Dying Wishes

by Judith K Ivie

  “Well, we all have different interests. It’s what makes people so fascinating, don’t you agree? It must be gratifying to know that your hobby has helped so many individuals when they needed help most.”

  I was genuinely perplexed. “My hobby?”

  He shrugged apologetically. “I’m sure there’s a better word for your, shall we say, unofficial inquiries. There was that matter at BBG in Hartford, and I understand you were most helpful to the owner of the diner on Old Main Street. Of course, Ada and Lavinia Henstock think the world of you and your partners.”

  For the second time today I felt totally exposed and not a little foolish. How stupid of me to think I could sail into an experienced lawyer’s office as a potential client without his having thoroughly researched me. I gathered what was left of my dignity and looked MacRae in the eye.

  “How very kind of you to say so. As an attorney and a longtime resident of Wethersfield, you couldn’t help but be aware of our past activities, which were, as you say, entirely unofficial and motivated by a desire to help, I assure you.”

  “I have no doubts whatsoever on that score, Ms. Lawrence. Now, how may I help you? I know you have a need for some end-of-life documents, but which ones specifically?”

  “My goodness, how many are there?” I asked as I stirred a little honey into my herbal cinnamon brew. It smelled heavenly. “I already have a will, of course, but with my fiftieth birthday approaching I thought it was time to prepare a living will, as well. Is there something more I need?”

  “Ah, yes, the big five-o,” MacRae joked gently. “There’s something about the half-century mark that inspires a flurry of death preparations. Of course, in my case, fifty is only a distant memory.”

  I flinched at the phrase death preparations. “You speak about death so casually. It takes a bit of getting used to.”

  He regarded me with amusement over the rim of his teacup. “I assure you that death is a subject I take very seriously, Ms. Lawrence, more so with every passing year. I simply don’t believe it’s helpful to attempt to disguise it with euphemisms. We are all born, and we will all die. It’s a fact of life, so to speak, though that sounds a bit oxymoronic.”

  He stirred his tea for a moment. “It never ceases to amaze me how many careful, responsible people take great pains to plan for college, prepare for careers and save for retirement but do their best not to think about death. The planning they do is prudent, of course, since those things are all likely to happen; but death isn’t merely likely. It’s a rock solid certainty, yet relatively few people take the time to make certain their final wishes will be honored.”

  I had to admit that what he said was true. “I guess it’s human nature not to face our mortality too directly,” I suggested. “It’s much easier to hand over the responsibility to our physicians or God or some other supreme being. We can avoid thinking about it if we shrug and say it’s out of our hands.”

  MacRae chuckled. “That’s very true. We can talk about death in the abstract, just not our deaths. I find it helps to think about it as a practical matter and as if it were someone else’s issue. The Terri Schiavo drama is a good one to contemplate.”

  I recognized the name as having been very much in the news but couldn’t remember why.

  “Terri Schiavo was a comatose Florida woman in a permanent vegetative state who was being kept alive via a feeding tube. She had neither a written living will nor a formal proxy designation, so she had no one legally empowered to speak for her. While the relatives, courts, political groups and religious lobbies wrangled over their conflicting interpretations of the poor woman’s end-of-life wishes, it took her eighteen hundred seventy-seven days to die, more than five years.”

  “How horrible,” I said, “but it seems that everyone I know has a living will these days. Maybe that case is why. If it will save me from such a fate, sign me up. It’s a fairly simple form, right?”

  “It can be,” he agreed, “but I wouldn’t recommend it, and not just because I stand to earn a fee here. Between you and me, I don’t need the money,” he smiled. “My point is that these decisions are too important and too complicated to risk on one of the boilerplate forms available on the internet. They’re quick, and they’re user friendly, but they have been challenged successfully too many times for me to be able to recommend that approach.”

  I digested this information as I held out my cup for a refill. “So how do you suggest that I go about this?”

  “I always think information gathering is the best way to start. Fortunately, the internet puts it all at our fingertips. You need to educate yourself about your options, decide which ones you prefer, and then we’ll draw up a document that reflects them and set you up with a good, tight proxy designation.”

  “Options? You mean not being kept alive on machines, that sort of thing.” Was it my imagination, or did a veil of caution drop over MacRae’s genial features?

  “Yes, but we have so many other options to consider now thanks to recent changes in the law: hospice, voluntary withdrawal of food and fluid, physician-assisted suicide.” He kept his voice carefully neutral.

  “Surely, that’s not legal,” I protested, referring to the last option.

  “Not in Connecticut, no, but in Oregon and other locations in the Northwest and abroad under legally proscribed circumstances. Our choices are limited primarily by geography these days.”

  “Where do you stand on these issues?” I asked him point blank.

  His expression grew more guarded. “That’s really immaterial. The only person’s opinion that matters here is yours.”

  Shirley knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mr. MacRae, but Mrs. MacRae asked me to remind you that you have a dinner engagement in half an hour.” She smiled apologetically and retreated. MacRae looked at his watch.

  “Well, we did get to chatting, didn’t we? Let me give you some literature, lists of websites and so on, as a place to begin your research. You can complete some questionnaires, and we can meet again in a week or two to get started on those documents.” He rose and extended his hand.

  As I left the office I had the distinct feeling that MacRae had learned more about me than I had about him during our interview. Internet research, eh? I was willing to bet MacRae had done a bit of that on me before I had arrived that afternoon. Well, two could play that game, I thought, fingering his business card. I wondered what might turn up in a Google search on Gerald R. MacRae. Fortunately, I had the whole evening free to find out.

  Eleven

  As luck would have it, Mack Realty was a madhouse on Tuesday. Things usually don’t get crazy busy until the end of the month, since that’s when everybody wants to schedule their closings, but favorable interest rates were fueling a definite uptick in sales. Margo had practically worn out her Manolos showing a portfolio of new listings, and Emma had been forced to hire some temporary help to cope with a rash of refinances.

  Almost without our realizing it, Strutter had returned to the office nearly full time. She was lucky to have a wonderful daycare situation for Olivia, a schoolteacher who had opted to stay home for a few years with her own two small children, but it was clear that she missed her little girl terribly.

  “Just bring Olivia to work with you,” Margo urged, and Strutter and I howled. “What’s so funny?” she demanded. “I mean, the point of having our own business is to be able to run things as we please, right?”

  “I’m sorry, Sweetie, you’re absolutely right about that,” Strutter soothed her when she could speak. “It’s just the idea of turning a two-year-old loose in an office full of legal documents and electronic equipment …” Her eyes met mine, and we were off again.

  Margo looked from one of us to the other. “Maybe we could just pen her up out back with Rhett,” she suggested sourly.

  “Now there you might just have something,” Strutter said and went over to give her a hug. “Rhett’s always been a perfect gentleman with ladies of all ages.�
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  “He surely has,” I agreed. “I’ll bet Olivia could ride him like a horse and pull his ears, and Rhett would just turn those adoring eyes on her and lick her face. Now quick, let’s compare notes before the phone rings again.”

  I was bursting with information and could hardly contain myself, but first I wanted to hear about Margo’s massage session with Tommy Garcia. I expected her to recount a flirtatious, slightly bawdy encounter with the handsome Latino, perhaps even concluding with his suggesting that his sexual favors were available for a price. I trusted Margo’s devotion to her husband completely, but I knew she was entirely capable of making Tommy believe she was a needy, neglected wife interested in something more.

  Instead, I got a report that Garcia’s mother would have been proud to hear. “What an absolutely lovely young man,” Margo sighed. “I don’t know what Ginny could be thinkin’. The idea that that sweet boy could be carryin’ on improper relationships with any of the residents is simply disgustin’, that’s what. I don’t believe it for a second.”

  Strutter raised her eyebrows, and I blinked. “We are talking about Tommy Garcia, the hunky Latino busboy at Vista View?”

  Margo glared at me. “I can only imagine what you would have to say to some silly woman who talked about your Joey that way,” she scolded. “Just because a young man has eyes like molten chocolate and a physique to die for does not make him a gigolo, and workin’ at a menial job does not mean he’s stupid. For your information, Tommy has perfectly wonderful manners and was entirely respectful of my modesty during our entire session.”

  Strutter’s eyebrows climbed still higher. Margo, modest?

  “Furthermore, he is just six credits short of earnin’ his designation as a licensed massage therapist. Did you know that the pretty little blonde who works as a dining room hostess at Vista View is his girlfriend? Sandy, I think her name is. They’re practically engaged. After Tommy gets his license, they plan to open a small office and offer in-home therapy to clients who can’t travel, even hospice patients. He is one of those rare individuals who really cares about people and wants to help. We could surely use a few more like him in this world.”

  I regarded my friend with amazement. This was a side of Margo I had never seen before. From the look on Strutter’s face, she was experiencing the same confusion. Margo was pure mother tiger, defending her cub. She flounced to the sofa and sat down.

  “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know how people’s minds work. If a good lookin’ young man shows a mature woman the tiniest big of attention or affection, he must be after her money.”

  “Or the other way around,” I ventured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A pretty young woman and an older man,” Strutter supplied.

  “Yes, that’s right. Even though there was a gentleman of somewhat advanced years in my own romantic history, and I absolutely adored him although he was as poor as a church mouse, I may have been guilty of that sort of uncharitable thinkin’ myself once or twice. But if you could have seen the way Tommy’s eyes filled up with tears when I mentioned Margaret Butler …”

  “You came right out and asked him about her?” I gasped.

  She looked puzzled. “I thought that was the whole point of this little exercise in deception, to find out what Tommy knows about Margaret and Angela Roncaro, too, for that matter.”

  It was Strutter’s turn to look shocked. “You did not mention Angela.”

  I closed my eyes. “Margo, what did Tommy say about Margaret and Angela?”

  She thought for a moment, her eyes glistening. “Not a whole lot, really, just that it had been his privilege to know both ladies and he wished their spirits Godspeed. He said that was the hardest thing about workin’ with the folks at Vista View, getting to care about them and knowin’ they might be movin’ on soon. He seemed genuinely broken up about Margaret, said she was a very special lady who reminded him of his mother, who he misses very much. His mama,” she repeated with a wobbly grin. “Now there’s a woman who raised a terrific son.”

  We sat quietly, digesting this unexpected information.

  “Where is this mother that he misses so much?” I wondered.

  “In an urn on her sister’s mantelpiece in Bogotá,” said Margo tartly. “She died a few years ago, which is how Tommy wound up in the U.S. washin’ dishes at a retirement home to put himself through school. His father abandoned them when Tommy was just a baby, so when his mama died and a cousin who had emigrated to the U.S. offered to sponsor him, Tommy jumped at the chance to come here.”

  Strutter sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Tough,” I said.

  “Very,” Margo agreed, “but I know he’s going to be just fine.” She gave herself a little shake and extracted a compact from her purse to inspect her makeup, a sure sign of her return to normalcy. “Now what do the two of you have to contribute?”

  Strutter looked at me, and I made an after-you gesture.

  “Well, I’ve tried everything I dare to get an appointment with Dr. Petersen, but I’m not getting anywhere,” she reported. “The first time I called, I said I was new to the area and needed a primary care physician, but the desk clerk just kept trying to fob me off onto one of Petersen’s younger associates. Then I told her that a friend of a friend who lived at Vista View had recommended Dr. Petersen very highly, but that got me exactly nowhere.”

  “What about the Henstock connection? Did you mention Ada and Lavinia?” I asked.

  “That was my next move. I called again and was careful to speak to another one of the clerks. I invoked the Henstocks’ name and pleaded to get onto Dr. Petersen’s patient roster, but I was told in no uncertain terms that the doctor was not accepting new patients.” She turned up her palms. “I was going to try to fake an emergency, like palpitations or something, but I’m sure I would have been directed to the nearest emergency room or 911. I’m out of ideas. What’s the point of my trying to see Petersen anyway? It’s not as if he’s going to say, ‘Oh, yes, Margaret Butler. She was addicted to painkillers, and I kept her supplied,’ or something else equally preposterous.”

  “True,” I said. “I guess it’s pretty unrealistic to think we can get anything out of a medical professional through direct questioning.”

  “About as silly as expectin’ an intelligent, industrious young man to be sellin’ his body between shifts in the Vista View kitchen,” Margo sniffed, clearly still annoyed.

  My head was swimming. Hearing these allegations spoken aloud did make our suspicions seem far-fetched. How had I allowed Ginny, who obviously was under a great deal of stress, to corrupt my common sense to this extent? Then I remembered my computer research of the previous evening.

  “You may be right about the direct approach,” I agreed. “I didn’t get far with Gerald MacRae either, except to find out that getting out of this world in a way that isn’t totally reprehensible to you seems to involve an awful lot of paperwork.”

  “What else would you expect to hear from a man who makes his living by drawing up that paperwork?” Strutter pointed out.

  “Normally, I would agree with you, but not this time for a couple of reasons. First, MacRae doesn’t need the money. Not only do he and Janet own that drop-dead gorgeous unit in the prettiest cul-de-sac at Vista View, they own a historic residence diagonally across Broad Street from the Henstocks’ family homestead. They lived in it for years, but now MacRae shares the space with a couple of younger lawyers and their support staff. He works part-time only because he likes to. Second, he pressed me pretty hard to explore several end-of-life options before he even gets around to creating the legal documents. He gave me a bunch of pamphlets and a list of websites to review before we meet again. I got the distinct impression that protecting people this way is something he decided to specialize in, sort of a calling.”

  Margo wrinkled her brow, then remembered the risk of permanent creases and smoothed it out. “So what was all that transparent f
act-finding about with his wife and Bitsy Grant last Saturday?” she wanted to know.

  “I’m not sure how that fits into this yet,” I admitted, “but one thing is becoming clearer. Whatever this is, they’re all in it together. Oh, and by the way, they’re onto us.”

  “What does that mean?” Strutter demanded.

  “You know, aware that we’re looking into the circumstances surrounding Margaret’s death. Margo and I thought so on Saturday, but now I’m positive of it. Our interest—or at least mine, and yours by virtue of our partnership—has been duly noted. Bert Rosenthal said so point blank yesterday, and MacRae did, too. It seems I have quite the reputation around town as some sort of amateur sleuth because of our previous inquiries.”

  “You mean the skeleton in the old Henstock house.” Strutter shuddered at the memory.

  “And Prudy Crane’s murder at the diner,” Margo added.

  “Don’t forget Alain Girouard at the law firm. Not only does Gerald MacRae live in Wethersfield, a small community where everyone knows everything about each other, but he’s a lawyer. The drums beat efficiently in our little town, but they are totally outclassed by the legal grapevine. Discreet investigation is no longer an option. Our cover is blown. MacRae had a complete dossier on me before I even showed up yesterday.”

  “Which means that Janet and Bitsy did, too,” said Strutter.

  “Tommy Garcia might have been cautioned, as well. Just because he was a perfect gentleman with Margo doesn’t mean he hasn’t heard the gossip about us, which could have motivated his circumspect behavior.”

  Margo didn’t like it, but she made no demur. “Okay, so they’re aware we have questions, and you came up empty just like we did, is that about it?”

  “I didn’t say that. As a matter of fact, I learned quite a bit yesterday evening, but the information didn’t come from Gerald MacRae.”