“I never said you weren’t right about that,” Rick said. “But it looks to me like Felix Logato stole those vials from Dr. Horz’s office. Maybe he sold them to his buddy, maybe he did something else with them. But he’s dead now, so the case is closed.”
I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t blame Rick for wanting a simple solution to a simple crime.
“Don’t forget dinner at Tamsen’s tonight,” Rick said. “Justin’s looking forward to playing with Rascal and Rochester.”
I had forgotten, but Rick was so eager that I didn’t want to admit I had. “We’ll be there. Lili made rum balls, which have been steeping in our refrigerator. I’ve only been taking one at a time from each jar so she won’t notice.”
“Women always notice that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s in their genes.”
When I got home, Lili was in the kitchen with the jar of rum balls open, and I worried she was going to bust me. But when she turned to me, she had two in her hand, and passed one to me. “You think these are ready?” she asked.
I popped it in my mouth, and if anything, the flavor had improved since the first one I’d tasted. “I think they’re awesome.”
“My mother used to make these for parties,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten them. I had to look up a recipe online and then tweak it to make them taste like hers.”
“You are a woman of awesome talents,” I said. We kissed, and I tasted the rum and chocolate on her lips. Rochester tried to nose his way in, but I kneed him away. “No chocolate for you, puppy. We’ve already been that route before.”
A woman who had killed two Eastern College students had believed Rochester had dug up evidence against her. Before we knew she was the culprit, she had sent us a box of dog biscuits that were supposed to be flavored with carob, which is okay for dogs, but instead was heavily dosed with chocolate. I’d accidentally left the box within his reach, back before I knew how easy it was for him to get up to a kitchen counter. He’d eaten the whole box, and I had to rush him to Dr. Horz’s and have him dosed with activated charcoal. The woman was serving a life sentence in prison for her crimes, and I hoped she rotted there.
Later that morning, Dr. Horz called. “I know that you took an interest in helping Felix,” she said. “I spoke with his mother, and his funeral is tomorrow morning in North Philadelphia. I’d like to go and pay my respects, but I can’t say I’m thrilled about going to that neighborhood on my own. I was hoping you would go with me.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “I feel terrible about what happened to Felix and I’d like to express my condolences to his family.”
Her office was still closed, but she said she had to go in for an hour or so the next morning to catch up on paperwork. We arranged that I would pick her up there at ten and we’d drive into North Philly together.
After I hung up, Lili asked, “You’re not taking Rochester to the funeral, are you? Because even if he behaves, some people there might take it the wrong way.”
“No, I’ll leave him here. You don’t want to go, do you?”
She shook her head. “I was talking to Gracious at the party, and she told me about a great nail salon in New Hope. We’re going there tomorrow for mani-pedis. I need some girl time to recharge.”
I guessed my meetings with Rick counted as “guy time,” so I was fine with Lili’s plans. “That means you’re going to be on your own tomorrow afternoon, boy,” I said to Rochester, who was pushing up against my leg. “You all right with that?”
In response, he sprawled on his back on the floor and waved his legs in the air. “Looks like you’ve got to give him a head start on belly rubs to tide him over,” Lili said.
I sat on the living room floor and rubbed Rochester’s tummy, and Lili lounged on the couch until we had to get ready for dinner at Tamsen’s.
It wasn’t far to where Tamsen and her son Justin lived, in a fifties-era split level a few blocks from where I’d grown up. “Tamsen’s business must be doing well,” I said, as we got out of the car. Lili had the jars of rum balls in a canvas bag and I had Rochester on his leash.
“What makes you say that?”
“Houses like this one go for half a mill these days,” I said. “There must be a lot of money in tchotchkes.” I knew from Rick that Tamsen helped corporate clients find and produce promotional products like towels, mugs, and mouse pads imprinted with company logos, but he’d never mentioned how successful she was.
Justin opened the door to welcome us in. He was eight, a tow-headed boy with energy to burn. Behind him stood his quieter cousin Nathaniel, brown hair and glasses. He was two years younger than Justin, and too slight to play on the Pop Warner football team that Justin played on and Rick coached. Both of them were excited to see Rochester. I let Rochester off his leash, and he romped with the boys.
We found Tamsen and Hannah in the kitchen, which looked like it had been recently remodeled, with sleek appliances and new-looking cabinets. The sisters were a year apart, and a few years younger than Rick and I were. Tamsen was as tall as Lili, with lustrous blonde hair and a coltish grace. I thought her energy and cheer were a good match for Rick. She could keep up with him, mentally and physically, and keep his spirits up as well.
That evening, she looked particularly lovely, in a long-sleeved bright blue silk blouse and black slacks. Her hair looked fresh from a salon, and she wore gold earrings with tiny stars hanging from them.
Hannah Palmer, like her son Nathaniel, was quieter. She was the Clerk of the Friends’ Meeting in town, and had a deeply spiritual side, as well as a commitment to the Quaker ideals she and her sister had been raised with. She was an inch or two shorter than her sister, and her hair was the same color, but pulled back into a knot. Hannah was dressed more casually, in a chocolate brown turtleneck sweater over skinny jeans and those low boots that always remind me of elves.
After we kissed hello, Lili put the bag of jars on the table and began handing them to Tamsen. “These look delicious!” Tamsen said.
Tamsen’s cell phone rang with the theme from The Lone Ranger. “Crap, I have to get that,” she said. “Can you take over, Han?” Her sister nodded as Tamsen grabbed the phone and walked out of the kitchen.
“I hope nothing’s wrong,” I said to Hannah.
“No, that’s just one of her clients,” Hannah said. “My sister is too professional sometimes. She takes calls all the time. She’s a super saleswoman and she has an amazing eye for detail. And if she were here, she’d ask if you want something to drink. There’s beer and wine in the fridge.”
I got myself a beer, noticing that either Rick had brought some microbrews to Tamsen’s, or that she was stocking her refrigerator for him. Interesting. I poured a glass of white wine for Lili. She took a plate of crudités that Hannah handed her and we walked out to the living room.
Hannah’s husband Eric was on the sofa. He was a nerdy-looking guy with dark hipster-style glasses, though at the moment he was laughing at Rick. My friend was on the floor with Justin, Nathaniel and the two dogs, all climbing on top of him. A strange lump swelled at the bottom of my throat. I’d never be a dad.
“Steve! You’ve got to help me,” Rick called, as Eric laughed. “I’m being attacked!”
I got down to the floor with him, and Rochester jumped up and put his front paws on my shoulders. Rick and I romped on the floor with the kids and the dogs for a few minutes, until Rascal had a sudden urge to lick his genitals. Rochester wanted to investigate what his friend was doing, and they began rolling around and growling at each other, a blur of gold, black, brown and white.
“They’re not going to hurt each other, are they?” Nathaniel asked.
“Nah, that’s the way they play,” Rick said.
“Don’t even think about growling and biting each other,” Hannah said from the kitchen door. “Who wants to help me put out the little hot dogs?”
Both boys hollered, “Me!” and jumped up.
As they ran to the kitchen, I turned to Rick. “You have a good day of
f?”
He shook his head. “Right after you left, I got called in. Another death at Crossing Manor. A man named Victor Fictura.”
“Mr. Fistula,” I said. “The pain in the ass. What happened?”
“Looks like he had a heart attack sometime in the night. The people at the Manor notified his son, who’s a pain in the ass, too. He insisted that his father’s heart was fine and demanded they call the police.”
Rascal was chewing on Rochester’s ear, and my big dog had rolled over on his back and was waving his legs in the air. Rick stretched his legs out and leaned back against the sofa. “Mr. Fictura junior said his father told him to call the cops if anything happened to him. He said they were out to get him at that place, that people were dying there right and left.”
“Which is true,” I said. “Four people that I met with Rochester have died since we started going there.”
“It’s a nursing home. A place where you go when you’re about to die.”
“When we were there last, I happened to see a form being prepared for the state that listed suspicious deaths. One name I didn’t recognize.” I began holding up fingers as I ticked them off. “Mrs. Tuttle, an elderly woman with dementia. Mr. Pappas, who had Crohn’s Disease and no close family. Mrs. Divaram, whose son lives in California and had parked here there to get her out of his wife’s hair. And now Mr. Fictura.”
“How did you happen to see that form?”
“We were walking out and the receptionist’s desk was empty. Rochester nosed around her computer and the screen saver popped off. I got a quick look before the administrator came back.”
“You’re beginning to sound like the eight-year-olds I coach,” Rick said. “An excuse for everything. Although most of your excuses involve the death dog.”
“Don’t keep calling him that,” I said. “And it’s not just me and Rochester. Mr. Fictura told his son something was going on. And Mrs. Divaram had nothing wrong with her. Her roommate, Mrs. Vinci, was suspicious. She said something wasn’t right.”
Rick sighed and pulled a pad out of his back pocket. Immediately Rochester and Rascal mobbed him, and he had to push them away. “Spell those names,” he said.
I did. “Talk to Mr. MacRae, too. He and Mr. Watnik are two of the more coherent folks there.”
“What did you think of the place?” Rick asked.
“It looks and smells clean, and the staff seem kind and caring. They have lots of events for the patients, and there are always aides around.” I paused to think for a minute. “You think maybe one of the staff has it in for patients?”
“Doesn’t make business sense, because every time a patient dies they lose the revenue from Medicare or insurance or whatever. And I doubt families are ordering hits on their relatives to avoid the co-pays.”
“Are you going to investigate?” I asked.
“I’m going to wait for the autopsy results before I go crazy,” he said. “But if I have to, I can run background checks on the staff and get the Department of Health involved.”
He reached around to put his pad away, and his bicep flexed. That triggered something but it took me a few seconds to make the connection.
“Was Mr. Fictura on an IV?” I asked.
“Why?”
I explained what Jackie Conrad had told me about how easy it was to get that liquid into a patient’s IV. “The potassium stolen from the vet’s office could have been injected into Mr. Fictura.”
“You think someone at the vet’s office knew Mr. Fictura?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ve been looking at each person on the staff, and every one of them has someone in his or her life who could be helped into the afterlife, to put it politely, although I admit that some of the reasons I’ve come up with are stretching pretty far. The killer could be practicing on people at the nursing home.”
Tamsen called everyone to the table, and we stood up. “You have a very active imagination, Steve,” Rick said. “Sadly, sometimes what you imagine comes true.”
22 – Faithful
We had a great dinner, the adults talking and the boys trying to slip food to the dogs. Lili volunteered to help Tamsen and Hannah clean up, and Rick, Eric and I accompanied the boys and the dogs to the den. Very quickly, both boys were on their backs on the carpet, with dogs jumping over them.
When the dogs took a break to lick themselves, Nathaniel said, “See, Dad, I get along with dogs. They like me.”
I knew that Nathaniel was desperate to get a dog, but so far his parents were resisting, and I figured this was my cue to jump in. “You like to sleep late, Nathaniel?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. But we have school really early. The bus comes at seven-thirty.”
“You know, dogs need a walk in the morning,” I said. “You’d have to get up at least a half hour earlier to manage that.”
The dogs tired of their game and sprawled together beside the sofa. “And you have to clean up after your dog, too,” Rick said. “Sometimes when I go to pick up Rascal’s poop it’s all runny and smelly.”
“Yuck,” Justin said. He sat up and elbowed his cousin. “You could be poop boy!”
“You’re a poopy head,” Nathaniel said.
“A dog is a big commitment,” I said to both boys. “Not like a game you can get tired of and put away.”
The kids kept playing with the dogs as the three of us guys sat around in the den talking about the Flyers and their chances for the Stanley Cup that year. My dad had gotten tickets through work for at least one hockey game a season when I was growing up, and though neither of us were big sports fans, he and I had gone to the games, cheering for the home team. When the women joined us, we talked about skating on Mirror Lake in the winter, and eventually we all began yawning.
Lili and I left soon after that. We were both tired and I was a little drunk, and in the kitchen when I went to get water for Rochester I knocked a glass off the countertop, and it shattered on the floor.
Rochester immediately wanted to investigate and I had to body-block him. “You take him in the living room and I’ll clean up,” Lili said. She pulled a pair of blue plastic gloves from the drawer and began picking up the big pieces of glass.
I watched her work, and the sight of those gloves reminded me of the ones the aides had worn at Crossing Manor when they had to clean up after the patients. And that reminded me of my conversation with Rick. Had those deaths at Crossing Manor been a natural progression? Coincidence? Or the work of a killer on the loose?
When Lili finished picking up the glass, she went upstairs and I sat at the dining room table with my laptop, with Rochester curled protectively around my chair. I opened up a browser and typed in “nursing home deaths” to see how Crossing Manor stacked up against similar facilities.
I was stunned at how many hits came up – over twenty-one million. More than thirty percent of nursing homes had some incidents of elder abuse, and thousands of deaths that might be the result of negligence – bedsores, starvation, dehydration and so on. Nearly one-quarter of deaths in the US occurred in nursing homes. I hadn’t seen any open wounds, dirty linens or other visible signs of abuse on the people that I’d spoken with at Crossing Manor. The symptoms of emotional abuse were harder to pin down, but again, the patients I’d spoken with had been in good spirits – at least those who could communicate.
There was a big difference, though, between elder abuse and outright murder. I found an awful lot of information, though, on nurses who took matters into their own hands and committed what they called “mercy killings.” Four women in Austria were alleged to have killed over two hundred patients; a VA nurse who used epinephrine to induce heart attacks; and a male nurse in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who had killed forty patients with lethal injections of Digoxin, a heart medication.
Some of those killer nurses appeared to need the validation of trying to save someone, even if he or she had induced the problem. Others liked the power that drugs like Lidocaine or muscle relaxants ga
ve them. In many cases the victims were elderly, which made their deaths go unnoticed, though I found one pediatric nurse who had killed forty-six children in her care.
The research began to upset me, so I gave up and pushed back my chair. Was someone killing off the patients at Crossing Manor? Poor Mrs. Tuttle had dementia. How could someone have a grudge against her? Could it be someone wanted to put her out of her misery? How could anyone know if she was miserable, if she couldn’t communicate?
Then there was Mrs. Divaram. She wasn’t happy because she felt that her son’s second wife had forced him to push her aside. But according to Mrs. Vinci, her roommate wasn’t sick. Had she alienated someone at the home with her complaints?
Mr. Pappas had Crohn’s Disease, which had kept him in and out of hospitals his entire life. But according to Edith, he had been feeling better, and planning for discharge.
Mr. Fictura was certainly a complainer, and from the way Allison had called him Mr. Fistula, a pain in the ass. I had the feeling he wasn’t loved by the staff. Was there anything in common between the four of them, besides staying at Crossing Manor? One was demented, one abandoned, one congenitally ill, one angry.
Rochester got up from his place on the floor and nosed against my knee. I reached out to pet him. “What do you think, boy? You’re a good judge of humans. Could somebody be killing patients at Crossing Manor?”
He rolled over on his back in his dying cockroach posture, waving all four of his legs in the air. That was a signal that he wanted a belly rub, but could he be saying something more? He looked up at me and woofed once. “All right, bossy dog, I’m coming,” I said. I settled on the floor and began scratching his soft white tummy.
I already knew that the general population was aging, but even so, the predictions that by 2050 there would be nearly three times as many people eighty-five and older were surprising. What was going to happen to all those elderly people? To me and Lili? Would medical science keep us healthy until death? Or would we be warehoused in facilities, abandoned by loved ones, cared for by minimum-wage attendants?
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