Dead by Dinner Time

by Jeff Shelby

  Denise stopped at our table and set down a plate in front of each of us. “Save room for dessert,” she reminded us.

  Earl looked over his meal, at the soggy chicken and the pile of lumpy rice pilaf and the glazed carrot coins that looked like they were swimming in a sea of butter. “Can’t we just skip to that?” he grumbled.

  Denise smiled cheerfully, revealing a mouthful of metal. Even though she was probably twice my age, she’d decided late in life that she wanted straight teeth. She’d been in braces since my first day at Oasis Ridge, and judging from what her orthodontist told her at her monthly appointments, she was going to be stuck with them for the long haul.

  “You can do whatever you want with your lunch,” she said to Earl. “But dessert isn’t coming out for a good twenty minutes.” She hurried off to get more plates.

  I slid my fork into the pile of rice. The food wasn’t terrible at Oasis Ridge, but it wasn’t exactly good, either. I’d gotten used to the cafeteria taste of things; after all, Lola, the cook, was responsible for making enough food to feed, on average, over a hundred residents at each meal. The community had enough units for 200 residents, but some of those apartments and rooms were vacant, and some residents chose not to come to each meal. Still, feeding a hundred people three times a day was no easy task, and I was sure her primary focus was on having an adequate amount of food available for each meal.

  Besides, taste wasn’t a huge consideration for me. The thing that kept me coming to the dining room was that my meals were included as part of my compensation package. So I wasn’t going to complain if the rice was a little too salty and the carrots were a little too buttery.

  Billie shuffled by with her walker, lowering herself into a chair at the table just to our left.

  “Smells good in here!” she practically yelled.

  I nodded and smiled. The tables were filling up. Arthur Griggs and Mary Uhlrich, Oasis Ridge’s resident sweethearts, were already seated at their table near the coffee. Arthur was sniffing his plate suspiciously, a frown on his wrinkled face, while Mary stirred the cup of tea in front of her. She was newer to Oasis Ridge than I was but I’d already learned that she had tea with all of her meals.

  Ruth, another resident I was friendly with, was seated with a few women at another table close by. She dressed for every meal as though she were headed to a five-star restaurant. I grinned when I saw the pearls around her throat and the enormous rings decorating several of her fingers. I often wondered just how many of her pieces were costume jewelry or the real thing.

  “You gonna eat that?” Earl said, motioning to the yeast roll still sitting in the breadbasket.

  I snatched it and set it on my plate. I didn’t much care if I ate it or not, but I knew the baskets that were brought to the table had one roll for each seat. Since Earl and I were sitting alone, that meant he’d already eaten three.

  “I didn’t see you at the movie this morning,” I said to him. “Are you going to make it to the discussion this afternoon?

  He frowned. “It was An Affair to Remember?”

  I nodded.

  He harrumphed. “I don’t much care for Cary Grant.” His frown deepened. “All the ladies thought he was so handsome.”

  “I’m sure you were just as handsome as he was back in the day, ” I reassured him.

  Earl’s bushy eyebrows rose high. “More handsome,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  We ate our meal and Earl asked me questions about the cruise. I answered with generalities and a few white lies, which appeared to satisfy him.

  Before long, Denise was headed back toward us, her tray loaded with slices of the much-anticipated chocolate cake.

  Ruth stopped her just as she neared our table. “Lunch is taking an awfully long time to serve today,” I heard her say.

  Denise nodded. “We’re short staffed. One of the other gals—Patty—called out sick.”

  “Sick?” Ruth said.

  “A cold, I think,” Denise told her. “She’s coughing up a storm. And you know we can’t have that in the dining room.”

  Ruth’s eyes rounded. She spun the rings on her hands, thinking for a second. Then she put her hands on the armrests of her chair and pushed herself into a standing position. “Can I help?” she said. “I used to be a waitress, you know.”

  Denise shot a glance in my direction. I had no idea what to say. I mean, if it had been up to me, I would have handed her the tray and told her to have at it. Revisiting a previous job had the potential to be wonderfully therapeutic for someone her age, especially if she was voluntarily offering to do it.

  But Denise apparently didn’t think this. She shook her head as she slapped plates of chocolate cake down in front of Ruth and her three dining partners. “Nope, you just sit down and enjoy your chocolate cake. No need for you to help.”

  “I used to be a car hop,” Ruth told her. “And I wore roller skates! I could deliver food in here with my eyes shut.”

  “I bet you could,” Denise told her. “And I would have loved to see you on roller skates!”

  She was so good with the residents. From what I’d heard, Denise had worked on the dining room staff at Oasis Ridge for years and truly seemed to love her job. She never complained, and she never lost her temper with the residents...not even when they grumbled about the food or the service.

  But Denise was not a saint. She might put on a professional act for the people she worked for, but the people she worked with? Now that was anther story. She was as feisty as they came, and as much as she drove me nuts sometimes, I had to admit I liked her. Immensely.

  There were two pieces of cake left on her tray and she brought these to me and Earl.

  “Here you go,” she said, sliding the bigger of the two pieces in front of Earl.

  He glanced at my cake and then me, his expression hopeful. “You planning to eat that?”

  I took in his tall, gaunt frame. He ate like a horse. Where did he put it all?

  His own slice of cake was already halfway gone.

  I pushed my plate toward him.

  “You can have it,” I said.

  His eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He grinned. “You know something, Sunny? I like you.”

  I smiled back. “I like you, too, Earl.”

  And I did.

  I just wished I liked my job, too.

  THREE

  The aroma coming from the dining room tickled my nose but I wasn’t hungry.

  I’d spent the rest of my afternoon checking in on the movie discussion and then planning the fall calendar—and having Anne shoot down nearly every suggestion I’d had for new activities. Ending my day by restocking the Bingo prize cart and laminating new cards pretty much summed up how my conversations with Anne had gone: nowhere. Just keep doing the same thing.

  I shoved the box of restocked prizes—chocolates and hard candies and a roll of quarters to dispense one at a time for each winning game—into the Bingo cupboard and placed the stack of newly laminated cards alongside it. I was ready to go home, to kick off my sandals and have a beer or a glass of wine and just try to forget how stymied I felt on my first day back from vacation.

  I went back to my office and powered down my computer. Home was only a fifteen-minute drive away, just east on John Sims Parkway, down toward Valparaiso Boulevard. With any luck, there would be a frozen dinner or something in the freezer, something I could quickly warm up and call a meal. I’d gotten back from my cruise just the day before and hadn’t paid attention to anything other than taking a shower and crawling into my own bed.

  There was always the possibility that Megan, my roommate, might be home. Maybe we could grab dinner out, take-out or something a little nicer, even. Maybe have a drink. Or three.

  If she wasn’t with Dylan, of course. She and her boyfriend had been together long before I’d entered her life as a roommate. We’d hit it off immediately, and I often wondered if we would be closer if she was single like me
.

  I closed my office door, glancing at the clock on the wall just before it disappeared from view. It was 4:45, which was definitely early for me to be heading out. Fortunately, I was salaried so I could set my own hours, and because I often stayed late or came in on the weekends, I had no qualms about leaving early when I did so, especially when there was nothing to do.

  I knew residents would be streaming out of their rooms soon, ready for the clock to strike five and their meal to commence. Five o’clock always felt too early to be serving dinner, and if I had dinner at Oasis Ridge at that time, I would inevitably be starving and ready for a snack by nine o’clock.

  I knew I shouldn’t complain about free food—free was free, right?—and I knew that the early meal time was because the residents often ended their day much earlier than someone like me. And I also knew that I didn’t have to eat there.

  Which was exactly why I was leaving before the dinner meal was served: because I could go elsewhere.

  A commotion near the dining room got my attention as I approached the end of the hallway. People were bustling toward the eating area, but these weren’t residents.

  They were people in uniforms.

  I craned my neck. Was everyone on staff today heading in early for dinner? Did they know something about the menu that I didn’t?

  I squinted. The people hurrying into the room weren’t wearing nursing scrubs like the PCAs on staff, or even the couple of nurses we had on call each day.

  No, these people were in white uniforms.

  Paramedics.

  I shouldered my purse and hurried down the hall, smiling an apology at Ethel, who I accidentally jostled as she shuffled out of her room.

  Aidan was standing just outside the dining room, hunched over, one hand cupping his chin. He wasn’t bringing a resident to dinner. In fact, I didn’t quite know what he was doing.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He glanced at me. “Arthur Griggs. He passed out in the dining room.”

  “Passed out?” Is he okay?”

  I didn’t wait for Aidan to respond. Instead, I gently pushed my way past the onlookers, navigating a path through the sea of walkers and wheelchairs until I was standing with a clear view of the dining room. Most of the tables were empty, save for clean pink tablecloths. Crystal vases sat in the center of each one, all of them holding a lone silk rose. The smell of Mexican food and some kind of cobbler scented the air.

  Four paramedics were on the scene, the people in white I’d seen rush into the dining room.

  But none of them were doing anything.

  My gaze drifted to a table nearby.

  Arthur Griggs was seated in one of the chairs. Slumped over, his head at an awkward angle on the table. Two plates full of food were on the table, and it was almost a miracle that his head hadn’t landed on his enchilada.

  I swallowed and thought about what Aidan had just said. That Arthur had passed out in the dining room.

  Arthur Griggs did not look like he was passed out.

  I darted a look at the paramedics. They were stowing their equipment back into bags. One was standing near a stretcher with a white sheet neatly folded at the foot of it.

  I swallowed again.

  No, Arthur Griggs wasn’t unconscious.

  Arthur Griggs was absolutely, positively dead.

  FOUR

  Mary Ulrich was huddled in a corner, a handkerchief pressed to one of her eyes.

  I hurried toward her.

  “Mary. Are you okay?”

  She gazed at me with watery blue eyes. She looked confused. “What is happening? Why aren’t they waking him up?”

  My heart constricted. She seemed to have no idea that Arthur couldn’t be revived.

  “Oh, Mary,” I said, my own eyes filling with tears. “I think Arthur is...gone.”

  She pressed the handkerchief to her left eye to stem the flow of tears. “Ar-are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I think so, yes.”

  She hiccupped out a breath.

  “Were you with him?” I asked. “Do you know what happened?”

  Her jowls trembled but she nodded. “We’d just sat down to dinner. We got there early. You know Arthur. He has that certain table he likes.”

  I knew this. Arthur would often come to the dining room fifteen or twenty minutes early, especially when new residents moved in, to send the message loud and clear that the table by the coffee dispenser was his. And if someone tried to sit down in the empty two seats at his and Mary’s table, he would grouse and give the intruders dirty looks. People rarely made the same mistake twice.

  I put my hand on her elbow and steered her away from the dining room. The paramedics had moved the stretched closer to Arthur and one of them was unfolding a thick, white sheet.

  Mary didn’t need to see that.

  I guided her to one of the couches in the Gathering Room. She lowered herself on to it, her body sinking heavily into the cushions.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I offered. “Some tea? Maybe something a little stronger?”

  She shook her head. She’d gotten her hair done recently; her white curls were still tight, still springy, and they bounced as she moved her head from side to side.

  I sat down next to her, putting my hand on hers and giving her fingers a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

  “I don’t know what happened.” Mary’s voice shook as she spoke. “He was fine all day. Nothing was wrong. And he was fine when I left him.”

  “You left him?” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

  “I had to go to the ladies room,” she explained. “That’s where I was when...when...” Her voice trailed off and fresh tears sprung in her eyes.

  I squeezed her hand again, being careful not to apply too much pressure. Her skin was soft, paper-thin, like the skin on an onion. “I’m so sorry.”

  She pulled one of her hands free and searched for the handkerchief she’d shoved back into her pocket. “I just...it was so unexpected. I know we’re at that age where these things happen, but...”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I wasn’t naïve to the fact that people died in retirement communities. For most of them, this was their last stop, the home they would be in for the rest of their lives. Oasis Ridge had some units that were equipped for assisted living and memory care. As long as a resident didn’t require continuous or intensive medical care, they often didn’t have to be moved during their final months or years.

  We’d had a few residents pass during my time there, and I’d lost a few at the nursing home where I first worked after I’d graduated, so this experience wasn’t new to me. Elderly people died, often at a faster rate than younger folks. It was simply a fact of life.

  But knowing this—expecting it, even—didn’t make it any easier to experience.

  I hadn’t lost any of my favorite residents yet, and I was already bracing myself for when that time came.

  I immediately thought of Billie Applegate, the redheaded woman who’d yelled out to me when I’d walked back in from my vacation yesterday morning. I’d taken to her from the first day I’d started at Oasis Ridge, and not just because she had the same hair color as me. Of course, her hair was dyed and mine was natural, but she always referred to me as her younger self. No, I liked her for much more than her almost matching hair color. I liked her spunk, her sass, her sarcastic sense of humor. She always knew how to make me smile, even after dour conversations with Anne.

  “I heard the news,” a voice said from behind us.

  Speak of the devil.

  Anne was standing next to the couch, her hands clasped in front of her, her worried expression visible behind her purple glasses.

  She leaned over and patted Mary’s shoulder. “How are you doing, dear? Can I get you anything? A cup of tea, perhaps?” Anne gave me a look that suggested I should have thought of this.

  I was immediately defensive. “I already offered her one.”

  Mary nodded.
“That would be nice.”

  Anne gave me a reproachful look and I bit my lip in frustration.

  I couldn’t win.

  I stood up. “I’m going to see how everyone else is doing, see if I can get any more information. You’ll be okay?”

  Mary nodded and dabbed at her eyes again. Anne had already gone to fetch a cup of tea so I knew she wouldn’t be alone for long.

  I hurried back to the dining room, watching as the paramedics began to wheel the stretcher out, Arthur’s body covered by the white sheet.

  I watched solemnly as they rolled by. I’d always liked Arthur, despite the fact that he could be a bit of a curmudgeon. He’d never been particularly mean or ornery toward me, and he was usually willing to try any of the new activities I managed to get Anne to approve. Yes, he’d been grumpy about his table and his food, but everyone had their faults, right?

  The crowd of residents and employees began to thin as soon as the paramedics left. Even though it was now five o’clock, right when dinner was to be served, no one made a move to enter the dining room. In fact, they had all turned away, heading to their rooms or back to their stations. I scoped out the dining room and saw Denise looking a bit like a deer caught in the headlights.

  I made my way toward her. She was standing near Arthur’s table, a tray loaded with plates full of food in her hands.

  “Did you see what happened?” I asked.

  Her complexion was a couple of shades lighter than normal and her dark eyes looked hollow. “No,” she said, shaking her head. She set her tray down and I noticed that her hands shook as she lowered it. “We’d just started getting ready to serve. I’d brought drinks out. Mary and Arthur already had their food because they got here so early. Billie and her friends were at their table and I was bringing them their meal when there was some kind of...commotion.”

  “Commotion?”

  Denise nodded, then swiped at a stray black lock that brushed against her cheek. “I heard this big thumping sound and when I glanced over, Arthur’s head was on the table. It was like he just fell over.”