by Cate Price
As I watched Joe and Cyril pull away in the truck, I blew out a breath against the guilty flutter in my chest for the imminent arrival of our next model.
Eleanor had borrowed a fake brick wall from the local theater, and the plan was to back the detective’s Dodge Challenger on an angle into the garage and create the illusion of a grimy alleyway with a couple of garbage cans and some moody lighting. Serrano would stand partway behind the open driver’s door, pointing his gun at an imaginary assailant.
“Now, aren’t you glad we talked you into joining the society?” Eleanor said as we maneuvered the wall into place.
“Yes,” I answered dutifully, grunting as I pushed.
“Well, it was about time you joined, seeing as you were a history teacher, after all,” Martha said, peering at us over her clipboard.
Okay, Tom Sawyer.
While Eleanor and I worked, and Martha supervised, I could feel the tension building, like the pressure in the air before a summer thunderstorm. The mailman was nice enough to look at, but he was nothing compared to the main attraction.
At the sound of a powerful muscle car rumbling up the driveway, we scrambled to open the garage doors. We stepped out of the way as Serrano executed a swift three-point turn and slid the gleaming black vehicle into position. He got out and, with a respectful nod in our direction, headed over to talk to Roos, exuding authority with every movement. I could see there would be none of the usual banter that we enjoyed when he stopped by my store in the mornings for coffee and baked goodies.
Tonight was a necessary evil he obviously wanted to get over and done with as efficiently as possible.
He was wearing a dark gray suit that complemented his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. Serrano had the perfect physique—muscular, yet lean—to wear a suit, and wear it well.
Eleanor narrowed her gaze in his direction. “God, I can’t wait to see that man with his shirt off.”
Neither, apparently, could the crowd of women waiting outside, who had rushed into the garage now and were leaning against the car, trailing their fingers over the warm hood and giggling in feverish anticipation.
Detective Serrano was a transplanted New Yorker, like Joe and me. He was the hottest, most exciting import into Millbury in years, and he spent as much time fending off the local females as he did catching criminals.
Somehow I’d become a bit of an amateur sleuth, thanks to my, um, inquisitive disposition, and I’d helped him solve a couple of cases, whether accidentally or on purpose.
His ice-blue eyes surveyed the scene, taking in everything, missing nothing.
“It’s a good thing it’s cold enough to wear gloves tonight, or he’d have a heart attack at the fingerprints on that paintwork,” I murmured.
To say that Serrano was slightly anal was like saying Philly sports fans were somewhat enthusiastic about their favorite teams.
Suddenly there was a loud beeping outside, like someone leaning on a truck horn with both hands.
“What on earth is that terrible racket?” Martha exclaimed.
“Oh, probably Sally McIntire’s husband, here to pick up his wife,” Eleanor murmured, cocking her head toward a lithe, well-endowed blonde hanging on to the photographer. “She’s been flirting with Roos all week, and I hear her old man is mad with jealousy.”
We shooed everyone out again, including the reluctant Sally, and I closed the doors to a chorus of groans. While Serrano took his jacket off and laid it on the backseat of the car, Alex Roos adjusted the lighting. Martha dusted the car with a sheepskin cloth, and Eleanor and I pulled the garbage cans into place.
We stood back to admire our tableau.
Suddenly I spotted faces popping up outside the row of windows at the top of the garage doors. The groupies must be giving one another piggybacks to try to steal a peek.
I got up on a stepladder, and Martha handed me pieces of seamless black background paper that I taped carefully over the square panes so that not a crack of light shone through.
The stage was finally set.
“Okay, ladies.” Roos clapped his hands. “I think I can handle it from here. Good night. Thanks a million for your help.”
Eleanor sucked in a breath, but she couldn’t really object, not with Serrano standing right behind him. The photographer had obviously been given strict instructions to clear the scene.
One by one we trailed into the house.
“Damn that Roos. Now we can’t see anything either,” Eleanor grumbled as I pulled the door to the kitchen closed behind us. “What a spoilsport. And why the hell did you have to be so efficient and cover up all the windows, Daisy?”
The tastefully remodeled carriage house had the same heavy ceiling beams as the garage, but the whitewashed walls and exposed stonework were softened with paintings of rustic subjects like a folk art pig, and there were top-quality Persian area rugs covering most of the stone floors. It was a simple layout. A huge sleeping loft and a sitting room above, and a good-size living room, dining room, and kitchen with walk-in fireplace downstairs.
Ruth Bornstein, the owner of this estate, was standing at the maple wood kitchen counter making a fresh pot of coffee. She had more connections than a crocheted shawl and had talked the photographer into doing the shoot for a cut-rate price. The gorgeous fieldstone building served both as his studio and temporary living quarters.
She grinned at our downcast expressions. “Don’t despair, my friends. All is not lost.”
Ruth made a beckoning motion, and we followed her to an alcove off the kitchen that was set up as an office. It also housed a closed-circuit TV system. She poked the power button on the computer monitor and it flickered into life, showing a quadrant of pictures of the front of the house, the back door, the main gate, and the interior of the garage.
There was quite a bit of pushing and shoving so everyone could get into a good viewing position before the show started.
We didn’t have long to wait.
Serrano didn’t bother going back to the changing area to don a robe or a towel like the other guys. He simply pulled off his tie right where he stood and stripped off his shirt while we held our collective breath.
Even in a grainy black-and-white image, the hard-muscled body was awe-inspiring.
“Good God,” Martha said.
The nighttime gray hues accented the rippled stomach and strong biceps that flexed as he moved, like a prowling mountain cat that wastes no energy, but is a focused, tightly coiled killing machine.
I swallowed, but there was no moisture left in my throat.
As Serrano slowly reached for his belt buckle, he glanced in the direction of the security camera, and it seemed as though his eyes met mine. Roos triggered the strobes to test the light meter near Serrano’s face, and the resultant flash made my heart bounce.
With shaking fingers I turned the monitor off, suddenly ashamed of myself.
Serrano was my friend, above all else, and not only was I betraying our friendship, but his hard-won trust in me with such giddy, schoolgirl behavior. “We shouldn’t be spying on the man like this. We’re just a bunch of sick old women getting our jollies.”
“And you’re jolly annoying.” Eleanor pouted and slumped back in a chair, crossing her arms over her narrow chest.
“Daisy, why don’t you come up to the house with me and visit with Stanley while the shoot is going on?” Ruth urged.
“Okay.” My heart was still racing.
“We’ll clean up here when it’s all over, dear,” Martha said to Ruth. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
As we left the room, I thought I could hear the whir of the monitor starting up again.
I grabbed my coat from the kitchen, and Ruth and I walked the short distance up the curving driveway toward the magnificent main house.
The original section was from the eighteenth century, w
ith random width floors and fireplaces in most of the rooms. It had been added on to over the years, and the newer wings had the same sage-green siding as the carriage house. The carefully tended rose gardens, tennis court, and pool were situated behind with breathtaking views of the countryside, and verdant acres rolled away in every direction.
The wind whipped across the land, and even though we were only open to the elements for a minute, I felt my body temperature plummet. I huddled down inside my jacket and walked faster.
Ruth’s husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago. Before his illness, Joe and I used to join the Bornsteins occasionally for dinner during the summers when we vacationed in Millbury. Stanley Bornstein had been a successful chemist for one of the large pharmaceutical corporations based in Montgomery County. He’d made a fortune for the company, and for himself, and had retired in his early fifties.
I’d always thought of him as a highly intelligent, fascinating man. Brilliant, in fact.
And now he barely knew his own name.
Ruth hung our coats in the foyer closet and then took a deep breath. “Daisy, you haven’t seen Stanley in a while. I don’t want you to be upset, but he . . . Well, he’s gotten much worse lately. He probably won’t recognize you.”
“That’s okay.” I smiled up at her in reassurance. I’d never seen the tall, elegant Ruth not perfectly coiffed, and tonight was no exception. She wore a long ecru flowing sweater over a silk top and dress pants, together with a necklace of intertwined gold rings. Her bobbed hair was dyed a rich chocolate brown, and her dark eyes were enhanced with eyeliner of the same shade.
She’d always looked years younger than her husband, even before he got sick, but in the light cast by the chandelier there were fine lines of exhaustion drawn around her eyes and mouth that even the most expensive night creams couldn’t erase.
I followed her upstairs. We passed a guest bedroom on our way, and I caught a glimpse of some of Ruth’s things. When we walked into the master bedroom, I could see why. The imposing cherry four-poster bed was gone. It must have been dismantled and stored somewhere else and replaced by a metal hospital bed.
I’d steeled myself for this, but I had to press my lips together to hide my shock at Stanley’s wasted appearance. He’d always been a slim guy, but now he was incredibly thin, his cheeks sunken and gray hair standing up in wisps on top of his head.
His hands looked like bird claws resting on the starched white sheets.
“Stanley, Daisy’s here to see you,” Ruth said.
He didn’t turn his head.
It must have been six months since I’d last seen him. At that time he seemed to know who I was, although he couldn’t quite follow the thread of the conversation. He kept asking Ruth about someone named Mickey. Turns out that Mickey was the cocker spaniel he’d had as a kid.
There were sheets covering the mirrors on the dressing table and also draped over the closet doors. Ruth followed my gaze. “Sometimes we see imposters in the room,” she said softly.
I bit my lip and nodded.
An array of medicines stood on the bedside table, and a nurse sat in an armchair next to the bed, knitting a pink-and-orange scarf. She got to her feet with a grunt.
“He wouldn’t let me change him, Miz Bornstein,” she said, pursing her full lips together.
“I’ll do it, Jo Ellen. You were right not to push matters. Evenings are always the worst time.”
Stanley coughed, a painful dry wheeze.
“His sinus infection is getting real bad again, too.” The nurse shook her head. “Doctor was here earlier to do his blood work and said he’s probably gonna need another course of antibiotics.”
“I’ll pick up the prescription tomorrow.” Ruth walked over to the table and trailed a graceful hand over the bottles. “Did you give him his meds?”
“Yes, Miz Bornstein.”
“And did you sign off on the chart?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The nurse glanced at me. She stopped short of rolling her eyes, but she may as well have. I gathered they’d been through this routine many times before.
Ruth touched a hand to my shoulder. “Daisy, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to see Jo Ellen out.”
They walked out of the room, and I sat in the chair next to the bed. Even though I didn’t know much about how to deal with a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s, I knew I should talk to Stanley as normally as I could. If there was a part of him that could still comprehend, I wanted to respect his dignity.
I tried to ignore the faint odor hanging in the air that reminded me of the early days of teaching, when some of the little kids didn’t always make it to the bathroom in time. I wondered how long he’d been lying here like that. Surely Ruth paid the nurse well enough that she could have handled the task, difficult and unappealing as it admittedly was.
I struggled to think of something to say.
Throughout the house there were hundreds of books. He’d been such a vibrant, educated man. There were even two bookshelves on the back wall of this huge master bedroom.
I’d always relished our conversations about novels we’d enjoyed, the current state of world affairs, and even news of his chemical research. He had a way of explaining things that made it easy to understand.
We also shared a passion for quirky historical facts.
“Hey, Stanley, did you know that Charles Dickens always faced to the north when sleeping?” I said to him, hoping to see some sort of familiar answering spark in his eyes. “That the first novel ever written on a typewriter was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Or that ketchup was sold in the 1830s as a medicine?” He used to tease me about my penchant for putting the tomato condiment on anything and everything.
He stared unblinking at the ceiling.
Never mind not recognizing me; it was as if he couldn’t hear me at all.
I sighed, remembering one time when the four of us had gone out to dinner, right before he retired. Stanley insisted on taking the bill when it came to the table because Joe and I had treated the time before. But then he took so long figuring out the tip that Ruth pulled out her own credit card. Stanley was furious at his wife, and it was an uncomfortable scene, to say the least. She’d excused the episode afterward by saying he’d been under a lot of stress at work.
Now I wondered if Stanley had retired because he’d had a premonition that something might be going wrong.
His thin fingers plucked restlessly at the sheet, and he turned to look at me.
“I know you.” His face crumpled and he started crying. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. And I forgot your birthday.”
“No, no, it’s not my birthday. It’s okay. Really.”
“Card. I should have bought you a card.”
I tried again to tell him it wasn’t my birthday, but he wouldn’t be consoled. In fact, the more I protested, the more agitated he became. Desperate, I looked around. There was a small writing desk near the window with a stack of expensive cream-colored writing paper.
A memory flashed into my head of making Mother’s Day cards with the elementary school children, cutting hearts out of paper doilies and decorating borders with snippets of lace, sequins, and buttons.
“Okay, you know what, Stanley? You’re right. It is my birthday. So let’s make a card. What should I put on it?”
But he lapsed into silence once more.
I hurried over to the desk, folded a piece of letterhead adorned with an embossed B in half, and selected a fountain pen from the marble cup. I knew he liked dogs, so I drew a stick figure of a dog that looked a bit like my golden retriever mix puppy. I added a bunch of flowers and wrote Happy Birthday inside.
I went back to the bed and sat next to him. “Look. Here it is. Do you want to give it to me now?”
I held it out, but he suddenly
gripped my wrist so tightly that the paper fell from my fingers onto the stiff sheets.
“Help me, Daisy,” he said in a hoarse whisper, his eyes focused and very bright. “She’s trying to kill me!”
Chapter Two
“What?” I sucked in a breath.
Soft footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Stanley slumped back against the pillows.
“Everything all right?” Ruth came back into the bedroom, worry etched across her beautiful face.
“Yes, fine,” I said, forcing a smile. “Stanley was just giving me my birthday card.”
For a second she frowned, and then she nodded in understanding.
I cleared my throat and gestured to the bedside table. “Um, I was wondering, Ruth. All those drugs. What do they do?”
She explained that some were to try to delay the progression of the disease as long as possible, some were for anxiety and depression, and some were sleep aids or antipsychotics.
I glanced over at Stanley for any kind of signal, but after his startling pronouncement, he was staring blankly at the ceiling again.
“Seems like an awful lot.” The sea of brown plastic bottles all looked exactly the same to me. “Must be hard to keep them straight.”
“That’s why I have a checklist.” Ruth sighed. “Jo Ellen’s a wonderful nurse, but she and I butt heads sometimes. She has her own way of doing things, and it’s not always the way I’ve instructed. Like signing off on giving him this medicine.”
A little while later, I got up to leave. If Stanley needed changing, I wanted to give them some privacy.
We walked downstairs, and when we got to the foyer, Ruth hovered in front of the door as I slipped on my coat. “Thank you for your kindness, Daisy. About the birthday card, I mean. It’s easier to go along with him than argue. It just gets him more upset.” She ran a hand across her forehead. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to come over here. I guess that selfishly I wanted you to see . . .”
I swallowed against a lump in my throat. “What you have to deal with every day? Oh, Ruth, it’s okay. And I’m so sorry.” I hugged her and she hugged me tightly in return, like she never wanted to let me go. I rubbed her back a little to comfort her, feeling the bones of her spine through the silk. “You can share anything you want with me. This must be such a huge burden.”