Murder at Harbor Village

by GP Gardner

  “It does do a lot for the room,” Patti said. “Gives it some life. How about flowers, too? Couldn’t we find funds for a little bouquet to go on this table?” She glided across the room and swept her hand over the worktable. “And maybe another little arrangement for the lobby? Wouldn’t that be pretty? I could pick up something at the grocery store and it would last all week.”

  “You know, I need to have a look at our budget. I have no idea what funds we have for anything. Is Emily here today?”

  “Yes, and she’s already looking for you. Want me to call her?”

  “Not just yet. I’ve got a little chore to do first. If you’ll fend off visitors for a few minutes, I’ll draft something for you to format and print.”

  “Oh, I love doing that,” Patti said. “I’ll keep everybody out until you get ready.”

  I made a couple of phone calls and then asked Patti for a copy of the employee handbook and a sheet of paper. I wished I’d brought my laptop, but once I’d read the relevant section of the handbook, it took only a few minutes with pen and paper to draft a memorandum.

  MEMORANDUM

  TO: All Assisted Living Unit Employees, Harbor Village

  FROM: Cleo Mack, Acting Executive Director

  SUBJECT: Drug Testing

  In accordance with the Harbor Village drug free workplace program, outlined in the Harbor Village employee handbook, and as a consequence of a recent incident involving the theft of pain medications, this memorandum will serve as official notice that all employees of the Assisted Living unit will participate in a drug test within 24 hours. The cost of this test will be paid by Harbor Village, and the testing lab selected for this procedure is located at …

  I drew a blank line where Patti could fill in the street address.

  “Put today’s date on it and leave room for my signature. Call the lab back. Here’s the phone number. Get their street address. Sorry I didn’t think to do that when I was talking with them. Then deliver a copy of this memo to each employee in the Assisted Living building, ASAP. Ask Ivy to phone any staff members who won’t be coming in today and tell them what the memo says and that a copy is there waiting for them. Why don’t we copy the relevant page from the employee handbook, too, and attach it. Here, I’ll put a paperclip on the page.”

  “I’ll start on it right now. And there’s someone waiting to see you.”

  Dolly was my first visitor of the day. “I love your office. It looks new. How did you do it so fast?”

  “I didn’t do a thing. Stewart, the maintenance man, did it, after I left last night. Isn’t it amazing?”

  “Stewart? I know him. I want my apartment painted this exact color! And you owe me a paint job. I didn’t get one when I moved in. Now you and Nita have got me all fired up about redecorating. Can I see your apartment, too? You’ve had a week to work on it, so I expect something special.”

  “You and Nita come tonight. We’ll have a glass of wine and you can look at the apartment and visit the cat.”

  “Does she have a name yet? And is she friendly? I’m not sure I would be if I’d been thrown to the wilds for a month.”

  “She’s friendly. And I’m going to try again today to learn her name.” I was thinking of the clinic in the shopping center next door, the one that had been closed Friday afternoon when I called. Maybe Mrs. Flowers’ two cats had separate vets.

  Mr. Levine came in, puffing. “Why haven’t you signed up for the Community Affairs committee?” he asked Dolly. He shook rain off his pants then pulled a chair around and sat down heavily.

  Dolly blinked like an owl. “Affairs? Here? Is that legal?”

  “More political than legal, I’d say.”

  “No, I mean—oh, never mind,” Dolly said. “I’m not much into politics. Affairs either, for that matter. Exactly what are you planning?”

  “We’re sponsoring a forum Thursday night for the city council candidates.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t drive at night. Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to drive, Dolly.” He was catching his breath but growing irritated. “It’s right here, in the ballroom.”

  “In our ballroom? Well, yes, in that case I’ll come. What time?” She got out a little notebook and pencil. “I have to write everything down.”

  “Six o’clock.”

  She wrote. “Will it be over by eight? I keep early hours, you know.”

  “Over by seven thirty. You don’t have to stay for refreshments if you’re in a hurry. We’ve got a schedule and we’ll hold them to it.”

  “Oh, this is exciting! New paint and a political forum. Well, Cleo, I just wanted to welcome you aboard. Sorry I didn’t get in yesterday. And I’ll see you tonight. Did we say what time? I need to write that down, too.”

  She made her note about visiting my apartment and left.

  Mr. Levine wanted to see the ballroom, to see if preparations for his forum had begun yet.

  And Emily the bookkeeper was waiting in the hallway.

  “I’m walking around to the ballroom with Mr. Levine. Go in and admire the lovely new paint job and I’ll be right back.” To Mr. Levine I said as we walked, “I don’t know if Stewart has gotten anything done yet. He worked on my office last night.”

  We went out the door at the end of the hallway and turned toward the ballroom, staying under the roof all the way. “I talked with Carla in the kitchen about refreshments. Ann is going to help her.”

  “Maybe Ann can help her with some lunch menus, too. That dining room should be your number one priority. Don’t let this murder business distract you. That’s a police problem. Doesn’t concern Harbor Village.”

  “I hope you’re right. And hope everyone looks at it that way”

  The ballroom looked just as it had the last time we saw it.

  “I’ll check back tomorrow and there better be progress. But right now, I’ll speak to Carla. Maybe I’ll stay for lunch since I’m here. I’ve got some good books to donate to the library. Is Patti Wagon still in charge of it?”

  “I think so.” Actually, I hadn’t known there was a library. I wondered where it was but didn’t want to ask Mr. Levine.

  When I returned to the office, I saw a group of young people waiting in the lobby. They sat on the couches or stood near the windows, looking out at the rain.

  Patti had a sheaf of memos. “You’re certainly popular this morning. I’ve got copies made and I’m putting names on the envelopes right now. I’ll be out for a few minutes to walk them over to assisted living.”

  Emily was sitting beside Patti’s desk. She popped up and waved some papers at me when I looked at her. Leases, I learned, reading the bold print. I saw my name on one of them.

  “These were on my desk this morning.” Her voice was indignant and her face was even redder than her hair. “I don’t know anything about them, and now these people . . .” She waved the leases toward the lobby. “These people are here wanting their deposits back. How am I supposed to know if they ever paid a deposit? The leases don’t give any names. They say per Marjorie Zadnichek, and Marjorie Zadnichek has nothing at all to do with Harbor Village! She’s a manager at the Grand Hotel at Point Clear.”

  I scanned the leases while Emily vented. They applied to two units in one of the U-shaped buildings at the front of the complex. The rent quoted was cheaper than mine, but the tenants were directed to make deposit and rent checks payable to Ferrell & Associates, just as I had.

  From the corner of my eye I could see the people in the lobby coalescing and moving in our direction. There weren’t nearly enough chairs for them in my office.

  “Let’s go out there, where we can all sit down.” I moved in that direction, with Emily right behind me, and the group turned around.

  “Hi there,” someone said.

  I turned to see a familiar face. It was the desk clerk from the motel.
/>   “Hunter! Good to see you. And this group must be the students from Ukraine, right?”

  “Yes, yes,” they answered, happily.

  I wasn’t really superstitious, or not very, but I hadn’t adjusted yet to the idea of sitting on the couch where Lee Ferrell had died. Instead, I pulled a chair from one of the card tables and sat facing the group. Emily did the same, staying a couple of feet behind me.

  “I’m here to help with communication.” Hunter introduced the members of his group.

  I identified the pretty blonde as his girlfriend; her name, she said, was Angelika.

  “I am going home.” Her pronunciation was crisp. “And I need my money.”

  “Her deposit on the apartment,” Hunter clarified.

  I nodded and looked at the leases, scanning for names but not finding them. And not finding the amount of the deposits initially, but finally there it was, in small print—$1,400. “What documentation do you have? A copy of the lease showing your name? A receipt?”

  “Receipt, yes.” She whipped out a small piece of paper.

  It was a plain receipt torn from a pad you could buy at any office supply store, with no indication it came from Harbor Village. The dollar amount said three hundred fifty, and the date was three months ago. The signature was a heavy scrawl but I had no trouble making out the first letter J, followed by what might be a capital B.

  “Jamie Barnes,” Emily whispered, looking over my shoulder. “It’s her signature, but she never gave me anything, I swear. No cash, no check, no deposit slip. Nothing!”

  I might as well bite the bullet. I smiled at the students. “We would normally return the deposit after the unit has been vacated and inspected. But I understand this is a special situation, since you’ll be leaving the country. Are you all leaving at the same time?”

  Hunter got involved, repeating some of my words with slight variations.

  Angelika smiled at me. “We go Saturday. All eight. To Washington, DC.”

  Today was Tuesday, so that gave us a couple of days. Maybe the hotel would be willing to guarantee the condition of the apartments? I wondered why the hotel hadn’t paid the original deposit anyway and realized that since there were no names on the lease, and no name on the receipt, I couldn’t be certain who had paid what. I’d better talk with Marjorie Zadnichek before I made any promises to these young people.

  “Do all of you have receipts?”

  They did.

  “Hunter, if you’ll collect these, Emily will go with you to make a copy for us. Then I’ll talk with the hotel manager and we’ll have the refunds ready Friday. How’s that?” I hoped I’d be able to deliver.

  “Friday. Okay.” Angelika spoke in a mixture of English and something else—Russian or Ukrainian, I supposed—to the others. They all gave me big smiles.

  One international crisis averted.

  Hunter and Emily were back in two minutes and redistributed the original receipts.

  Another student spoke in a low voice to Angelika and pointed to the window. “May we look at your garden?”

  “You’ll get wet. But yes, of course. Hunter, thank you for coming.”

  Emily waited until they were out of earshot. “What do I do now?”

  I took a moment to consider. I didn’t know about Emily, but I was beginning to have an unpleasant inkling about the situation. What were the odds that someone had rented these two apartments outside of official channels? The students had been here for three months, paying rent that could be pocketed without much fear of discovery. And when the summer was over, and the apartments vacated, they could right go back on the list of available units and no one would ever suspect anything.

  I couldn’t be certain about who was involved. Jamie’s name, or something similar to it, was on the receipt, but anyone could’ve signed it.

  “You saw what the receipt looked like,” I said to Emily. “Go out to the Assisted Living building and find Nurse Ivy. Take her with you to the office Jamie used. Ivy can show you. See if that receipt book is there. If you find it, bring it back here, and don’t let Michelle interfere with you. Don’t even tell her what you’re looking for, just search the desk. Act like it’s something you do routinely, and don’t mention my name.”

  She stared for a second then straightened her back and gave me a cocky smile. “I’m on it.”

  While I waited for Emily, I went back to my office and tried to relax. That was only partially successful, so I got out my phone and searched for veterinary offices in Fairhope, found the one in the shopping center and dialed the number.

  “I inherited a cat that belonged to Ms. Flowers in Harbor Village,” I said to the woman who answered. “She lived in apartment eight. I’m calling to see if she might’ve been a client of yours and if you can tell me the cat’s name.”

  “Can you hold?”

  “Yes.”

  I was still holding when Emily appeared at the door. I motioned her to the worktable, where we could spread out the materials she was carrying.

  “Now, tell me again what the owner’s name was,” the woman on the phone said.

  “Flowers.”

  “We have a Bob on Fish River, and a Kimberly…this must be it. Kimberly Flowers, apartment eight, Harbor Boulevard?”

  “That’s it.”

  “She has two cats. Kitty Baby and Tinkerbelle.”

  “That’s it!” I was so pleased to solve the puzzle. “Tinkerbelle.”

  She spelled it for me. “Belle like a southern belle. That’s unusual. Three years old on the fourteenth of April, and she’s due an annual check-up next month. She’s a longhaired calico. I’ve got a picture of her here if you need to see what she looks like.”

  “I’m so glad to know her name. Can’t wait to get home and see if she answers to it.”

  The woman on the phone laughed. “Well, you said she’s a cat. Don’t expect miracles.”

  “Tinkerbelle,” I repeated to Emily after I hung up. “I’ve been trying for days to find out the name of the cat that adopted me.”

  “I’ve got five cats. A momma and four kittens. Do you want another one?”

  “No, one’s enough for me. But I’ll know who to call if I need a cat sitter.”

  We pulled two chairs to the table and she laid out a stack of folders. “Here’s the receipt book.”

  “It was in Jamie’s desk?”

  “The top drawer of the desk in the first office, just like you said. Michelle was sitting there, but I asked her to move. And I’ve looked; there are eight receipts for three hundred fifty dollars each in the middle of May. None of them show a name. That amounts to twenty-eight hundred dollars that was never turned in, never deposited, and I don’t want anybody blaming me.”

  There were a lot more than eight receipts missing from the book. I looked forward to seeing what the others were for, but now I turned my attention to Emily and the bookkeeping reports.

  Harbor Village was bigger than I had imagined. Emily listed two hundred twenty-four apartment units, not counting assisted living or the privately owned condos and houses. Owners of those still paid a monthly fee for yard maintenance, cable, water and sewer, gym membership and emergency call service. Emily’s charts showed resident names alongside one hundred seventy-two rental units, which translated to fifty-two vacancies, I calculated, writing all the figures in the margin.

  “What percentage is that, approximately?” I recalled the financial reports Riley had reviewed with me. They claimed the entire corporation had a seventy-nine percent occupancy rate.

  Emily produced a calculator and punched a few numbers. “Twenty-three percent vacant.”

  That meant seventy-seven percent occupancy. Only a little below average, but it sounded bad. I hated being below average in anything.

  “That’s fifty-two units we maintain and insure, heat or cool and pay taxes on,
while they produce no income, not for us or the dining room or the rental businesses. That’s a lot of waste.”

  “But remember, those Russians are in two units I show as vacant.”

  “Oh, right. Where’s my apartment? Does it show up as vacant?”

  It did.

  “Are you paying rent?”

  “Eighteen hundred a month.”

  “Wonder how much the Russians are paying.”

  I hadn’t thought beyond the deposits. So there was three months of rental income missing, too? “What’s the usual rental rate for those units?”

  “Two bedrooms, upstairs, in that building, with no incentives…” She was looking down the list. “The normal rate is sixteen hundred dollars a month.”

  “So that’s how much? For the summer.”

  She didn’t need to use the calculator app. “Sixteen hundred a month for three months is forty-eight hundred dollars, plus the fourteen-hundred-dollar deposit that will be refunded if the units are in good shape. In all, sixty-two hundred dollars I didn’t get.”

  “A nice little sum.”

  “Times two,” she reminded me. “For the two units.”

  “Twelve thousand dollars?”

  “Twelve thousand four hundred dollars.”

  “Ohmygod.”

  Emily flexed her financial acumen. “But we don’t actually know how much they were paying. Sometimes new residents get incentives, like free meals for a month. Since the deposits totaled fourteen hundred a unit, I’ll bet that’s what the monthly rental was, too. But it still totals…” She punched at the touch screen. “Eight thousand four hundred dollars for the two units, after you return their deposits.”

  “So much to think about.” I wished for greater accounting expertise for myself. “I may learn more when I go through the rest of the receipt book. Wonder if any other units are rented off the record.”

  This was beginning to look like it could be a significant under-the-table income for someone. But instead of the usual ohmygod chorus, my personal reaction was more of a sinking feeling in the stomach. I remembered my first visit to the Bergen apartment. When I told them I’d like to live at Harbor Village, hadn’t Nita said the complex was nearly full? Hadn’t Riley commented about all the new people upstairs in his building? And yet, Emily’s roster showed fifty-two vacancies.