Buffalo Jump (10 page)

T
he mission statement of the Vista Mar Care Group was heavy on saccharine but vague on specifics. Vista Mar had thirteen facilities across Ontario, according to its Internet home page. There were photos of each, along with links to testimonials from satisfied families. Meadowvale was by far the largest of the Vista Mar homes and the most recently acquired.

Along the home page’s top banner were two icons: “About Us” and “Contact Us.” I tried “About Us” first. I found the bio of the president and chief executive officer, one Steven Stone, aged thirty-two. He had earned a B. Comm. at York University, then took his MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. He founded Vista Mar a year after graduating.

Two years younger than me and the CEO of a sprawling corporation, while my current claim to corporate fame was being sole proprietor of an ass in a sling.

Also listed was the company’s medical director, Paul Bader. Since earning his medical degree at McMaster University in Hamilton, he had worked at a number of geriatric facilities. Quite a number, in fact, given the year he had completed his studies. He had moved around a lot before joining Vista Mar.

When I clicked “Contact Us,” an electronic business card popped up on screen: Alice Stockwell, director of administration and corporate secretary. I dialled her number and listened to it ring several times, hoping it would go to voice mail so I could hang up and pass the baton back to Franny. It was time for him to pull his head out of his ass and do his own work so I could turn my attention back to Jay Silver.

But on the fourth ring a woman answered in a cool, professional tone. “Alice Stockwell here.”

“Good morning,” I said. “My name is Jonah Geller and I’m an investigator with Beacon Security. I’d like to ask you a few questions about a case we’re working on.”

“Just a moment.” I was put on hold for about a minute before she returned. I wondered if she had had to ask permission to talk to me, or perhaps had set up a recording. She said, “All right, Mr. Geller. What’s this about?”

“We were engaged by someone who placed a family member in a Vista Mar nursing home. The family member died and the client has concerns.”

“What kind of concerns?”

“It would fall in the area of malpractice.”

“Well, I hope your client can prove it in court.”

“No one is talking about court—”

“Because Meadowvale has an outstanding record of patient care. There has never been a finding of negligence or malpractice as long as I’ve worked here.”

“I never said it was at Meadowvale. I said one of your homes.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, Meadowvale is the largest and our corporate offices are housed here so—”

“How long?”

“What?”

“You said ‘as long as I’ve worked here.’ How long?”

“Three years. But—”

“Did you know Steven before that?”

“Steven? What are you—”

“Stone. Steven Stone. He started it four years ago, you joined soon after …”

“Mr. Geller, your questions are all over the map and I—”

“Why is that a problem?”

“Will you stop, please! Just stop.”

I stopped. I was dying to hear what she’d say when she collected herself.

“It’s normal for people to feel that way,” she said.

“What way?”

“Guilty. When their loved ones die. We see it every day. They need someone other than themselves to blame and they choose us. Between you and me, I think your client is wasting your time.” Singing from the same hymnbook as Darlene Tunney, almost to the word. I wondered if they had rehearsed.

Stockwell told me to submit any further queries by email and hung up. I left Franny a note about my conversations with Tunney and Stockwell. I suggested he get one of Beacon’s forensic auditors to dig into the corporate structure of Vista Mar Care Group. And that was that. Let him pick up the thread when he got back from breakfast, or trying to tickle LaReine’s cervix with his eyelashes, or whatever he was doing besides dumping his work on me.

If Jay Silver had ever been in trouble professionally, there was no record of it on the Registered Pharmacists’ Association of Ontario website. An archive of news releases going back to the year 2000 included an alarming number of recalls of drugs found to be unsafe or counterfeit. A handful dealt with Internet sales to the United States and actions taken against Ontario pharmacists who had violated new rules against them.

There was no mention anywhere of Jay Silver. If he had ever given someone the wrong drug, adulterated drugs, copped
them for his own use or showed up to work naked, it hadn’t been in the new millennium.

Elsewhere on the RPAO site was a staff directory. I scrolled through it and called the office of Winston Chan, director of investigations. “I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you,” he said. “Our confidentiality regulations are very strict.” But he did agree to see me at ten the next morning.

The phone rang seconds after we ended the call and I wondered if Chan had changed his mind. But it was Franny. “Thanks for the message,” he said. “Now I only got one more favour to ask.”

“Aw, fuck, Franny.”

“Last one, I swear. Go out to this Meadowvale place and look it over.”

“You’re kidding. It’s way the hell and gone out Kingston Road.”

“Well, I’m in the west end now so you’re closer.”

“I have things to do.”

“What? The newspapers? You didn’t clip them already? Clint said you were available to help.”

He had me. I couldn’t say anything about the Silvers or even hint I had something going on outside of work. “Helping you is one thing. Doing all your work is another.”

“You think I wouldn’t do it for you?”

“It’s never come up.”

“Listen, Jonah, you want me to tell Clint what a great help you been, or that you bitch every time I ask?”

I sighed into the phone and hung up. Sighing wouldn’t change anything but it didn’t hurt either. I was pondering the best route to Meadowvale when Jenn flopped at her desk and dropped her knapsack at her feet. She was glistening with sweat. Her cheeks were bright red and strands of her hair were pasted to her neck.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked.

“Outside,” she panted. “Since five this morning. No A/C. Just heat. Humidity. Smog. Misery.”

“What were you doing?”

“Kelly Pride called in sick.”

“Again? She’s threatening Franny’s record.”

“Girl gives pride a bad name. She usually saves it for Fridays,” Jenn said. “But she’s too smart to work outside on a day like this.”

“Where does that leave you?” I teased.

She fixed me with a glare.

“Sorry. What’s the assignment?”

“You know that place out by Cherry Beach where they tore down the old refinery?”

“Where the new sports complex is being built?”

“Yup. Construction doesn’t start until August,” she said. “Meanwhile, someone has been dumping barrels of PCBs and other toxic waste there. We’re trying to catch whoever’s doing it so the owner can sue their ass and recover the cost of cleaning it up. I’ve been hidden in a little blind in the brush that overlooks the site, baking, sneezing and donating blood to mosquitoes.” She pulled a bottle of spring water from her knapsack and drained it. “At least I’m not doing the night shift,” she said. “Bugs’ll be ten times worse.”

“Why don’t you go down to the gym and grab a shower.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I offending you?”

“Only if you still smell like that when I take you to lunch.”

“Ooh, lunch,” she crooned. “My other favourite L-word.”

“Well, a fast lunch, anyway, and then a drive.”

“Where to?”

“Deepest darkest Scarborough.”

“What’s there?”

“A place called Meadowvale.”

“Sounds cool and shady.”

“How shady is the question,” I said.

S
o who are we?” Jenn asked.

“Allan and Linda Gold. Good friends of my parents. My brother’s godparents, actually.”

We were stuck on Kingston Road in the eastern beaches, as a kid with a scruffy blond chin beard tried to back a beer truck into the narrow alley beside a pub.

“Okay, Al,” Jenn said. “Whose parent are we committing?”

“It’s not a mental institution,” I said. “We’re
placing
my mother there.”

“And where do we Golds hail from?”

“Same as in real life. I’m from Toronto, you’re from Feedbag, Ontario.”

“That’s Fordham, city boy. Will they want to know what we do?”

“They’ll want to know we have money.”

“And do we?”

“A family fortune.”

“I like it,” Jenn said. “How much?”

“As long as we’re fantasizing, let’s go big. Five hundred thousand, left to us by dear old dad when he passed.” As opposed to the zip, zilch and bupkes my dad had left us.

“How long have we been married?”

I looked at Jenn in her yellow floral-print sundress that showed her tanned arms and legs to enormous advantage.

“Three years,” I suggested. “Three rapturous sex-crazed years.”

“In your dreams.”

Indeed.

“So what are we looking for?”

I filled her in on what I had learned so far. “Let’s see if they pressure us to accept Bader as Mom’s doctor. And where they keep their records.”

Ten minutes later, we parked in front of a ranch-style building of fieldstone and stucco with large windows and well-kept grounds. There was neither a meadow nor a vale in sight, but as nursing homes went, it was less bleak than I had imagined. It could have been a golf course clubhouse.

“Linda, darling?”

“Yes, Al?”

“Just to avoid any slips, let’s not use names in there.”

“Terms of endearment only?”

“Yup. Call me honey, sweetheart, dear. God of Thunder.”

“Dickhead okay?”

“Regrettably, I’ve been called that more than God of Thunder in my time.”

We crossed the parking lot toward the main entrance where a man who had just exited was lighting a cigarette. This guy was short but solidly built, with a round face a grandmother would want to pinch. His cigarette had the distinctive smell of American tobacco.

Jenn said, “Oh, dickhead dear?”

“Yes, honeypants?”

“The door?”

I held it open for her and we walked into the lobby. It was airy and inviting, with a terrazzo floor and fieldstone walls and
light pouring in through floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. A fountain burbled water into a small pool on the left side; on the right was a security desk where a burly man in a navy blazer watched a bank of monitors showing closed-circuit feeds. His name tag identified him as John. I signed us in as Mr. & Mrs. Allan Gold. The cameras, from what I could see, covered all entrances to the building, as well as a number of corridors and common areas.

When we asked John about a tour of the facility, he pointed at a slim, handsome woman of fifty or so across the lobby. She wore a cream silk jacket and skirt, and her blonde hair was pulled back into a chignon. “Ms. Stockwell is the administrator here. She’ll just be a moment.”

Alice Stockwell was engaged in a serious conversation with an earnest young man in a gorgeously tailored lightweight grey suit. I wondered if he was here to place a parent, or already had one in residence. Either way, he seemed displeased, lecturing Stockwell urgently through tight lips. Maybe he was another dissatisfied client like Errol Boyko, who feared something was amiss with his parent’s care. But Stockwell must have allayed his concerns because they finally shook hands and he headed out the glass doors.

She came clicking over the tile floor toward us, hand extended, and we introduced ourselves without any flubs.

“Did you have an appointment, Mr. Gold?”

I shook my head apologetically. “Ms. Tunney did say we should call ahead but I’ve had so much on my mind since Mom’s stroke …”

“Darlene Tunney referred you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“She had great things to say,” Jenn added. “You should be proud.”

“Then I don’t see any problem,” Stockwell said, all sympathy but for the one quick look she flashed Jenn: taller,
younger, blonder than she. Like one Siamese fighting fish finding another in the same aquarium.

“Before I show you the facility, tell me about your mother. You mentioned a stroke. Would you say the effects are mainly physical or cognitive as well?”

I had decided to make “Mom” sound as incapacitated, and therefore vulnerable, as possible. “Both.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” Stockwell said.

“She can’t remember things from one minute to the next,” I said with a downcast look. “I’m afraid if she’s left alone she’ll turn on the stove and forget about it, or take her medication more than once—or not at all.” Jenn put her hand on my shoulder and patted it for support.

“And she’s on so many medications,” I added. “Even before the stroke she was dealing with diabetes and high blood pressure. I take it the staff here is well trained in dispensing medication?”

She smiled coolly. “As good as you’d find in any hospital.”

Given the state of health care in Ontario these days that was hardly a ringing endorsement, but I smiled back as if reassured.

“Let’s start our tour at the front desk, with our state-of-the-art security system,” Stockwell said. Big John took his cue and stared intently at his bank of monitors. “We watch every exit and entrance around the clock to ensure no one wanders. That’s very important for clients like your mother, Mr. Gold. If they leave the home—which does happen at less vigilant facilities—they die of exposure, hypothermia, dehydration. They get hit by cars. It’s terrible. And it simply will not happen at Meadowvale, will it, John?”

“Not on my watch, ma’am.”

The script was corny but I gave them points for tight execution.

Stockwell led us across the lobby toward three glass doors, our steps echoing off the stone walls. “Through the door on the left is a locked ward where clients with cognitive deficits
reside. In addition to the cameras, all the doors in that wing are alarmed for extra security. Straight ahead through the middle door are the common areas: the dining room, day room, games room, clinic, dispensary and so on.”