Murder Is Uncooperative (2 page)

Dad had offered to give us the larger bedroom on the second floor when Ben and I had moved in with him, but that would have meant dealing with even more stairs, and we knew that wasn't a good thing.

I lowered Ben into his bed and started to remove his shoes.

“Ready to brush your teeth, kiddo?” I asked, smoothing the blond curls off his forehead. Ben didn't budge. With all the drama this afternoon, he'd missed his nap and the long wait at the hospital had exhausted him. He kept sleeping as I took off his pants and shirt and only muttered a little as I lifted him to pull the covers over him and tuck his favorite stuffed toy, a purple plush cat, beside him. His real kitten jumped up on the bed and curled up on his other side.

I headed back downstairs and looked in the fridge for something quick to eat. I was exhausted, but I was also starving.

I was startled by the phone.

“Rebecca Butler?” a friendly voice asked. “It's Les from Waterview housing co-op. You were asking about a three-bedroom that's wheelchair accessible? We have one coming available. Do you want to take a look at it?”

I was early for this appointment. The five-storey brick building looked well maintained. The dark-blue paint on the front door shone. The large windows at the front were clean, the beveled glass sparkling in the autumn sunlight. A square of grass in front of the building was neatly trimmed and framed by shrubs, with some pale pink and yellow roses still in bloom.

I pushed the doorbell.

As I waited, I checked my reflection in the glass doors. My light-brown, chin-length hair was tidy. My khaki pants and a moss-green linen jacket that brought out the green in my eyes were both neat, ironed, and free of stains. I hoped I looked like a good tenant, someone who would pay the rent on time and take care of the place.

The glass also reflected the view of the street. I saw a woman coming up behind me. Probably in her sixties, though it was hard to tell, she was pushing a shopping cart filled with bottles, cans, and bags stuffed with who knows what. Even though the day was warm, she was dressed in a heavy gray coat and gloves. The hem of her skirt had unraveled at one side and drooped beneath the hem of her coat but I could see she had made an effort to pin it up with a safety pin. I guessed she was one of the many people who lived on Vancouver's streets.

I reached into my pocket, searching for some coins to give her. But she wasn't asking for spare change.

“Don't go there; don't go there,” she was saying. Many of the street people suffered from mental illness or drug addiction. I
held out my hand to give her a dollar but she just shook her head. “No, don't go there.”

I pushed the doorbell again.

“Hi, it's Rebecca Butler,” I announced to the crackly sound that greeted me through the intercom. Not everything was perfect in this place. “I have an appointment.”

A buzzing told me the door was being unlocked, and I pulled the handle. The homeless woman reached out as if to grab me but she moved away when a young woman leaned out of a doorway in the hall. The door hissed shut behind me.

The young woman who had answered the door was in her late teens or early twenties, and tall, with her hair in long dark curls. She had a pale oval face and lush, plump lips. She would have been stunning, except for her frown and a slightly dazed look in her large brown eyes.

“I'm sorry. We've been having trouble with the intercom,” she apologized. “Can I help you?”

“Rebecca Butler,” I repeated. “I have an appointment with the building manager to see one of the apartments. I'm afraid I'm a bit early.”

She wrinkled her forehead.

“Maybe 505?” she asked. “But that's a three-bedroom. Are you . . . ?” She was looking past me, obviously expecting to see a husband and a couple of children. “Les is with some other people,” she added. “I'm not sure . . .”

I wasn't about to be put off by a teenager. I imagined another family upstairs, signing the lease on the apartment meant to house my son, my father, my kitten.

“She has an appointment, Ruthie,” a cheery voice interrupted her from down the hall. “I see people who have appointments, remember.”

A garden gnome was walking quickly towards us. At barely five-foot-three, I'm used to men towering over me. But he was even shorter, with sturdy legs and an oddly long torso. Dark curls circled a large bald spot on the top of his head, matched by a short beard. He smiled reassuringly at the young woman before turning to me.

“Rebecca?” he said, reaching for my hand. “I'm Les. Sorry to keep you waiting. Welcome to Waterview Housing Cooperative. Let me show you around.”

The elevator that took us up to the fifth floor was free of the graffiti and mess I'd come to expect in my search for a new home.

The apartment was perfect.

The building was old but it had large windows that filled the apartment with light. A faint smell of fresh paint lingered on the creamy walls. Polished fir floors glowed golden.

The living room had a large bay window, with two smaller windows on each side. I imagined an overstuffed armchair, or maybe a small, round table, where I could sit writing and drinking tea. The windows looked out onto a quiet residential street lined with mature maple trees, their leaves still green this early in September, but with the promise of autumn color to come.

I checked each of the bedrooms and the large closets. The kitchen was spacious, with lots of storage. The window looked out on a fenced-in playground. I could see kids my son's age climbing on playground equipment. A glass door led to a small balcony with room for a small table and chairs. An older woman on the next deck gave me a friendly smile as she watered her tomato plants and flowers. The yeasty smell of baking bread floated over from her open window. The smell instantly reminded me of my mother, and I had to blink the tears from my eyes.

“How much?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.

I couldn't believe the answer. It was $100 less than the basement suite I'd looked at the day before.

“Do you allow pets?” I asked the manager.

“A cat or small dog would be fine.”

I could have kissed him. Rental places that allowed pets were hard to find. But I couldn't give up my son's kitten. Especially after all the changes Ben had already gone through in his short life.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I'd love to live here.”

After showing me apartment 505, Les showed me around the rest of the building. The “Waterview” part of the name was a bit optimistic. Perhaps there had been a view when the building had originally been built, before the trees around it had grown so large. But it was in a friendly neighborhood, close to a park, a community center, and a good library. Grocery stores were within walking distance on Commercial Drive.

“This is a great building,” I told the manager. Up close, he had dark tufts of hair sprouting from each ear. These wiggled each time he moved. I tried not to stare. With his wide, lopsided grin and energetic way of talking, he was attractive in an oddball way.

“It's an old building, but we've just finished renovating everything,” he said, gesturing around the wide lobby. “The hallways were wide already and the apartments were a good size, so we were able to adapt some of the apartments for people in wheelchairs.”

He pointed to the doorway of the office. “See, no sills. And see how wide the doorway is. We've designed it so all the public areas are wheelchair accessible.”

“My father will be living with us, and he uses a wheelchair. But my son and I will be living here too and we . . .” My voice trailed off. I could see the sunny apartment slipping away from me.

“That's the beauty of this place,” the manager said, curls bouncing as he gestured in a way that seemed to indicate the whole building. “It's not an assisted living facility or anything with medical care. Most of the disabled people who live here can get along fine without any help. And only some of the people who live here have disabilities. But it's all wheelchair-accessible. “

His enthusiasm was contagious and the design of the building was impressive. I really wanted to live here.

We ended the tour back in the office where we'd started. The young woman, Ruth, was slumped at one of the gray desks, tapping at the keys of a computer. She had put on a pair of glasses with thick plastic frames.

The office was a complete shambles. File folders and stacks of paper made unstable towers on each of the three desks. More towers of storage boxes lined two sides of the room, almost reaching the ceiling. The boxes obscured the one window in the

All the chairs, except the one that Ruth was sitting on were stacked with more files and papers. She was staring intently at the screen of her computer, ignoring the papers piled on either side of the screen, as if this chaos were normal.

“As you can see, organizing paperwork is not one of my strengths,” Les said, looking a little sheepish. “But it's not normally this bad. We just cleared out a storage room so it could be painted. I think we can throw a lot of this stuff out, but we just need some time to sort through it.”

He pulled a form from the top of a stack of paper a foot high and handed it to me.

“Let's see,” Les was saying. “You originally applied for a two-bedroom. With your father living with you, you'd qualify for a three-bedroom. Let's just update your form here.”

I stepped towards the desk to find a flat surface I could write on, and tripped over something on the floor.

I bit back a curse as I pitched forward. I managed to avoid falling. As I tried to steady myself, I dislodged a stack of books and papers from the corner of the desk. The edge of one binder landed on my foot with a thud I knew would leave a bruise.

Les and I both bent down to pick up the papers I'd displaced. I saw that what I'd tripped over was a large metal plate that had been lying flat on the floor.

Picking it up, I found that it was quite heavy. It was a square brass plaque announcing the opening of the cooperative over thirty years ago. A sharp corner had left a large scrape across the strap of my brown leather sandal and blood was welling up from the corner of the coral-painted nail on one toe.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” Les said, taking the plaque from me and placing it against the wall. It was out of the way there but looked like it could be knocked over quite easily. “Are you all right? Ruthie, can you get the first aid kit?”

I grabbed a tissue from my purse and blotted the blood on my toe. “It's just a scrape,” I told him, but I could tell it was going to hurt for a while.

As I bent over to apply the bandage, I quickly pushed the plaque so it was wedged behind a pile of boxes and wouldn't immediately drop on the floor again.

“Are you sure you're all right?” Les asked. “I'm so sorry. That's normally bolted on the wall outside,” Les said. “We just took it down when we were painting and having the brick cleaned.”

“I'm fine,” I said, ignoring my throbbing toe. “And I'd really like to live here. I think the apartment would be just great for my son and me. And my father would love it. But how many people are looking at the apartment?”

"We do have quite a few people on our waiting list,” the manager admitted. “Lots of people would like to live here. But, see, we're here to help people in need. And you're a single mom, right? Little kid? Disabled dad? Not much money? You sound like a person in need. Of course the membership committee has the final say.” My heart fell, and then rose again as he winked at me. “They do listen to my opinions.”

As I left the building, I saw the homeless woman waiting on the sidewalk. I must have been limping a little. She stared at my foot and, when I looked down, I saw that blood was seeping from my toe.

“Don't go there,” she said, her voice croaking. “Bad things happen.”

“I'm fine.”

“Take this,” she said, pushing something into my hand. It was a small, tarnished pendant on a chain. Dirt covered the medallion face, but it appeared to have a picture of something with wings. “Guardian angel,” she said. I tried to hand it back to her but she backed away. “Take it,” she repeated. “You need it.”

A month later, I finished unpacking the last box in my new apartment. It already felt like home.

The movers had helped place the heavy furniture, and I'd been able to arrange smaller pieces in a way that made them look like they belonged there.

Dad had the biggest bedroom, with space for him to turn his wheelchair. I took the second bedroom, which was oddly shaped but had a small nook perfect for my desk. It was near the window and would get morning sunlight, making it an inviting space to work.

Ben's toys and books were unpacked in his room and his kitten was asleep on his bed. Dad had taken Ben out to explore the new neighborhood.

Les had told me that a spot in the co-op's underground parking was included in the rent, but I hadn't yet picked up the remote that would open the garage door. I made a mental note to do that before the office closed today.

I was happy with how things looked. The green loveseat and chairs my mother had picked out for their retirement condo nestled in a corner of the living room. The oak bookshelves fit against one wall as if they had been made for that spot. I was heading for the door when I heard a knock.

It was Les, smiling widely and looking more than ever like a garden gnome. With him was a silver-haired woman who looked to be somewhere in her early sixties.

Les was holding something out to me. “I realized you hadn't picked up the remote for the parking garage, and I wanted to make sure you had it. And I wanted to introduce you to Gwen, the president.”

The woman was tall and slim. Her thick hair was pulled up in an elegant twist and secured with a silver pin that matched her dangling earrings. She was dressed in a linen tunic and pants in different shades of lilac. Her soft leather sandals were a deep violet.

“Oh, I'm so pleased to meet you,” I said. “I just love it here. Les has told me that everyone is really friendly.”