The subject matter was varied: landscapes, portraits, one painting of a lush but drooping bouquet, another of a tabletop adorned with cut fruit, a silver pitcher, and a dead duck with its head hanging off the edge. The oil on most had darkened so much it was like looking through a tinted window. I know nothing about art, so I had no opinion about his collection, except for the dead duck, which I thought was in questionable taste.
I got busy in the bathroom, thinking to get the worst of it out of the way. I disconnected my emotional gears, much as I do at the scene of a homicide. Revulsion is useless when you have a job to do. For the next two hours, we scrubbed and scoured, dusted and vacuumed. Henry emptied the refrigerator and filled two large trash bags with unidentified rotting foodstuffs. The cupboard shelves held canned goods that bulged along the bottoms, signaling imminent explosion. He ran a load of dishes while I tossed a mound of dirty clothes in the washer and ran that as well. The bedding I left in a heap on the laundry room floor until the washer was free.
By noon we’d covered as much ground as we could. Now that a modicum of order had been restored, I could see how depressing the house was. We could have worked another two full days and the result would have been the same—dinginess, neglect, a pall of old dreams hovering midair. We closed up the house, and Henry rolled two big garbage cans out to the curb in front. He said he’d get cleaned up and then hit the supermarket to restock Gus’s shelves. After that he’d call the hospital and find out when he was being released. I went home, took a shower, and got dressed for work in my usual jeans.
I decided I’d make a second try at delivering the Order to Show Cause to my pal Bob Vest. This time when I parked and crossed the street to knock on his door, I noticed two newspapers lying on the porch. This was not a good sign. I waited, on the off chance that I’d caught him on the john with his knickers down around his knees. While I stood there, I spotted a scratching post on one side of the porch. The carpeted surface was untouched as the cat apparently preferred to sharpen its claws by shredding the welcome mat. A sooty-looking cat bed was matted with hair, dander, and flea eggs, but no visible cat.
I went out to the mailbox and checked the contents: junk mail, catalogs, a few bills, and a handful of magazines. I tucked the pile under my arm and crossed the lawn to his neighbor’s house. I rang the bell. The door was answered by a woman in her sixties, cigarette in hand. The air around her smelled of fried bacon and maple syrup. She wore a tank top and pedal pushers. Her arms were scrawny and her pants rested loosely on her hips.
I said, “Hi. Do you know when Bob’s getting back? He asked me to bring in his mail. I thought he was getting home last night, but I see his newspapers haven’t been tak
en in.”
She opened the screen door and peered past me at his drive. “How’d he manage to rope you in? He asked me to mind his cat, but he never said a word about the mail.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to bother you with that.”
“I don’t know why not. He’s happy to bother me about everything else. That cat thinks he lives here as often as I look after him. Scruffy old thing. I feel sorry for him.”
I wasn’t crazy about Bob’s neglect of the cat. Shame on him. “Did he mention when he’d be home?”
“He said this afternoon, if you put any stock in that. Sometimes he claims he’ll be gone two days when he knows it’ll be a week. He thinks I’m more likely to agree to shorter absences.”
“Oh, you know Bob,” I said, and then held up the mail. “Anyway, I’ll just leave this on his doorstep.”
“I can take it if you like.”
“Thanks. That’s nice of you.”
She studied me. “None of my business, but you’re not the new gal he keeps talking about.”
“Absolutely not. I’ve got problems enough without taking him on.”
“Good. I’m glad. You don’t look like his type.”
“What type is that?”
“The type I see leaving his house most mornings at six A.M.”
When I got to the office, I put a call through to Henry, who brought me up to date. As it turned out, the doctor had decided to keep Gus an extra day because his blood pressure was high and his red blood cell count was low. Since Gus was spaced out on pain medication, Henry was the one who dealt with the discharge planner in the hospital social services department, trying to find a way to accommodate Gus’s medical needs once he got the boot. Henry offered to explain to me the intricacies of Medicare coverage, but it was really too boring to take in. Beyond Part A and Part B, everything seemed to have three initials: CMN, SNF, PPS, PROs, DRGs. On and on it went in that vein. Since I wouldn’t have to navigate those rapids for another thirty years, the information was simply tedious. The guidelines were diabolically cunning, designed to confuse the very patients they were meant to educate.
There was apparently a formula that determined how much money the hospital could make by keeping him for a specified number of days and how much the same hospital could lose by keeping him one day longer. Gus’s dislocated shoulder, while painful, swollen, and temporarily debilitating, wasn’t considered serious enough to warrant more than a two-night stay. He was nowhere close to using up the days allotted him, but the hospital was taking no chances. On Wednesday, Gus was discharged from St. Terry’s to a skilled nursing facility, otherwise known as an SNF.
7
Rolling Hills Senior Retreat was a rambling one-story brick structure on a tenth of an acre without a hill of any sort, rolling or otherwise. Some attempt had been made to tart up the exterior by adding an ornamental birdbath and two iron benches of the sort that leave marks on the seat of your pants. The parking lot was a stern black and smelled as though the asphalt had just been redone. In the narrow front yard, ivy formed a dense carpet of green that had swarmed up the sides of the building, across the windows, and over the edge of the roof. In a year, the place would be covered by a jungle of green, a low amorphous mound like a lost Mayan pyramid.
Inside, the lobby was painted in bright primary colors. Maybe the elderly, like babies, were thought to benefit from the stimulation of strong hues. In the far corner, someone had taken a fake Christmas tree from its box and had gone so far as to stick the aluminum “branches” in the requisite holes. The conformation of branches looked about as realistic as recently transplanted hair plugs. So far, there were no ornaments and no tree lights. With so little late-afternoon sunlight penetrating the windowpanes, the overall effect was cheerless. Linked chairs of chrome, with bright yellow plastic seats, lined the room on two sides. Of necessity, lamps were turned on, but bulbs were the same paltry wattage used in cheap motels.
The receptionist was concealed behind an opaque sliding window, of the sort that greets you in a doctor’s office. An upright cardboard rack held brochures that made Rolling Hills Senior Retreat look like a “golden years” resort. In a montage of photographs, handsome, energetic-looking oldsters sat on a garden patio engaged in happy group-chat while playing a game of cards. Another image showed the cafeteria, where two ambulatory couples enjoyed a gourmet repast. In reality, the place had stimulated my hopes for an early and sudden death.
On the way over, I’d stopped at a market, where I’d stood for some time staring at the magazine rack. What kind of reading would amuse a cranky old man? I bought Model Railroading Magazine, a Playboy, and a book of crossword puzzles. Also, a giant-sized candy bar, in case he had a sweet tooth and hankered for one.
I hadn’t been in the lobby long, but since no one had opened the receptionist’s window, I tapped on the partition. The window slid back three inches and a woman in her fifties peered out. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was out there. Can I help you?”
“I’d like to see a patient, Gus Vronsky. He was admitted earlier today.”
She consulted her Rolodex and then made a phone call, keeping her palm close to the mouthpiece so I couldn’t read her lips. After she hung up, she said, “Have a seat. Someone will be out shortly.”
I sat down in a chair that allowed me a view of a corridor with administrative offices opening off each side. At the end, where a second corridor crossed the first, a nurse’s station diverted foot traffic like water flowing around a rock in the middle of a stream. I was guessing hospital rooms were located down the two peripheral halls. Living quarters for the active, healthy residents must be somewhere else. I knew the cafeteria was close because the smell of food was strong. I closed my eyes and sorted the meal into its component parts: meat (perhaps pork), carrots, turnips, and something else—probably yesterday’s salmon. I pictured a row of heat lamps beaming down on ten-by-thirteen stainless-steel food pans: one filled to the brim with chicken parts in milk gravy, another filled with glazed sweet potatoes, a third with mashed potatoes stiff and slightly dried around the edges. By comparison, how bad could it be to eat a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? Facing this muck at the end of life, why deny myself now?
In due course, a middle-aged volunteer in a pink cotton smock came and fetched me from the reception area. As she led me down the hallway, she didn’t say a word, but she did so in a very pleasant manner.
Gus was in a semiprivate room, sitting upright in the bed closest to the window. The only view was of the underside of ivy vines, dense rows of white roots that looked like the legs of millipedes. His arm was in a sling and the bruises from his fall appeared from the various gaping holes in his gown. His Medicare coverage didn’t provide private-duty nursing, a phone, or a television set.
His roommate’s bed was surrounded by a curtain on a track, pulled in a half circle that delivered him from sight. In the quiet, I could hear him breathing heavily, a cross between a rasp and a sigh that had me counting his inhalations in case he stopped and it was up to me to perform CPR.
I tiptoed to Gus’s bedside and found myself using my public library voice. “Hello, Mr. Vronsky. I’m Kinsey Millhone, your next-door neighbor.”
“I know who you are! I didn’t fall on my head.” Gus spoke in his normal tone, which came across as a shout. I glanced uneasily toward his roommate’s bed, wondering if the poor guy would be jarred out of his sleep.
I placed the items I’d bought on the rolling table beside Gus’s bed, hoping to appease his ill temper. “I brought you a candy bar and some magazines. How’re you doing?”
“What’s it look like? I hurt.”
“I can just imagine,” I murmured.
“Quit that whispering and talk like a normal human being. If you don’t raise your voice, I can’t hear a word.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t help. Before you ask another stupid question, I’m sitting up like this because if I lie on my back the pain is worse. Right now, th
e throbbing’s excruciating and it makes my whole body feel like hell. Look at this bruise from all the blood they’ve drawn. Must have been a quart and a half in four big tubes. The lab report says I’m anemic, but I didn’t have a problem until they started in.”
I kept my expression sympathetic, but I was fresh out of consolation.
Gus snorted with disgust. “One day in this bed and my backside is raw. I’ll be covered with sores if I’m here one more day.”
“You ought to mention it to your doctor or one of the nurses.”
“What doctor? What nurses? No one’s been in for the past two hours. Anyway, that doctor’s an idiot. He has no idea what he’s talking about. What did he say about my release? He better sign it soon or I’m walking out. I may be sick, but I’m not a prisoner—unless getting old is a crime, which is how it’s regarded in this country.”
“I haven’t talked to the floor nurse, but Henry will be here in a bit and he can ask. I did call your niece in New York to let her know what was going on.”
“Melanie? She’s useless, too busy and self-absorbed to worry about the likes of me.”
“I didn’t actually talk to her. I left a message on her machine and I’m hoping to hear back.”
“She’s no help. She hasn’t come to visit me for years. I told her I’m taking her out of my will. You know why I haven’t done it? Because it costs too much. Why should I pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars to make sure she doesn’t get a cent. What’s the point? I’ve got life insurance, too, but I hate dealing with my agent because he’s always trying to talk me into something new. If I take her name out as beneficiary, I have to figure out who to put in. I don’t have anyone else and I won’t leave a thing to charity. Why should I do that? I worked hard for my money. I say let other people do the same.”