She stood in front of me sobbing, “Bad things are happening,” she cried. “I’m scared for Angelica. She’s the one who says she knows Mom was murdered. I’m afraid whoever did it will go after her next. We need to stop them before Angelica has some horrible accident that isn’t really an accident.”
I put my arms around her and let her cry until I could feel that she had released much of her tension. Then I led her back to the couch and sat with her. “I know you want to take action right away,” I said, “but we don’t even know if there’s a killer out there. As you said, your contact sessions with your mother and grandfather didn’t give us any new information about how they died, which makes me think that their spirits aren’t going to tell us about that.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t try to contact them again?” Lacey asked.
“I’m saying that I don’t think you should contact them again to ask whether or not someone killed them. Neither of them gave you an answer when you asked that before. You may have another reason to try to contact one of them later to resolve unfinished issues you have with them or to say goodbye in a way that feels more complete to you. But I don’t think the next few days is the time to do that.”
“But what about Angelica? How can we protect her?”
“Here’s a suggestion. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m sure Angelica is upset about her grandfather right now and could use some time with her big sister. Can you be with her over the weekend, watch over her without being too obvious about it?”
Lacey thought for a minute. Then her eyes lit up. “Yes, I can do that. There’s a gallery in Aspen that has a show of paintings by a young girl about Angelica’s age. Faye suggested she go see it, and I said I’d take her sometime in the next month. We’ll do it—go up tomorrow and come back Sunday. And she won’t be going to school Monday either because of Grandad’s funeral. So I can be with her then too.”
My relief at the idea of getting both Lacey and Angelica out of the vicinity, even if it was only for a couple of days was tinged with concern about where we would go from there. I tried to tell myself that by Monday the whole situation might look so different that our fears for Angelica’s safety would disappear. But I didn’t really believe that.
Chapter 31
Early Saturday morning I sat at my kitchen table drinking coffee and reading a front-page newspaper article about the closing of Shady Terrace. Entitled, “Seniors forced out in the cold,” the article quoted a communications director from the national office of the corporation that owned Shady terrace. He said that although the corporation is selling the building, which means the residents will have to relocate, Boulder has other options available.
He made it sound so simple. Just sign up for one of the other options. I wondered whether he’d ever had to look for “options” for someone he loved. I pitched the newspaper into the recycling bin and gathered up the materials I had collected about Gramma’s options. I had the housing guide that Tim had given me, my notes from the family meeting he’d held two weeks ago, and materials from the nursing homes I’d visited. But nothing spoke to me. I knew I hadn’t found anything that was even close to being right for my beloved Gramma.
Just then my phone rang and the Shady Terrace phone number popped up on my caller ID. Yikes! Could they possibly have yet more bad news for me?
But it wasn’t bad news. It was Betsy, one of the Shady Terrace social workers, with an intriguing possibility. “Some of us on the staff have been working on finding a way to open a small assisted living house,” she said. “We couldn’t take Medicaid—at least not in the beginning, because it takes so long to get approval. At first we could only take the private-pay residents, so we’re trying to talk to as many of them and their families as we can to see who might be interested. Would you like to hear more about it?”
Would I? Someone up there must have been listening to my prayers. Maybe Grampa found a way to influence events down here.
“I’d love to hear about it, Betsy,” I said eagerly. “What’s the plan?”
“It’s too complicated to go into on the phone,” she said. “So we’re trying to tell families about it in some small meetings. We’re having three today—one this morning at 10:30 and two this afternoon, one at 1:30 and one at 4:00. Could you possibly make one of those times? The meetings will only take about an hour.”
I could hardly wait to hear their plan. “Absolutely, Betsy,” I said. “I’ll be there at 10:30.”
I got over to Shady Terrace at 10:00 so I’d have time to visit with Gramma before the meeting. The place was taking on a deserted air. Empty rooms and empty beds. Reminded me of one of those aging shopping malls with too many vacant storefronts and too few customers.
As I walked down the hall to Gramma’s room, I noticed one of the residents, Flora Gypsum, sitting on her usual hall couch. Flora typically dressed like an aging glamour girl, with fancy clothes and caked-on makeup, which she was still able to apply herself despite her confusion. She also had her hair done every week by the beautician who visited Shady Terrace. Today Flora wore a fancy green and yellow print dress and a black hat with an orange feather. But instead of her usual high-heeled shoes, she wore fuzzy pink slippers—a very unusual flaw for her.
As I stopped next to her, I noticed that she didn’t have her newspapers, which she typically carried with her everywhere. Of course she can’t actually read them anymore, but she seems to enjoy holding them and looking at them. Probably reading the paper was once an important part of her daily routine.
“Hi, Flora,” I said, “How are you today?”
“Bad,” she said. She looked troubled. “Some people here are lost and no one can find them. There are only a few of us left.”
Where to begin? Who knows what she thought had happened to the missing residents? It must be frightening for her. But it wasn’t my place to have a discussion with her about the closing of Shady Terrace. I had no idea what she’d been told or what she understood. Anything I said might very well upset her more.
“My gramma is still here,” I said. “You know Martha. I’m on my way to see her now. Would you like to come with me to her room?”
“No,” she said. “I need to wait here in case my friends come by.”
Ouch. This was sad. But I knew Flora well enough to know that arguing with her would only agitate her. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’ll see her at lunch.”
I continued on down the hall to Gramma’s room, where I found her sitting dispiritedly in her armchair staring into space. I walked slowly over and knelt down next to her chair. She startles easily, so I always give her time to adjust to my moving into her space. “Hi, Gramma,” I said, putting my hand gently on her arm. “How are you feeling?”
She gave me a bewildered look. “Who are you? Did you come to buy a painting?” she asked.
Oh dear. It was one of those days when she doesn’t recognize me. Even though I’m used to it, my heart always drops when it happens.
“Gramma, it’s me, Cleo, your granddaughter.” I said.
“Have you seen my husband James?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “He must be away. Would you like to walk down the hall and see Flora? I just saw her sitting on the couch.” I don’t try to correct Gramma’s confusion. It’s better to gloss it over and redirect her attention somewhere else.
“No,” she said.
“How about some music?” I asked, putting on a CD of one of her favorite piano concertos. She closed her eyes and seemed to relax into the music. I sat on the edge of her chair with my arm around her and we listened together for about fifteen minutes. Then I kissed her goodbye and went off to the conference room to hear about Betsy’s plan.
Several people were already sitting at the long table. Besides Betsy from Social Services, I recognized Mary Ellen, the Director of Nursing, and Joanna, the Activity Director. A short blonde woman introduced herself as Allie, the daughter of a resident, and we were shortly joined by a gray-haired woman who I recognized a
s the wife of a resident, accompanied by a middle-aged man she introduced as their son Henry.
After Mary Ellen welcomed us and we’d gone around the table greeting each other or in some cases introducing ourselves, she began to tell us about a new and different kind of nursing home model. “A geriatric physician named William Thomas came up with a plan—called the Eden Alternative—to de-institutionalize existing nursing homes by changing their culture to be more of a community,” she said. “We’ve used some of his ideas here like having our garden where residents help grow vegetables we eat and giving residents choices of times for their meals. I wanted to do more but Shady Terrace is a big place and change is hard.” She stopped briefly for a drink of water. We all sat in rapt attention waiting to see what would come next.
She continued. “Now with the closing, Betsy and Joanna and I got to talking about Dr. Thomas’s newest development called a Green House. It’s a small homelike group home with lots of plants and visits from animals and children,” she said enthusiastically. “We have a dream to start our own group home like a Green House. We could keep some of our residents together and offer jobs to some of our staff.”
Wow! This sounded amazing. It also sounded like a huge undertaking to pull off in the time available.
The gray-haired woman asked one of the first questions that had come to my mind. “Wouldn’t it take a long time to build or even modify a place to meet all the Health Department regulations?”
Betsy jumped in. “We’ve found the perfect place, actually. It was a small assisted living home that closed last year and the building is for sale. It has room for nine residents and it already meets all the regulations.”
“And it has a big yard with a deck and lots of room for a garden,” Joanna said with a big smile. “Our residents would love it there.”
I so wanted this to be possible. But my practical side had doubts. These women were young, probably in their thirties. How could they afford this? Nursing home staff aren’t highly paid and the project sounded like the sort of thing it would be hard to get financing for. I tried to phrase my question tactfully. “How about the financing to buy the building?” I asked. “Would that be a problem?”
“It could be,” Mary Ellen replied. “But we have one investor who is willing to put up about half of what we need and we’re hoping you and other families will be our partners in this venture. If we can find nine families who would like to have their family member move to our group home, and if those families are willing to invest enough to cover the rest of what we need for startup costs, we can do it.”
Before I could open my mouth, Allie, who was there representing her mother, asked the exact question I was about to ask. “How much of an investment would you need from each family?” My mother has been able to pay privately here, but she doesn’t have a lot of extra money.”
Exactly Gramma’s current situation. Her small monthly trust income combined with her Social Security and Grampa’s retirement annuity provided enough money each month to cover her private room at Shady Terrace and her personal and medical expenses. But her ongoing expenses were high enough that she didn’t have a large reserve of extra money. The last statement I remembered seeing showed about $20,000 in her savings account.
“With the cost of the house, plus furnishings and other setup costs, we figure we’d need $50,000 from each family,” Mary Ellen said. Yikes! $50,000! Where would Gramma get that much money? And even if she had it, could she afford to sink it into this undertaking?
As if she’d read my thoughts, Mary Ellen continued. “This would be an investment, which means the families would be partners in the venture. And the families would be co-owners of the building, which would be security for much of your investment. The three of us—Betsy, Joanna and myself—don’t have much money to put in, but we would donate our time in the beginning to get this started.”
“You’d have to pay other staff, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “What are you thinking our monthly charges would be?”
“If we can get $450,000 from the families to add to the $450,000 we have from our original investor, we’ll have the $900,000 we need for setup. Then we can provide the room and board and care for the same monthly charge you’re paying now at Shady Terrace,” Mary Ellen said. “And we believe you and your family member will be getting significantly more value for your money.”
Joanna stood up and handed each of the three of us potential investors a stack of papers. “We realize this is complicated and you’ll want a lot more details,” she said. “So we’ve prepared written plans, financial statements, and contracts for you to review. We’re inviting all the families of private-pay residents to come to one of these meetings in the next few days. We need to act quickly, so we’re asking you all to let us know by the end of next week if you’re interested. Then we’ll have another meeting next weekend for all the interested families, and move on from there.”
Our hour was almost up by then. We asked a few more questions, then gathered up our papers and went our separate ways to think over the proposition.
For me, the main thinking I needed to do was about where to come up with the money. I loved the idea of a small group home set up to be a community rather than an institution. And from all I’d seen in recent years, Mary Ellen, Betsy and Joanna were genuinely motivated by their concern for the best interests of the residents. Of course I knew this was a risky venture, but after all my searching I hadn’t found anything else even close to being this promising. So the risk was probably worth it for Gramma.
As I drove home, I ran through possibilities for raising the money. One big problem was that I knew virtually nothing about Gramma’s trust. Grampa hadn’t wanted to leave me with the job of managing Gramma’s money. To spare me that task—which he said shouldn’t be my responsibility—he had set up her finances to be handled by a bank and by her attorney, Vernon Evers. To be honest, math and money management aren’t my strong suit, so I was relieved to have that aspect of her care in more capable hands. I got copies of quarterly statements from the bank—which is how I knew the amount in her savings account—but all I knew about her trust account was the monthly income. I had been planning to get the details from Vernon Evers, but now I had no idea who would be handling it or whether I could get $30,000 out of it in a lump sum.
I couldn’t see how I could raise the money personally. I had almost no savings and I didn’t think any bank would loan me $30,000. Maybe I could sell Gramma and Grampa’s house. But that would take months or longer to get a good price. Plus the house was in Gramma’s name, not mine, so selling it would probably be complicated. Also, I had promised Grampa that I would do everything I could to keep the house in the family.
Selling some of Gramma’s best paintings looked like a better idea. I had several at home and in my office that had never been on the market before. These were paintings she had done at the height of her career when she was winning awards and selling her work to private collectors.
But I had no experience selling Gramma’s paintings. That had all been handled by Faye or previous gallery owners. Gramma hasn’t produced any new paintings for the past dozen years or so due to the progression of her Alzheimer’s, so her recent sales have all been from older never-sold work and that has all been through Faye’s gallery. Other galleries around the country may have some of Gramma’s work for sale but those are previously owned pieces being sold by the original purchaser. Gramma gets nothing from those sales, so I hadn’t tried to follow them.
Unfortunately I hadn’t kept up very well with Faye's sales of Gramma’s paintings. I probably should have, but I wasn’t in charge of her money and until now she’d easily had enough to meet her needs. Since Grandpa died, I’d been focused more on visiting her often and making sure she got good care than on checking on sales of her artwork. I had trusted Faye to market the paintings that she had on hand. But she still hadn’t shown me the figures for recent sales, and she’d admitted that the gallery was struggling financially
. I wondered whether I could trust her to put out the energy and resources to sell any of my collection of Gramma’s paintings.
I decided to go to the gallery and insist on an accounting of recent sales and prices. If I didn’t like what I heard, I might consider selling the paintings from my collection through some other means. I liked Faye, especially since she’d been so supportive of Pablo’s work, but I needed to get this money for Gramma and I needed it quickly.
Chapter 32
I stopped at home for a quick lunch, then went downtown to Faye’s gallery. I braced myself for an uncomfortable conversation. I wasn’t looking for friction, but I was determined to push Faye enough to get specific information about Gramma’s recent sales.
Faye was alone, working at her desk when I arrived. I pasted a smile on my face as I walked over and stood in front of her.
“Hey, Faye,” I said in the most genial voice I could manage.. “I got some good news about Gramma this morning.”
She looked up, smiling. “Wonderful,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Some of the Shady Terrace staff plan to start a small group home, very homelike, not institutional. I think it would be perfect for her.”
“That does sound like great news.”
“There’s only one catch. They need an upfront investment from the families of the people who move there. We’d be partners in the venture with the building as security, so it looks reasonable to me. But I don’t know if Gramma has the cash available. I might have to sell some of her paintings that I have at home.”
Faye bristled and tapped her pen sharply on her desk. “That’s not a good idea. I told you it’s not a good market right now,” she said in an exasperated tone. “If we release more of her paintings, I’m afraid they won’t hold their value..” She continued making the annoying clicking sound with her pen.
Too Far Under Page 21
