The Best Laid Plans

by Judy Penz Sheluk

  Ben could see nothing of the tiny, blue-eyed, perky, full-of-life woman he’d married ten years ago. Right now, he hated the mound of flesh that sat in front of him. And yet, he felt sorry for her. Myra wasn’t able to adjust to the changes in their financial circumstances. Were it not for her cousin, Renny, who lived in Okeechobee, Ben knew Myra would be even more impossible to live with. Renny took her out to a movie now and then, and the two of them had lunch together once each week. But what stood in the way of his reaching out and hugging Myra to comfort her was the image of Helen’s face when she served him his beer last weekend in the bar.

  “I’ll call the electric company tomorrow.” He turned away from his wife, the image of Helen’s flirty smile still filling his mind.

  “So I’ve got to spend the entire night in this hot box? I’d think you’d be a little more considerate of a woman in my condition.”

  “Pack a bag, and I’ll drive you to Renny’s. You can stay there until we get the juice back on.”

  He stopped at the bar on the way back home, but Helen had already left for the night.

  Early the next morning, he went by the bank and emptied his savings account, then took the cash and contacted Florida Electric and Gas. They informed him they’d turn the electric on in forty-eight hours. He drove to Renny’s house to let Myra know she’d have to stay there for another day or so.

  “Last week it was your phone. This week the electric. Don’t you make any money at that roofing job? Can’t you find anything better?” Renny stood with her hands on her hips, her face wrinkled up in disgust.

  Ben wondered if nagging ran in the family. “I’ll see about a pay-as-you-go cell phone,” he said.

  “You should, you know. What if Myra needs emergency medical help?”

  Oh yeah, thought Ben, like another load of chocolate syrup, a tub of ice cream, and a bushel of peanuts. The tires spit gravel as he spun out of the drive.

  “You’re fifteen minutes late,” Ben’s foreman notified him when he got out of his car at the job site. “Better not be late again or you’ll find yourself out of here. There’s no end to the people who’d kill for this job.”

  Ben began to wonder what he’d kill for, and it certainly wasn’t this job. Maybe a little distance from Myra and her cousin. Maybe more than that.

  “You here or somewhere else?” asked Ralph. Ben climbed onto the roof and began to shift the shingles into position.

  “I’d sure like to be someplace else.” Ben slapped shingles into place and applied the nail gun to them, beginning the dreary, repetitive, sweaty, mind-numbing work for the day.

  Instead of joining Ralph at the bar that night, Ben begged off, telling him he had groceries to buy.

  “The ball and chain need more bologna or are you feeding her lobster by now?” asked Ralph.

  “Shut your trap. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ben threw his empty lunch pail into the back of his truck and drove off without another word to Ralph.

  He knew Ralph found his attitude toward his wife irritating, but worse yet, he also figured Ralph felt sorry for him and thought he should grow a new pair.

  He nosed the car into an empty space near the building and walked into the library. Ben located the computer terminals at the rear of the main room.

  “We close in less than a half hour,” said the woman behind the checkout desk.

  “I won’t be long,” he promised.

  His internet search brought unexpected results. He thought Florida would have more poisonous scorpions like ones found in the southwestern states, but the most common one here was the brown scorpion. It could deliver a painful sting, but not a deadly one. He wondered what would happen if a person with medical problems experienced many stings. Could an individual die under those circumstances? How could he find out?

  The woman who had warned him of the impending closure of the library stopped at the monitor he was using. “We’re closing, sir, as I told you.”

  Ben looked up into brown eyes. They weren’t Myra’s icy blue ones, so he decided to take a chance.

  “I just moved my wife here from the coast and we’re living out of town. She’s deathly afraid of scorpions. She has a heart condition, and she’s worried she might get stung and die. I told her I’d look into it. You live here long?”

  “I was born here. I only heard of one person dying from scorpion stings. A little girl. She was diabetic, I think. Got hit about ten times. She died. It can happen, although it’s rare, but I guess if enough of them got you, well, I’d be worried, especially if I had something wrong with my heart.”

  “I wish I could move her someplace safer, but we’re kind of down on our luck right now. I lost my job.”

  “You’re a good man to be so worried about her.” The woman gave him a warm and somewhat inviting smile. He returned the look. She backed away from him. “I’ve got to close up now.”

  He walked out of the library considering what he had learned. Myra might be vulnerable. Those disgusting-looking creatures were all over the place, probably because he didn’t mow the lawn and the trailer was so old and rusted, it had holes in the floor where they could come in, find food, and build their nests. It was a death trap for Myra, he decided, an opinion he shared with Ralph the next day.

  “Don’t they sell spray at Home Depot for those buggers?” asked Ralph.

  “That stuff’s poison. In that little space, Myra’d breathe it in, and the poison would kill her.”

  “Might not be such a bad idea. Get a guy out of a bad situation, you know?” Ralph gave him a knowing smirk.

  Ben stopped his work and turned on Ralph. “What are you suggesting?” He no longer pointed the nail gun at the shingles, but at Ralph.

  “Whoa, buddy. Just kidding.” Ralph held up his hands as if to ward off his friend. “Although there’s nothing so attractive to a woman as a widower, and I’m talking here about Helen.”

  “I’m not interested in Helen.” It was a lie, of course, but one he wanted Ralph to buy, and one he wished he believed in himself.

  Before he stopped by Renny’s after work to pick up Myra, he drove to the trailer to make certain the electric worked and to turn on the air conditioner. Myra wouldn’t be happy if she had to wait for the hot tin can to cool down. Then he paid a visit to the old shed behind the trailer, a large, empty coffee can in his hand.

  Myra didn’t comment on the coolness of her house once she returned. Instead she headed for the refrigerator and stuck her head into the frosty cold of the freezer. “There’s less than a half gallon of ice cream here. Be sure to pick up some when you go to the store.”

  “Have a good visit with Renny?” Ben asked, determined to keep his cool.

  Myra ignored him, reached into the cupboard, and extracted a box of cookies from the shelf. “Renny’s husband, Hank, was out of work for a while, but he didn’t settle for some crappy job roofing. He’s a real go-getter. Beat the pavement until he found something with good pay. Kept their house. Got direct TV, internet and everything. She’s off shopping at the outlet malls tomorrow. If I were able to walk better, I’d go with her. Not that I could afford to buy a thing. Not even at an outlet mall. I used her phone to order me some of that fancy rum cake I saw advertised on television. I hope that won’t be too much for you to handle. Maybe you’ll have to cut out your beers with the boys, huh?” Winded from her speech, she dropped her overstuffed frame into the recliner rocker and explored the inside of the cookie box.

  “One beer every now and then with Ralph, that’s all.”

  She stopped chewing her cookies. He thought she was about to ask him a question, a question he knew he wouldn’t want to answer. But she shrugged her shoulders and grabbed two more cookies out of the box.

  “I guess one beer can’t hurt. If that’s all it is.” She let out a cackle, spewing crumbs down the front of her blouse. “Any lemonade left?”

  Ben sighed and turned away from the sight of his wife. He didn’t remember her always being so self-
centered. He’d given her everything she’d asked for before he lost his job. Now he was a failure in her eyes.

  On the other hand, Helen liked him well enough, and the librarian thought he was a kind man. He thought of himself as kind, and Myra was suffering.

  He ought to do something about that.

  He left for work early the next morning, tiptoeing out of their bedroom, not wanting to awaken his wife. He’d left her a present on the pillow next to her head. He wondered if she’d be surprised.

  By the time Ralph arrived at the job, Ben was whistling a tuneless song and nailing shingles in place.

  “This is supposed to be the hottest day this month, and you’re acting like there’s a breeze blowing down from the arctic. What’s up?”

  Ben refused to meet Ralph’s eyes. “Nothing much.”

  At lunch the men sat leaning against a Sabal palm, trying to catch the bit of shade provided by what was left of it after the bulldozer had attacked it. The tree leaned at an unnatural forty-five degree angle, most of its fronds lying dead on the ground, foreshadowing the fate of all the vegetation which once grew abundantly on the development site.

  “Not eating today?” Ralph noticed Ben hadn’t brought his metal pail and thermos.

  “Too hot.” Ben sipped water from a plastic bottle.

  Ralph sneaked a sideways glance at his co-worker. “Myra still on strike?”

  Before Ben could answer, the foreman drove up in a four-wheel drive truck, the company’s logo on the door panel obliterated by mud baked by the sun into a thick layer of dirt.

  “Your wife and her cousin dropped this off for you.” The foreman handed Ben his lunch pail. “She said you left in such a hurry this morning, you forgot to take it.” He sped off in a cloud of rocks and dirt.

  “Well, now, no wonder you’re so pleased this morning. Looks like you had a little come-to-meeting talk with Myra last night, and she’s back on track. Good for you, ole buddy.” Ralph clapped him on his back.

  Ben opened the lunch box rivulets of sweat rolling off his forehead and down his cheeks.

  “So whatcha got there?” Ralph leaned over toward Ben to get a better look.

  At the bottom of the lunch pail was a plastic container, one of those double-lined ones, Ben noted, the kind that could keep contents warm or cold. He slowly lifted the lid.

  Ben peered in without hope. “Ceviche.” He spoke in a monotone.

  “Ceviche? Never heard of it. What is it?”

  “It’s seafood marinated in lime juice, but not cooked.”

  “Raw? Ugh! But you said Myra was a great cook. I could give it a try.”

  “You won’t like it.” Ben dropped his head to get a closer look at what Myra had made. He identified fish, octopus, shrimp, and a darker ingredient. Myra was a culinary innovator, but something about this made him wonder. He pushed at it with his fork, and he thought it moved its tail higher over its back. Probably just his imagination. Several hours in the citrus marinade and the fridge, even if it was what he thought it was, it had to be dead. He leaned closer to the container. Nope. It was what he thought. He sighed, held the morsel aloft on his fork, shoveled it into his mouth and chewed. Crunchy.

  He’d have to let Myra know he ate the entire container.

  Vicki Weisfeld

  Vicki Weisfeld’s short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine; her story “Breadcrumbs,” which appeared in Betty Fedora, Issue 3, won a 2017 Derringer Award. Her stories are included in the anthologies Busted: Arresting Stories from the Beat, Murder Among Friends, Bouchercon 2017’s Passport to Murder, and Quoth the Raven, contemporary stories inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. A member of Sisters in Crime National, Mystery Writers of America, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the Public Safety Writer’s Association, Vicki is a reviewer for crimefictionlover.com and TheFrontRowCenter.com. Find her at vweisfeld.com.

  Who They Are Now

  Vicki Weisfeld

  The day after deadly Hurricane Alex hit, our duty sergeant gave my partner and me the kind of assignment I dread—the kind that reminds you that no matter how brave or smart or rich or good-looking you are, no matter how good a planner or how much “in control” you are, the indignities of old age lie in wait.

  A Department of Children and Families investigator had called the Delray Beach Police Department about a possible homicide at an assisted living community called Sunshine Rest. She’d been called in because they had three storm-related deaths, and one of them looked suspicious. Bill Buxton and I were following up. The patrol officers were busy directing traffic at intersections where signals were out, checking alarms, and a million other things, so her request came straight to us detectives.

  Bill and I breezed past Sunshine Rest’s empty guardhouse through wide-open gates. If one of the reasons people moved there was to feel safe, the storm had shattered that illusion. The left side of the main building’s front portico had collapsed, and the wind had uprooted shrubbery, flung the memorial benches into the koi pond, and strewn the grounds with trash. Sunshine Rest’s gates and high walls couldn’t keep a hurricane out.

  I’d been called to Sunshine Rest a time or two when I was a patrol officer and remembered its layout. A main building housed the dining room, activity rooms, and administrators’ offices. Healthy seniors lived in five three-story apartment buildings on the grounds. Those that couldn’t manage on their own were relocated to the nursing facility—sometimes temporarily, more often…well.

  Dr. Marta Acevedo and one of the forensic investigators were hauling equipment out of the county medical examiner’s van.

  Marta waved. “Hey, Yolanda, this must be the big time if you and Bill are here.”

  “Just checking up on you,” I said.

  “What’s up?” Bill asked her. He and I had been partners for two years. I’m hotheaded in certain situations, but Bill keeps his cool. Saves me from myself.

  “The problem’s in the nursing unit,” Marta said. “Lost a big piece of its roof and its electricity. Three patients died up on the second floor. No physician on duty, so I have to take a look.” Shadows under her dark eyes proved she’d had a long day already.

  “What about the apartment residents?” I asked, scanning the battered landscape. From missing roof tiles to a fallen parking canopy that turned a couple of Cadillacs into convertibles, damage was visible everywhere.

  “All okay. Security staff did a check.”

  “Apparently one of the deaths is”—Bill waggled his hand back and forth—“so we’re checking it out. Not the first time a natural disaster provided cover for murder.”

  We passed through the main building and out the back. The nursing facility was down a short walkway, its doors propped open with cement blocks. Given the ninety-five degree temperatures and no air conditioning, they hoped to catch a breeze. Ironic, considering.

  Inside, the bitter-sour smell of saturated drywall overlaid a sloppy mess. Maintenance staff tackled the puddles in the dim hallway. As fast as they mopped, the seeping water returned.

  “¿Luces de emergencia?” I asked.

  The maintenance man apologized. The building had lost its back-up generators. “Rayos,” he said. Electricity from the sky—lightning—had left them without electricity on the ground.

  “Ay, mi madre,” Marta said. “¿Escaleras?”

  He pointed us to the stairwell, and we climbed, avoiding the hazardous farrago of broken ceiling tiles, twisted metal, and other debris mostly pushed to one side. Plasterboard dust covered the treads. Marta fanned herself with her sheaf of paperwork. “This says a lot already. Imagine residents negotiating these stairs.”

  I could picture it: fragile residents—terrified, confused—the roaring storm, total darkness.

  We found the nursing home administrator, Greg Thornberry, pacing the upstairs hallway, sunlight pouring through the open roof. We introduced ourselves. “What happened here?” I asked.

  In a voice ragged
with exhaustion he said, “When that goddamn roof went, my staff and I worked like dogs to get these people out of harm’s way.” He wiped his hand across his forehead, leaving it covered in white powder, like he’d been dredged in flour. “Most of them are downstairs now, packed in two and three to a room.” He didn’t actually say, “like sardines,” but I bet he was thinking it. His hands and forearms were bruised.

  Was that from hauling patients and beds?

  “We just couldn’t get to them all soon enough. And they couldn’t make it on their own. Slow as Christmas.”

  A woman wearing a flimsy nightgown tottered across the hall, a dented walker the only thing holding her up.

  “I can’t run an efficient operation in this chaos,” he said.

  “Much less a compassionate one,” I sympathized.

  His head snapped toward me. “Compassion is the social workers’ job. And the nurses’.” He tapped his chest. “I’m an MBA. I run this place like a business. The only way.”

  Bill shifted foot-to-foot, frowning at a pile of sodden mattresses.

  “But—” I started, an edge in my voice.

  Bill must have heard it and headed me off. He asked about the number of residents in the facility—forty-five. Twenty had needed to be moved.

  “Some of them aren’t with us permanently,” Thornberry said. “They’ve had a procedure or a fall or whatnot, and we monitor them here until they can return to their apartments.”

  “I see.” I hoped I’d never be old, afflicted with whatnot, and under the supervision of someone like him.

  “Listen, I have to check on the residents downstairs. Can we talk later? Give me half an hour?”