Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  “Is this…the total?” she asked him, pointing to the eight-digit number at the bottom.

  He glanced up from where he’d been clicking more things on his computer. Solitaire, she hazarded a guess. Or maybe a fantasy football league. Except it was February, so maybe basketball. Or was that March? March Madness, right? She wasn’t a sports fan, but her family in Tucson had all been basketball-crazy since the 1990s. She gave him some side-eye. Or maybe he was a member of a private Ponzi scheme chat group. Even though he seemed like a good guy, he might have a suburban-dad, Robin Hood streak to him.

  He has a “steal from the rich to give to the Cub Scouts” vibe.

  “Bottom of the second page,” he said, and she flipped through the papers until she found the number he was talking about. Her mind stuttered to a halt. “I believe her husband, when he was alive, was heir to the famous Downes family.” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “Cough drop makers. Downes Drops. The licorice ones were the most famous. I want to say they’ve been around since the 1890s.”

  That must have been a heck of a lot of cough drops—because Lynetta is freaking loaded.

  “Why in the world is she living at Pleasant Valley?” she blurted out, leaving out her personal opinion of the run-down, depressing facility, but certainly implying what she thought. “With these kinds of funds, she could be living in a private residence, complete with attendants and nurses with a physician on call.”

  She could be Granny Batman with her own personal Alfred catering to her every whim. She could live in a mansion with a thousand cats.

  Josie went on a mini-vacation in her mind imagining herself as an eccentric millionaire. Josie Warbucks. She’d live in a massive house with a refrigerator in every room. The kind of fridge with the glass front door. And every one of them filled with dumplings and finger foods. Like having tapas on tap. An endless supply of starters. Appetizers aplenty.

  Bob Fisher shrugged. “That’s a good question. I know I’d be living in a place a lot warmer than here—somewhere with palm trees and a golf course—but everybody’s different. To each his own.”

  Okay. I’ve followed the money and found a massive mountain of it. Chances are someone else wants it. If anyone else knows about the Downes Drops fortune, there should be coughing cousins coming out of the woodwork. Especially now that Lynetta is so vulnerable.

  “What about beneficiaries? Whose names did Lynetta put on these accounts?”

  “That should also be somewhere on the last page. I haven’t always managed her finances. My dad was her primary guy before he retired and I took over, but…” He clicked through some screens on his computer and a weird expression crossed his face. “Flip to the next page.”

  She did as he asked and scanned down the words until she saw the right box. “This is a trust fund?” she asked.

  He scrolled on his computer screen for a second or two. “Yep. Looks like it.”

  “And who are the beneficiaries of the trust fund?”

  “That’s on the last page,” he said.

  She read further, blinked, and looked again as all the blood rushed to her head. “This can’t be right.”

  The line for beneficiary listed only one person: Josette Maeyingthahan Tucker

  With Josie’s date of birth and Social Security number. First of all, no one knew her horrible middle name, which was Thai for “female warrior”—by the way, thanks, Mom and Dad. Secondly, this was all wrong. Like, seriously wrong.

  She sat speechless.

  And somewhat nauseated.

  “But—” Words failed her, and she made several starts before she could form complete sentences. “There have to be descendants who are closer to her. Why me?”

  She doesn’t even know me.

  He shrugged, not all that concerned by her horror. “I don’t know. Congratulations?”

  Only one thought crossed Josie’s mind at that point. I need to speak with Greta. Right now.

  He pushed away from his desk and stood up while she was still staring at the papers in disbelief. “I’ll just take these with me,” she said, belatedly realizing their impromptu appointment was over.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I need to pick my daughter up from school. It’s my day to take her to karate.”

  “Awesome,” Josie said, although she definitely didn’t feel awesome. She cleared her throat and collected the papers. She stood up from her chair in a daze and her mouth went on autopilot while her mind still tried to deal with the shock. “Thanks for letting me drop in on you last minute.”

  “Sure. No problem, and sorry to rush you. My daughter is nineteen,” he said, and hurriedly explained, “It’s just that she’s ASD—on the autism spectrum—and she doesn’t drive. I’m a part-time taxi.”

  “No worries.” She wanted to get on the phone ASAP to Greta to see if this weird situation could be fixed.

  They passed the open door of an office that had been closed when she’d first arrived in the crumbly brick building about a block away from the cute town square. She glanced into the office at exactly the same time that its sole occupant looked up from his desk. They ended up locking eyes, which was made more awkward when she realized he was Sandra’s nephew Harris. Fortunately, Bob had barreled ahead, leading her way out of the office, so she was saved from having to fake a smile of greeting at her grouchy neighbor from across the street.

  “Dang, this really is a small town,” Josie muttered.

  “What’s that?” Bob said as he pushed open the door. He’d grabbed his coat from an old fashioned iron coat rack by the front door and zipped up as a frigid gust of wind buffeted Josie as they stepped outside. She took a second to marvel that no one had taken Bob’s jacket. It had been hanging with a bunch of other overcoats just inside the entrance, as cozy and casual as if their office was a private residence. Probably if someone had the gall to take another person’s jacket in a place like this, it would have been viewed as an accident. Other people would recognize Bob’s coat going down the street on someone else’s back.

  “The man in the office next to you. Harris Somebody. He’s my neighbor in the house across from the place I’m renting.”

  Bob dug leather gloves out of his pockets and waited a second for her to gesture which way she was headed in the parking lot. It turned out they were parked in the same row, so he walked alongside her. “Harris Kane? Oh, are you living in Sandra’s cute little green and purple house on Lincoln? I didn’t know the previous tenants had left already. I heard they’d enough of winter and broke their lease so they could get the heck out of here and move to Arizona.”

  “I used to live in Arizona,” Josie said, gulping as a particularly icy gust almost stole her breath. Her face was starting to sting. Tucson weather sounded really good right now. The average winter temperature there was in the 40s, which was bikini weather compared to this.

  “Why in the world did you leave?” he said. He didn’t smile, so he either wasn’t joking or his face had frozen. “You even have the Cubbies for spring training.”

  She didn’t get a chance to explain that she wasn’t from Illinois, so the Cubs didn’t mean much to her, but the weather was interrupting their conversation enough as it was. “Harris seems like a grouchy guy,” she said bluntly. No time for niceties while she was about to lose the tips of her ears to frostbite.

  “I can’t really blame him,” Bob said, unlocking his car from afar using his electronic key fob. He opened the door and was already halfway in before his sentence was finished. “His wife is a real piece of work. I’ve met her a few times at the annual holiday party. She’s a shrew, to be honest. I think he comes to work to get away from her.”

  With that, he slammed his door shut and gave her a little wave, leaving her to jog the rest of the way across the quaint, brick-paved street to her rental car before she flash-froze in place like in that disaster movie about the next Ice Age.

  

  Josie immediately tried to call Greta, who didn’t answer her phone,
of course. She tried texting the woman instead.

  Josie: Why am I the beneficiary on Lynettas funds?

  After a long pause, during which she wondered if she’d dreamed the whole thing up or maybe she’d just misread the papers and Bob Fisher hadn’t corrected her because he’d been on his way out the door—because none of this could be real—she got a reply.

  Greta: I didn’t know that. That explains why she wanted your full name and SSN.

  Josie: We need to undo this - its not right

  Never mind that it made Josie a suspect if anything bad happened to Lynetta—if the poor woman’s paranoid suspicions were real. Josie had been like a dog chasing the money trail as if it were a bone, but she’d ended up biting her own tail in a surprise moment of self-discovery.

  Greta: You’ll have to speak with my sister.

  Josie growled with frustration.

  She next dialed her best friend Susan, who also didn’t answer her phone, which wasn’t particularly strange either. Her friend worked from home in her Boston apartment and often had client teleconferences so she couldn’t answer her calls right away.

  Josie listened to the mechanical robot-lady voicemail message and then said, “Hey, it’s me. Can you do me a favor? I know you’re good with Internet searches and ancestry stuff. Can you help me find someone’s next of kin?” She quickly rattled off Lynetta’s full name and birthdate. “This is Greta’s sister, but I’m looking for whoever would inherit Lynetta’s estate if she dies. Like a niece or nephew. It’s a substantial fortune, so there should be relatives coming out of the woodwork to claim it.”

  She added her thanks in advance and, before hanging up, promised again to help Susan find a new apartment. Some place with a lot of windows and a nice view. Or a hot guy living across the hall. Anything to get her friend out of her ever-shrinking comfort zone.

  Just as Josie set her phone down on the kitchen table, her ringtone sounded. Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf blasted through the rental house, and Josie rolled her eyes at Drew’s latest choice of tunes for her phone. Last time, he picked a song from the Appetite for Destruction album from Guns N’ Roses to poke a little fun at her food obsession.

  She didn’t recognize the phone number, but she answered the call anyway because it was a local Lake Park area code. She’d met so many new people in the last day or so, it might very well be a legitimate caller and not one of those monotone solicitors or weird recorded calls all in Chinese.

  “Is this Josie Tucker?” a man’s voice asked. “I think I met you earlier today in the dining hall at Pleasant Valley. I was cleaning tables. We talked about the flu.” Manteles, her goofy brain chimed in. Sacapuntas. She would remember how to say tablecloths and pencil sharpeners until her dying day.

  “Yes, I remember you.”

  “My name is Darren Ross. I’m the assistant director here. I’m sorry I didn’t formally introduce myself before. My hands were a bit messy and I was trying to get the dining hall set up for dinner. I don’t want to alarm you—you’re listed as the next-of-kin on Mrs. Downes’s contact sheet. Actually, her older sister is listed first, but since you’re the most local, I thought I’d call you—your Aunt Lynetta has been taken to the hospital.”

  Part 2: Frosty Reception

  According to Chinese poems from a thousand years ago, people harvested blocks of ice for cooling food storage cellars. Egyptians used a system of pots and evaporation to chill water. Persians built dome-covered ice pits called Yakhchāl. Early Aussies in the Outback used curtains for evaporative cooling to keep food from spoiling too quickly.

  One of the first refrigeration machines was invented in the mid-1700s, and even Benjamin Franklin took a turn experimenting with cooling, saying very creepily that he thought a person might be frozen even on a warm summer’s day.

  From the ancient ice harvest, to frosty Frigidaires, to the fingerprint-free, stainless steel side-by-sides, aren’t you glad to know that thousands of hours of research and experimentation went into your frost-bitten chicken breasts purchased with good intentions, your forgotten mealy apples, sprouted onions, and fuzzy cheese?

  —Josie Tucker, Will Blog for Food

  Chapter 11

  Josie made it to the ER in a startlingly short amount of time. Her trip felt like a land-speed record compared to what she was used to with Boston traffic. But her light speed across Lake Park Villa was assisted by the fact that the hospital was only five miles away. She could probably cross the entire town from border to border in less than fifteen minutes.

  She parked in a mostly empty lot and her heart pounded as she slid out from behind the driver’s seat, hoping that she hadn’t already failed Lynetta in the short time that she’d been in town. She scuttled across the blacktop and the wind whipped through her clothes as if she were wearing shorts and a t-shirt instead of a winter coat and jeans.

  At the front counter she identified herself as Lynetta’s niece, produced her driver’s license, and was led back through a shockingly deserted hallway with room after empty, darkened room. “Quiet day?” she asked the nurse, a cute brown-haired girl in blue scrubs and athletic shoes who looked like she could still be in high school. Her Nikes squeaked across the shiny floor. Her unhurried steps eased the tightness in Josie’s chest.

  “Calm before the storm, I guess. Literally,” the girl said. “When it gets super cold like it will tomorrow, we sometimes see car accidents, people breaking their wrists by falling on the ice, asthma attacks. Stuff like that. Not a lot of heart attacks from shoveling snow, though. It’ll be too cold for that. When it’s warmer, that heavy, wet snow likes to kill people and it throws out a lot of backs, too.”

  “I guess being busy is good then?”

  The young nurse shrugged. “I don’t have a preference, but I don’t mind when it’s busy. It makes the shift go faster. Nothing worse than a long shift and no patients to see.” Judging by her casual stroll, Josie didn’t think the girl was an adrenaline junkie, but looks could be deceiving. Maybe she jumped out of airplanes in her free time.

  “Here’s your aunt,” she said, gesturing to a darkened room at the end of the corridor. “I think they’re running some tests. I brought her some warm blankets. Dr. Patel will be by in a few to chat with you.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  The nurse shrugged and dropped her voice down to a whisper. “This week, it seems to be chest pains. Last week, it was pressure on the top of her head.” She smiled apologetically. “I know you’re just visiting, so maybe you didn’t know, but Mrs. Downes is a frequent flyer here.”

  Well, that explains the girl’s lack of urgency.

  Josie peeked into the room. Lynetta was lying on her side under a layer of thin white blankets. Her white hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her eyes were closed. Other than a monitor clipped to her finger and a blood pressure cuff, she looked as if she could have been in a hotel room. She gave a contented little snore, and Josie sighed. Two uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs lined the wall. She unzipped her coat and dumped it in one while she sat down on the other.

  She dug her phone out of her back pocket and texted Greta Williams.

  Josie: Dont want to alarm u but your sister is in the ER

  After a pause, a text bubble popped up on her screen. She watched the three dots flash for what seemed like ten minutes while Greta typed her response, which came fully punctuated and with every word spelled out.

  Greta: What is it this time?

  Josie rolled her eyes. Great. It would have been nice to know from the start that Lynetta is a darned hypochondriac. It would have saved me from having a minor panic attack on the way over here.

  Josie: Not sure but theyre doing tests

  Greta: If it’s like the last three times, she probably just needed a nap where her roommate wasn’t there to disturb her.

  Josie: Good to know in hindsight

  She sighed and rubbed a hand down her face. Apparently she’d been the only idiot alarmed by Lynetta’s fie
ld trip to the ER. Josie had gotten all worked up over nothing.

  The room lights clicked on, making even Josie blink. Lynetta blinked and sat up. A dark-skinned man in his forties in a white lab coat bustled into the small room, holding out his hand to Josie. “Hello, are you the daughter?” He glanced at Lynetta. “Or granddaughter? I’m Dr. Patel.”

  “”Niece,” Josie corrected.

  “Oh, that makes sense,” he said, looking at the clipboard he’d grabbed from outside Lynetta’s door. “You don’t look very much like each other. You are Asian and she is very Caucasian. There’s not much resemblance.”

  “I’m adopted,” Josie deadpanned.

  “Aha,” he said with a toothy grin. “That makes even more sense. Plus I have never met you, but Mrs. Downes, I have met many times before even though I have been in Lake Park Villa no longer than a year.”

  Oh boy. More confirmation that Lynetta is just playing them all for fools.

  “Mrs. Downes,” he shouted at Lynetta. “It’s time to examine you. Can you tell me what is the problem today?”

  Lynetta folded her hands in her lap, apparently unbothered that the doctor was treating her as if she were hard of hearing. “Oh, you know, a little of this and a little of that.”

  The doctor’s smile froze and he looked at Josie for translation. She shrugged.

  Beats me, buddy.

  “But what exactly are your symptoms that you are feeling right at this moment?” he asked again at top volume, removing a stethoscope from his lab coat pocket.

  “Well, my heart is pounding really hard and I have a bit of a headache.” Her pale, spotted hand touched first her chest, then her temple.

  “Her BP is a bit high,” the nurse, who had appeared in the doorway behind Dr. Patel, said.

  “How high?” he asked, suddenly all business.

  “One forty-eight over ninety-six.”

  “Yes, that’s a bit higher than we like to see.” He looked at her chart again. “Especially for someone who is already on blood pressure medicine and a water pill.”