by E M Kaplan
Someone else said, “That was something entirely different, Carol. Woodstock was two years later. Completely different hippie gathering. Get it right. Do we have to tell you this every time?”
“Well, my fricking apologies. My daughter keeps telling me my memory isn’t what it used to be. I think it really hasn’t been the same since she dropped me off here—but that’s okay, she’s coming to get me soon. They took away my car, which made me hopping mad. That happened on the Tuesday before Halloween. Otherwise I’d just drive myself home. And my name is Catrine, not Carol. How many times do I have to tell you that, you old nag?”
The woman who had corrected her shrugged her fleece-clad shoulders, not looking the least bit worried. She was in a matching baby blue track suit and hoodie, looking for all the world as if she were training for an octogenarian triathlon. What would that consist of? A 1.5K diatribe about the Good Ol’ Days, a 40K complaint about aches and pains, and 10K power walk around an indoor mall?
Only if I’m lucky enough to have my health at that age, Josie thought, picturing her own perpetually confused mom. Their last visit had been…not good. Depressing and true to the course in her downward slide. Josie had had to lie to her mother about her living in her nursing home only temporarily, too, which was a horrible but necessary untruth.
“There was a man in my room again this morning,” another woman said.
“What man?”
“Did you report him to the police?”
“Believe me, I will the first chance I get. I just can’t find my cell phone.”
“You don’t have a cell phone anymore.”
“Oh, I don’t? Good—I never like that thing anyway. Too many buttons and people calling me. Why do they need to call us when we’re on the toilet?”
“What did he want?”
“Who?”
“The man in your room.”
“Oh, Helen, there wasn’t any man in Mary’s room. Not this time and not the last five times.”
“How do you know? Where you there?”
While the women bickered semi-coherently, Josie studied Lynetta, searching for familiar features, any signs of traits in common with Greta Williams. Lynetta had white-blonde hair and fair skin where Greta was salt-and-pepper and slightly more olive-complected. Bright coral lipstick defined this woman’s almost elastic looking mouth that seemed in constant motion, whether speaking or silent—whereas Greta’s lips were thin, with creases leading into her mouth as if it were a fissure in a topographical map and usually twisted in a slight grimace at Josie.
Maybe they aren’t hatched from the same alien space pod, Josie mused. But both sisters are definitely not exactly from this world.
Even at first glance, Josie could admit there was something ethereal about Lynetta. From her ballerina-straight posture—aha, that was something she had in common with Greta. That steely ramrod up her spine—to her sharply intelligent dark blue eyes, Lynetta had an undeniable charisma that pulled in even judgmental Josie like a magnet.
“Well?” Lynetta asked, suddenly noticing her standing there. “What is it? I’ve already been kicked out of the dining hall. What felony have I committed now?”
Her friends tittered, their eyes looking down, away—in any direction other than at Josie—nervous as chickens in the presence of the queen of their coop.
“I’m Josie Tucker.” She paused, waiting for recognition. “Your niece,” she added. Her subtlety was not Oscar-worthy, she knew, but she was still searching Lynetta for signs of dementia or any reason for her to be here in Pleasant Valley.
Comprehension dawned on the older woman’s face like U-Boat suddenly surfacing in a placid lake. She went from relaxed, light-hearted chit-chat to full-on drill sergeant mode, barking at her friends to leave the room.
“My niece has arrived,” she declared with all the tact of an Eastern Bloc dictator and the acting skills of a vaudeville veteran—loud and obvious. “My niece whom I haven’t seen in many years. Go away so that we may catch up in private.”
Aha, there was more family resemblance.
“I see my sister has finally begun to take my complaints seriously,” Lynetta said when they were alone. Although she was fair-skinned, her eyebrows had been drawn on in dark, reddish brown face crayon and winged imperiously on her pale, age-spotted forehead. The twin ski-slopes of foxlike color were static and unmoving. On any other person, they might have expressed surprise, but on Lynetta, they conveyed pure skepticism.
Those are Joan Crawford eyebrows. Very judgy penciled arches that speak of a rich past lifetime in which she may or may not have been a child actor who later tormented her older sister like in that movie, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
“How long have you suspected someone has been plotting to kill you?” Josie asked, feeling ridiculous for voicing the question aloud, based on their setting. Maybe she needed a Venn diagram to chart the people in this facility who all shared the same paranoid delusion.
“For approximately six months now. My sister would know this if she called more frequently.” Lynetta drummed coral colored fingernails on the arm of her chair.
“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Josie said, not bothering to mention that communication with Greta was not usually a two-way street. Sometimes it was more like a boulevard Greta’s way and a broken dirt path the other. Not that it stopped Josie from barreling down it anyway.
“I first began to notice little things,” Lynetta said, sitting tall in her chair, her tone accusatory as if Josie herself were the ringleader in the conspiracy against her. “Items that I’d set down moved out of place in my room. Some of my belongings missing entirely. Later, I would find them here in the Activity Room or even amongst someone else’s possessions. Of course, they would simply deny that they’d stolen them. No one wants to be labeled a thief in this place. That’s worse than being a snitch in prison. After that, I began to feel sick for no reason every now and then. Aches and pains, stomach upset, dizziness—and the confusion is quite terrible. I’m a sharp woman. I won’t stand for this when I know it’s not normal. It’s not dementia as they keep trying to tell me.”
“How long have you had your current roommate?”
“Ahhh, yes,” Lynetta nodded, casting her a scrutinizing stare. “I can see you’re a smart one. The most likely suspects are those close to the victim. It’s true—these occurrences commenced right around the time that I received my suite mate. I assume you’ve made her acquaintance already. She’s canny, that one. She says she has no patience for my antics all the while taking notes about me in her little electronic journal that she calls an e-reader. I know the truth, however. She’s spying on me and sending notes to the government. Of course, you know, it all comes down to the number twenty-three.”
Chapter 9
This woman is bat-crap crazy. The only significance of the number twenty-three are the number of imaginary little green men juggling Lynetta’s perception of reality.
Josie wondered if she’d been successful at keeping the judgment off her face. She was notoriously bad at hiding her emotions. Her friends both loved and hated to play poker with her. She and her three best friends—including Drew—had started having Game Night once a month, but bluffing games were off the table because they had such an unfair advantage over her thanks to her transparent face.
Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. I definitely wear my heart on my face. Or my stomach on my face. Whatever. But gut reactions are never wrong.
“Did the person who is threatening you ever leave a note or some sign that might help identify who they are?” she asked Lynetta, hoping to get the woman back on track. Or at least help her rocket ship to outer space find its way back to Earth. It sounded like Josie needed to have a chat with Lynetta’s doctor as soon as possible. Maybe they needed to up the woman’s meds.
“No, they are far too clever for clues like that,” Lynetta said with a wave of her age-spotted hand. “Nor have I ever caught the instigator
in my room as positive I am that he or she has rifled through my belongings.”
A fool’s errand, Josie thought with a sigh. It seemed her entire trip was caused by the ramblings of a woman who, sadly and unfortunately, was losing her cognitive fortitude.
“Why would someone do this to you?”
“Oh-ho,” Lynetta said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Now you follow my reasoning. It’s simple. They’re after my money.”
Josie felt her eyebrows shoot up again—she really needed to work on her poker face. She had assumed based on their humble surroundings—there were much ritzier care facilities than this one, especially closer to the city—that Lynetta was not as loaded as her younger sister, Greta, whose line of credit was limitless, pockets bottomless.
Josie had the black AMEX card in her wallet from Greta to prove it. The account was ostensibly for business expenses, but she was intimidated by it. She liked to think of it as insurance—a Get Out Of Jail Free card—just in case of emergencies. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but she carried it if she ever needed it.
“How much money are we talking?” Josie asked. She’d decided to humor Lynetta on this topic, unlike her obsession with the number twenty-three. Money could be easily confirmed. Nostradamus-like conspiracy theories were a bit more challenging.
I’m not a miracle worker, Josie reminded herself.
Lynetta cast a suspicious glance around the room. She puckered her mouth into a tight, pink-colored purse before she spoke. “I don’t want to say a dollar figure aloud because they might be listening, but you can speak with my financial advisor. His name is Bob Fisher and he has an office on Green Street near the town square. I’ll give you a handwritten note or whatever it takes so that you have permission to see the state of my finances. I don’t keep any of the paperwork here at the facility.”
She reached out and squeezed Josie’s forearm with a speckled but well-manicured hand. “We may not be close, but I trust my sister. Therefore I trust you by extension.” A look of fear crossed her face for the first time during the entire interview. “I know you’ll do whatever it takes. Please help me before it’s too late. I don’t want to die in here. Not crazy and confused. Not like this.”
Somewhat rattled by Lynetta’s desperate plea, Josie sat in her car with the heat on in the facility’s parking lot after their meeting. The noontime sun had warmed up her car despite the freezing temperatures. Her rear end was deliciously toasty thanks to the seat warmers. A hastily scribbled note of consent from Lynetta and a business card of her investment account manager lay on the leather upholstery next to Josie.
Maybe it was unfair of her, but she didn’t believe Lynetta’s weird, paranoid ramblings at all. Frankly, the old woman sounded like she was off her rocker. Her claims of being wealthy could be easily proven or disproven, but all that talk about the number twenty-three and chit-chat Josie had overheard about being at the famous music festival sounded farfetched. Especially combined with Lynetta’s narcissistic tendencies and her small crowd of groupies who had rejoined her just as Josie had taken her leave.
I may not be a psychologist, but I think I know coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs when I see it.
She glanced at the dashboard to check what time it was and ended up searching all over the screen for a few minutes between the satellite radio and icons from her phone—when had that been hooked up to the car?—before she figured out it was just slightly past noon.
Robert Fisher worked at a financial firm called Keystone Investments, according to the internet search Josie did on her phone. Their webpage listed an address that was right in the town square, about five minutes away from where she was now and even closer to the house she was renting. She had enough time to swing by the house and take her dog out for some fresh air before tracking down Lynetta’s money manager to try to confirm her doubtful Zsa Zsa Gabor status.
Follow the money.
She pressed the button to start the car and carefully navigated through the potholes of the parking lot. If there was any truth at all to Lynetta’s fears, the money should point to the culprit. Most crimes had either love or money at the root of their cause. She didn’t think there was a hidden love triangle at the heart of this one, so she was going to have to buckle down and look for the dollar signs to point her in the right direction…
If there even is a crime.
When she got back to the rental house a few minutes later, Bert was happy to see her and joyfully shoved his way down the front steps to the sidewalk. She’d thought his dramatic panting and excitement over her return was a little excessive, especially for him, until he abruptly upchucked in the bushes halfway down the block.
“Poor guy,” she said. “Thanks for not doing that in the house. Sandra is nice and all, but I’m glad we don’t have to find out how nice.”
He wagged up at her, apparently all better. If only her stomach recovered from things that quickly.
Live life like a dog. There’s probably an internet meme for that sentiment.
“If I acted more like you, I’d be half as sarcastic and probably cheerful at least some of the time.” Josie let him steer them the rest of the way down the block while she pondered that weird idea. Maybe somewhere out in the universe there was a parallel world with an outgoing salesperson type of Josie Tucker who didn’t care that much about food, wasn’t nosy about other people’s crimes, and smiled every time she met a stranger. Or maybe no such Alternate Josie existed because the very things that defined her were sarcasm and appetite—and if a person without those traits existed, then she wasn’t Josie by definition.
Hello, the Philosophy major raises her ugly head.
“Cold enough for you?” a man in one of those fur-lined hunter’s caps with the ear flaps asked her as she passed his house. His scratchy voice sounded like an antique car that hadn’t been warmed up yet. She almost jumped out of her skin because she’d been gathering wool with her inner ridiculous thoughts. Bert, however, gave the man two wags, so Josie took her dog’s opinion of the old guy and gave him a wave and a smile. “It’s not too bad now, but just wait until tomorrow,” he added ominously before going back to his house, the smile on her face drooping as he went on his way.
She didn’t know if he meant tomorrow, as in the actual next day after today or if he was metaphorically speaking about the future. But then she rolled her eyes at herself. Of course he meant actual tomorrow. People didn’t go around talking like creepy harbingers of doom. Well, not in real life. Maybe in the movies.
“This is what I’m going to be like if Drew leaves me and I turn into a crazy cat lady. Arguing with myself and choosing to believe the more far-fetched of hypothetical options. Reverse Occam’s Razor.” Bert blew out his jowls at her and tugged them ahead. “Crazy dog lady,” she corrected herself. “My apologies.”
When they got back to the house, she gave him some fresh water in his bowl and was reaching for the box of dog treats when she noticed the empty cookie plate on the kitchen table. The plastic wrap had been delicately nudged aside and discarded. If it weren’t for a smear of dog drool on the edge of the wrapping, she might have thought a stranger had come in and helped themselves to the whole plate.
“You didn’t save me a single one of Aloysius’s snickerdoodles. Serves you right for losing your cookies—literally—you greedy thing.”
Chapter 10
Lynetta’s money manager, Bob Fisher, like any private consultant worth his mettle, didn’t trust Josie at all. He blustered and cleared his throat while he decided how to deal with her. Despite the handwritten note, he insisted on calling his client to confirm her request. As he listened to Lynetta, whose voice came through the line clear enough that Josie could hear it from across his immense and highly polished desk, he squinted at Josie as if she were trying to pull off the heist of the century.
All I want to know is a number, buddy.
From what she could see of him across his behemoth desk, he was a rotund man in his fifties,
balding, pink, and slightly shiny—probably because he was flustered and suspicious of her. She decided she liked him. Anyone who didn’t trust a person on sight was a friend of hers. Kind of a messed of version of that Groucho Marx quote, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
“Uh-huh,” he said into his desk phone receiver. “Yes, I see. Very well then.”
After he hung up, he cleared his throat, this time looking more uneasy than embarrassed. “Apologies. I didn’t realize you were Mrs. Downes’s niece. In any case, she hasn’t given you full access to her accounts, only her statements and current balance information. That means, you can’t touch the funds, but you can know what’s in them. If you wouldn’t mind showing me your I.D…?”
“Sure. That sounds about right to me,” Josie said, trying to seem reasonable to allay his fears as she dug her wallet out of her back pocket. She wasn’t going to say anything more though. If he could be cautious and distrusting, so could she. He didn’t need to know why she was looking into Lynetta’s finances. He didn’t need to know about the alleged attempts on her life.
He rubbed his rounded chin for a minute and then said, “Rather than go through each of her accounts, I think I’ll print you the quarterly summary statement. You can look it over and if you have any questions, just let me know.” He clicked a few buttons on his keyboard and a printer under his desk began whirring. After a moment, he gave a discreet grunt as he leaned over to retrieve the printout. Then he handed Josie several pieces of paper.
She scanned the sheets like a rock climber looking for a handhold to keep her from sliding off the surface of incomprehension. All of the account numbers had been blocked out, replaced by pound symbols, but the balances were visible, and it had a lot of digits. Like, a lot, a lot. She frowned trying to figure out which number was the total. She’d found a column of extremely large numbers on the first page, but even with her questionable math skills, they weren’t adding up to the number at the bottom of the column.
