Baylin House (Cassandra Crowley Mystery)

by L. J. Parker

  Helen sent word she was busy and would talk to Cassie later.

  Thanks Mom.

  Chapter Two

  The flight from Las Vegas to Austin lasted a little more than two hours, which jumped to four hours when Cassie adjusted her watch for the time zone.

  Dorothy’s flight from Orlando had arrived in Austin an hour ago. She was waiting for Cassie outside the roped path leading from the gate.

  Cassie recognized her immediately; aged somewhat, but still an elegant senior with her tanned skin and silvery white hair that looked fresh from the beauty salon. She wore a powder blue silk blouse under a tailored silver gray pantsuit with coordinated handbag and shoes, everything designer named.

  It was striking contrast to Cassie’s black stretch jeans and scoop neck top, pea-green, that she found on sale at Target yesterday, and her cleanest pair of scuffed Reebok joggers.

  When Dorothy recognized Cassie, her expression changed to shock. “Good Lord! What have you done to your hair, Cassandra?”

  Cassie shrugged and mumbled something inane about the shagged pixie cut that replaced her old mid-back ponytail. She had forgotten the shocking difference it made to someone seeing it for the first time.

  “Well,” Dorothy breathed, adjusting to the new look. “Humidity does not lend favors, so short is probably better than your long hair would have been. The young women who come to the island looking like princesses for the evening usually go home looking like drowned haystacks.” She craned her neck to see around toward the back, then stood in Cassie’s face and said, “And you do wear it well even with your nose.”

  Cassie huffed a sharp breath warding off the reference. She inherited the Patrician shape from her mother’s side of the family. There were plenty of times during her teen years when she wished for her dad’s ski slope profile. Her prettier classmates often cruelly magnified physical flaws like the boney hump on the bridge of her nose caused by a softball pop fly. Behind her back, they bestowed her nickname ‘The Crow’, and then insisted it was only short for Crowley.

  Cassandra-The-Crow had long ago outgrown that teenaged sensitivity, and accepted the nickname with genuine affection, like the silhouette crow stamped on her business cards. She considered having it tattooed on her ankle once, but settled for an ankle bracelet with a tiny crow-shaped charm instead. That did not mean she was immune to pointed comments like wear it well even with your nose.

  “I’ve already made arrangements for a rental car,” Dorothy told Cassie as they entered the baggage area. She marched straight to the cart rack, poked quarters into the slot, and motioned for Cassie to retrieve a cart.

  Cassie clamped her jaw as she pulled the thing free. She would have volunteered, given the difference in their ages, but it felt demeaning the way it was ordered. Even more while Cassie retrieved all three of Dorothy’s hard-sided suitcases that filled the cart before she could grab the Voyager Duffel, and then struggle to balance the big duffel and her carry-on on the apex without losing the whole load.

  It was obvious Mrs. Kennelly was establishing rank so Cassie would know who was in charge. Dorothy Kennelly was the boss, and Cassie was definitely hired help – not just hired to edit a manuscript, but for anything Her Highness desired.

  Cassie should have guessed the high-paying contract had fangs attached, but to be honest she would still have accepted the job. She told herself she could tough it out for three or four weeks.

  At the Rental Car desk, Dorothy signed papers while the attendant loaded their luggage into the back of a Ford Explorer (silver, of course). She handed Cassie the ignition key, and slid her own boney bottom into the passenger seat. She would be chauffeured from Austin to Cordell Bay; it wasn’t a question.

  Cassie was a little surprised when Dorothy unfolded an Austin City Map and directed her attention to a red circle near the top left corner –traveling north on Interstate 35-- the opposite direction from the Gulf Coast.

  “The address is written there in the margin,” Dorothy told her. “We’ll stop and have lunch with Lawrence before we leave town. That’s why I had us both fly into Austin instead of directly into Cordell Bay.”

  Cassie had assumed they were in Austin because Cordell Bay had no airport of its own. “Lawrence?” she questioned, blinking a few times to adjust her eyes to the tiny print on the map.

  “Lawrence Baylin. Rosalie’s brother.” Dorothy settled back, fastened her seat belt, and flipped the car’s air conditioner to full blast. Then she snickered under her breath, “Or Rosalie’s father, depending on which story you believe.”

  Cassie pretended she didn’t hear that. She used her finger to trace a line of travel on the map before she drove out of the parking area.

  “He lives off campus near one of the University buildings,” Dorothy said when Cassie began refolding the map. “He’s retired from his tenured position now. Still guest lectures and gives occasional speeches for professional groups. I think you’ll find him interesting to chat with.”

  Cassie nodded, though chatting with a University Professor was not high on her list of things she wanted to do.

  Thirty minutes later the address on the map brought them to a high-dollar assisted living facility across the street from the University’s rear parking lot.

  Inside the building, the receptionist ushered them into an air-conditioned day room with a full-width garden window and babbling brook waterscape. Very nice! The floor was covered in tight Berber carpet that allowed easy travel for wheelchairs.

  Several people were in the room; two women in candy stripe aprons reading magazines, and two older women seated at a small table playing a double solitaire card game Cassie recognized. A group of six men, two of them in wheelchairs, sat in front of a television in the corner nearest the door. Two more men in wheelchairs were on the opposite side of the room; one very old, dressed in a business suit for the office. They were huddled deep in conversation with a lot of hand and arm movement.

  Suddenly the older man looked to the open door. “Dorothy, it’s so good to see you.” His voice was scratchy, but carried enough volume to get her attention.

  “Hello Lawrence,” she said with a wave, and briskly walked toward him with the receptionist and Cassie trailing behind.

  Cassie studied the man without being too obvious, taking her time walking behind the receptionist. Dorothy had said Rosalie was ten years younger than Cassie’s grandmother; that would make Rosalie Baylin around seventy-five. This man looked at least a hundred.

  The younger man began wheeling himself away, moving toward the group watching television; the receptionist veered off to give him a hand, leaving Cassie standing alone some distance away.

  “I’m glad you felt up to having visitors, Lawrence. How are you, today?” Dorothy leaned down to peck the old man’s cheek.

  “Fine, fine, fine,” he answered without looking at her. His attention was on Cassie. “I see this is our lunch guest?”

  “Yes, she is,” Dorothy announced, tugging a chair until she had it close beside him. Before she sat down she said, “Let me introduce you properly. Lawrence, this is Cassandra Crowley, Noreen’s granddaughter through Nolan with Helen Walsh. Cassandra, this is Dr. Lawrence Baylin, Rosalie’s brother.”

  Okay, good, so the official version was still that he is her brother; given the visible age difference, Cassie was glad Dorothy clarified that.

  Lawrence reached for Cassie’s hand, and she cautiously stepped forward for a handshake. He enclosed her hand with both of his, looking closely into her eyes as though trying to recognize something.

  “I’m honored to meet you, Dr. Baylin,” she said in her most respectful tone. She felt her hand caught in a vise of the old man’s grasp; felt the cool temperature of his skin, the sensation of weathered paper around her fingers, and caught the familiar scent of the same after-shave her dad used.

  “Noreen’s granddaughter, yes,” he breathed, still searching every feature of her face. Suddenly his eyes filled with moisture. He dropped h
is grip to draw a handkerchief from an inside coat pocket, and dabbed at his eyes, apologizing, "Forgive me, my dear, but your young face brings back such sweet memories."

  Cassie shot a glance to Dorothy Kennelly in near panic, but Dorothy returned only a tight-lipped smile and slow nod; she actually looked pleased at his reaction.

  Lawrence Baylin tucked the handkerchief back into the pocket, and looked up, searching Cassie’s features again. “When were you born, Cassandra?”

  “September, 1964” she answered with a fair amount of grace. She was aware how older people use a person’s age to establish a cubby hole for them – teens are allowed a certain amount of rudeness, twenties are allowed a certain immaturity, thirties are allowed to ride the fence between youth and middle-age, and anyone over forty is expected to know better than whatever mistakes they make. It does not have to be accurate, just a benchmark that is comfortable for the elders to use.

  He smiled. “I’m afraid that seems like such a short time ago to me.” Then he turned and said, “Thank you for bringing her to visit me, Dorothy.”

  “Of course.”

  A musical chime on the intercom muted Dorothy’s answer. The rest of the people in the room began moving toward the door.

  Lawrence Baylin pointed to the opposite direction. “Let’s move over to that table where we can visit. The main dining room will be crowded and much too noisy, so the girls will bring our lunch in here.”

  Dorothy stood. Lawrence pushed a button on his motorized chair, leading the way until he had fitted his chair into the open space on one side of a square table. Dorothy and Cassie sat in the wooden chairs on either side of him. As if on cue, two girls in candy stripe aprons came with a rolling service cart and distributed salads, then bowls of soup, small plates holding fluted cups containing some kind of whipped parfait dessert, and finally napkins and utensils. Then they left.

  Lovely. Soup-salad-desert . . . but after skipping breakfast this morning in favor of a bottle of juice in the airport, then a handful of peanuts on the plane, it wasn’t going to satisfy Cassie’s craving for protein and calories. She would have to find a drive-thru burger joint before they drove out of town.

  When the candy stripe girls were gone, Lawrence leaned toward Cassie and said, “I spoke to Rosalie early this morning. We’re both delighted you’ve agreed to help on her project, Cassandra. I hope you won’t mind combining the meal with our conversation. What would you like to ask me, my dear?”

  Dorothy’s gaze bore into Cassie, no doubt a warning not to say anything wrong. “Lawrence, why don’t you tell her about Oakwood?” she suggested. “Cassandra will need that to understand why Baylin House is so important to Rosalie.”

  “Oakwood,” he echoed, nodding. Then he looked down at his plate and took a bite of the salad.

  Quickly, Cassie dug into her black hole of a purse for the steno notebook and pen she always carried. She could see from the corner of her eye that Lawrence was watching her, waiting, studying her actions while he chewed. He took another bite, and watched as Cassie flipped through the notebook to reach a clean page. His gaze never left until she made direct eye contact to say she was ready.

  He only motioned for her to eat, and focused on his own plate again. Across the table, Dorothy Kennelly finally began to eat, still watching Lawrence and Cassie with a cautious expression. She need not have worried.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes.

  Then without warning, Lawrence pushed his plate away and announced, “That was 1965, Cassandra. You were just a little thing then.” His tone was professorial; Cassie imagined he had given this lecture a hundred times to an auditorium filled with students.

  He said, “I was asked to take Directorship at Oakwood with a primary objective to reduce the population post haste. I knew when I accepted the position that Oakwood was dysfunctional, built in the late 1800’s to warehouse those whom society wanted kept out of sight. By 1965 it was overburdened beyond tolerance.”

  “A prison . . ?” Cassie asked in surprise, and quickly realized from Dorothy’s expression that she should not have interrupted.

  “No, no, not at all,” Lawrence answered, shaking his head. “Common thieves and murderers were housed where they could work for their keep. Oakwood, as it was built, was a mental hospital.”

  Cassie’s scribble in the notebook jetted to the side margin with a reminder that Rosalie Baylin’s specialty was psychology. She could research Lawrence’s credentials later if necessary, though she doubted it would be.

  He took a breath and continued, “Oakwood Institution grew from a patient count of 125 to a total of 275 in the first fifty years, operating as a clean sanatorium for a small number who could be helped, but primarily as a warehouse for patients who were either mentally deranged beyond limits, or mentally deficient from birth.”

  He paused and searched Cassie’s expression, which she assumed meant he wanted confirmation that she understood the difference.

  “In street language one was crazy and the other retarded,” she offered.

  Dorothy grunted. Her expression said Cassie had just been as crude as Dorothy expected her to be, and wasn’t she ashamed of herself!

  Lawrence winced. “Yes, I suppose so, but we don’t use street language, Cassandra. You’ll need to gain the proper vocabulary for this work.”

  He leaned sideways to dig into a cloth bag hanging from the side of his wheelchair, brought out a blank index card and ballpoint pen, and placed them on the table. Then he motioned for Cassie to eat as he loaded his own fork once more.

  She put down the pen and took a few tentative bites, watching him cautiously. It was surreal trying to follow his lead and avoid making more mistakes. Dorothy was no help; her constant glare hovered like a damned python looking for an opening to strike.

  Lawrence continued to eat, chewing quietly, thoughtfully, his gaze on the table, his head moving in small nods and tilts as he carried on a silent conversation inside his head. Cassie finished her salad quickly and slid the bowl of soup into place, grateful for the quiet moments to put more substance into her stomach.

  Dorothy’s eyes flicked to the blank index card, then to Lawrence, then back to Cassie with another warning look. Cassie didn’t have time to signal anything back.

  “At the time of my appointment . . . ,” Lawrence suddenly started again. Cassie hastily changed from soupspoon to ballpoint.

  “ . . . Oakwood was nearly a hundred years old. Several decades of operation by private contractors had allowed maintenance neglect. The population had grown out of control, understandably due to billing contracts based on headcount rather than on patient progress of any kind. The entire record system consisted of a box of old ledger books that hadn’t been reconciled in years.

  “And not only were the records jumbled into a single mass, so were the patients – mild to severe, it made no difference. More than four hundred residents shared the space built for two-seventy-five, and the only distinction in housing was to separate the men from the women. Not the children from the adults, not even the violently deranged from the meek, except in a haphazard way; just the genders, male from female. It was an appalling condition.” Lawrence sighed heavily, shaking his head.

  “The ledger books had to be transcribed and new patient records created; all residents had to be given full physiological and psychological evaluation. It was a major task to complete quickly for everyone’s sake, for the safety of my staff as well as for the residents.

  “Within the first month we discovered the facility had also been used as an orphanage during the years from the Depression through most of World War II. Sixty-seven children had been put in Oakwood simply because the authorities didn’t know what else to do with them. Most were released at age of majority as the contract with the state stipulated. But not all; nine were never released–we discovered them as middle-aged men who had been there since young childhood – and it was nothing short of unconscionable negligence that kept them there. They were not
mentally ill, nor were they suffering congenital insufficiencies to require total care. They were kept at Oakwood because the state was willing to continue paying for them. And over time they tragically became too institutionalized to be able to leave.”

  “Institutionalized . . . ?” Cassie needed a less formal way to describe what he meant, but this time she was not going to offer a guess.

  Lawrence smiled patiently. “It means they had no basic skills with which to survive anywhere else. They were grown men with mostly average intelligence, but less social training than normal five-year-olds. They were raised with the kind of minimal care one allows an animal.”

  Cassie cringed, and made another side note of his description. She wished she had a tape recorder to capture Dr. Baylin’s tone of voice as well as his words. Without one, she hoped she would be able to decipher her pen scratches when she could sit quietly at the computer.

  Lawrence continued, “Rosalie was working in Sacramento at the time, but she came immediately when I described the conditions to her. She will give you the details that called her to the rescue. I kept the specific candidates separate from the general population as well as possible, and as soon as she was ready, I began releasing them to her excellent care. Tom Anderson and Neil Cooper were the first. A week later I sent Calvin Dodd and . . .” he paused, and frowned. “And one of the men who was mildly deficient, but definitely trainable. Brady Irwin was his name. I’m afraid I can’t remember all them, and the records have long been archived, but you will learn specifics of the individual men from Rosalie.”

  He paused, and Cassie was grateful for the extra seconds to write the names in a legible hand. Tom Anderson. Neil Cooper. Calvin Dodd. Brady Irwin.

  Cassie sat with her pen poised, but he was still silent. She looked up from the steno book to see him watching her so intently it startled her.