The Rampant Reaper

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Resident. Or even a member of the staff might have rearranged things. Cut to the chase. Are we talking staff, resident, visitor from the community? What? Who could do such a thing to such a frail population?”

  “My vote is for the Grim Reaper. Next, it would be staff, other residents, or their relatives and friends. Can I go now? My feet are warm.”

  But Elsina Miller blocked the doorway and right behind her, Darla the bouncy social worker. Charlie’s illegal examination had not been private after all.

  CHAPTER 17

  DOLORES THE TOMCAT did not have the dark Myrtle eyes, and neither did Sherman Rochester of the suspicious socks. Somehow, Charlie couldn’t see either one of them murdering the lingering dead. The two nutty Fatties were capable of anything and had relatively strong upper bodies but were confined to wheelchairs.

  Charlie couldn’t even believe she was thinking like this. If she were her old self before the accident, she’d be clawing her way out of here and back home somehow, or at least to Mason City, the only living airport for miles.

  Oh, right, you’d steal somebody’s snowmobile, plop your mother on the back and soar off on roads you don’t know and couldn’t see anyway. The coroner can’t even get here in this weather and he’s used to it.

  Harvey, the actor businessman, was having an intermittent conversation with the Floyd County coroner on Del’s cell phone, explaining what Charlie had said about the deteriorating victim as well as the crime scene. As the conversation came and went, Harvey would throw theatrical hysterics and Darla and Elsina would try to comfort him. Somewhere not too far off, Marlys laughed. It wasn’t an aged cackle, more of a deep-throated, lewd laugh—but unmistakably Marlys Dittberner.

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m a professional literary agent. You’ve got RNs around here who know more about dead bodies than I do.”

  “He wants to talk to you and back at the crime scene and—” he turned to his admiring staff “—to you and me alone.”

  They were in the dining activities area and had to pass again the poor wretch who found it so hard to be alive these days. Harvey, still trying to keep contact on the cell, had a hold of Charlie’s wrist and hurried her along. She looked back for Edwina, who was talking to one of the inmates, and happened to notice a very un-Christian narrowing of the administrator’s eyes as they followed Harvey and Charlie’s progress away from her.

  Another suspect?

  Greene, Elsina’s not here at nights or on weekends.

  Actually, in Ida Mae’s room, the transmission was much better, still by no means good, but Harvey and Charlie followed the coroner’s instructions as carefully as possible, checking and reporting each other’s every move to the county official. Reporting odors, swelling from gas buildup, bruising, taking swabs from the poor woman’s nose and throat and, yes, genitals, with sterile Q-Tips and putting them in bags they labeled as they went along, Harvey rushing to the door to order new supplies when needed. They wore surgical masks and rubber gloves.

  “He orders an on-site autopsy, I’m outta here,” Charlie warned.

  It didn’t come to that, but there were certain incisions to drain certain fluids, scooping certain samples from the diaper—and certain places on the corpse to describe intermittently by cellular again and again. Coroners are ghouls. Literary agents are not.

  Ida Mae Staudt Truex was then buried in a hallowed limbo in the snow outside in a fenced area—just below the smoker porch—where sealed hazardous and infectious waste containers were kept. There was plenty of room for a body.

  “Jesus Christ, what an experience,” Rochester boomed to Charlie, the ones ordered to deep-freeze the corpse alone. “No, dear Elsina—I am not born again, back off now. But, Ms. Greene, I’ll wager your feet are cold again.”

  “Tell me this coroner from Floyd is a medical doctor,” Charlie said.

  “Actually, he’s a mortician.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “We got plenty of that.”

  “I know, Gladys. How are you?”

  “He’s one of my boyfriends.” Gladys reached for Harvey’s hand and missed.

  “And the coroner’s not from Floyd, just serves Floyd County,” Harvey said. “The county seat is Charles City, and that’s where he is. Floyd was supposed to be the county seat but the railroad chose to go through Charles City instead, so—”

  “Is he good?” Charlie asked Gladys.

  “Oh, you bet. Really good.”

  “Does he have a piano in his living room?”

  “Three of ’em, maybe four.” Gladys had gas and shared the fact with everyone in the hall.

  “‘Warning: Liquid oxygen reservoir. Warning: No smoking. Do not place flammable materials in this closet. Please return all equipment to this closet after using and return the key to the nurses’ station.’” A tall woman in a walker and mismatched pink sweatpants and sweatshirt stood in front of a closed door reading out loud the sign attached to it. Most of the residents were dressed that way, and most were in wheelchairs, many with oxygen tanks strapped on the back. At least she could walk. Her walker had a split green tennis ball over each back foot.

  “Unfortunately, unless it’s a case of stroke, speech seems to be one of the last things to go.” Harvey Rochester dumped their disposable masks and gloves in a hazardous-waste container behind another locked door.

  “‘Warning: Liquid oxygen reservoir. Warning: No smoking. Do not place flammable materials in this closet. Please return all equipment to this closet after using and return the key to the nurses’ station.’”

  “That’s enough, Rose. Go play with Darla. Darla, come get this creature.”

  “‘Darla Lempke, Activities Director.’” Rose read the social worker’s badge as they waited for a break in the wheelchair traffic.

  “That’s very good, Rose,” Darla said. “Who am I again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ciga-riga-rooo?”

  “It’s sooo haaard being alive nowww.”

  “Help me, please. Somebody help me.”

  “Charlie, you going to be okay?” Edwina asked and followed Charlie into the ladies’ room.

  “I want to go home and I don’t mean the home place.” Charlie scrubbed her hands and forearms and made a cold pack out of wet paper towels for her face. “I’m about a fraction of a hair away from a hissy-fit panic attack—full blown. I’m just not ready for this particular stage of life yet.”

  “I don’t think most people ever are. And it’s really getting out of hand now with so many lingering so much longer than their minds.” Edwina wasn’t as tall as Libby but she was taller than Charlie. She held Charlie and the wet towels against her shoulder and Charlie cried. A lot. And a long time.

  “What if we have to stay here all night? It’s snowing so hard it practically buried Ida Mae for us.” They’d stuck a push broom into the snow—handle down, bristle side up—to mark the spot, and when she and her mom stepped out of the ladies now the broom stood totally coated in white, the bristle end less than a foot above the snow. And Dolores the tom sniffed at a human turd in the middle of the hall.

  “Maybe we can stay at Helen’s tonight. I don’t see anybody getting us out to the farm in this. Don’t lose it now. It’ll be all right, honey.”

  “Got a match?”

  Charlie ignored Sherman and his socks to stare at her mother. “You know, I haven’t seen you smoke since I met you in the Minneapolis airport.” Charlie had never known her mother without a long brown cigarette and a cough. “When?”

  “You smoke?” Sherman inquired.

  “When I got home after your accident. Decided it wasn’t worth it.”

  “Just like that? Can people do that? I mean, don’t you have to go to therapy and everything? I thought it was like alcoholism and drugs and stuff.”

  “Got a cigarette?”

  “Believe me, this trip is trying my resolve. If I can get through this, I can get through a
nything.”

  “Ciga-riga-roooo?”

  Sherman and Flo were sure examples of how hard it must be. They didn’t know who they were, but they knew they wanted a cigarette.

  “Charlie, don’t look at me like that. People can change at sixty. I’m still the mother you knew.”

  “Yeah, but no glasses, no cigarettes, you did your eyes, colored your hair, dated a younger man, you’re squaring your shoulders and not stooping, had your teeth capped.”

  “Yeah, and I’m in a fitness-workout program at CU, almost free for faculty. We do weights, yoga, swimming, running, Pilates—”

  “Mom, pretty soon I’m not even going to know you. Why are you doing all this at your age? I mean, I’m glad you quit smoking, but what’s the point with all the rest?”

  Before Edwina Greene could answer her daughter, a familiar mewling sounded from one of Sherman Rochester’s socks.

  “Larry, can you hear me? I won’t be back tomorrow. Edwina and I are snowed-in, in Iowa. What? All I’m getting is static—”

  “—been trying to get you all day.”

  “Someone stole my cellular, just found it. I’ll get back to you as soon as the storm clears. Could you check on Libby for me? Let her know what’s happening?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Oh, Edwina and I are stranded in a nursing home full of really old maniacs. But don’t tell Libby that, just tell her I’ll try to call her tomorrow. I’ll probably be a day or two late.” The rest was static, but she had her contact with the outside world in her hand. It still worked. The real world, other people’s nightmare, was Charlie’s ballast and still out there. How the hell did old Sherman get her precious tether to reality? And why did he put it in his socks? It wasn’t even silver.

  Charlie looked through her purse to see if anything else was missing. Her Palm Pilot. “Harvey, could your grandfather have stolen my Palm Pilot, too?”

  Rochester and Darla looked at each other and seemed agreed that it was unlikely.

  “He usually just takes silverware,” Darla said. “But if you hand him something, he’s more likely to put it in his sock than his pocket. Gladys steals letters and magazines to slip to Rose, who will read aloud until someone goes nuts and takes them away from her. Rose steals signs off the walls. Marlys—”

  “Marlys was standing next to you when you were telling off Elsina Miller this morning,” Edwina said.

  Marlys Dittberner roomed with Gladys, and both old women watched Harvey pull a suitcase out from under Marlys’ bed. “That’s mine. I’m going home today. It’s all packed,” Marlys told him.

  “It certainly is.” Harvey pulled out Charlie’s Palm Pilot, flight schedule, and key case. The rest of Marlys’ packing consisted of dentures, one bedroom slipper, and hearing aids with strings and clips to attach them to clothing so as not to lose them, but now all the strings and clips were tangled together. Plus a roll of toilet paper, pairs of dusty eyeglasses, several ballpoint pens, an empty clipboard, hats of various sizes, and an unopened box of Efferdent.

  As it turned out, Cousin Helen couldn’t take the Greenes in that night because her guest rooms and extra couches were filled with stranded help from Gentle Oaks. At least the nursing home wouldn’t be understaffed during the storm if the snowmobiles could get them about.

  The stranded administrator would have to sleep either in the lobby or her office—it was that bad an emergency. Charlie wondered about Harvey Rochester’s big house—but no one offered beds there that she heard about. What, he had a huge family everyone forgot to mention?

  So it came to pass that Charlie and Edwina and Uncle Elmo would spend the night upstairs at Viagra’s. Well, it was an emergency and respectable women couldn’t be seen there.

  Oh, boy.

  CHAPTER 18

  THAT NIGHT, CHARLIE had her first low-fat and low-sugar meal since she’d been in Iowa. Fresh salad greens with chopped carrots and whole sugar snap peas. Pasta with chopped basil, tomato, red and green bell peppers, green onions, parsley, garlic, and sprinkles of olive oil. Warm French bread, a good Chianti, a small chocolate truffle each. French-pressed coffee.

  Uncle Elmo complained that this would have been meatloaf, mashed potatoes, cooked green beans, and apple cobbler night if Viagra’s was open for business. He drank beer instead of wine and refused the coffee. “You should never have gone to Florida—twenty kinds of uncooked vegetables and not a shred of meat.”

  Charlie leaned back against a couch, replete. They’d eaten sitting on pillows on the floor around a square coffee table in front of a small wood stove, music playing softly on a CD somewhere behind a bookcase partition. “I thought it was magnificent, Kenny. Wonder what Elsina Miller’s having tonight.”

  He chuckled. “Figured you two wouldn’t hit it off. Wonder why. She’s eating whatever’s being served the rest up there. Del said nobody’d take her in.”

  “Oh, yeah. She’d have them up all night trying to convert ’em.” Uncle Elmo lowered his upper plate to clean bits of raw veggie off his gums.

  “Not even the woman preacher?”

  “Oh, she don’t live here. She’s got two churches, one here, one in Floyd. Lives in Floyd. Besides, our preacher’s Methodist. That Elsina’s Baptist. You got baking soda, Kenny? Have to soak these dentures in something. What about you, Edwina? Looks like you got false teeth, too.”

  “I’m fine, these don’t come out. Charlie’s contacts do, though.”

  “I’ve got baking soda and saline solution. I’ve got an apartment-size washer and dryer if anyone needs to wash out a few things, and some T-shirts for you to sleep in. If the electricity holds up. I’m surprised those wires haven’t gone down, too.”

  “So everybody in town is taking in employees of Gentle Oaks in this emergency, except Harvey Rochester, who owns the nursing home and the biggest house in town?”

  “Well, he can’t, you see, little Charlie. Because most of those employees are females, and females find him irresistible and he could get in a whole lot of trouble even if he wasn’t home. I expect you noticed his resemblance to that fella that was one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands.”

  Charlie watched the laughter fight with the fondness in the barkeep’s eyes and a real smile part lips that usually settled for a closed, sardonic grin. “God, I missed this in Florida.”

  “Get me another beer, Kenny. I’m trying to die. See, there was a school superintendent in the county not long ago caught stepping out with some of the high-school students. Stepping out to motels far from home. Lost his job and family, life ruined forever. Things have got to a point these days a man don’t dare smile at somebody ain’t his wife or mother.”

  “So how about you, Charlie Greene? Is it fun being a Hollywood literary agent?” Kenny set a beer down in front of Elmo.

  “I love it,” Charlie said. “It’s hectic and stressful and exciting and gives me something to get up for every morning. It’s my identity. What’s your identity, Kenneth Cowper? All these books, your fab figure, your sensitivity to the horrors up at the Oaks—you just don’t profile as a tiny-town barkeep somehow.”

  “Squirt.” Edwina came suddenly alive. “Kenneth Cooper, right? The Last of the Manly Hardy Boys. I’ve been trying to remember what was so familiar about you besides the Myrtle eyes and you as a squirt. I loved Dead Time in Disneyland.”

  Charlie had never heard of him or his books—she wouldn’t if he wasn’t a bestseller. Even then, bestsellers crank through the industry pretty fast—if it’s not your author, never filmed, and Cooper’s a pretty ordinary name compared to Cowper.

  He watched her churn through all this, the closed grin on his face. “I’ve heard all about you.”

  “Tell me you’re not writing a nursing-home book.”

  “Why not?”

  “Totally too depressing for the market. What would your market be? Women? No way, they get to change the Depends. Men? It’s not exactly football. They want to see blood and bruises, not excrement. There’s no glory i
n excrement, Kenny.”

  “Charlie, Kenneth Cooper writes nonfiction,” Edwina said. “To think I was calling Kenneth Cooper ‘Squirt.’ I’m getting old.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Charlie squinted so hard at their host his grin opened into a smile again. “The Legend of Myrtle.”

  “I was thinking something more like The Curse of Myrtle, which, you realize, must include Gentle Oaks.”

  “You write books, Kenny?” Elmo too squinted at the hunk. “How do you have time to do that and run the pool hall and run yourself to a sweat and lift all them weights and stuff?”

  “And have time to visit your relatives at the nursing home?” Charlie added.

  “I do the ordering and the bookkeeping for Viagra’s, have things pretty well computerized. Jack does the cooking. Lorna does the bartending, Jody and Lou the cleanup. I come down to the bar in the evenings to keep an eye on things, sometimes at noon. But since we close down by ten at the latest, I have lots of time to write and research, work out, and enjoy life, too. And don’t worry, I have an agent.”

  “Who?”

  “Jeth Larue.”

  “Isn’t Jethro Larue the one who stole Georgette Millrose from you, Charlie?” Edwina asked.

  Charlie’d had an inkling there were writers coming out of the woodwork everywhere, but Jesus—in Myrtle, Iowa?

  When Kenny’s father died and his mother left for Florida, taking Kenny and his sister with her, she leased this building and the business to Jack and Lorna. They were his secret weapon. “They couldn’t make a go of it, so eventually in order to get rid of me, my mom sold me her holdings in Myrtle to get rid of them, too. Turned out a perfect deal for us both. I need to get away to do my work. Here, I can arrange my privacy and my socializing as I want.”