Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  It felt amazingly invasive to rummage through someone else’s clothes and underwear, but Josie had done it a time or two before. The trick was to focus on her goal and to stay on task, setting aside the case of the heebie-jeebies touching someone else’s intimate belongings gave her.

  Her heart was pounding even though she had an excuse ready. She even went so far as to pull a bright orange knitted poncho from Lynetta’s middle drawer and set it on the bed in case anyone walked in on her shady foraging.

  After ten minutes of searching, she’d made an initial pass through the small chest of drawers, peeked under the bed into some plastic bins which held nothing but shoes, and rifled through a small desk that held some books, a blank journal, and a brand new calendar of lighthouse photos still in its plastic shrink-wrap. Josie found nothing of interest. In fact, the lack of personal and private belongings bothered her. Surely Lynetta had an address book or a few letters at least?

  Where would you hide your personal, private things if you were occasionally paranoid and possibly losing your marbles?

  She dropped to her knees by the side of the bed and ran a hand between the mattress and box spring, cringing that she might encounter something weird…but found nothing. She checked the desk to see if anything were taped underneath it, but didn’t find anything there either. While she was near floor level, she checked to see if any parts of the carpet were cut or patched—still nothing.

  Straightening up, she headed for the tiny shared bathroom. She could almost feel her time running out—tick, tick, tick—and she had nothing to show for her covert search and anxiety-induced sweaty neck.

  In the medicine cabinet, she found combs and toothbrushes—no medicine, of course, because that was kept and distributed by the facility—and normal things like a lipstick, an air freshening candle, and a pair of readers. She checked behind the toilet in case Lynetta had been watching crime shows and had learned to hide her secrets like a small-time drug dealer, but that, too, was clear. Even the water tank behind the toilet was empty of everything but water, as it was supposed to be. Sure, everything was normal, but it was too normal. Too clean.

  Outside the bathroom, the main door into the room opened and closed. Josie froze. Then she rose, flushed the toilet, and washed her hands at the sink.

  Betty’s voice came from the outside room. “They said you’d got taken to the hospital, but you’re back already—so you didn’t kick the bucket after all?”

  

  “It’s me again,” Josie said, stepping into the shared living space.

  Betty’s thin white eyebrows shot up behind her glasses. Her age-spotted hand went to her cardigan-covered chest. “Oh my. What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting you.”

  That’s fairly freaking obvious.

  Josie stepped around the older woman and collected Lynetta’s orange sweater from where it still lay on her bed. “Just getting this. Had to use the restroom. I’ll be on my way.” She headed for the door.

  Betty had paused by her reading chair.

  “So she is at the hospital then.” Her words seemed less of a question than confirming her suspicion. Josie was about to ask her if she was planning to throw a party in Lynetta’s absence when Betty continued, “They don’t tell us squat here. Doris next door disappeared one night and didn’t come back.”

  That information halted Josie in her tracks. “What did you say?”

  Betty settled herself in her chair, confident that she’d secured Josie’s attention, which undeniably was the case. “It’s the God’s honest truth. No one knew what happened to Doris. We didn’t see anything. We didn’t hear anything. Just got up the next morning and she was gone.”

  Josie’s mind tried to come up with a logical explanation for a scenario like that. “Did she wander off?”

  “With this place being like Fort Knox?” Betty paused. “I mean, obviously, you got in here, but you’re someone’s family.”

  Who still somehow has to persuade the gorgon at the front gate to let me in…

  “So maybe her family took her out of here?”

  “That’s the thing,” Betty said, peering at her from behind her glasses, the white knot of hair on her head barely reaching the top of the wingback. “Her family came the following week and took away all of her things.”

  The tension eased from Josie’s neck. “Oh, so she was okay then. She was just with her family.”

  “Yeah, in an urn. She was dead.”

  “Are you sure she had passed away?” Josie frowned. Maybe that wasn’t cause for alarm. After all, Pleasant Valley was an assisted living facility and its inhabitants were elderly. Nursing homes tended to be the final stop of the train of life for a lot of people, statistically speaking.

  “Her family was pretty darned sure. They were the ones who passed along the information. No one else bothered to tell us.”

  Josie was going to check with the facility. Maybe that was standard practice, not to inform the other residents when their fellow inmate passed away. Pretty weird, but she didn’t know what the rules were in cases like that.

  “That must have been upsetting.”

  “You could say that again,” Betty agreed, picking up her Kindle from the table beside her.

  “I’m heading back to the hospital,” Josie said, draping the sweater over her arm. “Do you have any messages you want to pass along to Lynetta?” It’d be nice to tell Lynetta that people were thinking of her and sending her well wishes.

  Betty looked at her blankly for a second or two. Then she shook her head. “Nope. Not really.”

  Chapter 14

  “Dr. Patel, have you spoken with Lynetta’s primary physician about her latest problems?”

  Josie had caught the man in the hallway on her way out of the maze of rooms back at Lake Park Villa’s emergency department. He was coming out of another patient examining room and looked at her blankly for a minute before recognition kicked in. He stepped to the side to reveal a woman in a white lab coat behind him.

  “This is Dr. Charles,” he said and introduced the two of them to each other. With all the mixed emotions that Josie had been dealing with this trip, she didn’t even flinch when Dr. Patel called her Lynetta’s niece.

  I must be getting used to it, Josie realized with an inward eye roll at the ridiculousness of the situation.

  The woman, who was about the same height as Josie—that is, roughly the size of a gnome—peered at her through thick, pink-framed glasses. Her sleek gray hair fell about her face in a silky curtain, trimmed with razor sharpness just below her jawline. She stuck out her hand to shake Josie’s, but then retracted it when she realized she still wore latex gloves.

  “We have a consultation room over here,” she said, pointing across the hall. “Step inside and we’ll chat for a minute.”

  Dr. Patel excused himself, and Josie followed the woman into a tiny broom closet of a room into which someone had somehow wedged a short couch, a matching chair, and a potted plant. If she lay down on the floor, she’d be able to touch the opposite walls with her hands and feet. It suddenly struck her that this was where a family member might be told that their loved one had been killed in a car accident or other disastrous event. This tiny yellow-walled closet was the place in which people received life-changing news.

  Dr. Charles sat in the chair and indicated a seat on the couch for Josie, which she took. Josie suppressed a shiver thinking about all the people who might have sat in the same spot before her.

  “What are your impressions of your aunt’s mental state?” the doctor asked. She didn’t pull any punches and cut right to the heart of the matter, which Josie appreciated.

  “To be honest, even though she’s having weird moments, I don’t think she has dementia. She’s not forgetting significant things—not that I can tell in the short time I’ve been in town—but she has these weird glitches in her thoughts that are worrying.”

  Dr. Charles nodded, giving Josie an owlish look from behind the thick lenses on
her nose. “My opinions exactly. And coupled with the physical symptoms that come and go with almost startling regularity, I’ve begun some tests which you should be aware of. I’ve sent samples to a lab in the city. We don’t have that kind of testing available in a small town like this. Actually, all of our testing goes out of town to other places, but this one in particular.”

  She paused at the look of confusion on Josie’s face and then clarified, “I’ve sent out some samples to test Lynetta for poisoning.”

  

  Poison?

  “The problem with poisons is there are so many different ones to look for. We’re searching for a root cause based on a handful of symptoms, which may differ from person to person. There are so many factors that influence how a harmful substance manifests itself in a body—weight, age, general health, how much poison has been ingested and how frequently. Variety of symptoms such as headaches, nausea, stomach and digestive problems, confusion, and so on.”

  All of which Lynetta has been experiencing.

  “It’s too expensive to run a random battery of tests, and also, some of them can take quite a long time to obtain results. So what I’ve tried to do is select the one that I most suspect based on what I’ve observed.”

  Josie didn’t mention the fact that Lynetta could pretty much pay for any test Dr. Charles wanted. Probably the fewer people who knew about the unused fortune, the better. As soon as someone was aware of it, Josie assumed that person’s motives were suspect.

  “While I understand that Pleasant Valley has some older sections of the facility that might indicate exposure to toxic chemicals like lead or asbestos, no other residents have exhibited symptoms of those. Similarly, the facility has passed inspections. And while I’m certainly not an expert in this subject,” the doctor continued, “I’ve watched a lot of murder mystery shows on TV, so I’m picking arsenic first.” She paused and stared at Josie from behind her thick lenses. “That was a joke.”

  “Ah.”

  The doctor nodded once—whether acknowledging that her attempt at humor had fallen flat or that the punchline had been a success, Josie didn’t know. But even she realized this wasn’t the best time for a gag, so to speak.

  “A urine screen for arsenic takes only a couple days to come back from our lab. I’ve requested this test already—I’m sorry. I would have let you know about it sooner if I’d known you were in town. I didn’t realize Lynetta had close family to consult.”

  “I just arrived in Lake Park Villa a couple days ago.”

  “I see. I don’t know how long you’re staying, but a hair or fingernail sample can determine the level of arsenic exposure over a period of up to 12 months. In other words, results from this kind of test can provide a historical record of any poisoning, which might provide a better explanation for Lynetta’s many return trips to the hospital. If she’s being poisoned by someone or something at the nursing home, it would make sense that she’d feel much better after a hospital stay during which she’d be isolated from the source.”

  “We should definitely do these tests,” Josie said, not sure if they would need Lynetta’s consent—or even Josie’s, as the fake next of kin.

  “Already sent,” Dr. Charles said. “Lynetta was hesitant to support my theory, but I insisted. I was only half-kidding about watching a lot of mystery shows. I do watch them, but I also think we have to follow our instincts and not ignore the signs.”

  “What do we do if the tests come back positive for arsenic?” Josie was thinking aloud more than asking for advice, but the doctor answered her anyway. She leveled a stare at Josie from behind her pink glasses.

  “Find out who’s trying to kill her.”

  Chapter 15

  By the time Josie got back to her rental house on Lincoln Street, it was past dinnertime, and her stomach was howling with emptiness. She’d returned to Lynetta’s room and waited with her until the hospital had transferred the older woman upstairs into a room so she could stay overnight. Lynetta was still acting a bit confused, and Josie couldn’t give them a definitive answer about whether or not her fake aunt’s cognitive function was worse than usual. Josie was going to have to speak with the Pleasant Valley staff again to see if they could shed some light on the woman’s mental state.

  Bert was raring to go and, after a happy wag to see her and a damp nose poke on her cheek, charged down the front steps after she clipped his leash to his collar. Her belly growled again, but he needed to eat before she went in search of dinner. “Bros before stomach woes,” she told him as he snuffled the evergreen hedges along the sidewalk.

  Lynetta had ordered dinner at the hospital before Josie left, and the menu choices had made her stomach growl—yes, there’d been an actual menu printed on thick cardstock paper with appealing graphics and marketing-caliber descriptions of the selections.

  Pasta Primavera: A delightfully filling, whole grain pasta dish with fresh-from-the-garden vegetables, drenched in a succulent sauce and topped with three premium artisanal cheeses.

  Chicken Tender Wrap: Crispy strips of free-range breaded chicken tossed in a zesty buffalo sauce swaddled in a low-carb spinach-herb wrap.

  Midnight Chocolate Cake: A decadent, dense chocolate cake blanketed in a silky smooth dark chocolate mirror glaze.

  Josie had been an in-patient more times than she wanted to admit—and recently, too. She certainly didn’t remember any hospital kitchen providing room service like this one. She knew writing tantalizing menu blurbs was an art form unto itself. The trick was finding the balance between vigorous and colorful descriptors without sounding forced. The goal was to maximize the drool, not the eye roll. Whoever had done the hospital menu was a pro. The choices were enough to propel her out the door in search of her own meal, and she left before Lynetta’s dinner arrived.

  After she took care of Bert and gave him his dinner, she put her coat back on and made her way to the town square. The temperature had definitely dropped in the last few hours. Her breath billowed out in big puffs, but the air was calm and still—and she was stubborn as a goat. She could prove to herself and all her naysayers that the weather wasn’t as bad as they’d all warned her it was going to be. Plus, the square was only a few short blocks away. If the weather turned bad, she could hustle back.

  From what she’d read and heard earlier, she had some decent dinner options: two bars, a public house, a pizza joint, a sandwich shop, a Mexican taqueria, and an upscale Italian bistro, as well as two cafés—a chain coffee shop and a locally owned one that were in the grips of a not-so-friendly competition. By the time she’d walked the thousand or so steps down the silent street with the bare, black-branched trees stretching high overhead, she could feel the cold seeping through her jeans and chafing her legs. Still doable, but making her think about hot chocolate. A sizzling burger and some crispy fries would round out that repast well. A token salad for her required greens would remind her that it was just about to be spring, despite how frosty it felt out here in the waning daylight.

  A few more steps propelled her down one of the four main feeder streets that led into the square, and although she was losing sensation in her face, she paused for a second to appreciate the beauty of the setting—the cobblestone streets, the cozy quad of old bricked buildings that seemed a bit warmer than the open, unsheltered street behind her just by virtue of their lights and welcoming storefronts. In the middle of the square, stark tree branches reached high into the darkening sky above a square ice skating rink where fairy lights twinkled, capturing a Christmassy feel even in this time of year.

  “It’s cute in November, but it gets super tiresome in March,” a voice behind her said.

  Josie turned around to find a heavily bundled man holding open the door of the pub for her. She followed him inside quickly to save more heat from escaping. The warmth inside was almost a shock to her system and she felt an immediate melting sensation as all the muscles she hadn’t known she’d been clenching began to relax.

  Okay, maybe I undere
stimated the chill, she thought, but at least she was inside now.

  The man who’d preceded her into the pub went to a table in the corner of the room without stopping at the hostess desk. He unwrapped the scarf from his neck and sat down with a pile of folders and papers.

  “Table for one tonight or would you prefer to sit at the bar?” the hostess asked Josie, grabbing a leather-bound menu. The woman was middle-aged, in a sweater and jeans with a short, May I Speak to the Manager hairstyle. She looked like she could drive Josie to ballet lessons and help her with her math homework—in a cheerful, competent way.

  Josie looked around at the classy leather chair-backs and high-gloss tabletops. For a Wednesday night, the place had a decent-sized, merry clientele. Still, there wasn’t a wait time and the crowd wasn’t at capacity, so she didn’t feel guilty asking for a booth just for herself. She wanted a little privacy so she could snuggle up with a burger and get warm.

  A cute waitress in a black t-shirt that reminded Josie of a deli back home introduced herself as Mandy and asked, “Have you been here before?”

  When Josie shook her head and said she was just in town visiting a relative for the week, the girl looked concerned. “Well, I hope you brought some warm clothes. We’re in for it tomorrow, from what I’ve heard.” Not for the first time since she arrived, Josie looked down at what she was wearing and wondered what was so incredibly deficient about her wardrobe that was obvious to others on sight. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” the girl said at Josie’s worried look. “We might get a couple deaths a season, but that’s mostly older people with health conditions. Or someone’s grandpa with Alzheimer’s wandering out of the house in a blizzard.”

  Josie’s eyebrows shot up.

  The girl asked, “So, would you like to hear about today’s specials?”

  

  The pub’s menu was an eye opener. Josie had been expecting standard diner fare, like burgers and basic sandwiches, or a BLT or a turkey on wheat. Maybe some chicken noodle soup—a beef barley if someone was feeling fancy. What she found, however, was an interesting array of fusion dishes, like mahi-mahi with a miso-orange glaze on a nest of pan-fried rice stick noodles. Bulgogi soft tacos with Spanish rice and fresh avocado. She was tempted by all the lovely choices, but in the end, she found she craved simplicity. Maybe it was all the details about Lynetta swirling through her mind. Josie needed a gastric balm, so she went for comfort food.