Tips for Living

by Renee Shafransky

  Maybe if he liked me and my olives, which I happened to have, he’d go easy on our next lease negotiation, I mused.

  Strains of Sondheim floated on the warm, early summer breeze as I walked across the grassy field between the Coop and the solar-paneled farmhouse. There were cars in the driveway—two Jeeps, a gray Mercedes, an Aston Martin. I heard laughter as I stepped onto the wraparound porch. The front door was open, so I went right in.

  A half dozen tanned, attractive men were gathered around a white desk in the corner of the airy living room. I glanced around at the skylights, the oversize windows and bleached wood floors. The contemporary furniture upholstered in chocolate, pale blue and various creams. A tall, tanned man in jeans and a white linen shirt, who I assumed was Jack Mance, stood at the center of the group regaling them.

  “I found it when my sister and I cleared out my father’s study last week to get his house ready to put on the market. We had no idea he even owned one.”

  No one had noticed me yet. They were busy listening to Jack and admiring some object he was showing them.

  “I’m registering it in my name and keeping it for sentimental reasons, but it’s staying out here. I can’t have it in the city. I’d be too tempted to use it on Bigfoot, my upstairs neighbor. Or on the Tony Soprano look-alike with the jackhammer tearing up the street in front of my apartment at seven a.m.”

  The men laughed. Jack lifted a martini to his lips. He finally saw me across the room.

  “Ah, this must be Nora Glasser, my tenant. She’s a journalist with the local paper. Our resident Joan Didion.”

  “Thank you. I’m very flattered, but you exaggerate.”

  “Come in. Come in.”

  He waved me in with his other hand, the one that held a gun, and I instinctively ducked and shielded my face with the olive jar.

  “Jack! Put that fucking thing away,” shouted the man I’d pegged as his partner, David.

  “Sorry. One martini and I’m Annie Oakley,” Jack said sheepishly.

  He put down the gun and his martini, opened a gray metal box that sat on the white desk and deposited the weapon in it.

  “Ms. Glasser, did you hear me?”

  “What? Sorry.”

  “I’ve noticed you drift off a lot.”

  “Yes, well, I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.”

  Roche gave a fake smile. “That can happen when you’ve got too much on your mind.” He studied me. “I said the lockbox contained a .22-caliber handgun, which happens to be the caliber of the bullets in our investigation.”

  I experienced a strange sensation in my gut akin to snakes slithering.

  “You think the same person who took the box used the gun to commit the murders?”

  “That’s a possibility we’re considering, yes.”

  “How would they get the gun out?”

  “Those boxes aren’t difficult to open. Any one of a number of basic tools can do it.”

  He looked at the Swiss Champ in my hand. We both did. I slipped it into my robe pocket.

  “Ms. Glasser, you’re trembling.”

  “Am I? It is chilly in here. I need to light the woodstove,” I said, and wrapped my arms around myself.

  “We wondered if you’d seen or heard anything unusual on the property between say October eighteenth, the last meter reading, and November fourteenth, the night before the murders.”

  As far as I knew, there hadn’t been anyone else on the property besides the mailman and me.

  “No.”

  “Since you’re the closest neighbor, I was hoping you might have seen something.”

  Roche’s eyes bored into mine. I blinked first, and he cracked a triumphant smile.

  “Well, thanks for your time. Give me a call if you have second thoughts. Even the smallest detail can be helpful.”

  He rose from the chair and started for the door.

  “Detective?”

  He stopped.

  “If possible, I’d like to have my phone and computer back, please.”

  He didn’t even bother to turn.

  “We’d like to hold on to them.”

  As soon as the police car was out of the driveway, I unpacked my new pink Acer Aspire computer, set it up and did a Google search. There were at least fifteen entries on the subject. Turns out you don’t even need a tool to open a lockbox. One video on YouTube showed how to pop it with a paper clip in less than a minute.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Yvonne!”

  I sprinted down the hall, dodging the empty wheelchairs and gurneys lined up against the wall. A bright-yellow-and-black-striped turban bobbed near the nurses’ station like some sort of cartoon bumblebee.

  “Whoa. Put on the brakes, girl,” Yvonne said, raising her palm traffic-cop style as I closed in on her.

  “How is she?” I said between huffs.

  “She okay. The doctor’s gone, but he says your auntie gonna be fine. No worries.”

  She wrapped herself around me in a big bear hug, and my nose bumped one of her bracelet-size hoop earrings. After a few pats on the back, she released me. I must’ve still looked shell-shocked because she grabbed my shoulders and shook.

  “She be fine. You hear?”

  I nodded. “So, what happened, exactly?”

  Yvonne took my arm and headed for the row of plastic chairs across the hall. She plunked herself onto one and patted the seat next to her. I sat down.

  “It was eight o’clock when I went up to give her your number like I said I would, I hear her yelling inside. But she don’t answer the door. I get security to open up, and we find her in the tub shakin’ from cold. Too weak to stand up. ‘Why you don’t let out the cold water and fill it with hot?’ I ask her. But her mind not thinkin’ right. So she freezin’ in there. Doctor says she had a ministroke. Lucky she didn’t catch pneumonia, too. The doctor be here in the morning.”

  I leaned back and blew out a long breath. “The stroke. How bad?”

  “Not so bad. I say three out of ten, if ten be dead.”

  I prayed “three out of ten” didn’t translate into a permanent disability.

  “But she also dehydrated. That’s why her mind fuzzy.” Yvonne shook her head in disbelief. “She sittin’ there in a tub full of water, dehydrated.”

  “Thank you for staying, Yvonne. Let me pay you something, please.” I fumbled for my wallet, but she put her hand on mine.

  “You goin’ through bad times. Spend it on yourself or your auntie.”

  She gathered her black patent leather coat and matching purse from the chair on her other side and stood up.

  “Show this girl some love, Marie,” she instructed the young night nurse who’d been eavesdropping from behind the counter. “She gettin’ beat up by the world this week.” She turned back to me and tilted her head. “You have somewhere to go for the holiday?”

  Thanksgiving. I hadn’t given a thought to Thanksgiving. It was coming up the next week. Between Lada’s condition and my precarious legal situation, I couldn’t imagine making plans for the holiday. I might be spending it in the hospital or in jail.

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “You both welcome at my house,” Yvonne offered.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind. Can I let you know?”

  “No worries. Unless you’re one of those Tofurky people. I can’t help you with that. But we ordered a big bird. We got enough to feed Macy’s parade, the New York Knicks and whoever. You just call me.”

  She squeezed my arm and then sashayed down the hall toward the exit door. I looked after her, touched that she would offer to share her holiday with us. The harsh reality I was facing softened for a moment.

  Night nurse Marie gave me a sympathetic look and directions to Lada’s room. Finding it was easy—the clinic was small—only ten rooms to a floor. The top of a medical chart labeled “Levervitch” stuck out of the plastic holder outside on the wall. I opened the door a crack, hesitating. The overhead lights had b
een turned off and the curtains drawn. What shape would she be in?

  My stomach rolled as I stepped cautiously into the darkened room, leaving the door half open so I wouldn’t have to turn on the lights. Lada had fallen asleep propped up on her pillows. A beeping monitor tracked her vital signs. She looked like Yoda—the bald spots on her scalp showing through unkempt wisps of hair. They’d clipped an oxygen tube under her nose, and she had a bruise blossoming on the pale, thin skin around the IV stuck in her skinny forearm. The bones in her wrist seemed as delicate as bird bones.

  I sank into the chair by the wall and put my head in my hands. I began to cry silently. We’re such vulnerable creatures, I thought. At least Lada hadn’t died or become a vegetable. She was still Lada. But if they sent me to prison, how could I continue to help pay for her care? If she defaulted on payments, they’d transfer her out of The Cedars to some state-run nursing home where she’d get bedbugs and bedsores. I was sick at the thought, and time was running out. The noose was tightening. Gubbins told me so when I called him after Detective Roche’s visit.

  “I’m afraid this strengthens their case substantially. The most compelling argument for your innocence—not having access to a gun—has just been eliminated,” he said.

  “But I didn’t take the gun,” I protested, my voice shaking. “It’s all circumstantial. You know there have been more summer home break-ins this season. The burglary was a coincidence.”

  It had to be a coincidence. It had to. The other option was unthinkable.

  “An inopportune one. You have no alibi. And a strong motive.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why would I kill them now, after all these years? Answer me that one.”

  Please give me a reason not to go down that road, Mr. Gubbins. Please.

  “The DA will say your wounds reopened when Hugh and Helene moved here.”

  “They moved here last May. It’s November. Why would I wait?” I croaked.

  “Helene pushed you over the edge when she joined your Pilates class. Your resentment and hatred got out of control. The DA will also try to prove you found out about your ex-husband’s retrospective somehow—the one just announced on the radio today on your friend’s show.”

  I thought of Hugh’s letter. He’d told me about the retrospective.

  “You were enraged that your story would be in the public eye again,” Gubbins said.

  “But the murders put my story in the public eye!”

  “Good point. We can use that.”

  “Use it now, before this goes any further,” I pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, Nora. But I have to advise you to get your affairs in order. We need to prepare for the possibility of an arrest warrant in the next few days.”

  I instinctively distanced the phone from my ear. “Oh no. No. No. Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear that.”

  “Nora. You need to stay focused. Try to breathe.”

  I brought the phone closer, still panicked, but willing myself to listen.

  “If it comes to that, there will be court costs when I file the motion for bail, so I’ll need that fifteen thousand dollars as soon as possible.”

  “Jesus. The bail. How high will it be? It’s a murder charge.”

  “A double-murder charge,” he corrected me. “We’ll get you bonded for that. I know people . . . There’s one other thing I’d like you to be aware of.”

  “What? What else could there be?”

  “A polygraph test. It’s up to the judge whether to admit it, but the DA may ask for one.”

  Lada shifted in her bed, startling me. Recounting the conversation with Gubbins had my stomach in knots. I should call Grace. Tell her about Aunt Lada’s condition. And my neighbor’s missing gun. But what if her certainty about my innocence wavered? I couldn’t cope with that right now. I couldn’t.

  I clung to the facts that were still on my side. A) I’d never traveled beyond my immediate surroundings during previous sleepwalking episodes. But what about the leaves and twig in my hair? Where had they come from? B) I’d always woken up in the midst of an episode, so I couldn’t have broken into Mance’s house to steal a gun. Or committed two murders miles from my bed. But what about washing my jeans, and those blazing lights in the Coop the other morning? I’d almost certainly been sleepwalking, and I hadn’t woken then.

  Terrible thoughts kept creeping in. Thoughts of sleep killers. Kenneth Parks butchering his in-laws. That father slamming his innocent infant into a wall. A killer lived inside me; my vicious fantasies attested to that. But had the unspeakable demon murdered in a white-hot rage while my human side slept? Had it gone on a bloodthirsty rampage?

  I reminded myself there were still other suspects. Tobias. Stokes. An unknown lover. But even a trace of self-doubt could cause enough anxiety to skew a lie-detector test. Television crime dramas had taught me that. I had a giant glob of self-doubt living in my belly. It was a horror movie in there.

  Whatever happened, I would need a war chest—fast—to pay for legal expenses and what might soon be a small army of caretakers for Lada, not to mention the clinic’s bill. I resolved to call Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips’s auction houses tomorrow and offer the sketchbook to whichever one set the highest opening bid. I worried that even an expedited sale would take more time than I probably had.

  I pulled myself together and looked around Lada’s room for a tissue. There was a box of Kleenex on the heating unit by the window. I rose to fetch one.

  “Nora?” Lada wheezed.

  I rushed to her side. She still hadn’t opened her eyes.

  “Welcome back. How do you feel?”

  “I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” she whispered.

  “No apologies.” I patted her arm.

  “I’m an old car. My parts are rusted. I belong in the scrapyard.”

  “Don’t say that. Take it back,” I demanded, my fear turning me shrill.

  She opened her eyes. They were vacant. Her voice was flat.

  “I can’t take care of myself anymore. Vashna nee to kak dolga tuy prozsheel, a kak horoshow zsheel.”

  “In English, please.”

  “How well you live makes a difference. Not how long. I can’t even get out of the bathtub. What kind of life is that?”

  She turned away from me, her chin trembling. My heart melted.

  “All you need is a little help. They have people here who can help you, Aunt Lada. I’ll arrange for someone.”

  “And pay with what?”

  “Let me worry about that.” I stroked her cold, bony hand. “Lada?”

  “What?”

  “I heard a rumor.”

  She loved rumors. She turned her head back and looked at me. Her green eyes twinkled with life for a moment.

  “They’re going to show White Nights at the cinema club here. Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines dancing ballet and tap. Defectors and spies in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.”

  “Bubbala, don’t call it Saint Petersburg. It’s Leningrad. It will always be Leningrad to me.”

  If she was up and around by next week, I’d make them rent the movie. Or rent it myself.

  Lada fell asleep again, thanks to the nurse’s pill. She was snoring peacefully as I left her room to go out to the clinic’s courtyard and check my burner—clinic rules demanded that cell phones be turned off inside. Ben had called twice and left a message.

  “Hey. I just wanted to hear your voice and tell you that thinking about you makes me happy. Call me.”

  Ben. Oh God. If only I could listen to that lovely message and feel happy along with him. The situation was so much worse now than before he left for the airport. Even if I came clean about sleepwalking, I couldn’t tell him with more than 50, maybe 60 percent confidence that I was innocent of murder. The phone buzzed in my hand. Ben again. My heart stopped. What to do? I couldn’t let him worry. I swallowed hard and picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Nora. I’m so glad I reached you. I was getting nervous.
”

  “I’m sorry. There was a medical drama with my Aunt Lada, but it’s okay now.”

  “What happened?”

  “A ministroke.”

  “Damn. You must be upset. Is there any way I can help? I can drive back tonight.”

  “No, no. You’re generous to offer. But she’s out of the woods. And mostly okay.” I started to choke up, realizing how it might have turned out differently. “Ben?”

  “I’m here.”

  I wanted things to be simple. Just for a minute. To pretend we were two normal people beginning a real relationship. To think of him knowing the woman who was so dear to me, and have her know him.

  “I’m hoping she won’t die anytime soon, because I want you to meet her.”

  “Of course. And I plan on asking her to fill me in on what you were like as a little girl.”

  “You’ll get an earful.”

  “There are still so many things I don’t know about you. For instance, what’s your favorite color?”

  I smiled. “Jade green.”

  “Food?”

  “Rice pudding.”

  “Where do you stand on GMOs and Monsanto?”

  I loved that he was trying to cheer me up.

  “I . . . well . . .”

  “Just kidding.”

  “How did you get to be such a mensch?” I asked.

  “The love of a good woman.”

  I could still hear the pain losing his wife caused him.

  “Of course.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it’s all right. Judy was something special. I understand. You were a lucky man.”

  “I’ve been lucky twice.”

  I could hear Ben really meant it. But what do they say luck is? “When opportunity meets readiness.” I feared that he was an opportunity I might miss.

  “I miss you,” Ben said.

  “I miss you, too.” If I didn’t switch gears, I might start crying. “Were you late for Sam?”

  “Almost an hour. But he was deep into his new iPhone and didn’t mind.”

  “Please don’t worry about me. Enjoy your time with him . . . Oh. I almost forgot. You left your knife here.”