She blinked, her expression unchanged. “I could, but there’s no point. He’s out.” She closed her mouth, apparently not wanting to plague me with more information than I’d requested.
“You have any idea when he’ll be back?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, dear. Mr. Downs doesn’t keep me apprised of his comings and goings. I’m his landlady, not his wife.”
“Do you mind if I wait?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you. Wednesdays he doesn’t get back until late.”
“Like what, six?”
“I’d say closer to ten, judging from past behavior. You his daughter?”
“I’m not. Does he have a daughter?”
“He’s mentioned one. In point of fact, I don’t allow single women to visit the tenants after nine at night. It sends the wrong message to the other residents.”
“I guess I’ll try another day.”
“You do that.”
When I got home I went directly to Henry’s house and knocked on his door. We hadn’t had a chance to visit in days. I caught him in his kitchen pulling a big bowl from one of the lower cabinets. I tapped on the glass, and when he saw me he set the bowl on the counter and opened the door.
“Am I interrupting anything?”
“No, no. Come on in. I’m making bread-and-butter pickles. You’re welcome to lend a hand.”
In the sink I could see a large colander piled high with cucumbers. A smaller colander held white onions. Small glass jars of turmeric, mustard seeds, celery seeds, and cayenne pepper were lined up on the counter.
“Are those cucumbers yours?”
“I’m afraid so. This is the third batch of bread-and-butter pickles I’ve made this month and I’m still up to my ears.”
“I thought you only bought one plant.”
“Well, two. The one seemed so small, I thought I ought to add a second just to keep it company. Now I’ve got vines taking up half the yard.”
“I thought that was kudzu.”
“Very funny,” he said.
“I can’t believe you’re still harvesting in January.”
“Neither can I. Grab a knife and I’ll find you a cutting board.”
Henry poured me half a glass of wine and made himself a Black Jack and ice. Occasionally sipping our drinks, we stood side by side at the kitchen counter, slicing cucumbers and onions for the next ten minutes. When we finished, Henry tossed the vegetables with kosher salt in two big ceramic bowls. He pulled a bag of crushed ice out of the freezer and packed ice over the cucumber-onion combination and covered both bowls with weighted lids.
“My aunt used to make pickles that way,” I remarked. “They sit for three hours, right? Then you boil the other ingredients in a pot and add the cucumbers and onions.”
“You got it. I’ll give you six pints. I’m giving Rosie some, too. At the restaurant, she serves them on rye bread with soft cheese. It’s enough to bring tears to your eyes.”
He filled a big soup kettle with water and put it on the stove to sterilize the pint jars sitting in a box nearby.
“So how was Charlotte’s Christmas?”
“She said good. All four kids gathered at her daughter’s house in Phoenix. Christmas Eve, there was a power failure so the whole clan drove to Scottsdale and checked into the Phoenician. She said it was the perfect way to spend Christmas Day. By nightfall the power was on again so they went back to her daughter’s house and did it all again. Hang on a second and I’ll show you what she got me.”
“She gave you a Christmas present? I thought you weren’t exchanging gifts.”
“She said it wasn’t Christmas. It’s early birthday.”
Henry dried his hands and left the kitchen briefly, returning with a shoe box. He opened the lid and pulled out a running shoe.
“Running shoes?”
“For walking. She’s been walking for years and wants to get me into it. William may be joining us as well.”
“Well, that’s a good plan,” I said. “I’m glad to hear she’s still around. I haven’t seen much of her lately.”
“Nor have I. She’s got a client in from Baltimore and he’s driving her nuts. All she does is drive him around looking at properties that somehow don’t suit. He wants to build a fourplex or something of the sort, and everything he’s looked at is too expensive or in the wrong area. She’s trying to educate him about California real estate and he keeps telling her to think ‘outside the box.’ I don’t know where she gets the patience. What about you? How’s life treating you these days?”
“Fine. I’m getting my ducks in a row for the coming year,” I said. “I did have a curious run-in with Solana. She’s a prickly little thing.” I went on to describe the encounter and her touchiness when she realized I’d been talking to Gus’s niece long-distance. “The call wasn’t even about her. Melanie thought Gus was confused and she wondered if I’d noticed anything. I said I’d check on him, but I wasn’t meddling in Solana’s business. I don’t know beans about geriatric nursing.”
“Maybe she’s one of those people who sees conspiracies everywhere.”
“I don’t know…it feels like there’s something more going on.”
“From what I’ve seen of her, I’m not a fan.”
“Nor am I. There’s something creepy about her.”
17
SOLANA
Solana opened her eyes and flicked a look at the clock. It was 2:02 A.M. She listened to the hiss of the baby monitor she’d put in the old man’s room beside his bed. His breathing was as rhythmic as the sound of the surf. She folded the covers back and padded barefoot down the hall. The house was dark but her night vision was excellent, and there was sufficient illumination from the streetlights to make the walls glow with gray. She was drugging him regularly, crushing the over-the-counter sleeping medications and adding them to his evening meal. Meals on Wheels delivered a selection of hot foods for the noon meal and a brown-bag supper for later in the day, but he preferred his hot meal at 5:00, which was when he’d always eaten supper. There wasn’t much she could do with an apple, a cookie, and a sandwich, but a casserole was excellent for her purposes. In addition, he liked a dish of ice cream before bed. His sense of taste had faded, and if the sleeping pills were bitter, he never said a word.
He was easier to get along with now that she had him on the right routine. At times he seemed confused, but no more so than many of the elderly she’d had in her care. Soon he’d be completely dependent. She liked her patients compliant. Usually the angry and obstructive ones were the first to settle down, as though they’d waited all their lives for her soothing regimen. She was mother and ministering angel, giving them the attention they’d been robbed of in their youth.
It was her belief that the contentious oldsters had been contentious as kids, thus garnering anger, frustration, and rejection from the parents who were meant to give them love and approval. Raised on a steady diet of parental aggression, these lost souls disconnected from most social interactions. Despised and despising, they had a hunger masked by rage and loneliness masquerading as petulance. Gus Vronsky was neither more nor less cantankerous than Mrs. Sparrow, the acid-tongued old harridan she’d tended to for two years. When she’d finally ushered Mrs. Sparrow into the netherworld, she’d gone out as quietly as a kitten, mewing only once as the drugs took effect. The obituary said she’d died peacefully in her sleep, which was more or less the truth. Solana was tenderhearted. She prided herself on that. She delivered them from suffering and set them free.
Now while Gus lay immobilized, she searched his dresser drawers, using a penlight she shielded with her palm. It had taken her weeks of incremental increases in his doses before she’d been able to justify staying overnight. His doctor checked on him just often enough that she didn’t want to arouse suspicion. He was the one who suggested that Gus needed the supervision. She told the doctor he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, disoriented, and would then try to get himself out of bed. She sa
id she’d caught him on two occasions wandering through the house with no idea where he was.
Extending her hours had necessitated cleaning out one of the bedrooms so she’d have a place to stay. As long as she was about it, she’d gone through both spare bedrooms, setting aside items of potential value and discarding the rest. With the Dumpster at the curb, she was able to eliminate most of the junk he’d been saving lo those many years. He’d set up such a howl about it early on that she’d taken to working when he was asleep. He seldom went into those rooms anyway, so he didn’t seem to notice how much had disappeared.
She’d searched his bedroom before, but she’d obviously missed something. How could he have so little of value? He’d told her, complainingly, that he’d worked for the railroad all his life. She’d seen his Social Security checks and his monthly pension checks, which together were more than sufficient to cover his monthly expenses. Where had the rest of the money gone? She knew his house was paid off, disgusting as it was, but now he had her salary to pay and she didn’t come cheap. Soon she’d start billing Melanie for overtime, though she’d let the doctor suggest the added hours.
The first week she worked she’d found the passbooks for two savings accounts in one of the cubbyholes in his desk. One contained a pathetic fifteen thousand dollars and the other, twenty-two thousand. Obviously he wanted her to believe that was the extent of it. He was taunting her, knowing she had no way to get her hands on the funds. In her previous job, something similar had occurred. She’d persuaded Mrs. Feldcamp to sign countless checks made out to cash, but four more big savings accounts had surfaced after the old woman was gone. Those four held close to five hundred thousand dollars, which made her weep with frustration. She’d taken one last run at the money, backdating withdrawal slips that she forged with the old woman’s signature. She thought the effort was credible, but the bank had taken issue. There was even talk of prosecution, and if she hadn’t shed that particular persona, all her hard work might have come to nothing. Fortunately she’d been quick enough to vanish before the bank discovered the extent of her chicanery.
At Gus’s, the week before, after a diligent search through the chest of drawers in one of the spare bedrooms, she’d found some jewelry that must have belonged to his wife. Most of it was cheap, but Mrs. Vronsky’s engagement ring was mounted with a good-sized diamond and her watch was a Cartier. Solana had moved those to a hiding place in her room until she could get to a jeweler’s and have them appraised. She didn’t want to try a pawnshop because she knew she would net only a small percentage of their value. Items in pawnshops were easily traced and that would never do. Really, she was losing hope of unearthing assets beyond those in hand.
She crept to the closet, lifting the knob as she opened the door. She’d learned the hard way that the hinges screeched like someone stepping on a dog’s tail. That had happened the second night she’d spent in the house. Gus had sat up in bed, demanding to know what she was doing in his room. She’d said the first thing that had come into her head. “I heard you yelling and I thought something was wrong. You must have had a bad dream. Why don’t I warm you some milk?”
She’d laced the milk with cherry cough syrup, telling him it was a special drink mix for kids, full of vitamins and minerals. He’d swallowed it right down, and she’d made a point of oiling the hinges before she tried again. Now she went back through his jacket pockets, testing his raincoat, his only sports coat, and the robe he’d left hanging on the closet door. Nothing, nothing, nothing, she thought irritably. If the old man was worthless, there was no way she could put up with him. He could go on for years, and what was the point of helping if it netted her nothing? She was a trained professional, not a volunteer.
She gave up the search for the night and returned to bed, frustrated and out of sorts. She lay there, sleepless, roaming the house in her mind, trying to determine how he’d outwitted her. Nobody could live as long as he had without having a substantial sum of money somewhere. She’d obsessed about the subject from day one of her employment when she’d been certain of success. She’d quizzed him about his insurance policies, pretending that she was pondering the issue of whole life versus term. Almost gleefully he’d told her he’d let his policies lapse. She’d been sorely disappointed, though she’d discovered through Mr. Ebersole how difficult it was to insinuate oneself as a beneficiary. She’d done better with Mrs. Prent, though she wasn’t at all sure the lesson she’d learned there would apply to this situation. Surely Gus had a will, which might provide another possibility. She hadn’t found a copy, but she’d come across a safe-deposit key, which suggested he kept his valuables at the bank.
All the worrying was exhausting. At 4:00 A.M. she rose, put on her clothes, and made her bed neatly. She let herself out the front door and walked the half block to her car. It was dark and cold, and she couldn’t shake the sour mood he’d put her in. She drove to Colgate. In long stretches, the highway was deserted, as wide and empty as a river. She pulled into the carport at her apartment complex, her gaze moving across the line of windows to see who was awake. She loved the sense of power she experienced, knowing she was up and about while so many others were dead to the world.
She let herself in and checked to make sure Tiny was home. He seldom went out, but when he did, she might not see him for days. She opened his door with the same stealth she employed in searching Gus’s closets. The room was dark, dense with his body smells. He kept his heavy curtains closed because the morning light bothered him, nudging him awake hours before he was ready to get out of bed. He stayed up late at night watching television and he couldn’t face life before noon, he said. The soft wash of daylight from the hallway revealed his bulky outline in the bed, one beefy arm on top of the quilt. She closed the door.
She poured a tot of vodka in a jelly glass and sat down at the dining room table, which was piled high with junk mail and unopened bills, among them her new driver’s license, which she was thrilled to have in her possession. On top of the closest stack was a blank envelope with her name scrawled across the front. She recognized her landlord’s nearly illegible scrawl. He was actually the manager, a position he enjoyed because he paid no rent. The note inside was short and to the point, informing her of a two-hundred-dollar-a-month increase, effective immediately. Two months previously she’d been told the building had been sold. Now the new owner was systematically jacking up the rents, which automatically raised the value of the property. At the same time, he was making a few improvements, if that’s what you wanted to call them. He’d taken credit for having the mailboxes repaired when it was actually a post office regulation. The mailman wouldn’t deliver to any address where there wasn’t a clearly marked box. The dead bushes had been pulled away from the front of the building and left at the curb, where the trash collectors had ignored them for weeks. He’d also installed coin-operated washers and dryers in the communal laundry room, which had been abandoned for years and had served as a storage space for bicycles, many of which were stolen. She knew most of the tenants would ignore the washing machines.
Across the back alleyway from her apartment there was another complex he’d bought—twenty-four units in four buildings, each with its own unlocked laundry room, where a washer and dryer were available without charge. There were only twenty apartments in her building, and many of her fellow tenants took advantage of the free facilities. Small boxes of detergent were available from a vending machine, but it was easy enough to jimmy the mechanism and take what you needed. She wondered what the new owner was up to, probably snapping up properties right and left. Greedy people were like that, squeezing the last penny out of those like herself, who struggled to survive.
Solana had no intention of paying two hundred more a month for a furnished apartment that was barely habitable as it was. For a while Tiny had kept a cat, a big old white male that he’d named after himself. He was too lazy to get up and let the cat in and out, so the animal had taken to pissing on the carpet and using the heat reg
isters to relieve itself in more serious ways. She was used to the smell by now, but she knew if she left the place, the manager would raise hell. She hadn’t paid a pet deposit because when the two of them moved in, they didn’t have a pet. Now she couldn’t see why she should be held responsible when the cat had died of old age. She wasn’t even going to think about the medicine cabinet Tiny had ripped out of the bathroom wall or the scorch mark on the laminate counter where he’d set a hot skillet some months before. She decided to hold off on paying the rent while she considered her alternatives.
She went back to Gus’s house at 3:00 that afternoon and found him awake and cross as a bear. He knew she’d been sleeping in the house three or four nights a week and he expected to have her at his beck and call. He said he’d been banging and thumping on the wall for hours. The very idea put her in a fury.
“Mr. Vronsky, I told you I was leaving at eleven o’clock last night just as I always do. I made a point of coming into your room to tell you I was on my way home and you agreed.”
“Someone was here.”
“It wasn’t me. If you doubt me, go in my room and look at the bed. You’ll see it hasn’t been slept in.”
She went on in this vein, insistent on her version of events. She could see how befuddled he was, convinced of one thing when she was standing there telling him the opposite.
He blinked rapidly and his face took on the stubborn cast she knew so well. She put a hand on his arm. “It’s not your fault. You’re overly emotional, that’s all. It happens with people your age. You might be having a series of small strokes. The effect would be much the same.”
“You were here. You came into my room. I saw you looking for something in the closet.”
She shook her head, smiling at him sadly. “You were dreaming. You did that last week. Don’t you remember?”
He searched her face.
She kept her expression kind and her tone sympathetic. “I told you then you were imagining things, but you refused to believe me, didn’t you? Now you’re doing it again.”