Dying Wishes

by Judith K Ivie

  Dying Wishes

  by

  Judith K. Ivie

  Mainly Murder Press, LLC

  PO Box 290586

  Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586

  www.mainlymurderpress.com

  Mainly Murder Press

  Copy Editor: Jennafer K. Sprankle

  Cover Designer: Karen A. Phillips

  All rights reserved

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  © 2012 by Judith K. Ivie

  Paperback ISBN 978-0-9846666-4-5

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-9846666-7-6

  Published in the United States of America

  Mainly Murder Press

  PO Box 290586

  Wethersfield, CT 06129-0586

  www.MainlyMurderPress.com

  Dedicated to my wonderful

  family and friends who

  frequently don’t understand me,

  often disagree with me,

  and put up with me anyway.

  I love you, too.

  Books by Judith K. Ivie

  The Kate Lawrence Mysteries:

  Waiting for Armando

  Murder on Old Main Street

  A Skeleton in the Closet

  Drowning in Christmas

  Dying Wishes

  Romance Fiction:

  Never Can Say Goodbye

  Nonfiction:

  Working It Out: The Domestic Double Standard

  Calling It Quits: Turning Career Setbacks to Success

  The Workaholic Syndrome

  One

  “There comes a morning in every woman’s life,” I said to Strutter on the telephone, “when she looks into the mirror and knows precisely what she’ll look like if she makes it to the age of eighty. Lines, pouches, droopy bits—they’re all there, lurking just below the surface, waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation. I won’t need to wear a mask this Halloween. A pointy hat and a broom, and I’ll be the perfect old hag.”

  I squinted at my reflection in the hand mirror and stuck out my tongue.

  “The approach of the big five-o has got you down, huh? Well, I’m afraid I can’t relate. Not only am I a full seven years younger than you are, but we women of color age undetectably, or hadn’t you heard? It’s you pigmentation-challenged Caucasians who dry up in your fifties, Katie girl.” The twinkle in her Jamaican lilt softened her unsympathetic words. “Not that you could prove that by Margo,” she added as a final dig.

  Margo Harkness was our third partner and a few years into her fifties, an apparently ageless blonde beauty.

  “That’s a Southern thing. Comes in the gene pool right along with the drawl and the debutante’s guidebook. So what’s on your agenda today?” I turned the mirror face down on my bed and reached for my cooling coffee.

  “Nothing very exciting, although grocery shopping with a two-year-old does have its heart-stopping moments. She chuckled. “Thank goodness Charlie has a game after school. I can plop myself in a lawn chair and hand Olivia over to that gaggle of fourteen-year-old girls who think she’s just the cutest thing ever.”

  “She is the cutest thing ever, and it doesn’t hurt a bit that her big brother is the emerging star of Wethersfield High’s soccer team.”

  “Oh, Lord, don’t remind me. It’s only October, and I already wish the school year were over. Those girls are absolutely stalking him. If he’s not on Facebook, he’s got that damned cell phone clamped to his ear, or he’s hammering away at a text message. I swear, none of them will have functional thumb joints by the time they’re thirty. What’s your plan for today?”

  I sighed. “Vista View. I told Margo I’d take her days this month as well as mine. She has a ton of new listings to show, and I told her I’d finalize the sale on Mrs. Roncaro’s unit. Her death was quite a surprise. She seemed just fine the last time I saw her. Such a nice lady.”

  Vista View is a retirement community repped by our firm, Mack Realty.

  “Tomorrow, I’m going to stop by to see the Henstock sisters. Ada telephoned me, and I haven’t seen them in a while. I think they may want to check out the retirement complex. Even that little Cape we sold them behind the Silas Robbins House is getting to be too much for them, I think, so I want to tell them about Vista View, if they’re looking at options.” Ada and Lavinia are sisters, former clients and now good friends who live near the Wethersfield Green on Broad Street, right around the corner from our office.

  “Seeing them will probably do your silly age funk good. Those old gals are what, eighty-something? And still interested in the opposite sex, if Lavinia’s reaction to Margo’s husband is any indication.” Lieutenant John Harkness, AKA Margo’s husband, had taken charge of an investigation involving the sisters some two years previously.

  I emptied my mug and eased out from under my ancient cat Jasmine, who considered me her personal heat source. Her housemate Gracie, a young ginger cat, slitted her eyes at me from the foot of the bed. I had lingered under the covers long enough that they had assumed it was a weekend morning and settled in.

  “Let’s face it. Women of any age respond to a man as good looking as Margo’s husband,” I said, reflecting upon our previous experiences with Ada and Lavinia, “but Lavinia did have a habit of blushing whenever John was around, as I recall. Anyway, gotta go. Pinch Olivia’s fat cheeks for me.”

  “Will do,” Strutter promised and rang off.

  Despite my later than usual start, I could hear Armando’s shower running upstairs. His work schedule at TeleCom International required a good deal of international travel and lots of overtime, so he could pretty well start and end his days in the office when he chose. That suited my Colombian husband’s casual relationship with time very well, although it made me a little nuts. I headed for my own downstairs bathroom and hoped there was still enough hot water for my shower.

  It isn’t so much the age, I mused as I rinsed shampoo out of my hair under a stinging spray. It’s the unavoidable significance that gets attached to birthdays ending in zeros. The beginning of yet another decade of life, they seem to shout, and a lot more water has gone under the bridge. For women, these announcements have a lot to do with physical appearance. Even an attractive woman, and I’m happy to say I do have my good points, gets labeled differently as the years roll by. She’s “a pretty young thing” in her twenties and “still very youthful” in her forties but only “well preserved, considering her age” by the time she hits fifty. After that, “still takes care of herself, bless her” is about all she can hope for.

  I toweled off and blew dry and moisturized, then spent my customary two minutes with the mirror, applying the workday amenities of mascara, lipstick and a little blusher. “Still very youthful,” I muttered defiantly, struggling into pantyhose and the pencil skirt and tunic that would get me through the day in comfort, if not the height of elegance. Small gold hoops in my ears, and I was done. At the last second, I dabbed a few more drops of firming serum onto my chin and neck. Couldn’t hurt, might help.

  “Good morning, Cara, did you sleep well?” said Armando from the hall as I hastily made my bed. He stood in the bedroom doorway, impeccably turned out for his work day, as always. Not especially tall, but undeniably dark and handsome, he was fastidious about his personal appearance and always a sight worth seeing. Unfortunately, that orderliness didn’t ext
end to his bedroom and bathroom which were, to put it kindly, a perpetual mess.

  I yanked the comforter smooth and turned to give him a smile. The sight of him caused all the usual stirrings, so evidently there was some life in the old girl yet. Both cats dropped all pretense of feline aloofness and churned around his ankles, purring and nudging, as they vied for his attention.

  “Apparently, your Latino appeal extends to females of all species,” I noted, and he obliged the hairy ones with a scritch apiece. I inhaled his clean, soapy scent as I leaned in for a kiss.

  “I am very glad to hear that.” His hand wandered from my waist, and I slapped it away lightly.

  “Off to work with you. I’m running late for Vista View, and I still have to feed the beasts.” I wiped a smudge of my lipstick from the corner of his mouth and patted his butt. “Go.” He went.

  A few minutes later I got on the road as well. Instead of following my usual route to Old Wethersfield, where Mack Realty had its offices on Old Main Street, I turned right out of The Birches’ entrance road and made my way down Prospect Street to Collier, where the Vista View complex was located. The signs of autumn were everywhere, in the gardens that were lush with fall blooms, in the property repairs being made in preparation for a New England winter, and the pumpkins and pots of colorful mums on every front stoop. Within half a mile I passed a painter on a ladder, tending to the window trim on an already tidy looking Colonial; roofers repairing shingles atop a sprawling ranch; a young man in earphones operating a roaring leaf blower; and an elderly woman on her knees, energetically tidying her perennial border.

  I parked my car in a visitor slot and hefted my briefcase over the gearshift console. Never without a full complement of file folders and papers, it weighed about twice as much as usual today, stuffed as it was with rental agreement forms, sales brochures and price sheets. By the time I reached the entrance of Building One, which housed the administrative offices and dining facilities for the complex, I was puffing. Yet another sign of advancing age, I reflected sourly.

  As I paused to catch my breath, I looked around at the other buildings. Several surrounded a tasteful green, and carefully meandering roads led to similar groupings set farther from Collier Road. From the outside they all looked similar, like expensively constructed and maintained residential housing, but I knew that each one served a specific purpose in the hierarchy of caring for the elderly. The clusters farther removed were indeed elegant housing units of all configurations—garden apartments, townhouses, and even freestanding units—and were rented or owned by the not-yet-retired or newly retired who still enjoyed good health and mobility. Phase One-ers, the developers labeled them.

  Phase Two facilities were located closer to the main road and consisted of one-bedroom units discreetly equipped with bells, buzzers and other devices that allowed their residents to call for help, should they require it. Housekeeping services were available to Phase Two-ers, as well as communal dining in Building One if they wished to avail themselves of regularly provided group meals that were both nourishing and appealing.

  Phase Three residents were essentially nursing home patients and enjoyed the best round-the-clock personal care services that money could buy. It wasn’t anything to look forward to, exactly, but it was the reason that most residents signed up for a Vista View unit to begin with. While enjoying the amenities of Phase One and Phase Two, they knew Phase Three was waiting. It was comforting, I supposed, to know that one need do nothing but slip quietly into an adjoining building to accomplish the transition. I imagined myself, the advancing years robbing me of my mobility and independence, and felt inexpressibly sad. Vista View was my job today. Was it also my future?

  A blue Audi slid smoothly into a parking space, and an exuberant foursome in tennis whites burst from its interior. They still glistened genteelly from what must have been an early morning session on the courts. They headed for the front door of Building One and, presumably, the snack bar. “Your game is really improving,” one of the men, sleek with good health, threw over his shoulder at his companions. “You two almost got us today. We’ll have to put in some extra practice time with the pro, right, Jan?” He poked the trim lady at his side, and she giggled.

  “I’ll be glad to spend extra time with Anthony anytime for any reason,” she agreed. She yanked open the heavy glass door and swept through, winking at her friends. The general banter continued as they made their way through the immaculate lobby, and I found myself smiling as I trailed after them, lugging my paperwork. Apparently, this aging business had some positive aspects.

  It was an exquisite fall day, and prospects were few and far between. By mid-morning I was drumming my fingers on the desk in front of me and waiting to have lunch with Ginny Preston, Vista View’s business manager. The small conference area to one side of the lobby, where Mack Realty customarily set up shop, allowed me to see who was coming and going “without being intrusive to our guests,” as Ginny had phrased it. Over the years Ginny had become a good friend. We often swapped stories over coffee or lunch on my days here. Ginny worked mostly by herself, poring over her computer and ledgers, so she welcomed the break, and I enjoyed a little conversation with someone my own age. Margo, Strutter and I alternated our Vista View duty, so Ginny and I always had lots to talk about.

  Drop-ins dwindled to nonexistent, and I still had an hour to kill. Ginny had left a couple of telephone messages from the weekend on the desk. After I dealt with them I occupied myself by putting together packets of sales literature, which consisted of small pamphlets fitted into staggered pockets of a presentation folder. Each one featured a different couple, smiling toothily at their good fortune in living “the Vista View lifestyle.” If you believed these photos, no one here was over the age of fifty-five, lonely, overweight or incapacitated in any way. I guess that’s because they have lifestyles instead of plain, ordinary lives like the rest of us.

  After that time hung heavily. I still had twenty minutes before my lunch date with Ginny. I gave Vista View full marks for their food service. Menu offerings were light, tasty and attractively presented, and the chef put together a killer Cobb salad. A steady stream of residents already trickled through the lobby, heading for the dining hall. My stomach rumbled in anticipation, and I glanced at my watch yet again.

  “Why so glum, Gorgeous?”

  I looked up, startled, to find a dapper, aging elf standing before me. With his bow tie, thick lenses and unlit cigar, he bore a marked resemblance to George Burns in his later years.

  “Say goodnight, Gracie,” he prompted, reading my mind.

  “Goodnight, Gracie,” I responded obediently. “I have a cat named Gracie Allen, actually. She’s another ditsy blonde. You get that a lot, huh?”

  He tapped his cigar and leaned in conspiratorially. “It’s always more fun to beat ‘em to the punch line, ummm, Kate,” he said after reading my name tag. “Bert Rosenthal here. Mind if I sit for a minute?” He dropped into my visitor’s chair with relief. “My doctor says these daily constitutionals he makes me take are good for me. Personally, I think they’re going to do me in.”

  I laughed out loud. “I feel exactly the same way. Whenever I get the urge to exercise …”

  “ … I lie down until it passes,” he finished the old joke for me. “Well, that’s better. At least I got you to laugh. So why the long face, Katie?”

  The friendly little man somehow had cut through my natural reserve, or maybe I just needed to vent to someone. For whatever reason, I warmed to him immediately. “Just contemplating my future, I guess. My partners and I take turns staffing the Vista View sales desk, but today I feel as if I’m really seeing the place for the first time.” I told him a little about Mack Realty and Margo and Strutter and our contract as sales reps.

  “The stunning blonde and the Jamaican beauty with the sea-green eyes. Believe me, I’ve noticed them often. You’re more the girl next door type. So you’re stuck with us all month?”

  “That’s fine,” I
assured him. “It’s very pleasant here, and compared to our office, it’s an oasis of calm, but for some reason lately, sitting here day after day makes me very aware of the passage of time.”

  He chuckled in understanding. “Tick tock, eh? Yeah, this place will do that to you. Nothing but old crocks as far as the eye can see. But a sweet young thing like you is decades away from life here in the elder ghetto.” He twinkled at me lasciviously. “What are you, forty-five?”

  I smiled my gratitude. “If you’re running for office, Bert, you’ve got my vote. The truth is, I’ll turn fifty at the end of this month. My fortieth birthday didn’t bother me at all, but this one is getting me down. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous to you.” I felt myself color. The man had to be as old as the Henstock sisters, and here I was whining.

  “Ahhh, fifty.” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “A very good year, as I remember.” He cackled again and grinned at me. “You’ve got to trust me on this, Katie. A fifty-year-old woman is just getting good. Take it from one who knows.” He creaked to his feet and tipped an imaginary hat. “Anyway, nice to make your acquaintance. Let’s do this again sometime.” He selected a business card from the stack on my desk and slipped it into his pocket. “For my little black book.” He headed for the dining room, where a chorus of female voices welcomed him. Apparently, he was a popular fellow.

  I found myself smiling. Bert Rosenthal had made me feel very much better.

  ~

  At noon on the dot Ginny appeared to accompany me to the communal dining room. She had been the business manager at Vista View since its opening and had hired most of the employees, so the staff badge she flashed to the hostess was superfluous. “I can’t insist that everyone else follow the rules if I don’t do it myself,” she shrugged. “What looks good today, Sandy?”