The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  So the residents of Sunset Grove hired two vans, designed especially for elderly passengers, with the Ambassador’s taxi coupons. Anna-Liisa, Siiri and the Ambassador took one and in the other were the Partanens and the Hat Lady, who had recovered from her cardiac infarction and started going from door to door in the retirement home. Siiri and Anna-Liisa assumed she was going begging, hoping for some coffee and sweet rolls, but she claimed she was on Jesus’s business. And when she came to visit, it didn’t take her long, in fact, to fish out a Bible and start grilling her host on personal matters.

  ‘I haven’t yet come to a decision,’ Siiri had told her, trying to be tactful, but that was a mistake. The Hat Lady had been giving her the full treatment ever since, thinking she was easy pickings. She’d got to be quite a nuisance, and Siiri took care to make sure they didn’t travel in the same van.

  There was no car access to the front door of the crematorium. The vans had to drop them off along the street and the drivers offered no help with the slog to the entrance; they just dumped the chairs and Zimmer frames in the wet snow and sped off. The old people took so long getting to the door, nudging each other along through the snowdrifts, that they were late for the ceremony. Clumps of snow stuck to the wheels of their chairs and Zimmer frames and made them nearly impossible to push. The Ambassador’s cane got stuck in the handle of Anna-Liisa’s Zimmer frame, the Hat Lady fell into a mound of snow, hat and all, and Margit Partanen looked like she was going to have a heart attack.

  ‘It’s all right, we’ll all end up at the crematorium eventually!’ the Ambassador shouted gamely.

  Finally, the chapel verger, a frail-looking woman with no coat on, hurried over to help them. By the time she ‘d hoisted all the wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and old people inside she was soaked with sweat. They crammed themselves into the small foyer to take off their coats and hats and unwrap the flowers they’d brought. There was no bin for the wrappers – there never seemed to be, in any church or chapel. Anna-Liisa left her Zimmer frame by the coat rack, thinking it would only be in the way and that since it was red it wasn’t suitable for the occasion.

  The old crematorium was a gloomy place, small but echoey and unadorned. The door at the other end of the hall was particularly ghastly, because it led to the oven. Siiri had never liked the way they slid the coffin on rails into the oven and left the pall bearers standing there watching it go. She always imagined the rising flames and pain of purgatory, although Anna-Liisa said that the body was burnt with heat alone, without any flames, and it all happened automatically at the press of a button, like making coffee. Siiri thought the funerals at the Hietaniemi chapel were better. The building there was designed by Theodor Höijer, and was unusually beautiful. She didn’t know who was responsible for the dismal design of this crematorium.

  There was hardly anyone else at Reino’s funeral besides them. The residents of Sunset Grove sat on the left in the fourth and fifth rows, not wanting to be too close to the coffin as it rolled along its final track. On the other side of the aisle there were just two men, relatives of the deceased, whom they had never seen before.

  ‘We’re his nephews,’ one of the men said, nodding politely.

  ‘Ah. Here to get your inheritance,’ the Ambassador said, somewhat inappropriately, but the two men smiled.

  ‘Uncle Jaakko didn’t really leave anything. Everything he owned was spent on the retirement home.’

  ‘Are we at Jaakko’s funeral?’ asked Eino Partanen, who wasn’t even wearing a dark suit, just tracksuit bottoms and a pullover.

  ‘But it was good that he was there at the retirement home. We didn’t have to worry about him.’

  ‘This is Reino’s funeral. Would you be quiet?’ Margit Partanen hissed at her husband, wishing there was a mute button on his wheelchair.

  The funeral was an unusually bad one. They almost felt sorry for Reino. The pastor kept his speech short, however, and the nephews didn’t start reciting poetry next to the coffin, but the Hat Lady fell asleep in the middle of the ceremony, and it took them quite a long time to get the wheelchairs to the coffin. Since Reino had always been the one to say a few words about the deceased, there was a little moment of uncertainty over what to do once they were all next to the coffin.

  ‘To the memory of a card partner and a good fellow,’ the Ambassador said finally, or rather mumbled, which annoyed Anna-Liisa.

  ‘Whose bedfellow? Jaakko’s?’ Eino Partanen shouted to his wife as they went back to their seats, but just then the organ started up a hymn, so they were spared from explaining it to him. No one sang, since Irma wasn’t with them, and, once again, Siiri felt unsettled. Irma would have so enjoyed this outing if she weren’t lying in the closed unit, tied to her bed, with no idea that anything fun was happening.

  A deadly dull memorial reception was held in Restaurant Perho on Mechelininkatu. The service was always slow there because it was staffed by students from the restaurant school. On one visit, Siiri hadn’t got the salt she’d asked for until the bill came, and this time they waited twenty minutes for their coffee.

  The nephews were snow dumpers by trade, making their living by shovelling snow off rooftops and dropping it on people’s heads. They were very quiet men, but Irma would have managed to show enthusiasm even for them. She might have asked them something funny about what snow dumpers do in the summer. Now Anna-Liisa was assiduously taking the reins.

  ‘When there’s this much snow, you can’t get anywhere with a Zimmer frame. We’ve had quite enough snow in our lives, we don’t need any more.’

  A snow discussion of sorts ensued, but Siiri didn’t participate. She looked out of the window and tried to wash away the gloom with weak coffee. They didn’t even serve cake, these stingy nephews of his. The elderly group took the tram home, since no one had a mobile phone and their attempts to have the restaurant staff order a van for the disabled didn’t quite work out.

  When she got back to Sunset Grove, it dawned on Siiri that their friend had been known as Reino and yet the nephews had kept talking about their Uncle Jaakko. It was quite possible that they’d gone to the wrong funeral!

  ‘Döden, döden, döden,’ she said to herself and laughed out loud until she gave herself a stomach cramp.

  Chapter 26

  The doorbell rang so loudly and insistently that Siiri nearly jumped out of bed, dropping her newspaper on the floor. She pulled on her dressing gown but forgot her slippers as she hurried to open the door, a little nervous, since she didn’t usually have unexpected visitors, at least not any who rang the doorbell. She had to stop for a moment and hold on to the dining table because the buzzing in her head had turned unpleasantly loud from her sudden movement. She shouted ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ to keep the visitor from leaving, then was instantly ashamed of herself because it would have been more sensible to shout something else.

  But she was happy to see Mika Korhonen standing at her door in his leather jacket. She threw herself around his neck, then pulled herself away just as quickly, because he seemed tense and in a hurry.

  Mika declined her offer of a cup of instant coffee and strode into the middle of the living room. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. Can you turn off the symphony?’

  ‘It’s a concerto, a solo work for orchestra and piano. Beethoven’s third concerto,’ Siiri said, and turned off the record player. She felt as if Mika had something very important he wanted to discuss, and it would be best to call Anna-Liisa to come and act as a witness. Mika didn’t say anything; he just sat down on the little sofa and rummaged through his backpack. Siiri asked him to take off his muddy boots and he politely obeyed. He had holes in his socks, and they weren’t even wool, and Siiri knew what she was going to give him as a present someday, if she remembered. She didn’t enjoy knitting herself, but Margit Partanen knitted every day; she could make a pair of wool socks in no time.

  Anna-Liisa arrived with her Zimmer frame amazingly quickly. Now that the two of them were more accustomed to eac
h other’s company, Siiri had noticed that Anna-Liisa didn’t really need the Zimmer frame to get around. She was very nimble and could, in fact, walk very briskly. But Anna-Liisa said she kept the Zimmer frame because it was good for balance problems; it was a precautionary measure, to prevent falls. It cost society great sums of money when old people walked around in their stockinged feet without any assistive devices and then broke their bones.

  Mika took a large stack of papers out of his backpack and put them on the table.

  ‘These are Irma Lännenleimu’s medical records and a few other files – everything Sunset Grove had listed under her name.’

  Siiri and Anna-Liisa looked at the stack of papers in horror. So much information about Irma! Did Sunset Grove have huge files like that on them, too? Anna-Liisa was the first to pull herself together, and started questioning Mika as if he were a fifteen-year-old who’d forgotten his adverbials.

  ‘Where did you get those papers? Who gave you permission to take them? Are they originals or copies?’

  ‘I stole them,’ Mika said. He dropped the words calmly and pointedly into the silence and gave Siiri and Anna-Liisa a moment to catch their breath before continuing. ‘I got the Sunset Grove keys from Pasi, the whole key ring. Pasi is in cahoots with your head nurse, the one who runs the nursing agency.’

  ‘Virpi Hiukkanen? Hardly. She’s the one who fired him,’ Siiri informed him.

  ‘Yep. The business continues, thanks to Tero. There’s no better scapegoat than a dead scapegoat. And Pasi doesn’t have to be an employee of Sunset Grove to work for Hiukkanen. Do you know what the name of her nursing agency is?’

  ‘Well, no, we’ve never had a reason to ask.’

  ‘Piri Care Suppliers. They’re suppliers all right!’

  Sometimes Mika was confusing and a bit peculiar. Now he laughed with a strangely loud guffaw at the name of Virpi Hiukkanen’s company and kept repeating something that they couldn’t understand. He thought that both Pasi and the police were in cahoots with Virpi Hiukkanen, which couldn’t be true. But Siiri didn’t dare to contradict him, because there was something frightening about him now that he’d taken to stealing on their behalf.

  ‘Are we your accomplices?’ Anna-Liisa asked formally, straightening her spine like a former gymnast. Secretly, she was thrilled at the new turn in events. Mika handed Irma’s papers to her, copies of the originals, he said, so that they could study them at their leisure.

  ‘It’s ugly reading,’ he warned.

  Then he left as quickly as he had come. He had already pulled on his boots when Siiri asked when they would see him again and what was to come of all this. Mika couldn’t promise anything.

  ‘Look out for your own affairs, and I’ll take care of Pasi,’ he said, and closed the door behind him.

  They were left sitting at the table in bewilderment. Siiri didn’t understand how it had become so important to take care of Pasi, or what Mika was actually up to. The case was taking a new turn. Anna-Liisa didn’t say anything; finally, she picked up the papers fearfully and started to read them as if they were just another stack of exams to be marked. She was quiet for a long time, until she paused, leaned back, and said:

  ‘Mika was right. This is ugly reading.’

  Anna-Liisa asked for a glass of whisky, something Siiri had never seen her do before. Siiri got herself a little red wine, in honour of Irma. Irma had been much braver than they’d realized, writing vehement complaints to everyone from the Ombudsman of Parliament to the Social Services Minister, and every complaint had ended up on the desk in the offices of Sunset Grove.

  ‘Your complaint has been received and will be processed according to standard procedures,’ said the paper from Parliament, which was dated three years ago. Nothing more was heard from the Ombudsman of Parliament – no doubt the wheels of the standard procedures were still turning.

  ‘These aren’t medical records,’ Anna-Liisa said solemnly.

  And yet someone had added this documentation of Irma’s complaints to her medical records. There were also two letters from the Uudenmaa County Administrative Board, the oldest one from five years ago, plus a few more recent letters, including the one they’d written together to the members of the board of the Loving Care Foundation, which was on the top of the stack.

  The worst documents, however, were the ones concerning Irma’s health. The staff had sent Irma’s ever-changing personal physicians incorrect information about her over a year ago. They’d said that she had shown signs of suspiciousness, serious paranoia, intermittent aggressiveness, and increasingly serious memory loss. The doctors’ consultations had been conducted entirely by email and telephone, and various prescriptions had been written without them ever seeing the patient. The last correspondence read: ‘The only solution to these worsening problems is immediate removal to the Group Home dementia unit. The patient’s daughter will provide a statement.’

  ‘They could at least have arranged a doctor’s visit for her. Then someone could have seen that she wasn’t sick,’ Anna-Liisa said, her voice even more sombre than usual.

  ‘Sharp as a tack, that’s what she always said. Although she was very confused and tired in December, and even before that, actually, like it says here. And her suspicions only got worse. Is it possible . . . do you think that they might have been . . . ?’

  ‘It’s as clear as day. Multiple drugs acting on the central nervous system will make an old person sick. It was somebody’s long-term plan to give Irma dementia.’

  Irma had been prescribed pills for irritability, restlessness, insomnia, muscle stiffness, extreme pain, depression and who knows what else, in ever larger doses and increasing numbers over the course of a year. It was as if, when one pill caused one symptom, they prescribed another pill for that, in an endless chain.

  Siiri started to feel weak. There was nothing in her head but emptiness. This really would be a good time to go to sleep for good. She couldn’t comprehend why anyone would go to the trouble of doing such a thing. Surely one old woman in a dementia ward couldn’t generate so much money from the city that the Loving Care Foundation would institute such a complicated course of action. There must be easier ways to silence an old lady’s complaints.

  ‘I guess there’s no one looking out for us, to make sure everything is legitimate,’ Siiri said numbly. ‘And they write about it so much in the papers.’

  ‘The only good old person is a dead old person,’ Anna-Liisa said grimly, then drank down the rest of her whisky and hastened to add, ‘And don’t say “döden, döden, döden”. Have you heard anything from Olavi Raudanheimo?’

  ‘I forgot about Olavi. There’s been so much going on. Are you leaving?’

  Anna-Liisa hadn’t lost her ability to function just because of Irma’s files. She had a chair aerobics session starting at eleven and after lunch she planned to go with the Ambassador to play bingo in the auditorium. She tried to coax Siiri to come along, but in vain.

  ‘I’m not so senile that I’m going to start playing bingo. Are these your keys? Don’t tell me they’re mine, because I’m sure I’ve never seen them before.’

  There was a ring of keys lying on the table. It wasn’t Anna-Liisa’s or Siiri’s.

  ‘Do you think Mika left them here . . . on purpose?’ Anna-Liisa asked.

  Siiri looked at the key ring more closely. There were three keys, and one of them was labelled ‘Group Home’.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Hello Siiri, dear. It’s the director calling. Good news! Your cane was found at Laakso Hospital.’

  All through the winter Siiri had wondered where her cane had disappeared to, but she hadn’t yet bought a new one. It certainly would have been useful to have one in the slippery weather; the freezing temperatures had made the streets treacherous. Director Sundström’s voice on the phone was even more energetic than usual as she shared the exciting news. She commended Siiri for being so clever as to put a label on the cane with its owner’s name and address, as if she were a sma
ll child. Siiri asked politely how the director’s winter holiday had been, but that was a mistake.

  ‘Absolutely fantastic! You can’t imagine what a country India is – it’s amazing, absolutely amazing. A lot of tourists just go there to enjoy the hotels and beaches and never see the poverty of the country, which is so heart-rending. Pertti and I were there for three weeks and we really threw our hearts into India’s problems, especially the children. Just think, Siiri, there are tens of thousands of orphans there, illiterate and unhealthy, sweet little children, and seeing them touched me so deeply that I’ve decided to help the orphans of India. We’ve started up a collection for Indian orphans here at Sunset Grove. You will, of course, contribute, won’t you, Siiri?’

  ‘Well, I put quite a lot of money into the collection for the Brotherhood of War Invalids over Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, I understand if the Indian issue seems distant to you. But these orphans don’t even have shoes on their feet; they absolutely need help from people like us, who have piles of everything. After all, there are hardly more than a couple of Finnish war invalids still alive.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘Well, we can chat about it some other time. I have lots of photos of Indian orphans, and when you see their pictures I’m sure your heart will melt for this important cause. But listen, unfortunately, you’re going to have to go and get the cane from Laakso Hospital yourself. There’s no one here who has the time to help. We haven’t a single spare hand at the moment, and there’s so much work to do that I fear for the health of my employees. Elderly work is difficult, and rather uninteresting, to be honest. And not terribly rewarding. And who ever even thanks us? And the pay is so low, because society doesn’t understand the significance of our work. In short, it’s very hard nowadays to find workers for retirement homes, and thus we are shorthanded this week.’