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Authors: Charles Atkins

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Tchotchkes in the Mist

By Lil Campbell

Like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, the first Saturday of April drew an excited crowd of over 5000 eager treasure hunters to the Brantsville Fair Grounds. The near-freezing temperatures and dense fog that shrouded the five hundred dealer booths did little to dampen the mood, as long-time Flea Market manager Daryl Crane welcomed back the throngs of eager buyers. At six a.m. sharp he made the announcement,
‘
Open the gates.'

As she wrote, trying to stay light, local and fluffy her thoughts were pulled in darker directions. It wasn't just the fire and the awful – from certain perspectives wonderful – photos of Delia Preston that were in the same digital photo album as the flea market pictures she'd shot the day before, but the flea market itself. She and Ada adored the Brantsville market, and mourned its closing each November. But this Saturday, what started with the usual anticipatory excitement as they waited for the gate to open, had a number of queer notes. Starting with the obvious and really irritating, which she didn't think fit into her fluffy little column. But what had crept into the Brantsville market over the past few years were a number of practices that had wrung some of the joy out of the Saturday morning treasure hunt. Firstly, years back you could go on to the field as the dealers were setting up. This added an element of excitement – and risk – as they'd all head out in the dark with flashlights to look at the merchandise as it came out of assorted vans and trucks. Clearly, ‘buyer beware' took on added meaning as chips, cracks and outright forgeries were much harder to spot in low light. That changed when the owners – three local antique dealers – fenced in the field about five years ago and began to charge admission. The stated reason had to do with liability and concern that excited buyers would trip, fall, and injure themselves in the dark. But really, it was greed. The market's owners realized that the thousands of antique and collectible aficionados who showed up each week would shell out a buck or two. The market was a cash cow, so in addition to the rent they charged for the spaces and the cut they got off the food concessions they were now raking in over ten grand a week from admission fees. Sure, a couple bucks is no big deal, but it rankled and the loss of the free-for-all fun of scurrying across the field in pursuit of bargains at five in the morning was sad to lose. But this Saturday, and what she'd noticed for the past couple years, by the time they paid the two bucks and made it through the gate on to the field, other buyers had been there long before them. What had apparently happened was dealers, and some of the locals, were slipping bribes at the gate and getting on to the field hours before the official start time. The going rate was around fifty bucks. Which, yes, some antique shows advertise early buying for which they charge a premium. But not Brantsville, so essentially it was graft. Low-level, annoying corruption at Lil's favorite place to spend a Saturday morning. So while she dutifully typed in all the details about the flea market for her column – how to get there, the URL for the website, how much it cost for the dealers to set up, etc., she ran a parallel piece in her head, and jotted down a few notes for a future column.
Stay on task
. Easier said than done, as she remembered something that sent her scurrying back to the other computer on the dining-room table. She scrolled through the flea market photos, flagging the ones that would accompany the article, including a beautiful long shot of the dense mist hovering over the market, and the long line waiting to go through the admission gate. But that's not what she was looking for. ‘Wow!' And there he was. Dr Norman Trask, a man she knew peripherally through Bradley, who'd clearly gotten on to the field well ahead of the rest of them. As they were just clearing the gate, the tall silver-haired surgeon was heading in the opposite direction toward the parking lot pushing a battle-scarred shopping cart laden with bulging cardboard boxes and a large wooden clock, hastily wrapped in a stained blanket and duct tape. The expression on his face a combination of exertion and glee. ‘Wow!' she repeated, as Ada emerged from the bedroom. With her tea in hand, she looked at the photo.

‘What a difference a day makes,' was her somber comment. ‘He seems happy at least.'

‘He does, and now he's dead.' Lil looked at Ada, her eyes bright, her spiky silver hair squished down on one side. ‘How's your head?' she asked.

‘Nothing a lobotomy couldn't fix.'

‘Do you mind checking on them?' Lil asked, referring to her mother, Alice and Aaron over in Ada's condo.

‘Later,' she said. ‘You know, sleeping dogs and all that. Quite a Scrabble game,' she commented.

‘I thought it was brilliant,' Lil said, referring to last night's somewhat bizarre events.

‘If nothing else, it helped Mom. That woman likes nothing better than trouncing me at Scrabble.'

‘I still don't think all those interrogatives count. I mean really? “Er, hm, uh”; I don't think so.'

‘Rose Rimmelman knows her two-letter words.'

‘I think she cheats. And exactly how much of the Yiddish-English dictionary is acceptable?'

‘Apparently a lot,' Ada said, ‘at least according to the Oxford Unabridged. What a night . . .'

‘It wasn't boring,' Lil said, feeling pulled. It was clear Ada wanted to rehash the events of yesterday, but she had to get back into her cave-like office and finish the column.
Priorities, Lil, it's not like you're either Woodward or Bernstein. And the Grenville Sentinel . . . not quite The Washington Post.

Sensing something, Ada asked, ‘You get your column done?'

‘In the middle of doing something on Saturday's flea market.'

‘You going to use that one?' Looking at the picture of the ebullient, but now dead, Dr Trask still on the screen.

‘Absolutely not, and if that scared-of-his-own-shadow editor of mine found out . . . not worth it. I like doing this too much.' Ada was smiling. ‘What?'

‘Go get your piece finished,' she said. ‘We'll talk later.'

‘God, I love you.' They smooched, but while she'd clearly given Lil permission to hole up and get her work done, something gave her pause. ‘We never asked: “How long?”'

Ada shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘That nurse last night, Kyle.' Her fluffy column seemed increasingly unimportant. ‘We never asked him how long until he'd get Alice settled somewhere else.'

‘We kind of did,' she said. ‘It was early going, but I think you'd already had a good bit of whiskey.'

‘I must have,' Lil admitted, realizing portions of last night were wrapped in a boozy haze. ‘I'm not an alcoholic . . . I promise.'

‘Yes, well . . . Isn't denial the number one symptom?'

‘So what did he say?' Lil asked, ignoring her jab and recalling the tall and handsome, albeit exhausted, dark-haired man – Kyle Sullivan – who'd come over, ostensibly to pick up Alice. It had been around eight, he'd called first, thanking them effusively for keeping her safe and getting directions to their place. When he'd shown up, the wild west Scrabble tournament was in full swing, the five of them around Ada's dining room table, swiveling her de luxe edition of the game, while sipping exceedingly good single malt from Bradley's vast collection of Christmas and give-the-doctor-a-thank-you presents they'd amassed over the years. Neither Bradley nor Lil were big Scotch drinkers, but somehow there must be an etiquette book instructing people to bring their local GP a good bottle of single malt at the holidays, or following the birth of a baby or after setting a son's broken arm in the middle of the night, or covering for a drunken night of debauchery where you needed a bit of patching up before facing the wife . . . or husband. Regardless, Lil had a closet filled with cases of the stuff, including some truly stellar bottles of Bowmore, Balmore and the old standby – Glenfiddich.

‘You really don't remember?' Ada asked. ‘Is this like an alcoholic black out? Do I need to find a program for you?'

‘Fine,' Lil said, ‘I remember him showing up . . .'

It all came back. Yes, she'd had a couple . . . OK, maybe a few. She was excited about having finished the piece on the fire, and wondered if they'd actually run it. She was also feeling weird about how giddy it had her – people were dead, and she was experiencing a writer's rush. ‘He said he was going to take her to his condo.'

‘Right, and then you asked how he was going to look after her. Clearly Alice has at least a moderate degree of Alzheimer's.'

Lil remembered Ada putting a mug of tea in Kyle Sullivan's hands, and settling him in a chair next to his grandmother and Rose, who were playing as a team. Admittedly Alice's Alzheimer's restricted her participation to the occasional – ‘Can I go home?' and the eerie, ‘Where's Johnny?' But she had seemed to enjoy herself. To his right was Aaron and then Ada and she was across the table.

Kyle had smelled of smoke and his blue scrubs were filthy at the bottoms. Rose had told them how he'd gone back into the burning building to check on residents, and how he'd asked her to stay with his grandmother and get her out.

Something about Kyle had pulled at Lil's heart. The way his deeply set brown eyes had looked at Alice, so clearly devoted to her. The caring in his voice, whenever he spoke to her. The fact that he didn't want to talk about his heroics throughout the day, which she'd pulled out of him, as Ada got him to eat a turkey sandwich. ‘She'll stay with me,' he'd said, his long fingers blackened with soot as he took hungry bites. ‘Before we moved here, she was with me. I'll call an agency in the morning and get a live-in, until I can figure out what makes sense.'

‘Don't they need you back at Nillewaug?' Lil had asked.

He'd looked at her, something haunted in his expression. ‘You can't imagine what it's like right now. Everyone is so scared, there's no way any of the residents can return to the main building so we're looking at six hundred people, many of them with special needs and complex medical issues who are essentially homeless. The scope is unreal . . . I feel guilty even leaving for a couple hours.' He'd seemed on the verge of tears, his voice choked. ‘There are nearly forty residents we've not been able to find.'

When Lil had filed her article late in the afternoon she'd been aware, via Hank Morgan, that a number of residents were unaccounted for. He'd assured her it had to do with the unprecedented scale of the disaster. By late morning, Brantsville Hospital's emergency room had closed and patients had to be diverted to hospitals in the adjoining towns. Hank had been hazy about exact numbers. ‘
Maybe a couple dozen still unaccounted,
' he'd said. But this . . .

‘Forty?'

Kyle had nodded. ‘Yes, I'm sure they're mostly fine . . . But no one was keeping track of where people were being sent. I have the list of all the residents and their emergency contacts; I've been trying to account for everyone . . . There's no one really in charge.'

‘How can that be?' Ada had asked.

‘You know that Delia Preston died in the fire.'

Ada had nodded. ‘But there have to be other administrators . . . a second in command?'

‘There is – the director of nursing – and she's on two weeks' holiday in Barbados for her honeymoon,' Kyle had said. ‘I tried her cell, but either they don't get service there or she turned it off.'

‘What about the owners?' Lil had asked, knowing a little about the corporate structure of Nillewaug from when it first had opened and for the very brief time Bradley had been their medical director.

‘Good question. I've been trying to reach Jim Warren since five this morning. And not a word. And to be honest, I've been so caught up in just trying to account for people, call in any staff I could . . . I don't have the authority to do any of this stuff. I was the nurse on charge last night . . . I finally got through to this Wallace Doyle guy – the Chief Financial Officer – who told me to contact Jim Warren. He started to give me this whole story about how he just managed the finances . . . Like I care about that? And I don't get it, because I know he was there at the fire. The guy must weigh over three-hundred pounds; he's hard to miss.' He shook his head. ‘Everyone keeps looking to me like I know what's going on . . . I really don't.'

‘It's OK, man.' Aaron had placed a hand on Kyle's back, as the nurse's jaw clenched.

‘I should have seen something, smelled smoke, something . . .' he'd said, struggling to maintain composure. ‘And why didn't the alarms go off?'

Alice, sensing her grandson's distress, kissed him on the cheek. ‘Are we going home, Johnny?'

He'd smiled at her, the bond between them so affectionate. ‘Soon,' he'd said, smoothing back her recently shampooed shoulder-length cherry-red hair.

To which Ada had replied, ‘She can stay here. She has to.'

‘That's kind, but I'll figure this out.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Ada had said. ‘Look, we've got plenty of space, she'll stay in my condo with Rose and Aaron. It's safe here, and during the day Lil and I can keep an eye on her.'

‘It makes sense,' Lil had agreed. ‘We both know what to do . . . I cared for my mom for years, and Ada's Harry had severe dementia by the end.' She'd made eye contact with Kyle. ‘Let us do this.'

Reluctantly, he'd agreed, and then his cell rang. Shaking his head he'd pulled it out, and, getting up from the table, had commented, ‘It's my sister . . . Hello, Kelly.' He'd stepped away and the game resumed half-heartedly as Ada had watched him. Her heart bled for the man who was being tested by circumstances beyond anyone's control. His conversation on the phone apparently not helping things. Not quite catching his words she'd focused on his lips, and could discern phrases – ‘I can't . . . I'm doing my best . . . No, absolutely not.' And then his voice had raised in anger, and they'd all heard. ‘Remember the last time you took Alice. Absolutely not!' His frustration had been obvious, as he looked back at the Scrabble game and caught Ada's gaze. Alice had turned at the sound of his voice. ‘Are we going home?' she'd asked.

BOOK: Best Place to Die
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