"It's a necessary service. After all, even if you're not afraid of blood, it would have been hard for you to clean up after that guy, right? Bernie. You knew him. That would make it a lot harder."
A strange look passed over Cindy's tired features. "I guess so. Sure."
"Cindy!" Someone was calling from the other side of the room. It was Carly, the other staff person. "I could use some help here."
Cindy jumped up. "Sorry. Gotta go."
Arie watched her walk away. What had that look meant?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Arie was able to convince Grumpa to stay at the center until after lunch—mostly by steadfastly ignoring his requests to leave. Carly, who they'd learned was the activity director, left right before lunch when another nurse, Karen, came on duty. Karen had been driving the appointment van, and with her were four residents—three women, one man. Arie thought she recognized one of the women from a vision but couldn't be sure. The numbers seemed to reflect the gender ratio at River Rest. Arie could understand a little better why Bernie might have been such a hot commodity.
Grumpa appeared to be turning into one as well. At lunch, he was surrounded by Alan and several women vying for attention from the "hot new guy." Arie had a sudden, entirely unwelcome image of Scarlett O'Grumpa sitting in a green-sprigged hoopskirt under an oak tree, surrounded by a bevy of white-haired admirers eager to bring him barbecue. She hustled him out to the car as soon as he finished eating.
"I'm not going back," Grumpa announced when Arie turned onto their street. She was driving his three-year-old Caddy and trying not to get used to the luxury.
"Yes, you are," Arie said. "We learned a lot today."
"Nothing we didn't already know. And I'm tired of getting pawed over. Those women act like I'm the only piece of red meat at their panther party."
"Panther party?"
"Yeah, one of them sex-crazy females. In my day, women didn't used to act like that."
Arie pulled the car into their driveway and put it in park. "Okay, first of all, it's 'cougar,' not 'panther.’ Secondly, you'd need to be at least twenty years younger than you are to qualify as their red meat. You're more like dried beef jerky."
"Well, they're still hungry for it, missy." He got out of the car, and as he moved to the front, his body started jerking spasmodically.
Arie gasped and leaped out. "Grumpa, what's wrong?"
He stopped jerking. "Nothing's wrong. I'm doing the twerk like that Hanna Banana girl. They're hungry for it, I tell ya."
Arie gagged and followed him inside. "Doing the twerk." God help them.
When they arrived at the center the next morning, Grumpa made a beeline for his birdhouse and the paints. The same residents were seated at the table with the addition of two more women, both of whom had been at appointments the day before.
Carrying his project, Grumpa slammed to a stop halfway back to the table. His eyes popped wide, and if he'd been a cartoon character, they would have spun in circles while his tongue rolled down to the floor.
No wonder—the woman he was slobbering over was a stunner at any age. A long snow-white braid trailed over one shoulder, and wide cheekbones accented deeply intelligent sea-green eyes. Although not as contemporary fashionable as Phyllis, her clothing—a flowing, shin-length sapphire-blue dress with a bright-yellow cashmere sweater—carried a soft, timeless quality. She smiled warmly at Grumpa as he joined the table then looked past him to Arie, where her gaze faltered.
"And who do we have here?" Her voice was low and melodious and seemed directed at Grumpa, but her gaze on Arie stayed sharply focused.
"I'm Harlan, and this is my granddaughter, Arie." Grumpa had yet to take his eyes off her.
"It's nice to meet you. I'm Belinda."
The second woman, dressed in black slacks and a short-sleeved black silk shirt, waved rather listlessly. "I'm Viv."
"Nice to meet you both," Grumpa said without taking his eyes off Belinda. "It's a real pleasure." He set his birdhouse down with a thump.
Arie stood awkwardly, waiting for him to introduce her. She quickly realized he was obviously lost in a twitterpated haze, smiling and shuffling his feet.
Belinda dimpled.
Viv loudly cleared her throat.
Flash.
My hip aches from having to flop down on the stupid blanket she had to bring. Red-and-white checked...
Arie shook her head, chasing the vision away. Belinda was staring at her quizzically and asked, "Are you all right, dear?"
"Oh. Fine."
"Are you sure? You seemed a little... I don't know. Distracted?"
"No, I'm fine. Really."
"Is it the chili?" Grumpa asked Arie. He turned to Belinda. "Sometimes she gets a little... you know"—he waved the air in the vicinity of his own scrawny butt—"after we have chili for supper."
Arie blushed. "Grumpa!"
Belinda smiled. "Well, then. Better left unsaid. But aren't you a little young to be here, my dear?"
"I'm only here for a little while," Arie said. For some reason, under the woman's eyes, she felt nervous—exposed, almost.
"Yes, but this isn't your first visit, is it?" Belinda said. "You were with that cleaning company who took care of Bernie."
Viv gasped, and the rest of the table stilled. Arie was glad she'd already mentioned the circumstance the day before, or she'd have felt like a fraud.
"That's right. That's what made me think of this place when my parents were trying to find a place where Grumpa could meet new people. I liked how they handled such an unfortunate situation."
At the reminder of the "unfortunate situation," Viv teared up. Standing abruptly, she excused herself and headed for the bathroom.
"I'm sorry," Arie said. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
"It's a sad thing," Belinda said. "But at our age, we all have to get used to saying goodbye to our friends."
Alan huffed. "Since when was Bernie Reynolds anybody's friend?"
"Well, that Viv seemed to think he was," Grumpa pointed out.
The group was silent for a few moments, working on their projects. Viv returned, still sniffling loudly. Everyone ignored her.
Grumpa reached for a pencil, and his sleeve caught a bottle of Tempura paint, almost knocking it over.
"Watch out, Grumpa," Arie said, lurching to grab the jar.
His face flushed with embarrassment. "You watch out. You're the one knocking things over."
Belinda intervened smoothly. "You call your grandfather 'Grumpa?'" Her warm smile erased any impertinence from the question.
"It's just a nickname from when I was a little kid," Arie said. "It stuck."
"Apparently so." Belinda noticed his birdhouse. "How pretty. Is that a lilac blossom?"
Grumpa's normally oatmeal-paste complexion flushed rosy at Belinda's remark. "It's going to be," he said. "When it's finished. Of course, I'm not sure how well it will turn out. These paintbrushes are all scraggly." He held one up, the bristles all askew.
"You could ask for a new brush," Viv added. Her voice was soft and hesitant and went unheard—or ignored—by most.
Arie hid her smile by checking out the rest of the room.
Cindy was at the staff table, a three-ring binder open in front of her and a pile of papers spread all around. She still looked tired, and a frown creased her forehead as she studied the papers. After taking a drink from a travel mug at her elbow, she grimaced.
Carly was on the far side of the main room, arranging chairs interspersed with yoga mats in a half circle around an old box-console TV set. Grumpa had one just like it. The hard-backed chairs outnumbered the yoga mats three to one.
The other nurse, Karen, walked by their table and gave Arie an inscrutable look. Maybe five or six years older and many inches taller than Arie, she had a flat expression that made Arie doubt she was much of a people person. However, she was in the nursing field, after all.
"Don't get too involved in your projects, folks," Karen said as she passed by
. "We're about to start your fitness program." She didn't bother to wait for their responses, instead continuing on to a frail woman who appeared in her late nineties.
Covered in blankets and a thick pink sweater, the woman sat in a wheelchair, which had been rolled against a wall. She lit up when she saw Karen approaching. She held out gnarled, arthritic hands, and the nurse took them gently.
Arie chided herself for prejudging the nurse, but then she noticed Belinda watching the pair carefully. Belinda's features were expressionless, but her whole body seemed intent on observing the interaction. She turned and seemed to catch Cindy's eye. Cindy gave a slight nod, some unspoken communication passing between the two women. When Carly announced the start of the fitness program from across the room, Belinda jumped.
"Let's gather round, everyone," Carly sang. Her smile was so bright it made Arie's eyes water. "Use a mat if you feel up to it. Just make sure you don't get yourself down there and not be able to get back up." Various chuckles sounded from the residents as they moved in her direction.
Grumpa looked irritated but perked up when Belinda rose and made her way to the circle of chairs. He followed her and, though she settled on a mat, took the chair next to her. Alan seated himself on the other side of Grumpa. Alan leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms and sticking his legs straight out. Other people, less mobile, were a little slower getting settled—most seemed resigned, and one or two grumbled. A few, like Belinda, seemed pleased about the activity.
As the residents claimed their spots, Cindy called across the room to Karen, who was wheeling the pink-sweatered lady toward the front door. "Isn't Ruth joining the group today?"
Karen shook her head and kept pushing. "No, we're going to go enjoy the fresh air while we still can. Miss Ruth loves the autumn leaves."
That was a nice sentiment, but since it was only the beginning of September, not a lot of autumn color was even apparent yet, and people had plenty of time to enjoy it when it did appear.
Ruth twisted around in her chair, peering around Karen's ample backside, and waved her knobby hands parade-princess style at the group clustered around the TV. She looked as excited as a PMS-ing woman in a chocolate shop. Belinda and Merilee waved back.
Carly started a DVD—some kind of low-impact exercise that seemed big on stretching—and began weaving through the residents, offering encouragement and advice with varying degrees of success. Even from a distance, Arie could tell Grumpa and Alan were acting up. They were whispering back and forth and sniggering together every time Carly turned away. When she'd swing back to see what the disturbance was, they'd slide exaggeratedly "innocent" looks over their faces.
"Oh boy. Not again." A voice behind Arie made her spin around.
Cindy stood with her hands on her hips, eyeing the exercise group.
"Not again what?" Arie asked.
"Alan seems to have found a new partner in crime. With Bernie gone, I bet Carly thought she had it made." Cindy stretched a kink out of her neck then walked back to her paperwork. Arie joined her, excited that the subject had come up without her having to bring it up on her own.
"How much of a problem could one old guy be?"
Cindy sat down with a sound somewhere between a grunt, a sigh, and a laugh. "Oh, don't let these people fool you. Just cause someone's lived a while doesn't automatically turn them into sweet, defenseless saints. Quite the opposite. 'Aging gracefully' is a bunch of bullcrap. Getting old sucks, and the more I work here, the more I dread it happening to me."
"Okay, but still..."
"Look, not to speak ill of the dead and all, but the guy was a real jerk. You should have seen how he played these women. There's a serious shortage of men in this age group, you know?"
Arie nodded. "I noticed."
"Well, Bernie knew instinctively how to work that kind of thing to his advantage. I guess he used to be a salesman."
"But with Carly?"
"Oh, he loved pushing her buttons. He always hated her activities, said she treated them like babies, which"—Cindy glanced over at the activity director, who was clapping her hands to count off the reps—"she kind of does. Most of them can deal with it. Some even like it. Bernie hated it, though. Called her Carly Horse and said she was a pain in the ass. Cramped his style."
"I get why that would be annoying, but..." Arie shrugged.
"Yeah, I know. She could have ignored it if it was just that, but he'd get everyone riled up. Like a mutiny, you know? It went deeper. I dunno. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe there was something else too."
Flash.
—"The Great Pretender" while I make my way across the office, trying to find Carly Horse's minifridge to fix us a couple drinks. Phyllis laughs when I—
Arie gave herself a mental shake. "Something else? Like what?"
Cindy shrugged and pulled the binder over, flipping it open. From what Arie could tell, it looked like a medication log.
"No clue," Cindy said. "Just the way they'd look at each other sometimes. She'd be totally glaring at him, and he'd have this smirk. If it was me, I'da slapped it right off, but she's a good little Christian girl. Actually, that probably made it harder. It would be a struggle for anyone to forgive him. Even his own family cut him off."
"Really?" No matter how annoying Grumpa was—or Brant… or her mother, for that matter—Arie couldn't imagine living without them. Well, maybe her mother. "What happened?"
"Who knows. He was divorced a long time ago, long before he came here. For a while, he had a grandson, Nick, who came to see him maybe once a month. I think his wife made him. She was super sweet. But that all ended when Bernie grabbed her boob and asked if they were real."
Arie gasped. Being a woman of ample proportions, she'd run into plenty of disgusting comments, but if her grandfather—even an in-law—had felt her up, she'd have snapped his fingers off one by one and made him eat them.
"So what's the deal with you?" Cindy asked.
"What do you mean?" Arie's heart thumped dully.
"Why are you really here? If you were thinking about a job in this field, you'd be checking out schools, not hanging around here." Cindy eyed her speculatively but not with any animosity.
Arie thought fast. "My folks are paying me."
"To come here? Why?"
"Well, as you can see, Grumpa can be a handful. If he decides he won't do something, it's game over. And my mom is kind of... nervous. She's afraid of confrontation, you know?" A bigger lie had never been told. "Anyway, my folks want to make sure he continues to cooperate with coming here so if we have to ease him in slowly..." Arie gave a one-shoulder shrug. "I think it's stupid, but hey, I'm getting paid."
Cindy laughed. "That's not a bad idea. I need to talk to Jane real quick, then it's snack time." She stood, gathering up the med binder and the other paperwork. "If I make them wait too long, they'll start to get rambunctious."
True to her word, Cindy only spent a few moments in Jane's office. She emerged with a frown and hurried to announce snack time. As she'd predicted, many residents griped about the delay but simmered down once the yogurt and cups of fruit were doled out.
In Arie's absence, Viv had stolen her seat next to Grumpa, so Arie had to sit across from him, facing the entryway. That was why she was the first person to see Detective Connor O'Shea walk in the door.
He saw her, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At the sight of Arie sitting in the middle of a gaggle of geriatrics, Connor slammed to a stop. That his mouth didn't fall open was probably due only to training and experience.
Grumpa hissed, "Cheese it! We got company."
"Cheez-Its?" Larry said. "I thought snack was yogurt today. I want crackers, too." He got up and headed for the serving counter.
"Where's he going?" Viv said. "There aren't any crackers."
Alan scraped the last of his yogurt from his cup. "He's the one who's crackers." Eyes fixed on Connor, he said, "And that is a scrumptious bite of yum-yum right there." He wasn't
talking about the yogurt, either.
Connor had reanimated himself and was crossing the room to Cindy, who was attempting to convince Larry that he hadn't been cheated out of any crackers. Arie couldn't hear what Connor was saying, but Cindy nodded and disappeared down the hallway leading to the offices and break room. Connor stood, arms crossed, scanning the room while he waited. His eyes locked with Arie's, and he shook his head. A slight smile made his lips twitch, and her heart lightened.
"He's a cop, isn't he?"
Arie jumped as she registered Belinda's question. Before she could answer, Viv piped in. "A policeman? Why do you say that, Belinda?"
"I can tell. My husband was a cop. There's something about the way they walk. The way they look at a room when they come in and the people in it." She turned to Arie. "He knows you, too, doesn't he?"
"He's... uh... a friend." Arie swallowed in a suddenly dry throat.
"Oh, honey," Merilee said, eyes wide and glued on Connor, "you do not want to park that hunk in the friend zone."
"But what's he doing here?" Viv apparently had the unique capacity of sticking to the point.
Belinda's forehead furrowed. "That's an excellent question."
"Nothing's been stolen lately," Alan said. To Grumpa, he said, "Sometimes, things 'get lost' in these places. If you move in, you'll want to watch your stuff. And it's usually the staff, too, more often than not."
"They don't pay them well enough," Viv said.
Alan spun in his seat to face her. "That's no excuse. Why do you do that? If you want to let people walk all over you, fine. But that doesn't mean the rest of us will. As far as I'm concerned, there's too many of you willing to be the victim of some petty thief or Don Juan con man. Well, not me."
Viv burst into tears. She lurched to her feet and fled in the direction of the tiny library. Despite being large and sturdily built, she gave the impression of a small, wounded creature.
"Now, look what you did, you cat," Merilee chided Alan. "You made her cry again."
"She's always crying. The woman loves to cry."
Scry Me A River: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (Blood Visions Paranormal Mysteries Book 2) Page 8
