The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Prologue

  ‘Is that a new blouse?’ Irma asked, fiddling with the fabric of Siiri’s old shirt. ‘It’s a pretty lavender. I once had a sofa this colour.’

  ‘Is it lavender? I thought it was violet,’ Siiri said, and only then did she notice the lovely shawl that Anna-Liisa was wearing. ‘Your throw is violet too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well,’ Anna-Liisa said, straightening the scarf and looking as if she were about to begin a long lecture on colour definitions. But all she said was that she felt her wrap was more of a pale shade of purple. ‘Irma’s dress, on the other hand, might be called lavender, if there even is such a colour.’

  ‘You are such a ninny, Anna-Liisa. This dress is blue. Or is it? Maybe it does tend more towards purple. Did you notice how all of us happen to be wearing something this colour today?’

  They laughed at the coincidence, and soon none of them could remember whose turn it was to start the next hand of cards. It hardly mattered, though, since they had been playing the same game for much too long already. Irma let out a deep sigh and Siiri took her lace handkerchief out of her handbag and wiped her eyes. For a moment it was terribly quiet, until Anna-Liisa started to drum her fingers on the cloth-covered card table. But that didn’t do much to lighten the mood. Life at Sunset Grove was certainly dull, if their only bright moment was when they noticed that they were all wearing the same colour, and they all called it by a different name.

  ‘I’ve finessed it!’ Irma suddenly crowed, her voice so high and loud that Siiri jumped. ‘Listen, you know how there are all sorts of things happening here at Sunset Grove? We could start snooping around, do some meddling.’

  ‘What exactly do you feel is happening?’ Anna-Liisa asked, but Irma was undaunted.

  ‘We’ll start a detective agency. I think that’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘So you reckon you’re Miss Marple? Lord above, you are childish,’ Anna-Liisa said, and fumbled for her Zimmer frame to indicate that she’d had quite enough nonsense for one day.

  ‘It might be fun,’ Siiri said helpfully. ‘We certainly could use a little play in our lives.’

  ‘Exactly! There’s no harm in having some fun. And I already know what the name should be: The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency.’

  Irma pronounced this ceremoniously, her voice trembling as if it were a stroke of genius. Siiri laughed approvingly, but Anna-Liisa didn’t say anything. She headed towards the cafeteria, shoving her Zimmer frame so forcefully that her purple shawl swung from side to side.

  Chapter 1

  Every morning Siiri Kettunen woke up and realized that she wasn’t dead yet. Then she got out of bed, washed, dressed and ate something for breakfast. It took her a while, but she had the time. She read the newspaper diligently and listened to the morning radio shows. It made her feel like she belonged in this world. She often went for a ride on the tram around eleven o’clock, but she didn’t feel like it today.

  The bright institutional lighting gave the common room of Sunset Grove retirement home the atmosphere of a dentist’s waiting room. Several residents dozed on the sofas, waiting for lunch. In the corner Anna-Liisa, Irma and the Ambassador were playing rummy at the cloth-covered card table. The Ambassador was absorbed in his own cards, Anna-Liisa was keeping up a running commentary on the other players’ hands, and Irma was looking impatient at the slow progress of the game. Then she saw Siiri and her eyes brightened.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ she crowed in a high falsetto, waving with a broad sweep of her arm like a train conductor. Irma Lännenleimu had taken singing lessons in her youth and had once sung the Cherubino aria to piano accompaniment at the conservatory matinee, and since student performances were reviewed back then, a newspaper music critic had praised her voice as supple and resonant. This crowing call was Irma and Siiri’s customary greeting. It always worked, even in the middle of a noisy conversation or on a busy street.

  ‘Guess what?’ Irma said, before Siiri had even sat down at the table. ‘The Hat Lady in C wing isn’t dead after all. And we’d practically finished grieving for her!’ She laughed until her plump body jiggled and her voice rang even higher. Irma always wore a dress, preferably dark in colour, and even on ordinary days wore earrings with many-faceted stones, a string of pearls around her neck and two gold bracelets on her left wrist. When she spoke, her exuberant gestures made the bracelets jangle pleasantly.

  Last week the flag at Sunset Grove had been flown at half mast, and since they hadn’t seen the Hat Lady for several days, they’d thought she had died. But yesterday she had reappeared, wearing her broad-brimmed turquoise hat and playing bingo like she always did. She’d just been out getting a spare part for her heart, and in the process had nearly died of a cardiac infarction.

  ‘She says she may live for ten more years, poor thing,’ Irma said.

  Siiri laughed, her grey eyes twinkling. Irma made the woman’s medical recovery sound like an extended sentence, which, of course, it was.

  ‘It wasn’t a spare part for her heart, strictly speaking,’ Anna-Liisa said in that no-nonsense way she had of correcting any errors or discrepancies of meaning. It was an obsession with her. Siiri and Irma thought it was due to the fact that Anna-Liisa had once been a Finnish language and literature teacher.

  ‘I got a red three!’ the Ambassador shouted but that didn’t stop Anna-Liisa.

  ‘Angioplasty is the vernacular, the most commonly used term for it. They use a thing called a stent, a sort of mesh tube, to hold the artery open.’

  Anna-Liisa was a tall woman with a deep, full-throated voice. She knew everything you could possibly know about angioplasty, replacement parts, local anaesthetic and arthroscopic surgery, but they never paid any attention to her explanations. Having worked as a teacher, however, Anna-Liisa was used to not being listened to.

  ‘It’s sheer lunacy to get spare parts at the age of ninety,’ Siiri said. Everyone else agreed.

  ‘Do you think yo
u’ll live to be a hundred, girls?’ the Ambassador asked, laying his cards down on the table and straightening his tie. He always dressed correctly, as befitted a former diplomat, in a smart shirt, tie, brown smoking jacket and straight-legged trousers, which was nice, since many of the men at Sunset Grove shambled around in ugly tracksuits. On important days and Sundays the Ambassador wore a tidy suit with an oak-leaf veteran’s insignia on the lapel.

  ‘It’s not as if it matters what we think,’ Siiri said, because that’s what she thought. ‘I wouldn’t want to be that old, though.’

  ‘If it wasn’t the Hat Lady who died last week, I wonder who it was,’ Irma said. She was very curious and always on the lookout for gossip at Sunset Grove. Her information on this event had been proved wrong, and so, understandably, she was a little upset about it.

  ‘It was that boy, the cook. Tero, I think his name was,’ Anna-Liisa said, laying down three sevens.

  Siiri’s head buzzed and her throat felt dry. She stared at Anna-Liisa. She couldn’t believe that Tero could be dead. Irma, on the other hand, looked delighted at the news because she remembered that she had heard about it before, and then promptly forgotten about it.

  ‘That’s right! You really liked Tero, didn’t you, Siiri? Was his name Tero? Have you noticed how young men nowadays all have two-syllable names: Tero, Pasi, Vesa, Tomi? Imagine my not telling you about it right away. I heard about it yesterday from the masseuse, but after all her pummelling I was so worn out that I just had a whisky and went to bed. My doctor has prescribed whisky for my . . . my everything. Look, I’ve got two sevens for you, Anna-Liisa!’

  Suddenly Siiri felt sad. She missed Tero so much that her stomach hurt. How was it possible that such a healthy young man could die while ninety-four-year-olds never seemed to? Siiri had read in the paper that once you lived to be ninety you stopped ageing. How horrible. That meant that over-aged people like her were late for their death. First everybody died – friends, spouses – then nobody did. Two of Siiri’s children were already dead: her eldest son from too much alcohol and her youngest from too much food. He’d been the baby of the family – a handsome, athletic boy when he was young. But then he ate himself to such a girth, doing nothing outside work, driving everywhere he went, eating pizza and crisps and smoking cigarettes. It was called affluenza – when a person reaches such a high standard of living that they die from it at the age of sixty-five.

  But Tero, the cook at Sunset Grove, was thirty-five if he was a day, and he hadn’t looked sick at all. On the contrary, he’d been glowing with good health, the way only a healthy young man can. Broad shoulders, strong hands, good colour in his face – that was the kind of person he was. And when he smiled he had dimples in both cheeks.

  Their friendship had begun over the mashed potatoes. The Sunset Grove cafeteria served mashed potatoes altogether too often. They never offered rice. They thought that old people didn’t have any teeth and mashed potatoes would go down easily, like baby food. None of the food was ever salted, and unminced meat was something they could only dream of. Siiri didn’t like mashed potatoes, so Tero kindly arranged to have some other side dish for her under the counter, some carrots or beetroot or something. After lunch he would come over to her table for a cup of coffee and when Siiri asked if he had a girlfriend he said that he didn’t need one because he had her. They had a way of flirting like that – and it was fun. A kind of harmless, happy chatter, which there wasn’t much of at Sunset Grove.

  The card game seemed to be over. The Ambassador asked Irma how old she was. No one except Siiri really seemed to care about the young cook’s death.

  ‘Ninety-two?’ the Ambassador marvelled. ‘So you don’t have a driver’s licence any more? You’re welcome to my taxis, Irma, dear. I have so many taxi coupons that I would have to ride around in a taxi all day long to use them up.’

  ‘Of course I have a driver’s licence!’ Irma puffed, resenting the suggestion. ‘I have an old classmate who’s a gynaecologist and she writes out driver’s-licence certificates at every alumni meeting. But then my children took my car away, just like that, and me a grown woman, with the right to go where I please! I’m sure you remember my little red car?’

  Siiri was the only one who remembered it; she had been friends with Irma for a long time. She had been in it when Irma drove the wrong way down Mannerheimintie, the busiest thoroughfare in Helsinki, and the police pulled her over in front of the Swedish Theatre. That was enough for her children to take the little red car back to the dealer’s. The Ambassador thought taking the car away was too severe a punishment. It was no great sin to drive a bit crazily past the Swedish Theatre; they were always doing roadworks on that corner, and even a tenth-generation Helsinki resident like Irma couldn’t be sure which way you were supposed to go on any given day.

  ‘But that’s the way it is,’ Irma said. ‘Old people have every little thing decided for them.’

  Irma’s children and grandchildren, of which there were many, whom she referred to as her darlings, had sold her apartment in Töölö and put her in a one-bedroom flat at Sunset Grove without further discussion. They’d said it was for her own good, and it was safer, and this way they would know that she was getting up and taking her medicine every morning and wasn’t running around the city in her nightgown.

  ‘And then they installed a surveillance camera in my apartment so that they can get on the computer whenever they like and watch what I’m doing. As if I were a three-toed sloth at the zoo! I moon the camera every night before I go to bed.’

  The Ambassador sat with his shoulders slumped and stared glumly at the worn tabletop.

  ‘At least you have someone who bothers to look after you,’ he said. ‘Someone to moon.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we loners have people watching us, too, I can assure you,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘The nurses have their own keys and go snooping around in our homes all the time.’

  ‘Yeah! The other day a man came into my apartment at seven a.m., when I was still lying in bed!’ Irma shouted.

  ‘Really?’ the Ambassador said with delight, picking up the deck of cards to start a new game.

  ‘He was looking for my will, of course. Döden, döden, döden.’

  Siiri smiled when Irma said that. It was Swedish for ‘death’, and she said it with a sound of doom in her voice. Irma had a lot of words of her own and tired refrains that she repeated constantly, but Siiri liked this one, especially when Irma said it at just the right moment.

  Then Anna-Liisa started to talk about her missing silver hand mirror again. She was sure it had been stolen, just like the Ambassador’s beautiful ryijy wall rug, while they had been out attending a memory group, a session of chair aerobics and an accordion concert. Siiri didn’t go to those sorts of scheduled events, especially not the accordion concert, although there was one every week. Why did it always have to be the accordion? Didn’t anyone know how to play a real instrument any more? There were three pianos sitting unused at Sunset Grove.

  There were other useless items scattered around the halls, too, left when residents died and no one came to get their belongings. Pianos, books and dining tables and chairs that nobody wanted were scattered here and there to create a cosy atmosphere, although they didn’t fit the decor since Sunset Grove was a modern building, the rooms low-ceilinged and the walls made of thin plasterboard. Somebody had probably even left the mahogany table they were sitting at.

  ‘They do it on purpose,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘They leave an old art nouveau table, a couple of pianos, and six metres of encyclopaedias in the hallways so nobody will think they’re stealing from the residents. Though that, of course, is by no means certain.’

  ‘It’s thievery enough the way they charge us for every little thing without us even seeing the money zipping from one account to the other,’ Irma said. ‘But my darlings take care of my money matters, because the banks have all been moved to computers. Direct deposit! I finessed it!’

  ‘What do you mean you �
�finessed” it? Isn’t that a bridge term?’ Anna-Liisa said indignantly.

  ‘Do you know how to play bridge?’ the Ambassador asked enthusiastically.

  ‘I mean I remembered the word. Isn’t that what they call that kind of stealing – direct deposit?’

  Irma didn’t trust her memory. If she surprised herself by remembering something she thought she’d forgotten, she said she’d finessed it, or said that ‘some odd instinct’ had told her that her beret was on top of the television. Anna-Liisa found it extremely annoying.

  But Irma was right. At Sunset Grove the money went straight from the residents’ bank accounts into the accounts of various providers of treatments and services, and no one noticed a thing. Just the rent for a small one-bedroom apartment was a thousand euros a month, and on top of that were assorted service fees and other costs. The prices were constantly changing, based on the assumption that the residents didn’t understand the value of money. Many of them still calculated their purchases in the old marks that hadn’t been used since 1963. The residents’ relatives felt too guilty to quibble about the prices and convinced themselves that the more the place cost, the better it must be.

  ‘Pants down, fourteen euros. Pants up, sixteen euros,’ Anna-Liisa said, reading from the Sunset Grove price list. ‘That’s a high price for a single service.’

  ‘Thirty euros. Holy smoke, that’s a hundred and eighty marks!’ Irma calculated.

  ‘Incontinence pads are cheaper,’ Siiri said, although she didn’t know how much incontinence pads cost or where to buy them. In Spain you could get them at the regular supermarket. There were a few returnees at Sunset Grove, people who had retired to Spain and the sunshine and, now that they had incontinence, cataracts and a hip condition, had hurried back to the safety of a retirement home in Finland. Like the new couple in A wing, who had such noisy sex every afternoon that their neighbours complained. They were thrifty, too. They’d brought cheap incontinence pads from Spain home with them.

  Irma happened to know that they had a balcony stuffed with boxes of them. ‘It looks terrible,’ she said. ‘There’s not even room for a geranium. Can you imagine?’