by Sue Grafton
Now I was the one silent for a beat. As usual, when confronted with a demand of that sort, my mind went blank. “I can’t think of one offhand. If you want my best guess, I’d say she’s drugging him.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. If you think she’s so dangerous, then fire her.”
“I don’t have the authority. That’s up to you.”
“Well, I can’t do anything until I talk to her. Let’s be fair about it. There are two sides to every story. If I fired her strictly on the basis of what you’ve said, she’d file a complaint with the labor relations board about unfair treatment or dismissal without cause. You know what I’m saying?”
“Shit, Melanie. If you talk to Solana about this, she’ll go ballistic. That was her response the last time around when she thought I was checking up on her.”
“How else am I supposed to find out what’s going on?”
“She’s not going to admit to anything. She’s too smart.”
“But so far it’s just your word against hers. I don’t mean to be hardnosed, but I’m not flying three thousand miles based on a ‘feeling’ in your bones.”
“Don’t take my word for it. You think I’m so nuts, why don’t you call Henry and ask him?”
“I didn’t say you were nuts. I know you better than that. I’ll think about it. We’re swamped right now at work and taking the time off would be a pain in the butt. I’ll talk to my boss and get back to you.”
Typical of Melanie, that was the last conversation we had for a month.
At 6:00 I walked up to Rosie’s and found Henry sitting at his usual table in the bar. I’d decided my sterling behavior entitled me to a meal out. The place was jumping. This was Wednesday night, which is known as “hump day” to working stiffs, the week being more than half done. Henry got up graciously and held my chair while I slid in next to him. He bought me a glass of wine, which I sipped while he finished his Black Jack over ice. We ordered, or, rather, we listened, while Rosie debated what we’d have. She decided Henry would enjoy her ozporkolt, a venison goulash. I told her about my nutritional goals, begging and pleading to be spared the sour cream and its many variations. She took this in stride, saying, “Is very good. No worry. For you, I prepare guisada de guilota.”
“Wonderful. What’s that?”
“Is quail braised in tomatillo-chili sauce.”
Henry shifted in his seat with a look of injury. “Why can’t I have that?”
“Okay. You both. I bring right away.”
When the food arrived she made sure each of us had a glass of really bad red wine, which she poured with a flourish. I toasted her and sipped, saying, “Oh yum,” while my tongue shriveled in my mouth.
Once she’d departed, I took a taste of sauce before I committed myself fully to the quail. “We have a problem,” I said, picking at the bird with my fork. “I need to borrow the key to Gus’s place.”
He looked at me for a moment. I don’t know what he saw in my face, but he reached in his pocket and took out a ring of keys. He worked his way through the circle and when he came to the key to Gus’s back door, he forced it off the ring and put it in my outstretched palm. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain.”
“Better for you if I keep my mouth shut.”
“You won’t do anything illegal.”
I put my fingers in my ears and did that la-la-la business. “I’m not hearing that. Could you ask something else?”
“You never told me what went on when you took him the soup.”
I took my fingers out of my ears. “That went fine, except she told me that his appetite was off and any kind of meat made him sick. There I stood having just given her the container full of chicken soup. I felt like an idiot.”
“But you talked to him?”
“Of course not. Nobody does. When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Oh, that’s right. And guess what? She says Gus took to his bed because you stayed too long and he was exhausted, which is bullshit. Plus, she canceled Meals on Wheels. I called Melanie to tell her and that conversation went straight into the toilet. She implied I was making things up. Either which way, she feels Solana should have the chance to defend herself. She did suggest it would be helpful if I had a shred of proof to support my suspicions. Thus…” I held up the key.
“Be careful.”
“No sweat,” I said. Now all I needed was the opportunity.
I believe, as many people do, that things happen for a reason. I’m not convinced there’s a Grand Plan in place, but I do know that impulse and chance play a role in the Universe, as does coincidence. There are no accidents.
For instance:
You’re on a highway and your tire goes flat, so you pull over to the side of the road in hopes of flagging down help. Many cars go by, and when someone finally comes to your aid, he turns out to be the kid you sat behind in fifth grade. Or maybe you leave for work ten minutes late and because of that you’re caught in traffic, while ahead of you, the bridge you cross daily collapses, taking six cars with it. You might just as easily have left four minutes early and down you’d have gone. Life is made up of these occurrences for good or for ill. Some call it synchronicity. I call it dumb luck.
Thursday, I left the office early for no particular reason. I’d grappled with a lot of paperwork that day and maybe I was bored. As I rounded the corner from Cabana onto Bay, I passed Solana Rojas in her rattletrap convertible. Gus was hunched in the front seat, bundled into an overcoat. As far as I knew, he hadn’t been out of the house in weeks. Solana was speaking to him intently and neither looked up as I went by. In the rearview mirror I saw her stop at the corner and make a right-hand turn. I figured she was taking him to another doctor’s appointment, which later turned out not to be the case.
I whipped into a parking place and locked my car, then trotted up the steps to Gus’s front door. I made a show of knocking on the pane of glass in the door. I waved merrily at an imaginary someone inside and then pointed toward the side and nodded, showing I understood. I went around the side of the house to the rear and climbed the back porch steps. I peered through the windowpane in the door. The kitchen was empty and the lights were out—no big surprise. I used the key Henry’d given me to let myself in. The action was not strictly legal, but I put it in the same category as returning Gus’s mail. I told myself I was doing a good deed.
The problem was this:
In the absence of an invitation, I had no legitimate reason to enter Gus Vronsky’s house when he was home, let alone when he was out. It was pure chance that I’d seen him pass in Solana’s car, heading off to god knows where. If I were caught, what possible explanation could I give for being in his house? There’d been no smoke boiling out his windows and no cries for help. No power failure, no earthquake, no gas leak, no break in the water main. In short, I had no excuse beyond my fear for his safety and well-being. I could just imagine how far that would fly in a court of law.
In the course of this home invasion, I was hoping for one of two things: either reassurance that Gus was in good hands or evidence I could act on if my suspicions were justified. I went down the hall and into Gus’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made—“a place for everything and everything in place” being Solana Rojas’s credo. I opened and closed a few drawers but saw nothing out of the ordinary. I’m not sure what I expected, but that’s why you look, because you don’t know what’s there. I went into his bathroom. His oblong pill organizer was sitting on the sink. The compartments for S, M, and T were empty, as was W. T, F, and S were still filled with assorted pills. I opened the medicine cabinet and scanned his prescription medications. I rooted through my shoulder bag until I found my notebook and pen. I wrote down the information from every bottle I saw: date, physician’s name, the drug, the dosage, and instructions. There were six prescriptions altogether. I’m not well versed in pharmaceutical matters, so I made careful notes and replaced the containers on the shelf.
>
I left the bathroom and continued down the hall. I opened the door to the second bedroom, where Solana kept clothing and personal items for use on the nights she stayed over. This room was the former warehouse for numerous unlabeled cardboard boxes, all of which had been removed. The few pieces of antique furniture had been dusted, polished, and rearranged. I could see she’d made herself right at home. A handsome carved mahogany bed frame had been reassembled and the linens were as taut as an army cot. There was a burled walnut rocking chair inlaid with cherry, an armoire, and a plump-shouldered fruitwood chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. I opened three drawers in succession and saw that all were filled with Solana’s clothes. I was tempted to search her room further, but my good angel suggested I was already risking jail and had better cease and desist.
Between the second and third bedrooms there was a full bath, but a quick peek through the open door revealed nothing significant. I did open the medicine cabinet and found it empty except for a number of cosmetics, which I’d never seen Solana wear.
I crossed the hall and opened the door to the third bedroom. Someone had put heavy black-out drapes across the windows so the room was dark and the air dense with heat. In the single bed against the wall there was a massive shape. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Oversized pillows? Laundry bags bulging with discarded clothes? I was so accustomed to Gus’s hoarding that I assumed this was one more example of his inability to throw things out. I heard a grunt. There was a shifting motion, and the man lying in the bed turned from his left side to his right so he was then facing the door. Though his upper body remained in shadow, a band of daylight bisected the bed, illuminating two glittering slits. Either he slept with his eyes open or he was looking right at me. He didn’t react and there was no indication he’d registered my presence. Immobilized, I stood there and held my breath.
In the depths of sleep our animal instincts take over, alerting us to any dangers that arise. Even a subtle shift in temperature, a change in the air as it eddies through the room, the faintest of noises, or an alteration in the light can trigger our defenses. In changing positions, the man had moved up from the deepest recess of sleep. He was reaching for consciousness, ascending slowly like an underwater diver with a circle of open sky above his head. I would have mewed in fear, but I didn’t dare make a sound. I backed out of the room, acutely aware of the whisper of my denim jeans as I moved, the press of my boot sole against the wood floor. I closed the door with infinite care, one hand firmly on the knob, the other resting against the edge of the door to prevent even the softest click as the door met the frame and the strike nosed into the plate.
I turned and retraced my steps at the tiptoeing equivalent of a dead run. I held my shoulder bag close to me, aware that the slightest bump of a kitchen chair might bring the fellow bolt upright, wondering who was in the house with him. I crossed the kitchen, let myself out the back door, and crossed the porch with the same caution. I descended the back-porch steps, my ears cued to any sound behind me. The closer I got to safety, the more in jeopardy I felt.
I crossed Gus’s grass. Between his property and Henry’s there was a short length of fencing and a longer stretch of hedge. When I reached the line of shrubs, I raised my arms to shoulder height and forced my way through a narrow gap between two bushes, then more or less fell onto Henry’s patio. I probably left a telltale path of broken twigs behind me, but I didn’t stop to check. It wasn’t until I was in my apartment with the door locked that I dared take a breath. Who the hell was that guy?
I turned the thumb lock on the door, left the lights off, and went around the kitchen counter to the blind cul-de-sac, where my sink, stove, and cupboards form a windowless U. I sank to the floor and sat there with my knees drawn up, waiting for someone to pound on the door and demand an explanation. Now that I was safe, my heart began to pound, banging in my chest like someone trying to break down a door with a battering ram.
In my mind’s eye, I ran through the entire sequence of events: the show I’d made of tapping on the window in the front door, pretending to communicate with someone inside. I’d tromped merrily down the front steps and tromped merrily up the back. Once inside, I’d opened and closed doors. I’d slid drawers back and forth on their tracks, checked two medicine cabinets, which by all rights should have squeaked on their hinges. I’d paid no attention to the noise I made because I’d thought I was alone. And all the time, that gorilla was sleeping in the next room. Was I out of my freakin’ mind?
After thirty seconds in hiding, I started to feel stupid. I hadn’t been apprehended like some hot prowl burglar in the process of breaking and entering. No one had spotted me going in or out. No one had called the cops to report an intruder. Somehow I’d escaped detection—as far as I knew. Nonetheless, the incident was meant as an object lesson for yours truly. I should have taken it to heart, but I was struck dumb by the realization that I’d passed up the chance to lift the passbooks to Gus’s bank accounts.
21
On the way to work the next morning, I took Santa Teresa Street as far as Aurelia, turned left, and made a detour into a drugstore parking lot. Jones Apothecary was an old-fashioned pharmacy, where the shelves were stocked with vitamins; first-aid remedies; nutritional supplements; ostomy supplies; nostrums; skin, hair, and nail products; and other items meant to alleviate minor human miseries. You could have your prescriptions filled, but you couldn’t buy lawn furniture. You could rent crutches and buy arch supports, but you couldn’t have film developed. They did offer a free blood-pressure check, and while I waited for service I sat down and affixed the cuff to my arm. After much huffing, squeezing, and releasing, the readout was 118/68 so I knew I wasn’t dead.
As soon as the consultation window was free, I stepped up to the counter and caught the eye of the pharmacist, Joe Brooks, who’d been helpful in the past. He was a man in his seventies with snowy white hair that eddied into a swirl in the middle of his forehead. He said, “Yes, ma’am. How’re you? I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I’ve been around—staying out of trouble as much as possible,” I said. “Right now, I need some information and I thought you might help. I have a friend who’s taking a number of medications and I’m worried about him. I think he’s sleeping too much and when he’s awake, he’s confused. I’m wondering about side effects of the drugs he’s on. I made a list of what he’s taking, but the prescriptions weren’t filled here.”
“That wouldn’t make a difference. Most pharmacists handle patient consultations the same way we do. We make sure the patient understands what the medication does, the dosage, and how and when it should be taken. We also explain any possible food or drug interactions and advise them to call the doctor if they have reactions out of the ordinary.”
“That’s what I assumed, but I wanted to double-check. If I show you the list, can you tell me what these are for?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Who’s the doctor?”
“Medford. Do you know him?”
“I do and he’s a good egg.”
I took out my notebook and folded it open to the relevant page. He removed a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket and eased the stems over his ears. I watched him trace the lines of print with his eyes, commenting as he worked his way down the line. “These are all standard medications. The indapamide is a diuretic prescribed to lower blood pressure. Metoprolol’s a beta-blocker—again, prescribed to treat hypertension. Klorvess is a cherry-flavored potassium replacement that requires a prescription because potassium supplementation can affect heart rhythm and damage the GI tract. Butazolidin is an anti-inflammatory, probably for treatment of osteoarthritis. Did he ever mention that?”
“I know he complains about his aches and pains. Osteoporosis, for sure. He’s just about bent double from bone loss.” I was looking over his shoulder, reading the list. “What’s that one?”
“Clofibrate is used to reduce cholesterol, and this last one, Tagamet, is fo
r acid reflux. The only thing I see worth scrutiny are his potassium levels. Low blood potassium could cause him to be confused, weak, or sleepy. How old is he?”
“Eighty-nine.”
He nodded, tilting his head as he considered the implications. “Age plays a part. No doubt about that. Geriatric individuals don’t excrete drugs as promptly as healthy younger people. Liver and kidney functions are also substantially reduced. Coronary output starts declining after age thirty, and by ninety it’s down to thirty to forty percent of maximum. What you’re describing might be an unrelated medical condition nobody’s picked up on. He’d probably benefit from an evaluation by a geriatric specialist if he hasn’t seen one.”
“He’s under doctor’s care. He dislocated his shoulder in a fall a month ago and just went in for a recheck. I expected a quicker recovery rate, but he doesn’t seem much improved.”
“That may well be. Striated muscle also declines with age, so it’s quite possible his shoulder repair has been impeded by torn musculature, the osteoporosis, undiagnosed diabetes, or an impaired immune system. Have you talked to his doctor?”
“No, and I doubt it would be productive, given current privacy laws. His office wouldn’t acknowledge his being a patient, let alone put his doctor on the phone to chat with some stranger about his care. I’m not even a family member; he’s just a neighbor of mine. I’m assuming his caregiver’s conveyed all the information to his doctor, but I have no way of knowing.”
Joe Brooks thought about that, weighing the possibilities. “If he was given pain pills for the shoulder, he might be abusing his meds. I don’t see reference to anything of the sort, but he might have a supply on hand. Alcohol consumption’s another consideration.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose either one is possible. I’ve never seen him take a drink, but what do I know?”
