Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  After an uneasy couple hours of lying on the couch and failing to rest, Josie pulled herself together and devised a plan. She felt muddled enough that she got out her phone and made some notes in a blank email message that included notifying the nursing home that Lynetta had died and let them know she was going to pack up Lynetta’s belongings and have them shipped to her sister…and also a reminder to herself not to forget to eat.

  Well, that’s a first. I don’t think I’ve ever had to remind myself to eat on a to-do list before.

  No, the only thing left to do was to follow through with whatever Greta needed her to do. Clean up her sister’s things. Make sure all bills were paid and what few loose ends that remained were tied up. And that wasn’t all. The fog had cleared from her brain and from it emerged an overwhelming sense of anger that she hadn’t been able to do anything to prevent Lynetta’s death.

  Someone had been dead-set on killing the woman.

  And I’m going to find out who did this.

  

  Josie made an appointment to see Darren Ross, the man in charge of Pleasant Valley. Based on his upbeat tone over the phone, he didn’t seem to know about Lynetta’s death, so Josie was going to confront him with it in person to watch his reaction. She hoped to catch him unaware. If he had the slightest inkling of what had happened at his facility, she was going to catch him and nail his gonads to the proverbial wall.

  After hanging up her phone, she spent the next couple hours tightly wrapping her foot and seeing if it could bear any weight. Her ankle throbbed like a DJ about to drop the beat in a nightclub called Pain, but she was determined to get down at least to just one crutch before she had to pack up Lynetta’s room. She wasn’t looking forward to the task, so getting in and out as quickly as possible was going to be her strategy.

  She made a quick stop—well, as quick as possible for her—at the grocery store on the way back to the nursing home and soon was hobbling up the icy walkway to Pleasant Valley’s front door, awkwardly gripping a plastic grocery bag in her free hand and a single crutch in the other.

  Over the front counter, Marcy the Gorgon watched her fumble with the door and catch the bottom of her crutch on the front stoop. Josie managed to right herself without face-planting onto the tiles of the lobby floor, but she’d broken out into a sweat by the time she swung herself over to the front desk. She halted, took a deep breath to compose herself, and plunked the grocery sack on the counter before sliding it across to the woman, who watched her with suspicion.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for you,” Josie told her. “Go ahead. Take a look.”

  “What is it?”

  Josie rolled her eyes. “Open it.”

  “It’s a six-pack of Shiner…what am I supposed to do with this?”

  “It’s for you. Take it.”

  “I like Blue Moon.”

  Josie squinted at her. “But that’s a trendy beer.”

  “It’s frickin’ delicious.”

  They said in unison, “With a slice of orange.”

  An awkward silence followed. Marcy took the grocery bag and hid it under the counter like a dragon adding treasure to her hoard.

  Yeah, you’re welcome.

  Josie cleared her throat. “I have an appointment with Darren Ross.”

  “He’s in his office.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Through the doors. To the right.”

  “Are you going to buzz me in or do I have to use laser vision to blast through it?”

  Marcy rolled her eyes, but she waited for Josie to swing closer to the inner door before she hit the unlock button.

  Baby steps.

  Chapter 28

  Before Josie met with Darren Ross to chew him a proverbial new one, however, she wanted to follow up on something that had bothered her earlier, so she followed the green painted line along the wall to the dining hall in search of the woman she’d heard referred to as Mary, the one who’d claimed to have seen a man in her room on several occasions.

  Josie found Lynetta’s group of four friends in the same spot where she’d last seen them. This time, however, they were missing their queen bee, sadly. Her heart gave a squeeze thinking about Lynetta spending her last days here…her last moments scared, alone, and very ill, wondering who was trying to kill her.

  “When’s Lyn coming back from California?”

  “Stop that. You know she hates it when you call her that instead of her full name. Say it right. Lynetta.”

  Their rapid-fire chatter kept Josie’s head spinning as she tried to follow.

  “Fine. When’s her majesty, duchess of magnificent, also known as Lynetta, coming back from…where did she say she was going? I can’t wait for my daughter to come get me. I’m sick of this place. I wish they hadn’t taken away my keys and cell phone.”

  “Lynetta is not coming back. She’s in the hospital. Darren Ross poisoned her. That’s why you need to stop eating the food here. Especially the bagels. They’re trying to kill us all and take our money.”

  “Well, I don’t have any money. They already took it all. I don’t even have my cell phone or my car keys. They took all of it when they did the strip search. So I’m going to eat all the food I want. They haven’t killed me yet.”

  “How do you know? You never remember a thing. Maybe they killed you and you just don’t remember that either.”

  “Why don’t you shut it, Carol?”

  “For the last time, it’s Catrine. Do I have to wear a name tag?”

  “Quiet, you two. Here comes a nurse. She’s probably going to take notes on everything we say. We should stop talking now.” They’d spied Josie watching them.

  “That’s not a nurse. She came here to visit Lynetta the other day. She’s Lynetta’s daughter.”

  “Not her daughter, her nephew. I mean niece—you know what I meant.”

  One of them turned toward Josie and demanded to know, “What did you do with Lynetta?”

  How much do I tell them? How much will they even remember later?

  The four aged faces in varying colors and states of comprehension stared at her with equal expectancy nonetheless.

  “I didn’t take her. I’m looking for answers, too,” she told them.

  There. That wasn’t a stretch.

  Telling half-truths or lies by omission didn’t feel very good, but at least it was a sensation she was familiar with. She did a mental eye roll at herself.

  Splitting ethical hairs again—my other specialty.

  “How do we know we can trust you? Maybe you’re one of the spies around here.”

  “Are there spies?” Josie asked.

  “How else are they going to collect information on us? This place is too cheap to install cameras.”

  Their logic was…baffling, but at least they seemed less wary of her.

  “What happened to you anyway?” Ruth, Josie thought her name was, asked her, gesturing at her crutch. “Did you forget to pay your bookie?”

  “I slipped on the ice.”

  They all nodded in unison and responded with a chorus of “been there, done that.”

  “My daughter is going to come and take me to Florida. We’re going to that place with the mouse in the suit.”

  “What’s that? Disneyland?”

  “No, the other place with the mouse and all the flashing lights…never mind. I can’t think of what it’s called.”

  The little old lady—Helen, Josie thought—in the tracksuit, which was blue today, stood up. She came up only to Josie’s chin, which meant she was well under five feet tall.

  “We don’t have a lot of answers for you, but we sure are good at making things up when we can’t remember what’s real.” She cackled, and her friends joined in like a pack of grandma hyenas in compression socks.

  “You know what? It is lasagna day,” one of the ladies said. “You should join us for lunch. They won’t kick you out if you’re our guest.”

  “Yeah, like this is an excl
usive club. This ain’t the Russian Tea Room.”

  “What’s that?” someone asked.

  “That place in New York City,” the fourth one whose name was Ruth said.

  “No, it’s in the city on Adams near Buckingham Fountain and Millennium Park and the Art Institute.”

  “You’re losing your marbles. It’s in New York City on 57th. It’s been there since the 1920s. My father took me to tea there when I was a little girl. It was like an enchanted fairy castle. And anyway, it’s not lasagna day. Yesterday was lasagna day. Today’s Tuesday. That means it’s turkey club sandwich with sweet potato fries.” She smacked her lips, but Josie wasn’t very hungry.

  “Are you out of your mind? It’s not Tuesday. It’s Friday, but I don’t remember what’s for lunch on Fridays. Sometimes they serve fish for Lent, but it’s not Lent right now.”

  Josie’s mind was churning, partly because she wasn’t sure what day it was either, and partly because she thought it actually might be Lent…but that was outside her religious awareness at the moment.

  “Well, it’s not fish,” Catrine said. “You would definitely smell that terrible odor by now. But maybe we’ll be lucky and get brownies for dessert. They should just serve dessert and skip the rest of it. I’m old, I deserve to eat the good stuff first.” She lifted her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered at Josie, “Sometimes I eat my sister’s dessert and tell her she already ate it.”

  “Your sister doesn’t live here,” Helen said.

  “Well, congratulations,” Catrine told her. “You’re my sister now, so watch your desserts.” She stuck her hand in the crook of Josie’s elbow. “Come on, let’s go get a seat before all the good ones are taken.”

  Josie was led to a nearby ten-top table where the ladies took chairs on either side of her. She was trying to figure out how to change the subject when she realized that these women didn’t need an artful segue or subtle turn of the conversation.

  “Mary, can you tell me about the man you said you saw in your room once?” she asked.

  The woman called Mary frowned, wrinkling up her already deeply lined face. Her coral colored lipstick was on point though. “What man? I don’t know about any man.”

  Josie sighed. This was not going well, but what had she expected with a witness who was deficient in the memory department?

  The old woman named Catrine—not Carol—smacked Mary lightly on the arm with a spotted hand. “Are you serious? You couldn’t shut up about him for days. You said he was wearing all black and a mask and he came through your window and left through the door to the hallway, never saying a word. Like one of those superheroes or a bank robber.”

  Mary shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I think you’re making it up to scare me. The nuns at St. Thomas’s used to tell us stories like that at Sunday school to try to scare us into behaving. It never worked on my friends, but it always did for me. If I didn’t do what they said, I’d have nightmares for days.”

  “Sorry,” Catrine said to Josie. “She’s like a TV with wavy lines across the screen. Maybe she’ll remember if you hit her this time. Go ahead, give her a good whack.”

  Chapter 29

  Despite her current state of emotional upheaval over Lynetta, Josie had still not yet stooped to striking old ladies. After reaching a confusing dead end with them, Josie excused herself and backtracked down the green striped hall to Darren Ross’s office.

  “Miss Tucker. Please come in. Can I offer you a coffee?” He gestured to a sad-looking one-cup machine with a selection of coffee pods on a table to the side of his office. “I know some people don’t drink coffee this late in the day, but I like that last cup after dinner myself, especially when I’m staying after hours.” He shot her a pointed, martyred look.

  She lowered herself into his visitor chair, propping her crutch against his desk, and declined his offer of a cup with a shake of her head. Between her crutch and her steeling herself to confront him, her heart rate was plenty rapid without the aid of caffeine.

  He settled himself in the chair behind his desk and fussed with the papers and pens in front of him for a second or two. “I assume you’re here to discuss the events that led up to your aunt’s most recent hospitalization and I can assure you that the staff and I have taken every measure to ensure her good health when she returns to our facility.” He obviously hadn’t heard her aunt wouldn’t be coming back.

  Are you so sure about that?

  “What happened before she went to the hospital?”

  He took a deep breath before launching into what seemed like a prepared speech. “I’ve interviewed the staff as well as Lynetta’s companions to create a picture of what her afternoon was like. According to her friends, she slept in late and missed the morning activities. When she finally arrived for lunch, she seemed disheveled and a little bit disoriented. Perhaps she was struggling with her memory a bit, but she ordered the low-salt, low-fat turkey club wrap and fruit salad. The staff says she had a small appetite and left quite a bit of her meal on the plate.

  “After lunch, there was a fabulous demonstration by some champion ballroom dancers, which we were very lucky to have, but by then, Lynetta complained of a headache and went back to her room to rest. Her friends remarked that maybe she was coming down with the flu.” He shrugged. “The flu is a big threat here, especially this month. We had quite an outbreak about two weeks ago and a couple of our residents had to be hospitalized—just for observation. They are all back with us now, thriving and healthy again. But the gossip mills tend to buzz with rumors at the moment anyone coughs or sniffles.

  “Later in the afternoon Betty Edwards who, as you know is Lynetta’s roommate, alerted us to the fact that your aunt was quite ill and had taken to her bed. When we had our on-site nurse check on her, we discovered she had gotten very sick indeed and was not responsive to our questions or even to us shaking her shoulder or tapping her cheek. Our on-staff nurse at that point called 9-1-1 for an ambulance.”

  Josie stared at him in disgust, fairly certain her expression was mirroring her thoughts.

  The weaselly bastard is lying his face off, but why?

  Lynetta had called Josie not long before she was taken to the hospital—yesterday morning, as a matter of fact. Not only that, but the older woman had sounded lucid and alert. She’d won some money at bridge and had been looking forward to the ballroom dancing later in the day. Had Darren Ross fabricated the whole account or had Lynetta’s friends lied to him?

  Should I confront him with the truth now or play my cards closer? Probably better to wait and see what missteps he takes next. Any one of these Pleasant Valley people could have killed her.

  The more Josie thought about it, the angrier she got. Not just with his rat-like nature—and wasn’t that unfair to rodents?—but with his entire career path. Taking care of the elderly and infirm was a noble choice. Providing comfort and security for people at the end of their lives was nothing but a golden ticket to paradise in the afterlife, if there was such a thing. Making money off them was a natural byproduct of doing the job well, but setting out to profit from the helpless was a moral quagmire—shaky ground when it came to earning his eternal reward.

  This man in front of her had just revealed himself to be part of the latter crowd. The middle management who stepped on the afterlife elevator that went only one direction, which was decidedly downward.

  One-way ticket to the basement, buddy. Not a shred of doubt about it.

  “So how is your aunt doing, if I may ask? We are certainly looking forward to her return to Pleasant Valley as soon as she’s able.”

  Afraid those sweet, sweet resident fees will stop? Or are you more fearful of a murder investigation? Josie wondered.

  Her best tactic would probably be to remain cool and collected and not reveal any further details about her aunt to him. If he continued to talk, he would probably incriminate himself or someone else here at the facility. She just needed to maintain her composure a
nd let him blunder ahead, the creepy jerk. All she had to do was remain silent. Keep quiet. Not say a single word—

  She could feel her mouth open as she heard her voice say, “She’s dead. She died this morning.”

  

  A visibly upset Darren Ross trotted after Josie as she swung down the hall toward Lynetta’s room. Two crutches would have allowed her to seriously outpace him, and she almost regretted having left the second one at home. Almost.

  He nattered on about his shock and condolences until she wanted to check him like a hockey player using her crutch as a stick. A little gift from Boston, Bobby Orr style. Darren Ross’s surprise at the news had seemed genuine enough, but Josie didn’t know whether to interpret his reaction as dismay over the death or shock that it had happened sooner than he’d planned.

  Definitely still on the suspect list.

  Although…what motive would he have for killing Lynetta? She had been a paying client. Now that she was dead, he stood to lose money.

  The door to room 39 was closed, so Josie knocked.

  No one answered.

  “Where’s Betty?” she asked him, trying the door handle, which wasn’t locked.

  “How would I know?” he said, snapping at her in his distress. She narrowed her eyes at him and pushed through the door.

  Pull it together, man. You’re falling apart at the seams.

  Betty wasn’t in the room, and the bathroom was empty, too.

  “Dinner just ended. Maybe she’s reading in the Activities Room. She likes her quiet time and her personal space.”

  That’s a polite way of saying she’s crabby unless she’s left alone.

  Josie glanced at Lynetta’s side of the room. The silky purple velvet duvet with red and orange beaded fringe would never be used by Lynetta again. The gaudy thing was a burst of color in a largely impersonal space, much like the woman herself had been in this drab place. She hadn’t belonged here and she’d been underappreciated.

  Maybe I’m getting maudlin and blowing this way out of proportion, but the woman is dead. Who else is going to remember her fondly?