Best Place to Die (6 page)

‘Around ten last night,' the Fire Marshall said, as he answered her earlier question about the alarms, his phone in hand.

‘Really? Who turned them off?' she asked.

‘Someone with the access code.'

She paused, standing in the center of the living room that reeked of smoke and mingled solvents. Her feet sloshing through blackened water. The windows shattered, charred crap that created a casing around mostly unscathed stacks of stuffed garbage bags and cardboard boxes so tightly crammed the fire hadn't gotten to them. ‘Why would someone turn off the fire alarm in a place like this?'

‘Few reasons,' the Fire Marshall offered. ‘System gets brought down for servicing or testing . . . but you sure wouldn't do that on a Saturday night. Maybe there was a false alarm or a faulty sensor and they needed to check it out, and figured it's just easier to shut it down and then fix it during the work week. Or . . . you know it's probably not just the fire that got shut down. All the systems go through the same line.'

‘Right,' she said, following his train. ‘It'll be security too.' She turned to her partner. ‘Jamie, call the security company, have them fax us a list of everyone who could disarm the system. And see if there's any way of telling who shut it down.'

‘You got it.'

‘Good.' Mattie slowly turned in place, her thoughts clicking. ‘I want you to stay here and don't let anyone else in until the CSI team gets here. I'm going to check out the office of the jumper . . . if she really was a jumper.'

Jamie Plank struggled to contain her excitement. This was the biggest case she'd ever been a part of. As a new detective she'd been exiled to third shift – the land that time forgot. Having someone like Mattie as her partner was an unexpected bonus and this . . . ‘Anything else?' she asked. ‘You think this was arson?'

‘We'll find out,' Mattie said, ‘but I've got a bad feeling.'

‘Y
ou should have just let me burn to death in that hell hole!' Rose spat at Ada from the back of Lil's Lincoln Town Car, as she pulled past the roadblock outside Nillewaug. It was just after seven a.m., the last hour and a half a confused blur. Retrieving the car, trying to get it around to the back of the burning building. Various emergency personnel and cops asking what Lil was doing there, lies tumbling from her lips, as she'd maneuvered her way back to Ada, now next to her, and Aaron, Alice and Rose now in the back. Along the way, she'd spotted familiar faces, old patients of Bradley's who'd moved to Nillewaug for its promise of safety and comfort. And one face that made her wonder if maybe there'd be more to this story than just a fire – Detective Mattie Perez.

‘Mother . . .' Ada's jaw was clenched. ‘Are you sure you won't let us take you to the hospital?'

‘Why? So you can kill me there?' Rose turned to her new, albeit confused, BFF, Alice in her soaked nightdress, the two of them huddled under a red wool horse blanket that Lil kept in the trunk for emergencies. ‘Do you have children, Alice?'

‘Vicky. But she's no use,' the redhead offered, shaking her head. ‘I want to go home. Please take me home?'

‘Where do you live?' Aaron asked.

His question worried her. ‘I don't know.'

He switched tactics. ‘Do you know where your daughter Vicky lives?'

‘Who?'

‘Your daughter.'

‘She's no good. Can you take me home?'

Lil glanced in the rear-view mirror at the two older women under the blanket, with Aaron on the far side in a smudged white tee shirt, having given his leather jacket to Alice. She cranked the heat, and the car filled with the mixed smells of wet wool and char. She tried to figure what made the most sense. A pair of medics had tried to talk Rose into getting into an ambulance so she could get checked out at Brattlebury Hospital. Not only had Rose adamantly refused, but had insisted that Alice didn't need it either. All of Lil's years with Bradley, and a decent amount of common sense, told her that neither of the women was in medical peril. They had the occasional cough, but Rose was right. Hospitals were places of last resort, and best avoided. Which meant they were headed back to Pilgrim's Progress. Lil threw Ada a glance, and, with her voice low, said, ‘You doing OK?'

She shook her head, and cracked the tiniest smile. She leaned toward Lil and whispered, ‘She thinks I set the fire.'

‘And this is what I get,' Rose declared, ostensibly to Alice, but clearly meant for Ada. ‘I wish I were dead!'

‘Mom,' Ada said, ‘you don't mean that.'

‘I most certainly do! What do I have? Everything is gone. Everything! I didn't want to come to this place. But no, I'm not safe in my own home where I've been living for fifty years. I've got to move to Connecticut, and that pushy Delia woman.'

‘She's dead.' Ada was struggling to keep her temper in check. ‘And you're safe. That's what matters.'

‘What do you know?' Rose spat. ‘This is your fault.'

Ada's hands balled into tight fists as Lil turned into the gates of Pilgrim's Progress. She longed to reach across the seat and comfort her, but didn't. Instead, she kept silent as they passed one of the two eighteen-hole golf courses, the man-made three-acre lake and finally came to their cul-de-sac.

Ada unbuckled and leaned toward Lil. ‘I'll put them in my place.'

Lil nodded, and waited as Aaron helped his great-grandmother and Alice out of the back seat. Unseen by the older women, Lil took Ada's hand and squeezed. ‘We'll get through this.'

Ada shook her head, her beautiful sapphire-blue eyes sought out Lil's. ‘She hates me.'

‘No, she's just scared and angry. She doesn't hate you.'

‘Maybe . . . you know I haven't told her about us.'

‘I know.'

‘She's smart. She'll find out.'

‘We'll deal.'

‘I love you, Lil.'

‘Love you too. And it just amazes me.' And with that she let go her hand, and got out.

Ada jogged up the walk passing Aaron and the two women. Her first impulse was to unlock Lil's condo on the right, but instead opened the door to hers on the left.
One thing at a time
, she told herself, as she waited for the trio to make it up the path. The phone started to ring. Leaving the door ajar, she went in and saw the answering machine on the granite kitchen pass-through blinking with recent calls.

She picked up. ‘Hello?'

‘Mom, where were you?' Her daughter, Susan – Aaron's mother – sounded frantic. ‘I've been trying to get you all morning . . . Where's Aaron?'

‘He's with me . . . I'm assuming you've seen the news.'

‘Is Grandma OK, what's going on?'

‘Everyone's fine,' Ada said, looking down the hall as Aaron held the screen door for Alice and Rose.

‘Did you see Jack?'

The question stopped Ada. ‘Jack?' The mere mention of her son-in-law blackening her mood further. ‘Why the hell would he be here?'

‘The fire,' Susan said. ‘He got paged a little after five. I've been trying to reach you ever since.'

‘Susan, it's been one hell of a morning, and maybe I'm losing it, but what would Jack be doing here?'

‘The Clarion underwrites that place. He got paged and was out of here like his job depended on it. You know him, he thinks he's always one paycheck from getting his pink slip.'

‘I didn't see him,' she said, ‘and your grandmother is fine. Just furious with me, but that's nothing new. Aaron's with her now; she'll be staying for a while. Maybe later you'd come down for a visit.'

Ada felt her daughter's hesitation. ‘I'll have to check with Jack.'

‘For the love of God, Susan, your son and your grandmother are both down here, and would love to see you. Not to mention your mother could use a little help right now.'

‘I know, Mom, it's just . . .'

‘Forget it!' Ada snapped, wondering what had happened that had so entirely robbed her daughter of every ounce of courage and self esteem. The answer flew back with a single syllable – Jack. A man she'd disliked from the very first, who over the years had bullied and belittled her once brilliant and enthusiastic daughter into a scared mouse. ‘If you can make it great. But don't worry, everyone's fine. I've got to go.'

‘Mom, it's just . . .'

‘Goodbye, Susan.' She ended the call, as Aaron thoughtfully spread an old quilt over her sofa and settled Rose and Alice in their drenched and filthy nightdresses.

She overheard him talking to the women, his voice calm.

‘I'll make tea,' he said. ‘Then we'll hunt down some warm clothes, Nana Rose. It's going to be OK, you'll see.'

Ada watched from the kitchen, her chest filled with pride and wonder.

‘You're a good boy,' Rose said, and she looked toward the kitchen pass-through and Ada. ‘Unlike some others who boss people into things they don't want to do.'

Ada's cheeks flushed –
this is not my fault –
and was about to remind her mother of all the falls, the middle-of-the-night distress calls and how she'd been going back and forth to New York for years trying to keep her mother in that damn Rivington Street apartment, when the phone rang again.

‘Hello?'

‘Mrs Strauss?' A man's anxious voice.

‘Yes.'

‘Hi, my name is Kyle Sullivan, I'm a nurse at Nillewaug. You're listed as the emergency contact for Rose Rimmelman. Do you know where she is?'

‘With me.'

‘Oh, thank God,' he said. ‘Has she been checked out at a hospital?'

‘No, she refused to go, and at this point I'm not going to argue. She seems fine though, and we have another of your residents with us.'

‘Alice?' His voice caught. ‘Please tell me you have Alice Sullivan.'

‘I didn't know that was her last name, but yes, I think so. Red hair, probably in her seventies, has some kind of Alzheimer's.'

A pause on the line. ‘Thank God. Thank God.'

Ada could swear the man was crying. ‘Are you OK?'

‘Not really,' he offered, ‘but a little better now. Alice is my grandmother. Her apartment is next to Rose's. I got her out of her apartment and asked your mother to stay with her and get her outside, but I haven't seen her since, and she gets so confused; she wanders, too. I didn't know where she was, or if . . . thank God. Things are so crazy here. I know we don't know each other, but I can't leave here right now, is there any way you could keep an eye on her for the next few hours? I'll try to get there as soon as I can.'

‘Stop right there,' Ada said. ‘She's safe, we can keep an eye on her for as long as you need. Let me have your numbers, and I'll give you mine. Do what you need to do. Your grandmother is fine. Does she have any special needs? Medications? Foods she can't eat?'

‘Not really, just some pills for the dementia that don't really work. If she misses a dose or two it doesn't matter. I'll call you as soon as I can. And, Mrs Strauss—'

‘Ada,' she interrupted firmly.

‘Ada . . . thank you so much. I can't tell you what a load you've just taken off my mind.'

As Ada hung up, she spotted Lil coming up the walk, and glancing behind at Aaron in the living room tending to her mother and Alice, she went out. Across the walk she spotted Clayton Spratt in the window of the unit directly across from hers, holding back the curtain and staring.
Bastard
, she thought, glaring back, and wondering when the other shoe would drop on his threats about reporting Aaron living with her to the homeowner's board. She kept her voice low. ‘What a mess.'

‘At least she's OK, and that Alice woman . . .'

‘Her last name's Sullivan. A nurse at Nillewaug called checking on Rose. Apparently he's her grandson. I told him not to worry. It seems like he's trying to track down all the residents.' Ada's gaze met Lil's. ‘What am I going to do? I feel sick, all my mother's things; she could have died in that place . . . What have I done?'

Standing there, feeling exposed as their across-the-walk neighbors stared. ‘We'll figure this out,' Lil said, desperately wanting to hold Ada, to tell her that everything would be OK, but she didn't. And something about that felt dead wrong. If Ada had been Bradley, he'd be holding her, and no one would have blinked an eye. Lil turned her head and spotted Clayton in the window with his pinched lemon-sucking expression, and then in the kitchen window of Bernice Framm's directly across from her unit, movement in the corner of her cutesy cat curtains. ‘Life in a fishbowl,' she whispered.

‘She's going to have to stay with me.' Ada stated the obvious.

‘I know.'

‘Lil, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but . . . I don't know how long I'll be able to take it. You heard her. As far as she's concerned I lit that place on fire.'

‘She's scared, and you're the only safe person around. And she's still angry about leaving New York. But what were you supposed to do? Her visiting nurse had said they couldn't keep her on as a patient because of the liability of her living alone, and she absolutely refused a live in. She left you with no choice.'

Ada stared down the walk, which was lined with daffodil shoots, about a week from blooming. In the distance they heard a lone siren as it made its way from Nillewaug to Brattlebury Hospital. ‘You know what she wanted . . .'

‘But that wasn't going to happen,' Lil said, mentally tracing Ada's profile, her firm jaw and high cheekbones. ‘Yes, she's your mother, but you were supposed to just give up your life here, and be at her beck and call? I wouldn't have let you.'

‘And now . . .'

They turned at the sound of a phone. ‘It's coming from mine,' Lil said. She paused, not wanting to leave Ada when she was so clearly distraught.