“The forensic people think there was more pressure than that.”
Freddy remembered Grandma and her meany beanies. What was a meany beany anyway, and how mean was he? Was he a murderer? Had Grandma seen something?
But Cordelia Chase couldn’t recognize a Christmas tree anymore, let alone spot that somebody was using a pillow to smush a patient.
And Grandma hadn’t sounded scared. Some dementia patients were scared all the time, but Grandma was only occasionally scared, mostly when he was pushing the wheelchair, so she couldn’t see him and she’d cry out, “Who’s there?” He would circle the wheelchair, kneel, take her hands, and say comforting things until she felt better.
Freddy couldn’t believe Maude had been murdered. There was no point in murdering anyone here. Every resident was already en route to death.
Out the single window of the yellow room, he saw Kenneth Yardley, now sitting alone on a bench. On TV cop shows, they always suspected the spouse first. Freddy could imagine a husband getting desperate; all the families got desperate. But there was a lot easier solution: just stop visiting.
But in sober fact—not that Freddy was sober—such a death could have been planned by both spouses. Back when she was herself, Maude and her husband might have discussed situations like this. Back when she could put on makeup, meet her girlfriends for lunch, and play golf, back when there was no such thing in their lives as cognitive decline, Maude might have said, “Promise you’ll just knock me off if I ever get Alzheimer’s. If you love me, take me out of this body and send me into the next world.”
But talking about offing the person you love and doing it aren’t the same. It’s more of a pact: This is not happening to us. We are not getting Alzheimer’s. We are going to die comfortably in our sleep on our incredibly expensive mattress.
“You know one of the things that happens to people with dementia?” Freddy said to the cop. “Or Alzheimer’s? They revert to being very little kids, like a one-year-old. And they forget how to brace for a fall. And they can’t balance to start with. So when they fall, they fall face-first. You’re going to see people with black eyes and gashed chins. Nobody got rough with them. They tipped over and hit the floor without flinging their hands out. So probably the bruises on Maude are from a fall. Nobody held her down. And don’t go after the staff. It’ll ruin MMC, and we need this place, and besides, I don’t believe it. It had to be somebody from the outside.”
“And how would that work, exactly?” asked the cop. “Start with signing in at that front desk.”
“You could write any old name on the sign-in sheet,” said Freddy. He had a bad feeling this was going to backfire, because if the detective knew about the sign-in sheets, he’d already confiscated or copied them, and Freddy’s name wouldn’t be there. But what would it matter? He had nothing to do with Kenneth or Maude. “Or come in with a group, like that Suzuki violin class that shows up every month with doting parents and video cams. As for the door code, it isn’t to keep visitors out; it’s to keep residents in. If you don’t know it, the desk clerk just gives it to you. But you’d just be a violin parent and slide right in.”
People loved doing good deeds, and what better good deed than to brighten a day at MMC? There was constant traffic of puppeteers, accordion players, storytellers, high school madrigal choirs, finger painters, and whatever. Half the residents were too deaf or mentally groggy to follow any action, song, or skill. The other half did enjoy it, even if they didn’t know what it was or left in the middle.
Freddy preferred to take Grandma out. There were others who did the same: the woman who saved up all her errands so she could take her Alzheimer’s sister along, the son who still took his father bowling. The dad just sat there smiling at nothing while the son bowled for both of them.
Freddy wondered how the outsider murderer would know which bedroom was Maude’s. They weren’t labeled. The staff would have to show him. They’d say to the patient, “Here’s your nephew!” or whatever. They’d be glad Maude had somebody in her life besides Kenneth. You wouldn’t suffocate somebody while the staff stood there, so you’d hang tight till they left.
There were usually three or four aides, one LPN in charge, and one housekeeper. And of course there were other wings, identical in layout, all opening to the activity center, all with their own staff. The residents wandered constantly from wing to wing, but it wouldn’t be easy for a stranger to wander.
But okay, the guy gets into the common room and somehow knows where to go and nobody sees him. What’s he going to do? Shut Maude’s door, press down the pillow, walk out? What if Kenneth was around? What about the physical therapist or visiting folk singers or the guy who clips everybody’s warped toenails?
If you did a daytime strangle, since Maude probably wore pull-ups, needed meds, and had to be coaxed to drink liquids, an aide would shortly check on her, find her dead. You, the killer, would just have left.
But maybe nobody would link those two events. They’d just be glad that the poor “nephew” didn’t actually witness the death. And if a day or two later, an aide mentioned the nephew’s visit to Kenneth Yardley, and Kenneth said, “What nephew?” the aide would figure that in all the confusion, she’d mixed people up.
Or maybe the killer would pretend to be visiting somebody else altogether, so there really was no connection with Maude.
It wouldn’t get easier to murder Maude by night. There were the before- and after-supper visitors. Then residents got washed up, given meds, put into their nightclothes, and tucked in. They were checked on all night long. There was no deep closet in which a visitor could hide, waiting for an opportunity, because people with dementia often had sufficient paranoia to like hiding, so instead of a closet, rooms had built-in drawers.
And what about when the murderer left MMC? He’d have to remember the exit code and pass the front-desk clerk again. Doable. But visible.
On the other hand, there were a lot of exit doors.
Each wing had two exits to the outside in case of fire. From the back garden with its shrubbery and fencing, there was an emergency exit gate. The bolt was very high up. Too high for a resident and, in Freddy’s opinion, too high for half the staff. What were they supposed to do in case of fire—bring step stools? Ask a ninety-three-year-old for a leg up?
Freddy had been here once during a fire drill. Talk about nightmare. The alarm was so loud it gave Freddy a heart attack, and not a single resident noticed it. The aides had to coax everybody to walk outside, or push their wheelchairs, or give them their walkers. Half the residents didn’t want to go. Half were asleep in chairs or sprawled on their beds, and it took two aides to move them. Half were going to the bathroom. Then when everybody was finally congregated at the proper exit, the aides did a head count and one resident was missing.
Freddy had been pushing his grandmother and also holding Mr. Griffin’s arm. Mr. Griffin appeared to notice nothing amiss, but his grandmother could tell they were taking a trip. “Freddy, where is my hat?” She wouldn’t move until Freddy located a hat.
The missing resident turned up in another resident’s bathroom. The aide had to wait for him to finish pooping.
Grandma’s wing failed miserably to get all the residents out of the building in the time allotted. If it had really been a fire, they would also have had to open the emergency gate and push everybody out into the parking lot. Freddy couldn’t imagine keeping track of this crowd while fire engines whipped onto the property.
It occurred to him that a person could get into Memory Care from the garden gate instead of the front door. They’d need a stepladder on the outside to reach over and down to the bolt.
Freddy found that he was telling the detective about the garden-entry possibility.
“The back exit doors are just open?” asked the detective. “But we checked those. They have a code both directions.”
“It’s the same cod
e. Even nondementia people can’t remember more than one. So if you’ve ever been here, you know the code.” Which opened up hundreds of possibilities: every friend, relative, medical worker, volunteer, and entertainer.
“What I think is,” he told the detective, “you need another opinion on that autopsy. Do you trust that pathologist or is he a jerk?”
“She. Not a jerk. But I will tell her about people falling all the time.”
“Don’t make that sound like the staff’s fault either,” Freddy directed him. “It just happens.” Too late, Freddy remembered another rule from Hippie Crime 101—don’t give cops instructions. Don’t give them anything. Just stand there and be stupid and silent.
Mrs. Maple said, “I’m uncertain that I accept the pathologist’s report. But if it’s true, Freddy is right. You have a lot of people to look at. There are many outsiders.”
The detective smiled indulgently at Mrs. Maple. “And what threatening outsider have you seen around here lately?”
Chapter Ten
A rushing sound filled Freddy’s skull. His brain swayed, as if it had come unattached.
Doc. The ultimate threatening outsider.
Doc had seen Freddy with Grandma. Grandma lived next door to Maude. Maude Yardley and Grandma had the same white hair and the same tiny breakable bodies. Could Doc have come into MMC and murdered Maude, thinking she was Freddy’s grandmother? All because he wouldn’t fake bead sales for Gary Leperov?
Some poor, confused old woman suddenly felt a vise of fingers, a mouthful of towel, her face crushed, her body thrashing, her life ending—and it was Freddy’s fault?
The inside of his head went dark and seemed to implode. Freddy had always wondered what a faint was. You’re standing there and you fall over? Come on.
He lowered himself carefully onto a soft yellow chair and managed to focus on the yellow wallpaper and the bowl of wooden apples in the center of a pointless little table. Somehow he drew a breath and then another, and when he could look around, the cop was talking to Mrs. Maple, and neither of them seemed aware that Freddy was hot, humiliated, and shaky. His faint had been on the interior. There were no witnesses.
Wait.
If the Leper had told Doc to hurt Freddy, he’d hurt Freddy, not his grandmother. And Doc wouldn’t use a pillow on Freddy. Not a bullet in the head either. Given his commitment to mixed martial arts, he’d beat Freddy to a pulp.
Besides, offing old ladies wasn’t the Leper’s master plan: paying taxes so he’d look legal was his master plan.
Plus, a guy like Doc, built like a refrigerator and wearing spiked rings on tattooed hands, wouldn’t blend into the parking lot, never mind the common room.
And the Leper didn’t know that Freddy even had a grandmother, let alone one at MMC. Yes, Doc and Skinny had seen him push the wheelchair, which was, like, a clue. But it wasn’t a name or a place.
You don’t kill somebody over beads, Freddy told himself.
Except that there were no beads. There was dirty money, and maybe you did kill somebody over dirty money.
“You don’t sign in or out, Mr. Bell,” said the cop, “so you could have been here Wednesday night.”
Had he admitted that he never signed in? Had the cop already examined the sign-in sheets? Or was the cop guessing?
A flaw of being high was that listening closely was out of reach; you could only listen loosely and then you drifted.
“Where were you Wednesday night?” asked the cop in a kind and neighborly voice. I’m just your friendly patrolman; you can tell me anything.
I was in my shop, thought Freddy. Alone. Making bongs. Which I plan to sell to your college-age kid.
Whoa. Had he said that out loud?
Apparently not, because Mapes snapped at the detective, “I beg your pardon! What is going on here? Why are you asking foolish questions of us?”
The cop sighed. “Mrs. Maple, I’m not saying either of you guys clipped the old lady. I’m just trying to get information, and instead, you’re giving me opinions and interrupting me. How about I ask the questions and you give the answers?”
Laura did not care for this man. She nodded out the window. “I am concerned about Kenneth. He looks ill.” She left the sitting room and walked through the lobby and out the front door to join Kenneth Yardley on the bench. The rain had stopped but the sun had not come out. It was gloomy and funereal and cold.
Kenneth was knotting his fingers and then releasing them, staring at his joints the way Alzheimer’s patients stared at things: with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Was he sliding into dementia himself or remembering all too clearly that these very fingers had held a pillow or a towel on Wednesday night?
Supposedly a person being suffocated fought with every bit of strength he or she possessed. What did fighting back consist of when you were nine decades old and weak as tissue paper?
“You let us know when the funeral is, Kenneth,” she said. “We’ll want to go.” Laura wasn’t sure who we meant, since in fact she did not want to go and couldn’t imagine that anybody else here did. But a life must be honored, and Laura believed in the power of a funeral to comfort the family and guide the soul.
“There won’t be a service,” said Kenneth drearily. “Maude didn’t believe in anything. Neither do I.”
People who didn’t believe in anything still had funerals. It was hard to drive up to a hole in the ground, drop the coffin in, and walk away. Even committed proselytizing atheists sometimes arranged church services, hedging their bets, perhaps, or succumbing to a last-minute horror over the dark nothingness they preached. Laura had been organist for a few of these. Don’t play sacred music, they would tell her. But she always did. If they wanted secular, they’d be at a funeral home.
Kenneth was wringing his hands. His nails had not turned yellow or gotten ugly ridges, nor was his skin covered with age spots. The fingers were young. And now that Laura paid attention, his white hair had a settled, stiff look, too lush for a man Kenneth’s age. Was it a hairpiece? Did men going bald ever buy white wigs instead of brown?
How old was Kenneth anyway? Maude had been in her nineties. But Kenneth did not seem anything like that old. Maybe Maude had once been a sexy chick and married a much younger man. Had Kenneth tired of waiters asking what he and his mother would like for dinner? Had he decided on a white hairpiece to present himself as a better match for his elderly wife?
“I wasn’t here Wednesday night when they say it happened,” said Kenneth, his voice full of anguish, “but they’re treating me as if I sneaked back in and did it myself.”
“Kenneth, I’m so sorry,” she said helplessly.
She prayed for Maude. Dear Lord, forget that she’s an atheist who believes in nothing. Take her anyway. Let Maude be joyous and beautiful. Let her laugh and run. Let her hug friends and read books. Forgive Kenneth.
Forgive me.
Freddy was not happy being alone in a small room with a cop, but he was filled with admiration for Mapes, just walking out on a detective.
He wondered if an autopsy started more than a day late could establish much of a time of death. “Wednesday night” was a bunch of hours. Suppose Maude had been murdered Wednesday afternoon instead, when visitors and activity people were still around, and nobody noticed the murderer or the temporarily closed bedroom door. Visitors tended to leave by five, as the staff gathered everybody for dinner. Would they notice if Maude was dead?
Most residents slept a lot of the time and a few slept practically all the time. If an aide glanced in and thought Maude was sleeping, would they shake her awake for dinner? Fix her a plate and hold it for later? Let her skip the meal altogether, figuring she needed her sleep?
MMC, which had seemed a nice cocoon last week, seemed pretty penetrable today. Freddy suppressed a shudder but not well enough, because the cop said, “Your grandmother is safe.”
<
br /> Freddy had trouble believing that a cop wanted to deliver comfort, but the guy actually patted Freddy’s shoulder. “I think of you, and all these families, as heroes.”
If I led Doc here, I’m no hero. And if the Leper ordered that murder, he’ll check the online banners of the local paper and the TV station. He’ll find out that the wrong resident got offed. He’ll be back.
Freddy would never tell a cop about Gary Leperov. But if Freddy didn’t tell, and Doc came back a second time…
Cut it out, he told himself. It wasn’t Doc. The Lep doesn’t want me or anybody else dead; he wants me to exhibit at BABE and fake another fifty thousand. There is no threatening stranger. There’s Kenneth.
“The administrator told me you take your grandmother for a walk three, four times a week so she can get fresh air and sunshine,” said the detective. Now he sounded snarky. Freddy looked up and saw mild contempt. You’re a loser, kid, the cop was saying. You have to get wasted to make yourself come in the door.
Freddy was saved from an inappropriate response by another cop stepping into the parlor and muttering urgently. Freddy headed for his car. Nobody paid attention.
It’s fine to be a loser to a cop, he told himself. Respect doesn’t matter. This is a good outcome. Drive away.
And that nub in the cup holder?
Smoke it.
Chapter Eleven
Laura got home to find that the organ crew was long gone and had locked up. It didn’t look as if they had done a thing, but in Laura’s experience, construction was like that. Guys wandered around and got comfortable with a project before they actually launched.
The Grandmother Plot Page 7
