by GP Gardner
Patti was busy with publicity, posting last-minute notices of the political forum on Facebook sites. “I’m going to e-mail reminders to everybody. The media outlets, too.”
She still had flyers on hand for residents who came to the big house. I picked up a few copies from the stack on her desk and walked over to the Assisted Living building. A dozen residents were still finishing breakfast, and others had already moved to the front sitting room. I gave the flyers to Rutie for distribution to staff and residents, waved to Ivy and stopped to watch the kittens chasing each other through a cardboard box. Someone had cut out kitten-sized doors and windows.
Ivy joined me after a few minutes and the two of us went on to the little back office that had belonged to Jamie. It had no windows and was crowded with furniture.
“We need to do something about this office.” I pulled out a chair and slid into it.
I began by thanking her for the good work she had done all week, and under such difficult circumstances. I could feel her bracing up, waiting for me to say her services were no longer needed. But I inquired about her licenses and certifications instead and, when the answers were what I expected, offered her a permanent job, directing the Assisted Living program. Ivy was delighted. She didn’t need time to think about it, just accepted on the spot.
“Come by the office later and we’ll complete the paperwork,” I said.
“I know you’re still getting used to this place, but do you have suggestions for me? Ideas about what you’d like to see in this unit?”
I hadn’t come with ideas already developed, but we spent a few minutes talking about possibilities. I told her about the open, inclusive management style I was employing.
“You might create some committees. Put residents on them, along with the staff. We’re doing something similar for the entire facility. An activity committee, entertainment committee, meals, whatever. I’d like to get residents more involved in decisions. People seem excited about the idea.”
We talked for several minutes before Ivy mentioned the kittens.
“We’re going to need some money for them, I suppose. Food and litter and toys. Vet visits will be the most expensive thing. It won’t be cheap with four of them.”
“Why don’t you ask Melba? Isn’t that her name? I haven’t met her.”
Ivy looked puzzled. “You mean the…what is she, the activity director?”
“Right. She’s got a budget and hasn’t used much of it, even though the year’s more than half gone. She can afford the kittens, I’m sure.”
“I’m glad to know she has a budget.” Her eyes narrowed. “She’s been in and out awfully fast this week. I’d better leave her a message to talk with me next time she’s here. I need to find out what her schedule is, so I can hold her to it.”
She pulled out a writing surface on the old wooden desk and ran her finger down a list of phone numbers printed there. Melba’s name was in the typed section. Ivy copied the phone number onto a sticky note.
I saw Michelle’s name and phone number on the list. “Have you talked with Michelle at all?”
“Not since Tuesday,” Ivy said. “I wasn’t comfortable saying much while I was temporary, but I’ve been arranging for backups for her. I was hoping she’d show up today.”
“Let me call her.” I took a sticky note from the pad on the desk and wrote down the number as Ivy read it out.
“Is she going to come back?”
I shrugged. “I heard a rumor she won’t. Better make plans without her and start thinking about a replacement. We’ll know for certain in a couple of days. Maybe one of the part-time people wants to go full-time. And there’s one other thing. Emily came in here a few days ago looking for a receipt book.”
“Emily?”
“The bookkeeper. Red hair.”
“Oh, yes. Nice girl. Talks like a machine gun.”
“That’s the one. She found what she was looking for in this desk, but I wonder if she might have overlooked anything. Mind if I check?”
“Of course not.”
We went through both desks. The one in the back office was empty, except for a few pencil stubs and a bulldog clip holding a skinny, dried out joint, of the herbal variety.
“Now who would that belong to,” Ivy asked, dripping sarcasm.
“I’ll flush it.” I took a tissue out of my trouser pocket and wrapped the joint. “You’d better come with me, so I have a witness.”
Ivy led the way to a ladies’ room across from the dining room. I held the little bundle under running water in the sink until it was soaked then dropped it into the toilet. Ivy flushed, and we watched it circle and disappear.
The other desk in Jamie’s office contained two file folders, one fat and bound with rubber bands, one of which broke when I removed it. Inside were two receipt books like the one Emily had found. A second folder held an orderly collection of bank statements, addressed to a post office box in town. The name on the account was Ferrell & Associates.
“Just what I was looking for.” It wasn’t true. It never occurred to me that the bank records would be at Harbor Village. But it was a lucky find, considering Jamie and Michelle were on their way back to Fairhope and might try to clean up their trail.
I continued to search but found nothing else of interest in the desks. I took both folders and stopped at the front office to gather the staff. We went to the sitting area, where a few residents were dozing or playing with kittens.
“I’d like all of you to join me in welcoming Nurse Ivy to the permanent staff of Harbor Village.”
There was a round of applause and hugs, everyone proclaiming their delight. I gave the tuxedo kitten a scratch under the chin and went back to my office.
Patti had the letter to Cynthia Quarles ready for signing. She watched with a twinkle in her eyes as I read through it, noting the power of the phrasing HR had come up with.
Cynthia wasn’t fired; her relationship with Harbor Village was terminated, due to complicity in or neglect of recently revealed fraudulent rental practices. I grinned at Patti and signed four copies then turned them over to her for distribution.
“Use Registered Mail for Cynthia’s copy, so she has to sign when she receives it.”
“Right. I talked with Emily and Stewart. They’ll be here by ten. Oh, I’d better hurry if I’m going to get back by then.” A cloud crossed her face. “You do want me, too, don’t you?”
“Yes. We’ll wait for you.”
She smiled again but hesitated. “I was wondering, are you thinking about giving the rental agent job to Emily?”
I smiled. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got someone else in mind.”
She looked disappointed. I was ready to tell her my idea, but she asked another question. “Can you tell me what this special project is?”
“Sure. We’re going to check all the rental units.”
Her eyes grew large. “You know there are two hundred of them.”
I nodded. “That’s why we need help.”
Jim Bergen came in while Patti was at the post office. “Got any coffee around here?”
“Let’s go to the dining room.” I led the way.
On the walk down the hall, I made a wager with myself. Either he knew something, or he thought I did. Which would it be? We got coffee, and somehow a little plate of cookies appeared on the table.
Jim pulled the plate closer and asked, “Don’t you want some, too?”
“How do you know they’re not for me?”
He grinned and slid the plate back where it had been. “Have you heard about Cynthia Quarles?”
“Only that she’s been dismissed from her job here. What else is happening?”
“She’s got two lawyers, one of them a big shot out of Mobile.” He rubbed his thumb and two fingers together to indicate money, lots of it. “They’re trying to w
ork out a deal for her.”
“What’s the charge?”
He spoke with cookie crumbs on his chin. “What do you think? Murder.”
“Oh. Not theft? Or fraud? Or embezzlement?”
He looked crestfallen. “I didn’t think about that. Is that why she’s fired?”
I had a lot to do, and I didn’t spend much time sipping coffee and watching Jim snack. I went back to the office and wrote up an announcement welcoming Ivy to Harbor Village and sent it to Patti for distribution.
Next I got a legal pad, went to Cynthia’s office, folded the door of the key box back against the wall and pulled a chair up. Using a marker, I listed, in order, each apartment in the residential buildings at Harbor Village and drew vertical lines down the pages, creating a chart where we could verify the rental status. If it had a green tab, I put a check in the first column, headed Rented. If there was a yellow tag, I put a check in the next column, marked Vacant. Units with red tags were probably rented off the official books, and I identified them with a star in the third column, to indicate that special attention was required. A wide space remained, where we could record a few words of explanation. Ready for rental, work needed, something else.
I wasn’t quite finished when Patti came to say she, Emily, and Stewart were waiting in my office.
“Do we have enough water for everybody?”
She went off to check while I finished up. “
“And clipboards,” I called after her.
When I got to the office five minutes later, Patti was standing at the worktable, arranging yellow and white flowers in a pair of short blue vases. Emily and Stewart sat side by side, sipping water and watching her.
“I got two bunches of flowers while I was out. Daisies and Peruvian lilies. We’ll put both vases in the ballroom tonight, one on the candidates’ table and one with the refreshments. Is that okay?”
“Perfect,” Emily answered.
Patti added, “And we’ll move them to your office and the lobby tomorrow.”
“The lobby and your desk,” I said. “More people will see them there.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
I took a few minutes to explain to the group what we were about to do.
Stewart approved. “This is just like a store taking inventory. We should do it once a year, but it’s never been done, not in the time I’ve been here.”
“But you keep up with all the repairs and cleanups,” Patti pointed out.
Stewart grinned. “A lot of things can fall through the cracks in eight years. I bet we get some surprises.”
“Emily and I will take the south side of the street and you two can take the north side. We’d better tell Carla we’ll be late for lunch so she can save us something. We’ve got one hundred two units on each side of the street, so as soon as you get the hang of things, split up. Then we might finish by noon.”
I gave a quick rundown of exactly how we’d proceed. “If it barks, mark it rented and move on. If you see furniture through the windows or chairs on the patio, there’s no need to go in. But if it’s empty, you have to see if it’s ready to rent. What else do you need to know, Stewart?”
“See if the refrigerator and carpet are clean, or if it needs painting.”
“The units marked with a star require a little extra attention. We know my unit is rented, and the Ukraine students are moving out in a day or two. Probably the other starred units are rented, but we need to know for sure, and there won’t be anything in our files.”
I looked around. “Everybody knows what to do? Any questions?”
“What about the units in this building?” Stewart pointed upward, to floors two and three.
“Oh.” I slapped my forehead. “I forgot about them.”
“Stewart and I will do them after lunch.” Patti twinkled at him.
“Are we ready? I have my passkey. Stewart, do you have—”
He held up two keys, and presented one to Emily, the other to Patti.
I divided the record sheets among us. “Let’s go.”
I finally met the chief housekeeper, Joyce, coming out of an upstairs apartment in Riley’s building. I looked over her shoulder, saw furniture, and marked the apartment as rented.
“I’m sorry I haven’t tracked you down before now,” I said. “I kept thinking our paths would cross.”
“My path is from one apartment to the next.” She pushed glasses higher on her nose. “I keep asking for more help.”
We chatted for a minute and then I prepared to move on. “Which way are you going, left or right?”
“Let’s see.” She got out a folded paper out of her pocket. “I’m going across the street next. I walk my legs off some days.”
“Oh, don’t you just hate that,” I sympathized, making a mental note to check into the housekeeping procedures. Maybe a simple reorganization of schedules would give them more time to clean.
Emily and I finished our buildings at noon, but Patti and Stewart, when they showed up, seemed much happier than we were. We headed for the dining room, ready for sustenance.
“One nasty refrigerator.” Patti made a face and circled the unit number
“I’m going to need a gas mask for that one,” Stewart said. “Maybe I’ll send one of the guys.”
We laughed.
We had lunch, and an extra glass or two of tea before Patti and Stewart went off to inventory the units on floors two and three of the big house. Emily and I stayed at the table, and I steered the conversation to her career plans.
“Would you want a full-time job?”
Her eyes popped wide. “Here? Definitely!”
“Business manager and bookkeeper sounds like a lot of work for one person, but since we’ve gotten by without a business manager for a while, and since you’re handling the bookkeeping in three days, maybe it would work out.”
She agreed enthusiastically.
“We’re all going to spend more time talking with residents, making sure they have what they need to be safe and comfortable here, and we’re all going to help each other out as needed.”
“I like the bookkeeping,” Emily said, “but I don’t like being shut off from people all the time. Combining it with different responsibilities sounds perfect for me.”
We talked about salary, and she was happy with that, too. So happy that she teared up just talking about it and had to go tend to her mascara.
The candidates’ forum was only a few hours away. Carla and Liz were setting out trays and cups, disposable plates and glasses, sweetener and napkins. Everything they needed to serve refreshments.
Mr. Levine had stopped in to check their progress and obviously he had a case of nerves.
“Let’s start taking things down there,” he told Carla, snapping his fingers unconsciously. “I want to be sure we have enough tables set up before the work crew gets away.”
Lizzie was putting on a clean apron, but her hands shook so that Carla had to tie it for her. “I’m just going to keep things neat and restock the trays,” she told Carla. “I’m not going to pour. I’ll spill something.”
“Whatever you like.” Carla patted her on the back. “Don’t worry. You’ll do just fine.”
My office still gave me a little shock every time I walked in. I sat at the desk and swiveled the chair around for the panoramic view. Had Patti watered the fig tree? I rolled back and leaned over to feel the soil. Dry, but I didn’t know where to find a water container.
I rolled back to the desk and reached into my pocket to pull out a tissue to wipe my hand. Attached was a blue sticky note. Michelle, it said, with a phone number.
I brushed off my hand and reached for my phone.
A woman answered on the third ring. “Hello,” she said, in sort of a bark.
“Michelle?” I knew it wasn’t.
“Mi
chelle who?”
“Uhmm,” I stalled, trying to think of Michelle’s last name.
“Who are you?”
Uh-oh. “Officer Montgomery? Is that you? This is Cleo Mack, at Harbor Village. I was trying to reach Michelle, in assisted living. Did I get the wrong number?”
Montgomery snorted. “Honey, this is the phone you turned in. We charged it up and just waited for somebody to call. And who should that somebody be but you! Naturally. Now tell me about this Michelle. Has she got a last name, or not?”
* * * *
Patti asked what we were going to do without a rental agent. “There are a couple of messages waiting for Cynthia already.” She shuffled through the message slips. “Nothing looks urgent. Yet.”
I called Vickie, Nita’s realtor friend, to ask for advice. She already knew that Cynthia was off the job. “Cynthia had an assistant,” I said, “but he only works weekends and I haven’t met him yet.”
“He’s licensed,” Vickie said. “May not know much but he’ll learn.”
I crossed my fingers and asked, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in the job, would you?”
“I don’t know. What does it pay?”
I told her Cynthia’s salary and she laughed. “I’m surprised she’d work for that.”
“But it’s regular hours. No weekends, no expenses. Good benefits.”
She laughed again. “I know I complain all the time, but real estate is a gold mine for somebody like me. I don’t mind a little hard work so long as I’m having fun.”
“Well, then, could you recommend somebody?”
“That I can do. Give me a couple of hours. I could’ve warned you about Cynthia Quarles, too, if anybody had asked.”
Mr. Levine needed an extra table at the last minute. He’d forgotten to tell us that representatives from the League of Women Voters would be at the meeting, to register new voters. Stewart was cool with the last-minute details. I didn’t recognize him at first, with his hair all slicked back and no tool belt.
I was the League’s first customer and met Marjorie Zadnichek, a darling with twinkling eyes and steel-gray hair. Even though she still worked, she was only a couple of years younger than Nita. I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t be voting in the municipal election. I didn’t think I knew enough about the issues or the candidates or even the city, yet. But I did promise to have lunch with her at the Birdcage Lounge on Tuesday.