Fire and Ice (14 page)

The records clerk hadn’t hinted that although her father may have been Polish, Mama Rose was at least a quarter and maybe even half African-American. She was stately; she was serene. When she held out her rail-thin arms in welcome, I noticed that her hands were beautifully manicured. When she smiled at me, her face was transformed. She was simply gorgeous.

I noticed that right off. So did Mel.

“Why, Mr. Beaumont,” Mama Rose said. “That is correct, isn’t it—Mr.—since you’re no longer a detective? Welcome. Tommy says he knew you back in the day. And this is?”

“My partner,” I said. “Melissa Soames.”

Mel stepped forward to accept her own handshake. “People call me Mel,” she said.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for not standing up to greet you,” Mama Rose said. “I have MS.” She reached out and patted a walker that was stationed strategically on the far side of the chair. “When they told me years ago that I was HIV-positive, I thought that was a death sentence. And, without all the progress they’ve made in AIDS treatment, it could have been, but it turns out that dealing with MS has been much more debilitating. Won’t you please have a seat?”

Mel and I sat. “Can I get you something?” Tommy asked. “Beer, a soda, coffee, tea. We have pretty much everything.”

“We’re working,” I said, which was easier than saying the truth, which would have been to say that I’m off the sauce and have been for years.

“Coffee,” Mel said decisively. She can drink coffee at any hour of the day and sleep like a baby. I used to be able to do the same thing. Now I can’t do that, either.

“Nothing for me,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Tommy disappeared, but instead of going back toward the kitchen the way we had come, he continued on through a swinging door just to the left of the fireplace. I suspected that it most likely led into a small butler’s pantry.

“You have a lovely home,” Mel said. The compliment may have sounded phony and ingratiating, but it was absolutely true. Mama Rose knew her home was spectacular, and she accepted the comment with good grace.

“It’s easy to have nice things when money’s no object,” Mama Rose said with a small shrug. “When I first got the HIV diagnosis and didn’t have insurance or a place to live or enough money to pay for the medicine, that was scary. Now, whatever the prescriptions cost, I just pay it. Or, rather, Tommy does. It’s no big deal.”

And that’s when it came back to me. I remembered how, years ago, I had encountered the improbable rags-to-riches story of a young homeless woman (the word “prostitute” had been discreetly edited out of the newspaper account) who, within months of being diagnosed with HIV, had been one of the first-ever Powerball Winners in Washington State.

“I remember now,” I said. “Aren’t you the person who had one of the first winning Powerball tickets around here?”

She smiled at me. “Thank you for not saying ‘Weren’t you the whore who won…’ Believe me, I’ve heard that more than once. But yes, that’s true. Mine wasn’t ‘one of the first’ winning tickets in Washington State. It was the first winning ticket. And you’re right—it was a big one—sixty-seven million after taxes!”

Mel was living back east at the time. I doubted she knew any of the story. “Whoa!” she exclaimed. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Yes, it is,” Mama Rose agreed.

“So why do you even bother with something like the Silver Pines?” Mel asked. “Isn’t that more trouble than it’s worth?”

“It is a lot of trouble on occasion,” Mama Rose admitted. “But it’s made it possible for me to help a lot of people over the years. And that feels good, of course. Giving back always feels good. But do you want to know the real reason I keep Silver Pines in business?”

Mel bit. “Why?” she asked.

Mama Rose smiled her serene smile. “Because I can,” she said. “It’s my way of slipping it to those bastards at Planning and Zoning.”

TOMMY RETURNED TO THE ROOM THROUGH THE SWINGING DOOR
beside the fireplace. He was carrying a tray with three cups and one of those French press coffeepots where you have to lower a screened plunger through the hot water and squeeze the coffee grounds at the bottom of the pot. I prefer Mr. Coffee any day.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Not Planning and Zoning again. It’s a very long story. You’re not going to tell them that whole thing, are you?”

“My house, my rules,” Mama Rose said.

“Whatever you say,” Tommy said with a certain amount of resignation. He finished pressing the coffee. He poured a cup for Mel and handed it her, then turned to me. “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

“Why not?” I said. “The night is young.”

And so, knowing I’d live to regret it later, I took the cup of that very strong coffee and sat back to listen.

Tommy turned to Mama Rose. “What about you, my dear? Would you care for anything at all?”

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m fine.” Her next comment was addressed to Mel. “So I take it you know nothing of my history?”

“Only what I’ve heard here just now,” Mel said.

“Back in the eighties, the idea of safe sex was a joke, especially to those of us who were working the streets. Oh, we heard about HIV and AIDS, but we were young. We thought we were immortal and those awful things only happened to other people. But then it happened to me. Once I had my diagnosis, I quit working cold turkey. I quit and never went back. I may have been a whore, but giving some poor unsuspecting john HIV wasn’t something I could or would do. Just because someone gave it to me didn’t mean I had to pass it along to someone else. The problem was, I didn’t know how to do anything else. I’d never had a regular job and didn’t know how to find one. Do you have any idea how many jobs there are for ex-hookers with no education and no other marketable skills? I couldn’t even type.”

I thought about Donita back at Silver Pines. Hadn’t she said something about the receptionist job being one she could do without knowing how to type?

“I suppose I could have sold drugs,” Mama Rose continued. “I had all the contacts in the world to do that, but I knew firsthand what drugs do to people. And I wouldn’t do that, either, so when I was well enough to work, I cleaned other people’s houses, the same way my grandmother did. I didn’t have enough money to get an apartment. I couldn’t squeeze out enough money to pay for my treatment and pull together enough for the first and last months’ rent at the same time. One of my clients—one of my old
clients—helped me find a room to rent over a friend’s garage. And for my birthday that year, he gave me a card with a Powerball ticket in it.”

“The winning ticket,” Mel breathed.

“Exactly. When I won, I offered to split it with him fifty-fifty, but he turned me down. I still remember what he said to me, ‘Honey lamb, if you do that, I’ll never in this world be able to explain it to my wife. So you just go out and do what you want, and whenever you do something good for someone else, do it for me, too.’

“I couldn’t get his words out of my head,” Mama Rose continued. “I found an investment counselor and put the money to work to earn more, but then I tried to think what else I should do. It was a big responsibility. I asked people for advice about that, including the guy who gave me the ticket—who’s still my friend, by the way. ‘Work with the people you know best,’ he said. ‘Someone gave you a chance to get out of that mess. Maybe you can do the same thing for someone else.’

“That made sense to me, but I don’t think he meant that I should give them a free ride. He meant I should help them help themselves, just like he had with me. The problem is, when you’re trying to get out of that kind of mess, either drugs or prostitution, no one really trusts you. No one wants to give you a job. You have no place to live except maybe some rat-infested subsidized housing.”

I had seen plenty of those in my time, and I’m sure Mel had, too.

“I came up with the idea of buying some property and starting a shelter,” Mama Rose continued. “I wanted to create a group-home situation, someplace safe where women from the street could live while they made the transition back into real life. The Silver Pines was for sale at the time, and I made an offer to buy it.
The place was affordable and I thought it would be a good place to put my shelter. Except, after I bought it, Planning and Zoning turned my plans down cold. They told me they didn’t want ‘that kind of place’ or ‘those kinds of people’ inside their precious city limits.”

“So you went around them and built your shelter anyway,” Mel said.

Mama Rose smiled again and nodded. “I certainly did. I already owned the park itself. As the people who rented the spaces moved on or died, I bought up their mobile homes one by one. I was always fair. I always paid at least the asking price and sometimes even more because I wanted to own them all. And now I do. I own every single unit in the park, and I rent them to people who would have trouble renting otherwise, and it’s all still inside the city limits.”

“And sometimes you let them work off the rent,” I said.

“Occasionally,” Mama Rose said. “Not all the rent, only some of it. They have to have real jobs as well. But if they can’t earn enough to keep a roof over their heads, I let them work for me. Some people do office work. Some work outside doing maintenance—yard work and painting. It’s on-the-job training for people who have never used a lawn mower or a paintbrush. By helping with upkeep, residents can take pride in where they live, but they all know they have to live by my rules—by Mama Rose’s rules. That means no hooking and no drugs, no exceptions. I believe some people call it zero tolerance.”

To me, it sounded a lot more like tough love.

“I believe Donita mentioned that when it comes to collecting the rent, you only take cash,” Mel said.

“That’s right,” Mama Rose replied.

“How come?”

Mama Rose shrugged. “People who have been living on the street, who don’t have jobs and have never touched a lawn mower or a paintbrush have never opened a checking account, either. Besides, checks bounce. Cash never does.”

The story was starting to make me smile. The city had objected to the idea of Mama Rose’s charitable intention to open a shelter, but she had outfoxed them and done it anyway. In the process, she had outmaneuvered the naysayers by marching over or around their roadblocks. And how had she done it? By using the oldest ploy in the book—plain old garden-variety capitalism.

“I’m guessing the local city fathers would still like to put you out of business?” I asked.

“They certainly would,” Mama Rose agreed. “Probably some of the city mothers as well, but it turns out I have something they don’t have.”

“What’s that?” Mel asked.

“Better lawyers.” Mama Rose beamed. “I happen to have the big bucks here,” she added. “I’ve got plenty of money, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

It was nearly eight-thirty when Joanna finally arrived at Caring Friends, the privately run Alzheimer’s group home in Palominas. On the drive out, she had called Peggy Whitehead’s home phone and left a message for the head of the county health department, letting her know about a possible problem at the facility. When she arrived, she had to wait while three separate ambulances drove out of the yard and toward the highway with their lights flashing. Tom Hadlock hurried forward to bring her up to speed.

“Those were for the other residents?” Joanna asked, nodding toward the disappearing aid cars.

“Yes,” Tom said. “We couldn’t very well leave them here. According to the EMTs, they’re all dehydrated. At least one is severely malnourished, and another one has bedsores.”

“How many patients in all?”

“There are six rooms altogether. One is apparently unoccupied at the moment. One belongs to the woman who’s gone missing. The other four patients, all women, are being transported to area hospitals. The most serious one has been airlifted to Tucson Medical Center.”

“Do we know who’s in charge and where he or she is?”

“She,” Tom replied. “Her name’s Alma DeLong. She evidently lives in Tucson. We’ve tried contacting her. Left a message on her machine.”

Tom handed Joanna a piece of paper. She leaned back inside her Crown Victoria and switched on the reading light. The paper was a three-fold full-color brochure about Caring Friends. It showed several silver-haired women, smiling and neatly dressed. One showed them eating at a table in a tastefully decorated dining room. Another showed two women seated on chairs on a sun-drenched front porch. A third showed a woman standing in the shade of a huge cottonwood tree while looking into the far distance.

At the bottom of the back page of the brochure was a photo of Alma DeLong. She was an attractive-looking woman, probably somewhere in her fifties at the time the picture was taken. According to the brief bio under the photo, she had spent years working in the area of health-care administration before taking on the management of Caring Friends.

“What about the attendants?” she asked.

“The one who was here at the time and called in the missing persons report has no papers, no ID, and no driver’s license. She’s been taken into custody by ICE.”

“At least she called in the report,” Joanna said.

Tom nodded. “But if there are charges to be filed, by the time we finish our investigation and get around to doing that, Immigration will probably have put her on a bus and shipped her back to Mexico.”

“What about the other attendant?”

“Same deal. I sent a deputy to the address where she supposedly lives. He says it looks like she’s skipped town.”

“And the nurse?” Joanna asked.

Tom Hadlock nodded in the direction of a tow truck that was hooking on to an older-model Toyota sedan. “Her name is Sylvia Cameron. She was supposed to be on duty today but called in sick. She showed up tonight about the same time we did. She stepped out of her vehicle smelling like a brewery and couldn’t walk a straight line. If somebody looks like she’s drunk and smells like she’s drunk, she probably is drunk. We administered a Breathalyzer.”

“How’d she do?” Joanna asked.

“She blew a .20,” Tom replied. “She’s on her way to jail right now. She already has two other DUI convictions.”

“No wonder she called in sick,” Joanna said. “Once she sobers up, maybe we’ll have a chance to talk to her about what’s really going on here.”

“Exactly,” Tom agreed. “As it says in the brochure, Caring Friends is supposed to provide ‘skilled nursing care. ’ It looks to me like the care in question was being provided mostly by unskilled illegal immigrants supervised by somebody too drunk to talk or walk, to say nothing of drive.”

“What about our missing person?” Joanna asked. “Any word on Ms. Brinson?”

“Not so far,” her chief deputy told her. “The K-9 unit was able
to follow her trail all the way out to the highway and across to the other side. Terry says that after that he lost her.”

“So someone may have picked her up and given her a ride into town.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed. “Most likely someone headed eastbound, toward Bisbee.”

“Have we located her next of kin?”

“Not yet. The niece in Phoenix still hasn’t returned our calls.”

“Whether she’s been notified or not, we still need to get the word out on this,” Joanna said. “It’s going to be cold tonight. We need to find her.”

Tom nodded in agreement. Joanne knew that if the missing patient died of exposure, Tom’s summoning a homicide detective was a good call.

“While I go inside to check things out, how about if you talk to the news producers for the Tucson TV outlets and see if you can get them to make an announcement on the ten o’clock news. We’re probably too late to make the broadcast that comes on at nine.”

Tom Hadlock was still so new in his dual positions as Joanna’s chief deputy as well as her media relations officer that he had yet to establish the kind of rapport Frank Montoya had enjoyed with some of the local newsfolk.

“I’ll do my best,” he agreed. “All their contact information is on the computer in my Crown Victoria, but before you go inside, you’d best prepare yourself. It’s pretty bad.”

The brochure photos may have looked lovely, but the conditions inside Caring Friends weren’t just bad; they were appalling. Detective Howell met Joanna at the door to give her the tour.

Stepping inside one room, Joanna found her nostrils assailed by a sour, all-pervading odor. “What’s that awful smell?” she asked.

Debra nodded toward the bed, where a tangled mess of soiled
bedclothes indicated someone had been left lying in her own filth. “This is the one with the bedsores,” the detective added grimly. “As far as I’m concerned, this seems way more serious than simple neglect,” she said. “More like reckless endangerment. Animal Control takes better care of the stray animals they have locked up in the pound.”

And it was true. There were six rooms in all. Each contained a bed, a single chair, and a small bedside dresser. The bedding in the other occupied rooms was also disgustingly filthy. The bed in the empty room was clean and made up and awaiting the arrival of another resident.

Another victim, Joanna thought.

In one of the rooms a set of cut-through Flex Cuffs lay near the legs of a chair. Whoever had been bound to the chair had been left there long enough that she had soiled herself.

“The woman in this room was still confined to her chair when deputies arrived,” Debra said. “The EMTs cut her loose. Ms. Brinson was evidently in a chair, too, but she somehow managed to walk it over to the dresser and found a nail clipper. That’s what she used to cut her own restraints.”

“Smart lady,” Joanna said.

Deb nodded. “Smarter than they thought.”

“We’ll need to document all of this.”

The detective nodded again. “I know,” she said. “I’ve already put in a call for Dave Hollicker to come here and bring his camera.”

“Good,” Joanna said. “Have him inventory and photograph everything.”

“What the hell’s going on?” someone demanded behind them.

Standing in the narrow hallway, Joanna turned in time to see a tall dark-haired woman in a turquoise-colored brushed-silk
pantsuit come storming toward them. She was clearly angry. Only when she reached them did Joanna recognize the woman from her photo on the brochure. This had to be Alma DeLong.