by Ross Pennie
Tuesday morning, Zol turned off Aberdeen Street into Eaglescliffe Avenue. And into Narnia. It might as well have been a fantasy world for all the resemblance the cul-de-sac bore to the rest of the lower city. Gorgeous mansions sat like haughty, overdressed dowagers at a nineteenth-century garden party. At the far end, the sheer face of the Niagara Escarpment defended the enclave from the riffraff to the south with its rampart of wooded limestone. Again, Zol felt uncouth driving his muddy minivan into such opulence. Everyone here would have a Porsche or a Mercedes tucked in the garage.
Camelot Lodge occupied one of the most well-known heritage structures in Hamilton. It had been built in the 1880s as a mansion for an industrialist’s family. Now it loomed on a snowy island in the circular roadway, where it boasted three stories of intricate stonework, a tall square tower, a round turret, and a forest of chimneys.
“I guess the previous owners didn’t fuss over their vows of poverty,” Zol told Natasha, who was beside him in the passenger seat.
“Sorry?” she said.
“I thought you knew. A few years ago it was full of nuns. A Catholic convent.”
The massive slate roof capped the original structure and the boxy addition beside it, which included the elevator shaft and glassed-in fire escape. Despite its storied grandeur, the place looked drab in grimy, leafless March. It would look better in May when its lawns and trees turned green.
An anxious face peered through a mullioned upper window and quickly disappeared. A wild-haired soul in a pale nightgown rapped her fist at another window and called inaudibly through the triple-pane glass.
“Does your grandfather like living there?”
Art felt like a grandfather, so Zol didn’t correct her. “He appreciates the company and the amenities, I think. A single room with his own bath and toilet. Says he’s glad the Lodge is a small operation that doesn’t feel like an institution.”
Thirty active seniors lived in the original part of the building, known as the Belvedere Wing. It was a shame the renovators had removed the grand staircase, which Zol had seen in old photographs, to make space for an enlarged dining room and several more bedrooms.
“The common sitting room is just the right size,” Natasha said. “Cozy but not cramped. And I love its chintz curtains.”
Zol never noticed curtains and had yet to figure out exactly what chintz was. “Don’t think there’s any chintz in the Mountain Wing infirmary. According to Art and Earl, it’s the dark empire on the far side of the moon. I’ve never had occasion to go in there.”
Natasha pointed to the second floor of the addition and made a face. “You haven’t missed much. Bare walls, ugly blinds on the windows. Eight patients, in four double rooms. All in various stages of dementia, poor things.”
Zol thought of his parents, currently on a month-long golfing holiday in Florida. They lived thirty minutes west of Hamilton, off Highway 403. His dad was pushing seventy but still active on the farm and secretary of the Ginseng Growers Association of Brant County. He’d switched from growing tobacco to harvesting ginseng seven years ago, soon after Zol started his public-health training. Zol couldn’t imagine his mother, so fastidious about her appearance, as anything less than a commanding presence in her own home. She was a super cook and a whiz at crosswords and Sudoku.
He had no warm and fuzzy illusions about nursing homes and retirement residences, no matter how many luxuries they purported to offer. He knew they were businesses, first and foremost. And visited by battalions who packed the parking lots: doctors, nurses, chaplains, chiropractors, chiropodists, physios, pharmacists, herbalists, hairdressers, and the delivery guys who lugged in everything from flowers to oxygen tanks. Today, only three vehicles sat in the lot: a blue Dodge van, a grey Chevy Malibu, and Phyllis Wedderspoon’s long, snow-white ’72 Lincoln.
The place was owned by someone offshore, a Taiwanese, Zol had heard. The Oliveiras were resident managers with their own apartment on the ground floor. Gus, who used to be in construction, did the maintenance. Gloria, who had once been a bookkeeper and office manager, was clearly in charge.
Zol read the closed-to-visitors notice on the front door as he held it open for Natasha. He’d ordered the Lodge quarantined the moment she’d told him about yesterday’s deaths. Of course, no one used the word quarantine these days — too frightening for the sensibilities of the modern public, too much like the nineteenth century and its epidemics of smallpox and typhus. The politically correct term was closed to visitors, with instructions to take enquiries to the front desk. The elusive pathogen had become a vicious adversary, its power escalating. The damn thing had killed five people in the past two weeks. Zol found it impossible not to think of the Q-word. He pictured the Prime Minister’s assistant at his desk beneath the Peace Tower, the name Zol Szabo scrawled on his to-do list.
Inside the lobby, Zol and Natasha pumped hand sanitizer onto their palms. Zol usually made a show of rubbing a double shot of the pungent antiseptic over every centimetre of his hands. But there was no audience to impress. The common room was dark and deserted. A ball of yarn sat forgotten on a sofa cushion, and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lay scattered across a card table.
He waved away the smell of the alcoholic cleanser and swallowed a cough, then greeted the sombre-faced woman at the reception desk. He explained they were from the health unit, here for another inspection. Her name tag said Maria, and she was in no mood to offer a cheery welcome. She was probably frightened about coming to work, but had no choice if she were to put food on her family’s table — tortillas and refried beans by the whiffs of cumin and chipotle that fought the lingering odour of the sanitizer. Zol’s well-honed sense of smell told him more about a person’s traits and habits than any photograph. He followed Natasha as the woman led them through the hollow, unlit dining room and into the kitchen.
The receptionist disappeared without a word, leaving Zol facing Nick, the chef. He of the lukewarm soup Art complained so much about. The man stood two inches taller than Zol, about six-three. He had a slim waist and the cultivated pecs of a cyclist or soccer player who did weights on the side.
Nick leaned against his counter, an act of possession. “None of this has anything to do with my kitchen,” he told Zol. “Me and the boys, we run a tight ship. Eh guys?” His prominent brow and massive jaw framed a face that radiated too much confidence for Zol’s liking.
Nick’s three helpers, men in their twenties, were absorbed in the chopping, stirring, and plating of impending lunch for thirty. One man was tall and skinny with blue-black skin, perhaps a Somali, Zol thought; one short, Asian, with hooded eyes and a pockmarked face; the third, stocky with a gleaming white scalp. All three raised their heads briefly from their tasks long enough to gape at Natasha.
Natasha ignored the stares directed at her discreetly camouflaged cleavage and removed her clipboard from her briefcase, then set about her inspection. She checked the refrigerators and dishwasher for the required temperature probes and asked to see the logs that documented the twice-daily readings. She inspected both sinks and ran the water to be sure it got steamy hot. She checked every cupboard for general cleanliness, then looked more closely for signs of rodents — footprints and droppings. She opened bins of rice and other grains and probed them with a spoon for mould and weevils. She opened the refrigerator and looked in the crisper, sniffed every container, and examined every best-before date.
Meanwhile, Zol looked in a few cupboards, then dropped his doctor facade and tried speaking casually with Nick, chef to chef. It took some time for the man to loosen up, but eventually they exchanged details of their culinary training. Zol outlined his studies in Stratford, Ontario, before shifting gears and heading to medical school a decade ago; Nick talked about earning his ticket at Toronto’s George Brown College. They traded stories of chefs who roared at their staff like boot-camp sergeants.
As Nick relaxed he pushed up his sleeves. He rubbed at an ugly patch of skin near his right elbow. Was it eczema? Psoriasis? Im
petigo? The crusty lesion was perched at the crest of the tattooed waterfall Zol could see cascading down Nick’s forearm.
“What are the Oliveiras like to work for?” Zol asked, finding it difficult not to gawk at Nick’s forearm.
Nick caught himself scratching and quickly rolled down his sleeves. “Okay, I guess. But you know the Portuguese.”
“Sorry?”
Nick shrugged and shifted his feet.
Zol raised his eyebrows and fixed Nick with his gaze.
“Skinflints,” Nick said finally. “Never met a penny they couldn’t squeeze into a dollar’s worth of supplies.”
“How does that affect you?”
“For one thing, they never let me do none of the shopping.”
Zol understood that grumble. A good chef liked to choose his own quality ingredients, the cornerstone of a good meal.
A hint of pink flushed Nick’s granite jaw. “Like,” he continued, “I give Gus a shopping list and all, but he never buys me the best stuff. He snaps up the leftover baked goods and produce at closing time, when the store is practically giving them away.”
“I see you’ve got a lot of no-name products.”
“Nothing wrong with no-name. It’s the wilted veggies I hate. Okay for soups and purées. But a nice Sunday dinner? Forget it.”
Puréed meals would be the ultimate drag for a cook. No art in them, and little flavour. But that’s all the Mountain Wing patients would be able to handle without teeth. And most of them had forgotten how to swallow. “I guess you whiz a lot of stuff in the blender in a place like this,” Zol said.
Nick gave a rueful smile at being understood by a colleague. “I’ll say.”
Natasha pulled a large plastic bag from the bottom of a chest freezer. She grunted at the effort of dislodging it. Frosty condensation obscured the bag’s contents, but Zol could just make out what appeared to be a jumble of vegetables — corn, celery, broccoli, and a couple of beets.
“What’s this?” Natasha asked. “This stuff should be labelled and dated.”
“Hey —” Nick chuckled “— we use everything up so fast we don’t waste time with dating.”
“But what is it?” said Zol. “At least the bag should be labelled.”
Nick shrugged. “I can tell they’re veggies.”
“All thrown together?” said Natasha. She lifted out another bag. “And what about these?”
“Bread and baked goods. Gus puts everything in the freezer after his shopping trips.”
Natasha replaced the heavy bags and shut the freezer. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter if the vegetables are all mixed up if you’re going to zap them in the blender anyway.”
Zol fingered the loonie in his pocket as he watched Nick taste the soup the Asian man with the pockmarked cheeks had been stirring on the stove. Even if the Oliveiras did their shopping at the end of the day, and at down-market places like Food-Club and Price-Slashers, it wouldn’t cause food poisoning. But it bothered him to see good food thrown carelessly together like that. Even if it didn’t violate any regulations, it seemed a sacrilege. The quality of the meals at places like this was a constant preoccupation among the residents. And why not? They had a right to their money’s worth.
“What about the meals in the dining room?” Zol asked. “Surely, the Belvedere Wing residents expect good food?”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed, “they know a proper meal when they see one. Get gussied up for dinner every night. And won’t touch slimy zucchini or mushy cauliflower, even with the brown spots cut off.” He turned to his helpers and chuckled. “Gus’s beaten-up broccoli comes back untouched every time, eh boys?”
The men nodded, tight-lipped, except for the Somali beanpole fellow whose toothy grin lit up his dark face. Zol pictured them scraping “untouched” vegetables off dirty plates and whizzing them into soup. It wouldn’t be so bad if they boiled them before recycling them. Testing the soup for infectious pathogens was suddenly a top priority.
Nick chuckled nervously, a cast of guilt in his eyes. “Tranh hates the smell of broccoli no matter how it’s cooked.”
While Natasha checked out the pantry, Zol poked around the kitchen. It felt good to be back inside a professional place. His own kitchen gave him a great view over the city and the lake, but a home kitchen was small potatoes. This place had real muscle. The penny-pinching Oliveiras hadn’t scrimped on equipment. The gas stove sported six turbo burners. The pots had thick copper bottoms. And the huge cast-iron frying pan gleamed with the beautifully cured surface only an expert knew how to care for.
Zol approached Tranh, the short guy standing by the stove, and asked if he could stir the soup. He’d always loved the satisfaction of swirling a wooden spoon through a hearty mix of stock, herbs, and vegetables. Soup could be difficult — it wasn’t easy to strike the perfect blend of flavours. You didn’t want it tasting as though you’d dropped a mess of leftovers into a pot, added salt and water, and stirred like hell. The only way to get soup right was to gradually adjust the seasonings as you tasted it. This one had the aroma of way too much cilantro, probably added to cover the bitterness of overripe broccoli. He pulled a clean spoon from a drawer and dipped it into the pot, but caught himself before putting the spoon in his mouth. The spoon felt barely warm. He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-five. This batch had a long way to go before it got hot enough for lunch. He took one of Natasha’s specimen containers and filled it with a ladleful of soup.
They wrapped up their inspection with a look at the hot-water tank and a careful assessment of the staff toilet, then returned to the front lobby and asked the receptionist to locate the manager, Gloria Oliveira.
The woman at the desk looked no more confident at her station than she had forty-five minutes earlier. She picked up the phone as though it were a hand grenade, then mumbled something into it. “Mrs. Gloria say she down in a few minutes.” The woman hesitated and stared at the closed-to-visitors sign beside her desk. Clearly, she had no idea what to do with visitors when none were allowed. She studied her fingernails, as if drawing inspiration from them, then pointed to a pair of wingback chairs in front of a coffee table in the common room. “Please, sit. Like a coffee?”
Zol stifled a shudder and turned to Natasha. There was no mistaking the look on her face. He shook his head for both of them. “Thank you. No.”
They settled in the chairs, not for comfort but for the chance to talk out of earshot of the reception desk.
“Gloria Oliveira’s got some cheek,” Zol said, “keeping us sitting on our hands down here. Doesn’t she know her licence is on the line?” He’d expected the manager to storm into the kitchen as soon as they arrived. He’d braced for her bravado and solemn assertions that we take food safety extremely seriously here at Camelot Lodge. What was she doing all this time?
Natasha tapped her checklist with her slender forefinger. “Nick isn’t among her greatest fans, but he does run a tight kitchen.” Natasha’s parade of brightly coloured shoes had been the talk of the office ever since her arrival, fresh with her Master’s. It seemed her latest indulgence was her fingernails. Today they were varnished the deep red, near purple, of a rich Shiraz. “A couple of minor deviations,” she continued, “but no violations.”
“I’m worried about the soup. We’ll see what the lab has to tell us about it.” He pointed to Natasha’s case. “How many samples did you get in total?”
“About a dozen. The usual suspects — the ketchup bottle, mayonnaise jar, some slimy lettuce and broccoli from the crisper, a big thing of gravy from the back of the fridge, the drains from the three sinks.”
“Unless things have changed since your last inspection, none of those cultures are going to show any pathogens.”
“Won’t even show any mould. We’ve been through every crumb in that kitchen before. Ever since their first gastro cases.” She thumbed through her sheets, found what she was looking for, then added, “This whole thing started with four gastros on January eleventh. Total number
reported now stands at thirty-one.” She pulled at the curls beside her ear. “And five deaths.”
Only three people had died at Camelot in the previous calendar year. It was a wonder the papers hadn’t got hold of the story and done the math. They were bound to soon and shout from the headlines: Cozy Camelot Turns Death Trap.
“How many active cases at the moment?” he asked.
“It changes every day. But among the independent seniors on the Belvedere Wing, we know about four.” She looked skeptically at her notepad.
Zol shared her skepticism. Unreported cases of flu, gastro, and other contagious infections were the bugbears of public health. Getting to the bottom of outbreaks in residential institutions — bringing epidemics under control by isolating their cases and pinpointing their sources — was close to impossible if many of the cases were not reported to the health unit. Even the most conscientious managers fudged the numbers. There was strong incentive for under-reporting: if cases weren’t reported to the authorities, the outbreak didn’t seem so bad, there was little for families to get upset about, life could go on as usual, and the problem might go away on its own.
“Did you notice that rash on Nick’s arm?” Zol asked.
“That tattoo was gross.”
“Dermatitis of some sort. And infected, by the look of it.” He pulled two loonies from his pocket and juggled them. “You know, this could be toxigenic food poisoning — staph aureus from Nick’s rash contaminating everything in that kitchen.”
“He let me take a culture of his rash. But I don’t think our problem is staphylococcus aureus. It never showed up in our previous samples. And doesn’t staph food poisoning start with violent vomiting?”
“Hurling your guts out is the dominant feature. That hasn’t been the pattern here, eh?”
“Abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and fever.”
“Staph food poisoning doesn’t cause fever,” Zol said. “But we’ll check it out.” If the swab from Nick’s arm did grow staph aureus, he’d have to ban the chef from the kitchen until the infection was controlled. “Until the results come back, he’ll have to keep that arm covered.”
