Antiques Wanted

by Barbara Allan

  “You needn’t worry about me,” I said. “I already know my way around this place, although I grant you, it’s different from the perspective of a patient.”

  She nodded. “Moving here took a little adjustment on my part, as well. It’s the same for everyone.”

  I cocked my head. “You seem much too fit for assisted living, dear. Why didn’t you stay in your lovely home?”

  I already knew, of course. Goldie had no family or relatives in town anymore, her daughter (a lawyer) on the West Coast, her son (a doctor) on the East Coast. After she’d taken several tumbles at home, they insisted she live with one of them. When Goldie refused to relocate and leave her many friends, a compromise was made for her to move to Sunny Meadow.

  So I politely listened to her story, inserting appropriate nods and nonverbal responses and prompts. I had hoped she might volunteer some dirt about her stay thus far at the facility, but learned nothing new for my trouble. But it was a good way to grease the wheels (not my wheelchair’s—the metaphorical ones).

  When Goldie had finished, I said, “Well, I for one am glad you’re here—you certainly add class to this facility!”

  I make it a policy to compliment someone I’m about to interrogate—I mean, interview—to put them further at ease.

  Goldie smiled. “How sweet of you to say so.” Her eyes traveled to my casts. “Do tell me about your operation.”

  Since this was not what I wanted to spend time discussing—past a certain age, people seem to want to endlessly recount their own operations, though their eyes glaze when the operations of their peers are detailed—I asked, “What is that marvelous smell emanating from the kitchen?”

  Her eyes glittered. “Chocolate babka! Have you had breakfast?”

  I admitted I hadn’t, despite the Sunny Meadow dietician lecturing me that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

  “You must have some, then,” she said. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you know.”

  It is when it’s fresh homemade chocolate babka!

  When I demurred (not too convincingly), saying I didn’t want to put her to any trouble, she responded, “Nonsense. And I’ll join you. Coffee or tea?”

  Soon we were enjoying the most scrumptious coffee cake known to God or man, and sipping hot tea from delicate china cups.

  Goldie patted her lips with a white linen napkin. “You were going to tell me about your operation.”

  I not so elegantly wiped my mouth. “Would you mind if we save that for another time? The details are nothing to share over babka.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I had no idea. . . .”

  “Yes, well, if you ever go that route, have the surgeon put you under. You don’t want to be awake, even though you can’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh, my.”

  That shut the topic down. And kept the babka down, too.

  I shifted in my wheelchair, which for all its merits could have used more padding. “Now, about Harriet . . . did you ever see her smoking around her oxygen tank?”

  Goldie shook her head. “As far as I know, she went outside on her patio without the tank, even in winter.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I could see her from my window over the sink . . . but every now and then—not too often—when I walked past her door? I could strongly smell cigarette smoke, which gave me the impression she sometimes cheated.”

  “When it was raining, perhaps?”

  My hostess frowned in thought. “Now that you mention it, yes. There’s no protection over these patios when it rains.”

  I switched gears (metaphorically—my chair had no gears, and anyway I wasn’t moving). “I understand when you came here after that last bad spill of yours, you were on the second floor for a while.”

  She nodded. “I needed better care—couldn’t just be alone in one of these apartments.”

  “You were on a pain medication at that time?”

  “. . . Yes.”

  “Which didn’t help?”

  She frowned. “Who told you that? However could you know?”

  “Just a wild guess.”

  “A wild guess named Norma Crumley?”

  When I didn’t answer, Goldie smirked. “Vivian, you’d be wise to be careful what you say around that woman.”

  No worries there—I was a sponge, not a spigot. (Another metaphor—isn’t colorful language fun?)

  “Is it true?” I asked. “About the pills not being effective, I mean.” (I already knew the truth about Norma Crumley spreading tales.)

  She nodded. “Funny thing—I’d been on that same medication before, and it worked wonderfully well. But not this time.”

  “What do you make of that?”

  Goldie leaned forward, placed her plate on the coffee table, and leaned back. “I don’t know that I should say.”

  “I’m not Norma, dear.”

  She studied me a moment. “Well, of course I knew that a medication that worked in one instance might not work in another—though both times I’d had a fall. But I suspected. . .”

  “Suspected what, dear?”

  My hostess sighed. “I thought an over-the-counter pain medication might have been substituted.”

  “Something cheap and less effective.”

  She nodded. “Something cheap, less effective.”

  Wanda Mercer was an LPN who distributed the patient’s daily doses; but Joan Lindle, an RN, was in charge of ordering the medications and keeping track of them.

  Goldie was saying, “Whether the nursing home was trying to save money with some inferior brand, or someone was pilfering, I couldn’t say.”

  “Did you share these thoughts with Harriet, perchance?”

  “Yes. She looked out for us, all of us girls out here . . . so she’d want to know.”

  I smiled. “From what I’m hearing, Harriet was pretty popular among the residents.”

  Goldie chuckled. “And pretty unpopular with the staff.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  The woman lowered her voice. “Who do you think? Mr. Burnett. I heard him arguing with her the morning she died—right through my bedroom wall! Her living room was just on the other side.”

  I sat forward. “When was this, dear?”

  She pondered that for a moment. “Between nine and nine-thirty that morning . . . well before you and Brandy stopped by.”

  “Could you hear what was being said?”

  She shook her head. “Too muffled. But it was an argument, all right. And Burnett did most of the shouting.”

  He would.

  I thanked Goldie for the visit, and when she offered me a piece of babka to take along, I accepted, not wanting to hurt her feelings, of course. My wheelchair had a little saddlebag where I could temporarily store the yummy snack, though if I didn’t watch my sugar intake, I’d be back at somewhere like this on a more permanent basis.

  My next stop was farther down the hall to the apartment of Louise Rockwell, who had donated the starburst clock to my white elephant sale, and I was wheeling along briskly when I encountered Wanda.

  “Oh, there you are!” the young nurse said, coming toward me pushing a dispensary cart on wheels.

  Wanda was a shade on the heavy side—with a pretty, round face, short dark hair, and invisible wire-frame glasses—and wore a floral smock, white slacks, and clog-like shoes.

  “Mrs. Borne,” she sighed, “I do wish you’d stay in your room until I’ve given you your morning medication.”

  “I’ll try to postpone my wanderings in future, dear. What medicinal delights have you for me?”

  She consulted a chart. “An antibiotic and pain pill.”

  “Very well. Have you some water?”

  She did. I was about to pop the two pills into my mouth when I stopped.

  “No pain pill this morning,” I said, eyeing the opioid. “I don’t believe I need one . . . and besides, it disrupts my, uh, plumbing, if you know what I mean.”

  Wanda withdrew the pill. “All
right. Will you want one tonight?”

  “Well, dear, we’ll know the answer to that when evening arrives, won’t we?”

  She gave me a smirk and a grunt—not long on repartee, this girl—and rumbled on with the cart.

  I might come to regret not taking that pill (unless an over-the-counter softball had been substituted for a hard-core opioid), as my feet were giving me some trouble; but it was more important for me to put bait in the trap. I knew that every pill had to be accounted for, whether the patient took it or not.

  Arriving at Louise’s apartment, I found her presence there no surprise—I’d learned she rarely took advantage of the morning activities offered, such as exercise classes, sing-alongs, and crafts.

  Louise was a stooped (though not stupid) woman, with permed gray hair, glasses thicker than mine, and a fondness for wearing old-fashioned cotton housedresses like those found in the Vermont Country Store catalogue (which regularly came to my house because I’d once ordered some foot-soaking crystals). Today’s dress might have been sewn from a red-checkered tablecloth.

  We sat in a living room with mismatched inexpensive furniture, from home, no doubt—era-mixing like that reflected the passage of time, or a trip to the thrift shop. Louise was sitting back in a recliner, with me parked next to her on a couch whose springs sprang eternal. I was offered no refreshment.

  “I’d like to thank you,” I said graciously, “for the lovely clock you gave me.”

  “I did?”

  Louise was at Sunny Meadow because of her faulty memory. Word on the street (actually the social areas) was, she might be moved upstairs to the Alzheimer’s Unit if she wandered off the grounds one more time.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding.

  “Well, that surprises me.”

  “It does, dear?”

  “I always liked that clock.”

  Good Lord, would she want it back?

  Louise sighed. “But on the other hand, I’m not surprised.”

  “You aren’t, dear?”

  “So many things have been disappearing around here lately.”

  “Like what?”

  The woman made a lemon-sucking face. “Money, for one! And a gold necklace. That’s why I hardly ever leave my apartment anymore. Why don’t they have locks on these doors, anyway?”

  I said, “I suppose it’s because the staff needs to get in quickly, should one of us have an accident or medical emergency. Any idea who the bandit might be?”

  Another sour face twisted her mouth. “I have a suspicion. That orderly . . . or is he a janitor? Anyway, that man who always comes in every morning, to empty the wastebasket.”

  “I believe his name is Blake Ferrell.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she snapped. “He’s someone whose acquaintance I’d rather not make. And he never knocks! And sometimes I’m napping in the bedroom! What if I were deshabille?”

  What part of her failing memory had she pulled that one out of?

  As if on cue, a knock came at the door and, without the knocker waiting for the knockee’s permission, it opened, and the gentleman of whom we’d been speaking came tromping in. Perhaps in his midtwenties, Blake Ferrell had dark hair and needed a shave—fashion statement or slovenliness, who can say these days?—and his clothes consisted of a plaid shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. He might have been good-looking, if it weren’t for his sullen, scruffy countenance.

  The janitor moved past us without even a glance. We might have been part of the furniture.

  “See?” Louise huffed, loud enough for the young man to hear. “Doesn’t even knock, just walks right in.”

  Well, he had knocked, but not loud enough for a senior citizen with fading aural powers to pick up.

  I could hear him rustling around in the kitchen, then he reemerged hauling a black plastic garbage bag, and went out as quickly and wordlessly as he’d come in.

  Louise picked up where she’d left off. “It’s not right for a man to enter a woman’s apartment when she’s sleeping. I told Harriet and she promised to bring it up with Mr. Burnett. . . but then she got blown to smithereens, and I’m right back where I started.”

  The woman was getting more and more agitated, so I shifted subjects. “Dear, is it true that you got bedsores here so badly you nearly lost a leg?”

  I’d barely got this out when I realized this might not be a calming query.

  She shifted in her recliner and frowned. “Nonsense! Never happened.”

  Either Alice had been wrong, or Louise couldn’t remember.

  “But I did have shingles on my leg,” she said, “that got so infected I might’ve lost it.”

  So Alice, like a clock without a minute hand, had been half right.

  I said, “Surely the doctor here, making rounds, must have looked at it.”

  “Yes, and ordered up some ointment to put on it. But do you think I could get anyone to help me apply it? They were always too busy!”

  “Did you happen to mention this to Harriet?”

  Her laugh was a cackle. “Sure did! And I bet she cost this dump a fine over that, or at least some kind of reprimand.”

  Sensing I’d gotten about all the information I could from Louise, I took my leave.

  My final stop of the morning was at the end of the corridor—the apartment of Arthur Fillmore, a retired insurance agent who also eschewed morning exercise, sing-songing, and artsy-crafting.

  “Vivian, come in, come in!” Arthur greeted me.

  Arthur reminded me of the old stage and screen actor Lionel Barrymore—not much to look at, perhaps, but charismatic and confident. His wife was a gentle, lovely lady among the angels now, although she must have already been one here on earth to put up with her hubby’s dalliances. But time had slowed the randy old goat down somewhat . . . or so I thought....

  I wheeled into a sparse but messy front room, newspapers and magazines littering the floor, where also resided more than a few dirty plates that should have long since been carted off to the kitchen.

  Arthur helped me position myself across from his recliner before he sat, though did not lean back.

  A television was playing loudly nearby and—when my host made no move to turn it down (or preferably off)—I did what I always do in that situation: I began to speak very softly, which made him ask me to repeat myself, which I did, but even softer (sometimes I just move my lips). Finally Arthur got up and turned off the intrusive boob tube, although it was actually a small flat-screen.

  Returning to his recliner, he asked, “I suppose you’ve come about the title to the car?”

  “No,” I said in my normal, if stage-trained, voice. “But have you found it?”

  “I have.”

  “Then I’ll take it before I leave.” I shifted in the hard wheelchair, wishing I’d sought a cushion to rest upon.

  I opened with Cora Van Camp’s tidbit. “Arthur, what do you know about any employees here at Sunny Meadow who have past criminal records?”

  He shrugged. “I have no firsthand knowledge . . . only what Harriet shared with me.”

  “Which was?”

  “That she had proof and was going to confront Mr. Burnett about it. You know, with a deputy sheriff as a nephew, she couldn’t just be shrugged off.”

  “Did she say what proof she had?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Or mention any names?”

  He shook his head. “But I agreed with her that a nursing home would be easy pickings for someone with a criminal bent, and that person might make less than an ideal employee.”

  I then asked Arthur about Harriet smoking around her oxygen tank, but he said with his apartment being at the end of the hall, he was unaware of her habits.

  He went on: “I did notice one thing . . . different . . . about the morning Harriet died. When I stepped out into the hall to retrieve my morning paper, I saw Joan—the head nurse?—going into Harriet’s apartment about seven-thirty with a tank of oxygen.”

  “What was different about that?
” I asked.

  “Well, that was Wanda’s job,” Arthur said. “At least it always was in the past.”

  I nodded. “Because she brings around whatever is prescribed, which includes oxygen.”

  “Right.”

  Then out of nowhere, my host said, “You know, Vivian, if you don’t mind my frankness, I’ve always thought you were just about the most attractive woman in town.”

  Not wanting to encourage him, I demurred, “Close only counts in horseshoes.”

  He crawled out of the recliner and stood before me. “Oh, no. Even now. Why, you haven’t aged a day.”

  I could hardly say the same thing about him.

  The old goat leaned down, and at first I thought he’d snapped his fingers, like Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, but it was only a backbone popping.

  He said slyly, “Maybe you could come back later this evening and we could see about me turnin’ over that car title to you . . . for your white elephant sale.”

  I didn’t want to win that badly!

  I said, “You do see these two casts on my feet.”

  He winked. “You know, there’s always a work-around, little lady.”

  I smiled up at him, calling upon all my thespian skills. “I do so love a challenge. Shall we say . . . eight?”

  He grinned, showing off dentures as white and gleaming as a freshly scrubbed toilet bowl. “Eight it is, dolly.”

  The man could wait till half past doomsday, and I still wouldn’t show up.

  I made my escape.

  I’m going to do a little rant here, dear reader, and not about sexual contact among residents in nursing homes. For heaven’s sake! We’re all of age. Why not have a little thrill on the way to the great beyond? As long as it’s consensual, that is. But Arthur Fillmore just didn’t trip my trigger.

  No, my beef is when people begin a sentence with, “You know . . .” Well, I don’t know. Not until that person tells me what they’re going to say, and then maybe I do know, or don’t. This verbal idiosyncracy is spreading like a most unwelcome rash. You know?

  Where was I?

  I was wheeling toward the elevator when my cell phone rang. I usually power it off when I’m investigating, not wanting any interruption in my train of thought, but I must have gone off the track and forgotten to do so.