What Rose Forgot (ARC)

by Nevada Barr

  “Will you take them?” Mel asks.

  “I guess,” Rose concedes.

  “Good. You’ll need that money,” Mel says seriously. “You can’t stay here anymore.”

  Rose opens her mouth to protest, then closes it. Obviously she can’t stay here. They know where she is. They could try again.

  “Why on earth would anybody bother to kill me?” she asks—not Mel, the powers that be.

  “Drug deal gone bad, got crosswise to the mob, saw something you shouldn’t, heard something you shouldn’t, are an unwitting cog in some criminal enterprise.” Mel lists the usual suspects.

  “The last is the only one even vaguely possible, and it’s a stretch,” Rose says.

  They sit in silence for a few moments.

  “What comes next?” Mel asks.

  “That’s a good question.” Rose sighs. “There isn’t anything to grab on to. No suspect, clues, means, motive—the Sherlock Holmes stuff.”

  “Now that you’ve fingered the perp—”

  “Very funny.”

  “Couldn’t you call the police? They’d have to take you seriously, wouldn’t they?”

  Talk of calling the cops makes Rose uncomfortable. Breathing into the feeling, she tries to make sense of it. “They would believe I have a severed finger in my freezer,” Rose says slowly. “They would see a lot of paintings of a mysterious dark man with a knife in his teeth, and a bunch of paint-smeared boxes. They would know I am dangerous, that I escaped from a mental institution—”

  “Memory Care Unit,” Mel corrects her.

  “It will be the same to them,” Rose declares. “They will probably be nice family men. They’ll take me back to Longwood to make sure I’m taken care of.”

  “Tell them the people at Longwood are the ones who are trying to kill you,” Mel insists. “Tell them you want to come to our house.”

  Rose shoots Mel a look.

  “Right. They’d so listen to a dotty old lady who poisoned a nice nurse-lady. Never mind.”

  Silence settles around them. Then Mel asks, “Can you run the fingerprint somehow?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a friend whose mom or dad is a crooked cop, would you?” Rose asks hopefully.

  “No cops,” Mel says. “A couple of lawyers, I think.”

  “Unsavory?”

  “Real estate and contract law. Or investment. Excruciatingly boring.”

  “Marion might be able to,” Rose muses. “She can access the dark web—don’t ask me what that is, but it has illegal items for sale, or so she tells me. Maybe a shady cop or disgruntled dispatcher runs license plates or prints on the sly and sells the information.”

  Mel fetches the sketch pad. Rose takes several pictures of the prints with her cell phone, taps in Marion’s email address, then adds: Can you find out whose these are? Story next time.

  “At least that’s something,” she says.

  “Unless it’s nothing.” Mel sits down, her knees pulled up under her chin.

  Rose says, “I think there are two separate areas of nothing/something. The first is what happened between the day your granddad died and the day your dad put me into Longwood. The second is what happened in Longwood from my incarceration up through the attempted murder last night.”

  “You don’t think they are related? Like first you acted all crazy, and second you acted all crazy?” Mel asks.

  “Then I got out and stopped acting crazy. That is key,” Rose insists. “First and Second Crazy must be related. But coincidences do happen. Lightning strikes in the same place more often than people think. Let’s say that First Crazy was caused by the shock and grief at losing Harley. Maybe throw in a few transient ischemic attacks, whatever. Then your dad gets me into this great facility. I start to get well. Then Second Crazy is induced for completely unrelated reasons.”

  “Sort of like walking down an alley and getting mugged,” Mel says.

  “Exactly. The alley didn’t cause the mugging. Walking down it merely put the victim in the vicinity of an opportunistic mugger. Rather than wasting time on why I was in that particular alley, I think we should start with the mugger,” Rose said.

  “The opportunistic Longwood mugger.”

  “Yup.”

  “First you should get out of this house,” Mel says. “Can you get a hotel with Great-Aunt Marion’s credit card?”

  “I could,” Rose considered. “But credit cards are easily traced. Longwood undoubtedly has all Marion’s contact information on a next-of-kin form. Marion would kill me if I exposed her in that way.”

  “Use the ATM and pay cash,” Mel suggests.

  “I’d have to be slumming to find a place that doesn’t require ID.”

  “Why not stay at our house?” Mel offers.

  That is unbearably tempting. The house is a trilevel, the guest quarters on the bottom floor, with a separate entrance. When she and Harley visited, they always stayed at Flynn’s home. It is spacious, airy, homey, familiar. Mel is there. All things Rose positively aches for at the moment.

  Prying her mind off the delights offered, “No,” Rose says. “But thanks.”

  “Why not? It’s perfect,” Mel exclaims. “If we’re careful, Uncle Dan won’t even know you’re there. He’s so laid-back, he hardly notices I’m there.”

  “It’s not Dan. It’s the murderers. If I’m ever going to get the Grandmother of the Year Award, Grandma can’t be leading the Big Bad Wolf to Little Mel Riding Hood. Flynn is the man who put me in Longwood. You think if they don’t find me here, they won’t go straight to your house? The man whose finger I have in the freezer isn’t the type to show mercy to the innocent.”

  “He’d have to deal with Uncle Daniel,” Mel says.

  “Dan is big and strong, but he’s not a fighter. Violence takes nice people by surprise. The damage is done before we even figure out the bad guy is serious.”

  “True. Even a midget like Stella scares Uncle Daniel,” Mel says.

  “Stella scares everybody,” Rose says unkindly.

  Mel stands and picks up her backpack. “I’ve got school. Will you be okay? I can call in sick.”

  “I’ll be fine. You get on with your day. I’ll work things out.”

  “Last period is honors study hall. I can ditch. I’ll come over after.”

  “That should be way before bad guy time,” Rose says.

  Rose washes down the cinnamon rolls Mel brought with a mug of tea. Fortified, she goes out the ruined door, across the weedy yard, to the garage. It is not so much a garage as a brick bunker, no windows, no side door, space enough for only one vehicle. Weathered garden gnomes stand in a line to one side of the door like bridesmaids. The door lifts, sliding along runners in the fashion of modern garage doors, but this is an early prototype. The hinged panels are of heavy wood—rotting in several places now—and must be hoisted with a chain-and-pulley system. Rose manages with a minimum of cursing.

  Inside is a single vehicle, Harley’s beloved mint-condition, cherry-red, 1949 Ford pickup truck. The truck takes up most of the space. An old croquet set, a couple of lawn chairs left behind by the previous owner, and the inflatable mattress they used before their furniture arrived are flattened against the walls.

  Harley’s toolbox is in the bed of the truck. Rose lugs it back to the house.

  She spends the next hours building her fortress. The kitchen window is covered with cardboard that is nailed in place with strips of packing she scavenges. The windows she didn’t nail shut during her pre-Longwood madness she nails shut now. She sweeps up broken glass and moves heavy boxes, building a wall to cover the shattered door.

  While she works, she draws up two lists. One is of the supplies she needs Mel to procure. The other is of questions for Marion. Marion can do just about anything on the computer. Whether she will or not, Rose has yet to find out. Like many members of the Digitari, Marion is more than a little paranoid about being tracked across cyberspace by unfriendly individuals or agencies.

  Ro
se needs Marion to feel safe.

  She needs Mel to be safe.

  That means keeping Mel out of the plan to a certain extent. Mel is not a girl for being kept out. She is smart and good at solving problems. She also has youth’s confidence in her own immortality. Unlike most young people, Mel knows for a fact that grown-ups are fragile. Death can snatch them when one least expects it. Taken together, these two attributes place Rose’s granddaughter in danger of unnecessary martyrdom.

  When the bulwark of boxes guarding the broken door is complete, Rose finishes it by shoving the couch against the mass. On one side, she leaves a dog-door-sized space sufficient for her to squeeze in or out if she isn’t concerned about dignity. This is camouflaged by a lightweight box. The upstairs bedroom she leaves as the intruder has redecorated it.

  Downstairs, in the coat closet by the front door, she makes a nest to sleep in. Should a new monster be dispatched, he will have little choice but to break in via the front door. If Rose is awake, at the first sound, she’ll run to the back of the house and slither out her dog door. If that option is unavailable, she will stay in her nest. With luck, the monster will thunder by the unassuming coat closet and toward the stairs. At that point Rose will quietly slip out the way he came in.

  That is the theory, at any rate. And the story she’ll spin for Mel.

  Having rendered the house as unappealing and unoccupied-looking as she can make it, Rose calls Marion.

  She tells her of the night’s adventure.

  “So,” she finishes up, “we can clearly see that I am not crazy, and therefore we can postulate that I am not demented. People were drugging me.”

  Marion takes a few seconds to digest the story, then says, “Good. Now I can quit humoring you and genuinely be on your side.”

  “Thank you,” Rose says sincerely.

  Marion gets down to business. “Here’s what I have. All this is public access: Facebook, blogs, promos, profiles, chat rooms, tweets, YouTube. It is all out there for anybody to find.”

  Rose takes notes. Marion has gleaned a great deal of information: Longwood’s shift hours, parking facilities, location of many cameras, senior management, layout of the Memory Care Unit, visiting hours, types of personnel used, both staff and private contractors. Rose is amazed at how much detailed information a dedicated computer genius can find lying around for the taking.

  Marion reluctantly agrees to try to get the fingerprint run. “I am not a hacker,” she tells Rose firmly. “I’m an explorer. Hacking is a whole different skill set. Besides, I don’t want guys in black jumpsuits rappelling into my backyard from helicopters.”

  “Can you get Longwood’s patient records?” Rose asks.

  “Not without a password. I am not a hacker.”

  That last is in case the call is monitored, Rose guesses.

  They talk another hour and thirty minutes. At the end of that time, they have a plan.

  Chapter 14

  An open-up-police-style knock jerks Rose from a much-needed afternoon nap. For an instant, the paint-spattered, box-ridden chaos of the living room disorients her. Recovery is quick. Her mind is back to normal—or at least as good as it has ever been.

  It is Mel, again carrying plastic sacks. As the girl brushes by into the house, Rose tells her, “I need your cell phone.”

  “Why don’t you just ask for my eyeballs and liver while you’re at it?” Mel says, mouth agape, so much like her mother, Rose wants to cry. “How long?”

  “Not more than a few hours.”

  Mel gasps, appalled. “Huh! No,” she says.

  “Marion and I came up with a plan. It requires two phones.”

  Mel groans. “Oh boy, I can’t wait. And whatever it is, I can do everything you’re going to do. What kind of plan?”

  Rose tells her.

  “Can’t Great-Aunt Marion just hack them or something?” Mel asks.

  “Not a hacker,” Rose says.

  “This is totally insane.”

  “That has become my specialty,” Rose says, hoping for a smile. She doesn’t get one. “It should work,” Rose insists. “It’s not foolproof, but it’s doable.”

  “That’s what all this stuff is for? Why don’t I just deliver it to Sing Sing and be done with it? I’m coming with you. To Longwood, not Sing Sing.”

  “That’s not part of the plan.”

  “You’ll screw up the electronic stuff. You’re not all that tech-savvy, you know.”

  “Marion will be with me,” Rose reminds her.

  “Right. You’re going to be Great-Aunt Marion’s avatar. That is so not going to work.”

  “You thought it would when I told you a minute ago.”

  “That’s because I thought I’d be with you.”

  Rose waits.

  “Please,” Mel begs. “It would be so much less scary if I were doing this stuff. You’re going to get all freaked out about internet interactions, and then they’ll grab you, and that will be that.” Mel is holding her phone behind her back protectively.

  Rose knew keeping Mel out of their plan was going to be the hard part. What she hadn’t foreseen was Mel’s aversion to being without her electronics. To Rose, being off the grid is a holiday. For Mel, it seems closer to an amputation. Rose says nothing, waiting for Mel to work through the concept in her own time.

  “Can’t you just go get a burn phone?” Mel asks after a while.

  “No. They don’t have the bells and whistles,” Rose says. Mel knows this.

  The exchange of words is peculiarly familiar; Rose realizes it is like the few times she has tried to talk someone out of an addiction. Invariably an exercise in futility.

  As they talk, Rose follows Mel back to the living room. When Mel sees the changes Rose has wrought, she ceases fretting over the coming separation from social media and looks around. “What’s with the rearranging?” she asks.

  Rose tells her, shows her the Rose-sized dog door with its camouflage, and the nest in the closet; explains her escape routes should an assassin come knocking.

  Mel takes it all in without comment. When they are seated on the couch-become-retaining-wall, she says, “You do know how unbelievably weird this is, don’t you? I mean, you really don’t think this is a rational approach?”

  Rose sighs deeply. “I do. And no, I don’t,” she admits.

  “Why not just grab some cash and check in to a Motel 6?” Mel asks.

  “I can’t face it,” Rose says. “I’d rather hunker down in a closet, with a doggie-door escape hatch, than spend a night in a soulless cheap motel. Let’s hope the bad people waste their time checking out all Charlotte’s fleabag motels.”

  “Yeah,” Mel says, unconvinced. “Let’s hope.”

  “Time for me to change and get ready to go,” Rose says.

  “I’m going with you. Just to the MCU,” Mel insists.

  “Promise you’ll go home after you drop me off?

  “Cross my heart.” Mel crosses her heart. “And, for the record, I think this is deeply, deeply disturbing behavior.”

  “If you can think of another way, I’m all ears,” Rose says.

  “Just because I can’t think of one doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” Mel says.

  Rose goes upstairs with half the bags Mel brought. Izzy had a nice collection of wigs. When she’d lost her hair from the chemo, she’d made a game of them—not for her own sake, Rose knows, but to make the hair loss less traumatic for her then eleven-year-old daughter. Mel has brought a pixie cut in brunette and a jaw-length bob in the champagne-blond color that older women often choose to hide gray. From Izzy’s dresser, Mel purloined a set of scrubs, the ubiquitous uniform of health care workers from janitors to brain surgeons.

  The scrubs are comfortable and fit as well as scrubs do. Rose chooses the blond wig over the brown pixie. The bob’s swinging sides obscure more of her face. Customarily Rose wears little makeup—lipstick and maybe a dash of blush. Tonight she puts on base, dusts the sides of her nose with a pale brown to m
ake it appear narrower, low-lights her cheeks with a heavier blush, and lines and mascaras her eyes. The result is not remarkable, particularly in the South, where women often wear full makeup, but she no longer looks like the washed-out old crazy woman the people at Longwood know.

  From the drawer of an overturned bed stand, she fishes out a pair of reading glasses with multicolored frames and hangs them around her neck on a beaded strap made for the purpose.

  Studying herself in the mirror, she is satisfied. Gone is the vacant wraith that wandered Longwood’s halls in Rose’s skin. In its place is a late-middle-aged health care professional who takes pains with her appearance. The alterations, along with the fact that no one will be looking for her at Longwood, should be sufficient.

  Pleased with herself, Rose goes back downstairs. Mel is on the couch making her fond farewells to her cell phone.

  “What do you think?” Rose strikes a modeling pose.

  Mel’s face crumples the way it did when she was two, before she was old enough to keep her emotions from showing. Tears fill her lovely eyes.

  Rose wants to shoot herself.

  The wig, the scrubs: Rose is disguised as Mel’s mom, Izzy, going to work during her chemo.

  Rose rips the wig off and falls to her knees by the couch. “I am so sorry. What an idiot! I didn’t think.” Her voice grows thick with tears for Mel, and for herself for hurting Mel.

  “It’s okay,” Mel says, sitting up and hugging Rose awkwardly around the head. “Just kind of . . . wham! For a minute. When Mom was so sick, she even looked kind of old, her skin all loose like yours. Ghost time, you know?”

  “I should have,” Rose says miserably. “I got all caught up in the moment and forgot. Are you really okay?”

  “Sure. For a half-orphan, I’m fab.”

  “Balderdash,” Rose says.

  “Balderdash?” Mel lifts an eyebrow.

  Rose gets up, checks her knees for paint smears. “I used to swear like a regular person until you came along and spoiled everything.”