Murder at Harbor Village

by GP Gardner

  “Go ahead and order the replacements. We’ll need them.” I would dump the question of a police report into Travis’ lap. He couldn’t expect me to handle that on my first day.

  Patti had moved on down the hall, her footsteps clicking on the tile, but now she was stopped, waiting for me.

  “Tiko is physical therapy.” She ran a finger down the employee roster. I noticed that her nail polish was orange and white zigzags. “I shouldn’t have put her on this list, since she doesn’t actually work for Harbor Village, just rents space here. But you may want to meet her anyway. She fixed my stiff neck one day by resting her elbow on it.” She moved to the next line of her chart. “Carla is in charge of the kitchen and has one helper, Lizzie.” She looked up and I noticed her glasses had orange frames today. “They’re the ones we wouldn’t want to interrupt right now. They’ll be busy serving lunch.”

  “Patti, do you match your glasses to your nail polish?”

  She twittered and admired her fingertips. “When I can. Don’t you love it?”

  “What time is lunch?”

  “Eleven thirty until one, officially, but everybody comes early. Just looking for something to do.”

  She went back to the list, nearing the bottom now. “Security won’t be here until tonight, and Joyce is the head of housekeeping. She has two assistants and they’re out working most of the day. Some days they come in early. We have some early risers here, and the housekeeper is like a social visit.”

  “And what do we offer in the way of activities to keep people entertained?”

  She shrugged. “Not much really. I hope you’ll have some ideas.”

  “Do the housekeepers work in teams?”

  “Oh no. They’d never get finished then. Usually two of them do the offices, but they separate once they’re here. And they come here every week. Most places they do every other week.”

  I silently hoped they did a better job on the apartments and condos than they did in the office area.

  “How long does it take them to do a circuit of the entire complex?”

  Patti didn’t know. “I know they complain all the time about being overworked. And they quit. Joyce will tell you she needs more help. I think what she really wants is an office job, instead of running a vacuum cleaner. She wanted my job, but she has an old DUI.”

  “You know everybody’s secrets.”

  “Yeah. Well, everybody has some. Aren’t you glad you’re from the big city?”

  One of the residents I’d met at the Goldenrod Grille was coming across the lobby. I couldn’t think of his name.

  “Who is this, do you know?”

  “Mr. Levine!” Patti sang out, making it sound like a greeting to him rather than an answer to me.

  “Good morning. Mr. Levine, you’re my first official visitor. Come back this way and see my new office. Would you like coffee? I guess we have coffee. Do we, Patti?”

  “Coffee, tea or bottled water. Which will it be, Mr. Levine?”

  “Water, I guess. Need to rehydrate after that walk across the parking lot.”

  He was puffing and red-faced, with a little ribbon of perspiration beads across the top of his forehead.

  “Have you thought about getting golf carts for us to use around here?” He took out a handkerchief and blotted his brow and upper lip then took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

  He had come to complain and wasted no time with pleasantries. “The place I moved from had things happening. Dances, lectures, performances. Why can’t we get that going here?”

  His lips still quivered with the heavy breathing.

  “Good idea. Let’s do it.”

  “There’s a municipal election coming up in two weeks. Why can’t they come here and debate? Or at least answer questions and try to get our vote.”

  Patti brought water and then perched on the edge of the third chair, wavering between staying and leaving and trying to intuit what I expected. I smiled at her while Mr. Levine drank a lot of water.

  “Do we have a club that could sponsor a debate? Current Events or Community Affairs, something like that?”

  Patti shook her head and Mr. Levine nodded. “A club, yes, we can call it that. Get them to help with publicity and emceeing. It’s nothing official, just the people in my building who sit on the porch every afternoon, but I’ll organize them. Community Affairs. That’ll do.”

  “You don’t think the candidates will be booked up already?”

  “I don’t think they’re booked at all! No place to go and hear them.”

  “How many people does our ballroom hold? I haven’t seen it yet.” I looked to Patti for an answer, but Mr. Levine beat her to it.

  “We can go look right now.”

  We went. Stewart was coming in the side door as Mr. Levine and Patti and I were going out.

  “Stewart! Just the person we need,” I said. “How many people would you say the ballroom holds?”

  “Standing or seated?” He fell in step with us.

  “I think we’d want to sit.”

  “Sitting. Definitely.” Mr. Levine was puffing from exertion.

  Stewart tried the door to the ballroom. It was locked, but he had a passkey.

  “I need to get a key, too, I guess. Who’s in charge of keys?”

  “That would be your friendly maintenance man. I’ll bring you one when I go back to the shed. Seated capacity is a hundred and thirty, according to the fire marshal. I think we still have that many chairs. They get banged up, you know, with people standing on them, or driving over them.”

  “Driving over chairs?”

  Patti twittered and nodded her head, curls bouncing. “It happened.”

  The ballroom was larger than I expected, with a chandelier that looked like a smaller cousin to the one in the lobby, and sconces spaced around the walls. Three pairs of garden doors opened out to the koi pond, but otherwise it was about as plain a space as ever existed. At one end there was a pass-through to a kitchen. Double doors stood open at the back end of the room, revealing a storage room filled with racks of tables and chairs with padded seats and backs.

  “Who sets up chairs and a sound system before an event?”

  “I do. Or a helper, if I’ve got one.”

  “What day would you like, Mr. Levine? You want to talk to the candidates first?”

  “Thursday.”

  “This week? That’s just three days from now.” I was thinking of publicity and schedules. “Would that give us time to post notices in town?”

  “Six o’clock,” Mr. Levine said. “If they can’t come, screw ‘em.”

  “Set up chairs for one hundred thirty people, six o’clock Thursday.” Stewart looked at me. “You want refreshments?”

  “Don’t tell me the maintenance man handles that, too.”

  Patti twittered again and Stewart preened just noticeably.

  “No, not refreshments. You talk to Carla in the kitchen about refreshments. And talk real sweet. But I’ll put up a table or two at the back for her to use. How many candidates do you expect?”

  “Let’s see, there are five council seats and four challengers, plus two running for mayor. What’s that, eleven?”

  Stewart gestured toward one end of the room. “Let’s see, tables with seats for eleven plus a moderator at this end, and two tables but no chairs back here, for refreshments. We’ll need the sound system, and all the microphones I can find. May have to borrow some. Do you need a sign-up table, anything like that?”

  Mr. Levine shook his head. “Literature, maybe. They pay all that money for cards and flyers. Better give them a place to set things out.”

  It was noon when we got back to the office area. “I don’t want to interrupt Carla while she’s serving lunch, but I think I’ll go down there and eat.”

  “Oh, you’d better go soon, th
en.” Patti looked at her watch. “They run out of food sometimes. You want company?”

  “Sure. But let me make a quick phone call first.”

  I went to my office and phoned Travis.

  “Looks like some pain meds are missing from the lock box in assisted living.” I gave him the facts. “Do you want me to file a police report?”

  “We both know who’s responsible, but yeah, go ahead.”

  “I don’t know who’s responsible.”

  “Three guesses. Is that all you needed? I’m in the middle of something here.”

  I told him bye and went back to Patti, waiting at her desk.

  “Want me to bring along some of this material to review?”

  “No, but I want you to lock it up while we’re out. Let’s not leave personal information lying around for just anyone to see. And while we eat, we’ll just chat with whoever’s in there.”

  “Oh, an undercover operation.” She sounded delighted.

  “Not at all. I believe it’s called fact finding.”

  “Even better.” She almost skipped across the lobby.

  “What’s our policy about the ballroom? Is there a reservation book or something? I should’ve checked before Mr. Levine left, but I’ll chase him down if there’s a conflict.”

  “I’ll check, but I don’t think there’s anything scheduled.”

  “Thursday, I think he said.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything scheduled, period. All the way to Christmas, maybe. We always have something then.”

  That was months away. “Why so long without an event?”

  She shrugged. “Who would do it? He’s not going to pay, is he?”

  “I didn’t think about it. He’s a resident. Do residents pay extra to use the facilities? They don’t pay you for driving them, do they? Or to use the gym, or the pool?”

  She sort of shrugged again, sort of rolled her eyes and moved her head in a way that wasn’t clearly yes or no.

  “Where can I get a copy of the ballroom policy? What are residents told about using the facilities when they move in?”

  “I should’ve brought a notebook, if you’re going to be fact finding all through lunch.”

  “Who’s the activity director? I remember seeing one listed on the employee roster.”

  “That’s Melba. But she’s just for assisted living.”

  “We don’t have an activity director for—what?—three hundred residents?” My voice was rising.

  “Isn’t that going to be your job? Resident Services.”

  “No. Absolutely not. Activities are something entirely different. Game nights, book groups, concerts, trips. Things like that.” No wonder people were complaining about the lack of activities; the staff didn’t seem to know what they were. “How often do we have a staff meeting?”

  Patti glanced at me and pursed her lips. “A what?”

  Chapter 9

  Half a dozen residents, two men and four women, were seated at the long table in the dining room, dirty plates in front of them.

  My neighbor Ann was one of them. “I hope you didn’t come to eat.”

  “Are we too late?” I introduced myself to the other people at the table and got their names.

  Ann laid down a knitting project and went to the steam table to see what was left of lunch.

  “You all know Patti.”

  They did, to some degree.

  “You’re Patti Wagon, aren’t you?”

  “I think it’s just so amazing your name matches your job,” another said.

  Patti did a double take, laughed and started to explain it wasn’t actually her name before she must have realized the futility of that approach. Then she laughed even harder, and I joined her.

  “I think you can get enough for two plates,” Ann said. “Want me to do it for you?”

  “Oh, no.” I went to the serving cart and got a clean plate off the stack. “We’ll do it ourselves. You just stay and talk with us while we eat.”

  Carla came out of the kitchen and went through the same apologizing routine after I introduced myself. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have made extra.” She was young, maybe Patti’s age, with square-cut, chin-length brown hair, a white apron over a polo shirt and jeans, and a tiny gold filigree butterfly in the side of her nose. “Let me get Lizzie out of the kitchen.”

  Lizzie was her helper, a skinny, pale-skinned girl with freckles across her cheeks, who looked like she should still be in school. She seemed stressed about being introduced and quickly went off to clear dirty dishes from the long table as Patti and I pulled up additional chairs.

  “Oh, oh, oh!” Ann grabbed her tea glass from Lizzie. “You got any more tea back there?”

  Lizzie, obliging, headed for the kitchen.

  I asked Carla, “How do you ever figure out how many people you’ll be serving?”

  That opened the floodgates.

  “It’s impossible! Some days we come out even, some days there’s enough left to feed an army. And some days, like today, we scrape the bottom of the trays. I always tell people, if they get here and there’s nothing left, I’ll make them a hamburger or a grilled cheese and salad. I’ll take that, Lizzie. Get some ice.” She took the tea pitcher and circled the table, refilling glasses.

  “And what do you do with leftovers, when you have them?” I asked when she got back to me. I scooped up a bite of squash casserole on my fork.

  Carla dropped her voice. “Save them for another day.”

  Well, that was nice to know, I supposed. “I wonder, Carla, are you and Lizzie able to provide refreshments for a political forum in the ballroom? Mr. Levine is planning it for Thursday evening. This Thursday.”

  “Oh, I love doing events.” She seemed completely unfazed by the imminent deadline. “How many people? What kind of refreshments?”

  Of course I didn’t know but the people at the table immediately began voicing their ideas.

  “Thirty people,” Patti guessed. “Maybe more. What do you think?”

  That sounded right to me, but Ann shook her head and Gloria Gibbons agreed. “Right here in Harbor Village? We wouldn’t have to drive? All the night owls will come.”

  “And serving refreshments? Everybody will come.”

  “Fifty, at least,” they assured me.

  “Plus the candidates,” Patti remembered.

  I added, “Mr. Levine is organizing a committee to help.”

  Every person at the table wanted to join the committee. While Patti and I ate, they discussed plans.

  “Get bottled drinks,” Ann told Carla. “Open them as you need them and that way nothing goes to waste.”

  “Right. And plastic cups and ice. Lizzie, go turn the icemaker up a notch, while we’re thinking of it. We’ll bag some up and store it in the freezer.”

  “Cookies,” one of the men said.

  “Good idea,” Ann said. “Assorted flavors. Chocolate chip and oatmeal with raisins. I always like lemon, maybe with some frosting. I’ll help you with the baking, Carla, and I’ve got nice tablecloths we can use.”

  “I’ll help, too,” Laurel Gibbons said.

  “Maybe some cheese,” one of the men proposed. “You can put it on lasagna later in the week if there’s some left over.”

  “Won’t be any leftover cookies. Ha! Not in this place,” Ann said.

  “Now, don’t forget to come,” they told each other and laughed like it was a running joke. Two of the women made notes of the date, time and location.

  “Can we put it on the bulletin board?”

  “Where is the bulletin board?”

  “I mean that little sign, the A-frame. That thing they put out front.”

  “I haven’t seen that sign in months.”

  “Didn’t Ms. Vetter run over it?”

&nbs
p; “I’m going to sign up for that committee. What’s he calling it? Community Action?”

  Well, well. I raised my eyebrows at Patti. She smiled back. It seemed that we had found some facts already. People wanted activities. Maybe Mr. Levine had hit on something. We’d know for certain Thursday night.

  “What about this woman who drowned,” a man asked as Patti and I were about to leave. “I heard it might be a purse snatching.”

  “I haven’t heard that but the police are still investigating. In fact, they’re coming to interview me this afternoon.” I checked the time and waved to get Carla’s attention. “Do I pay you?”

  She pointed to a clipboard on a stand beside the door. “Just sign. You’ll get a bill.”

  As Patti and I walked down the hallway, I checked my phone. Travis had called back and left a message. But Patti had a serious question, one I’d been dreading.

  “Do you think Ms. Ferrell’s death was an accident?”

  “I hope so. What do you think?”

  She did a little shrug. “Nobody liked her. Stewart says that alone makes it suspicious.”

  Would a guilty person say that? I didn’t think so. “Did you know Lee was Jamie’s sister?”

  Patti stopped in her tracks and stared at me, eyes wide. “No! You’re kidding me. Even her own sister couldn’t stand her? You should’ve heard the things Jamie said…do you think Jamie might’ve…” She pantomimed a quick little shove.

  “Hard to believe. But I’m no expert about such things.”

  “No, you’ve been in a university. You had to move to a retirement center to experience real life.” She grinned and bounced her curls. “How did you like the dining room?”

  “To tell the truth, I barely noticed the food. Meatloaf, squash casserole and a tomato-cucumber salad, right? Good, but I think it needed cornbread rather than toast.”

  We reached the lobby and I cast a quick glance toward the seating area as we walked by. How long before I quit thinking of Lee there?

  “You saw Carla send Lizzie to make the toast, didn’t you? I’ll bet she had cornbread and the early birds cleaned it out. People pay for one meal, eat the soup and salad at noon and take the meatloaf and vegetable back to their apartment for supper. That way, they get two meals for the price of one. And they probably take double cornbread, one for each meal.”