Beebe ended her tale on a light note, like it was some kind of mood stabilizer guaranteed to have an instant effect. Cliff could care less who was married to whom. He felt his frustration heating. Couldn’t Beebe do more? She seemed content to merely let the situation ride.
“Daddy, are you okay?”
He forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wish the news was better.”
“Maybe just another day. Heidi will call. Well, I’ve got to get off to the board meeting. After I meet the members, Vincent and I will talk about the programming he’s set up. Wish me luck.”
So that was the reason for the suit. He forgot about the board meeting. That worked in his favor because Cliff just wanted to be alone. He kissed her cheek as a way to push her off. “You’ll do well,” he added when, after a few steps, she turned to wave.
He finished stocking the incoming shipment of furnace filters, grumbling when he fought to fit the larger ones on the shelf. He broke down the now empty shipping cartons with a vengeance. Gathering them up in his arms, he banged through the hinged doors into the warehouse, tossed the cardboard into the recycling dumpster at the bottom of the dock stairs, and kept going down the alley until he came out on Cramer Street. He turned left and looked up the block. Rosemary’s restaurant sat across the intersection.
He stopped. Autopilot took him this far. His longtime friend and confidant was his intended destination, but did he really want to talk about the death certificate fiasco? He got this far. He thought he did want to talk. What to do? He rubbed his eyes and massaged his temples. Three minutes later, he swung through the diner’s door.
The look Cliff gave Rosemary dimmed her high-wattage smile. Staying behind the counter, she matched his steps to the far end. He propped a hip on the last counter stool. One foot remained on the floor. Rosemary leaned forearms onto the counter, ready to listen.
He rehashed every nuance attached to the death certificate in infinitesimal detail. His arms waved. The foot on the floor tapped. He opened with his desire to correct the name on the document. A simple request. How it started with his search for the life insurance papers. The quest was now on hold for nearly a week despite Beebe’s three or four visits to the health department. He lost track. He closed with his deduction that the coroner couldn’t be bothered to make a decision, or he was too inept to grasp the concept.
“Maybe Beebe didn’t articulate the request clearly enough,” Cliff argued, running his hand through his hair.
Rosemary finally broke into his rant. “I’m sure she did. It’s not her fault. The doctor is probably just busy.”
“God, I hope when I get home, Hal’s got that damn backhoe repaired and that grave filled in.” Cliff thought to latch onto another aggravating topic.
“That grave is still bothering you?”
“You know how it is. Something out of place. It’s a trigger for my memories. I can’t prevent all these thoughts from winding up when I go out to that section. First, it was just the grave. Now I’ve seen that backhoe for five days. How long will it be before I can walk that row and not think of these last two horrible weeks?”
Rosemary studied him closely. “Are you done for the day at McKinley’s?”
“Yeah. I’m done,” he groused.
“Hang out here then for a while. Let me fix you a plate. What do you want?”
Cliff heard the door, then people chattering. Rosemary’s attention veered away. What he said next brought it back.
“I want to do something,” he said with grit stuck to his words.
“Huh?”
Cliff looked from Rosemary’s questioning expression to his hand. He clenched his fist to cover the tremor. A rant of fury spiked with such energy that he thought his brain would explode. This duplicated his agony over the undelivered cement and spilled nails.
“Cliff, are you okay?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “No. Not yet, but I will be.” He spun off the counter stool.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. To change a memory.”
Small Town Fears
After Beebe arrived, Vincent hung a slightly worn sign from the hook suction-cupped to the glass in Crossroads’ front door. The sign read: Center Closed For Board Meeting.
The large recreation area was fashioned into a makeshift board room. Four tables were placed end to end with plenty of folding chairs spaced along both sides. To gain enough room, the board table at the room’s center point ran parallel to the front window, the pool table, and the half-wall dividing off the kitchen. A straggle of tables and chairs lined the room’s outside walls.
Vincent stood by Beebe, making introductions. Board members arrived in groups of two and three. The tally of Crossroads’ board membership numbered eleven. Several days ago, Mona Gabriel introduced herself. Beebe’s path crossed Donald Thorndyke’s last Thursday although he was locked into a conversation with a woman at the time and unaware. Ron Smith came in. She knew his name as both a voting member and Crossroads’ legal counsel. Beebe was glad to finally attach a face to the name. Other board members stepped forward to be introduced.
When the crowd around her cleared and Beebe took a breath, she was caught by surprise. Donald Thorndyke stood, talking ultra-privately with Dr. Samuel Jeffers in the kitchen. Her skin prickled. Why was the county coroner here? Both men entered Crossroads unobserved by her and, she presumed, by Vincent as well. Vincent said nothing earlier about an agenda item involving the coroner. She lay a hand on Vincent’s arm to ask him just that as the door opened and board member Mona Gabriel walked in with pool player Mick Nettleman.
Concern quickly ground itself into a lump in her stomach.
In the second it took for Vincent to lower his ear in response to Beebe’s touch, she jumped topics to the second unexpected guest.
“Why is he here?” Beebe nodded discretely the pool player’s way. Nearly a week ago in a private moment with Vincent, she described the “perceptions” conversation she had with Mona in the lobby of the newspaper building. The beginnings of that conversation were attached to the man with his head turned to Mona’s, listening to her whispers. Days before that encounter, she remembered his oh-so-righteous complaints about her mother.
“Mick Nettleman,” Vincent said grumpily. “Well, I guess we know what this is about.”
Beebe felt numb. She juggled so many balls since her return to Larkspur that she really wasn’t surprised that one of those airborne balls dropped instantly to the floor when Mona and Mick sent her duplicate sneers. That done, Mona directed the pool player to a chair along the wall.
Before Beebe and Vincent could comment further, Donald Thorndyke approached with Jeffers. Another juggled ball representing a trial plaguing her life fell through her peripheral vision, hit the tile, and rolled away.
“Beebe,” Donald said, “there you are. It’s been awhile.” Up close, Donald’s left eyelid drooped noticeably, putting Beebe in mind of a big cat that perpetually dozed. He wore a finely tailored suit. The hand he placed in hers was chilly.
“Good to see you, Donald. And Dr. Jeffers. Nice seeing you again.” The doctor’s warmer hand was also smaller, suitable for his delicate autopsies. His eyes smiled pleasantly through round spectacles.
Since Donald made no attempt to introduce Beebe to the good doctor, and was now offering no curiosity about their prior acquaintance, she assumed he owned some awareness of recent events. That cleared Beebe’s bafflement over the doctor’s presence. The kitchen conversation apparently covered details involving her mother’s death certificate. In Beebe’s head, there existed more than enough space for conspiracy thoughts to loom.
“My pleasure seeing you.” Jeffers released her hand f
or Vincent’s. The men exchanged a few words.
“Back in town, what, a week now?” Donald said to Beebe.
Still wary, she calculated. “Closer to ten days.”
“I wish I’d gotten over earlier to welcome you.”
“Mrs. Gabriel did.”
“Ah,” Donald said noncommittally. “Any of the others?”
“Not while I was here.”
“Still, I should have come,” he said in conclusion. His tone was almost too sincere. No, she thought, it was more apologetic than sincere. She got the sense it was directed toward an immediately upcoming event, not toward his past lapse in etiquette.
“Well, let’s get started,” Donald said.
He moved to find his seat at the head of the table and others quickly found theirs. Beebe and Vincent sat at the far corner, opposite Donald, who counted heads. Beebe watched Mona. From her seat at the table’s center point, she sent a reassuring glance to Mick Nettleman. The man responded with a firm nod. Dr. Jeffers moved a chair within range of the table, but at a level removed from the voting members.
Donald called the meeting to order. “Well, perfect attendance,” he said. “This rarely happens. I thank you all for arranging your schedules so we could meet Beebe together. Of course, that was the original plan a month ago when Beebe signed and returned our employment contract. In the meantime, one of our members,” he indicated Mona, “uncovered a detrimental situation. That was how I believe she put it. I asked Mona to make a presentation of those facts.”
A flash of stomach-twisting déjà vu resonated within Beebe. For an instant, she occupied the board room with the deacons of Trydestone Lutheran Church. She cast a glance into a dark corner beyond the pool table, expecting to see Olney Jones waiting beside his custodial cart, dust mop in hand, a couple of packing boxes at his feet.
As an aside, Donald said, “I hope the members don’t mind an interruption of our standing agenda for some—well, new business, I guess. Before I turn the meeting over to Mona, let’s talk about our guests. Mona requested that Mick Nettleman be present for this new business, and I agreed. You’ll hear about that.”
In unison, the board’s contingent turned toward the pool player, but Beebe raised her eyes to Vincent. He wore a look of consternation, blindsided as well by the direction Donald sent the board meeting.
“On a related note, Dr. Samuel Jeffers, our county coroner, is also present. His topic of conversation was brought into the light, as Mona well knows, because Beebe made a request of him to correct the name on a death certificate. That was the death that you recall occurred here in one of our hospice rooms.” He put his hands together. “Now, please give your full attention to Mona.”
Beebe’s mouth dried to dust as she watched Mona.
Wearing a brocaded summer suit and gold jewelry, she rose to her full height. She placed her fingertips on the table. “I think first I want to review the order of events. Last March, Vincent promptly made us aware of the passing of a hospice patient. The summary he put together named this woman as Terri Miller, who lost her battle with AIDS. The same summary was given to our county coroner when the body was transferred. Dr. Jeffers completed an autopsy and issued a death certificate for Terri Miller, an indigent. He also contacted town hall and requested funds—public money, mind you—for this homeless woman’s burial.” She made eye contact with every face around the table. “When Mr. Nettleman came to me with his knowledge that Beebe Walker’s mother stole narcotics from Lakeview Hospital, I didn’t know that Terri Miller operated under an alias.”
A murmur passed among the members at the word narcotics. Several members shifted in their seats, also uncomfortable with the word alias.
“It was Terri Miller’s name that Ms. Walker wanted removed from her mother’s death certificate, so Abigail Walker’s name, a wanted felon, could be added. You must all admit, this is shocking. I can only imagine that Dr. Jeffers is present to express his outrage. As a result, we have a darkening blot on Crossroads.”
Behind Beebe’s hot face, thoughts of conspiracy mutated to confusion. She assumed Jeffers must have abandoned confidentiality and took her request to correct the death certificate to Donald or Mona, with one of them speaking to the other. If so, if Donald and Mona operated as a team, why wouldn’t Mona be aware of Jeffer’s invitation to the meeting? Beebe bit her lip and let the court of public opinion rattle forward.
“As Mr. Nettleman remembers Abigail Walker,” Mona went on, “so will the seniors we look to serve. Thirty years have passed since Abigail Walker’s theft of drugs and her escape from capture. In that thirty years, the people who remember are now seniors. We can all see that picture come into focus. The community will perceive collusion between Vincent Bostick and Beebe Walker,” she said, looking down her nose at the pair of them, “and the fleecing, if you will, of our town funds for a free burial. Free burial, falsification of a death certificate, and free reign to put who knows how many seniors at risk for abuse, neglect, or some other type of scam directed at the very population these two swear they are here to protect. It’s villainous and disgraceful.”
As if rehearsed, Donald said, “And your recommendation to the board for its next step?”
“Someone has to resign.” She seemed pleased with her haughty and non-specific answer. Nose properly elevated, she sat.
Low rumblings rounded the table. Only four or five of the members dared to look at the accused. Beebe met their unspoken accusations with a straight back and shoulders.
“Do any members want to add something?” Donald asked.
Of course, they didn’t, Beebe thought. They were a flock of sheep, rallying around their shepherdess.
“Fine.” Donald sat forward, so poised. “Vincent and Beebe, I’m sorry for the ambush. If either of you want to comment, we will listen.”
Vincent started to push his chair back. Beebe clamped her hand onto his arm. She could not wait a moment longer to address her accusers. She rose in defense of three people.
“My mother, Abigail Walker, did not ask to be badly hurt in a car accident. She did not choose to be born with a weakness, what we term today, a disease. The disease of addiction. She needed help, but she didn’t ask for any. She was scared, and she ran. I ask each of you to imagine the degree of fear it would take to cause you to run from your families.” Her gaze jumped from member to member. “To run from prison, yes, but she ran from her family. That must have been more traumatizing than the accident. Realizing after she left what she’d done must have damaged every filament in her soul. You would know, if all the details were disclosed, that she sought forgiveness.” Beebe meant her mother sought forgiveness through her relationship with Yates, but she would not let this disgrace for a board meeting come down on him and release his identity. “My mother made a supreme effort to do good with her life, and she succeeded. Evidence exists. She found sobriety.” Beebe took a breath to be sure that message sunk in. “And yet fear lived within her still, as fear of so many things lives in a small town.” Quieter, for emphasis, she wondered, “Will we run from our fears, too?”
She sent that question to Donald. He sat with his elbows on the table, hands together, both index fingers propped against his mouth. She was surprised to find an attentive look on his face when she expected one of contempt.
“Vincent Bostick never met my mother when she lived in Larkspur,” Beebe said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “But when a stranger, a dying woman, showed up and literally collapsed in his arms on this very doorstep, his heart expanded to include another. She told him her name was Terri Miller. Do you know, if this hospice is allowed to continue, how many strangers may ask for his help? A stranger tells you his name, he has no identification, he’s sick, and this man will help him.”
Vincen
t must have felt a dozen sets of eyes on him. His were focused on his one knee crossed over the other.
“My mother used the name Terri Miller for over ten years. Was it legally changed? We don’t know. Terri Miller wanted to die with dignity. She wanted control of her life at the end of her life. Those decisions are difficult for the dying. Those decisions are difficult for the caretakers. You all better get a grasp of that right now. Difficult decisions are made by those who show up. As Mr. Thorndyke said, perfect attendance today, and for a sideshow. But who will be here when difficult decisions face you, like the decision that faced Vincent?”
Silence dimmed the room.
“My father,” Beebe said. “He did not want to hide from any of this. He insisted an obituary run in the paper. And he insisted that the name be changed on the death certificate so the proceeds from Mother’s life insurance policy could be used to reimburse the town for the so-called free burial. Whatever funding is left will be set aside to make final arrangements for as many future indigent burials as it can. He will not profit.”
Board attorney Ron Smith, in his crumpled suit, sat, informal and unpretentious, on one hip, his dangling elbow hooked over the chair back. At this point, he waved Beebe unceremoniously into her seat. Dragging himself forward to lean on the table, he said, “My dear Mona, Dr. Jeffers is not here as a witness for the prosecution. We do not have a perception problem. We have a family member who, from her teenage years, has lived in the trenches, and despite that, despite that, went into the service of others as her mother had. Both have returned to us. What does that say about these women who faced adversity and the pull of this town? This is a good town with ties that stay tied, that stretch and accommodate. You are new here, Mona. I hope you come to learn—and if not learn, then appreciate—and feel the connection the rest of us have to each other and to Larkspur. At least the vast majority of us.” His eyes darted to Mick Nettleman, who stared at the door and escape with longing, Beebe thought.
Proper Goodbye Page 29