Sharon Love Cook - Granite Cove 01 - A Nose for Hanky Panky (12 page)

“Rosie, you scared me. What smell?”

I pointed to the oversized sandwich. “I smelled it all the way down the hall.”

“It’s probably oregano. Stella makes the best fried eggplant subs.” She picked up a plastic knife. “Let me give you half. It’s loaded with fiber.”

“No, thanks. Fiber is all my dad talks about.” I sat down. “Why are old people so bowel obsessed?”

“Don’t knock it. Bowels are my bread and butter.”

I winced. “Please. Not at lunch.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

I got up and surveyed the stainless steel vending machines bordering the room. Finally, I inserted coins into a slot. An ice cream sandwich, smaller than the one depicted in the display, fell into the trough. I removed the wrapper and bit into a frozen disk that resembled, and tasted like, a hockey puck.

At the table, I said, “You seem in better spirits than you sounded on the phone.”

“Probably because I’ve had lunch.” With her fork she scooped up the remaining bits of minced green peppers and onions from the paper plate. “But eventually, I have to face the music.”

“Which is?”

She glanced at her watch. “Which is cigarette time. Every day after lunch around this time, I look forward to a smoke. There’s a group that gathers outside the storage shed. One guy’s from the laundry department, a couple are from nursing, and one’s from accounting. Every day, rain or shine, we gather to smoke.” She glanced at the window. “They’re probably there now wondering what’s keeping me.”

“Betty Ann, this time is different. This time you called me because you want to change. Isn’t that right?”

She nodded, gloomy. “Calling you, I reinforced the commitment I made to Tiny. Instead of smoking, I said I’d walk after lunch.” She crumpled her napkin, tossing it on the table. “But you know the saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I licked the last of the ice cream sandwich from my fingers and jumped up. “In that case, I think we’d better start walking.”

Betty Ann sighed and slowly got to her feet while I gathered up the trash, throwing it in a big corner barrel. When I returned to the table, she was staring fixedly at a man sitting across the room. “Betty Ann?” When she didn’t respond, I followed her gaze and spotted the pack of Marlboros in the breast pocket of his olive uniform. I placed my hand on her arm. “Is that your brand?”

“Right now, everything’s my brand,” she said, her voice bleak.

“Come on,” I said, leading her away. Like a zombie she followed me out of the room. We stood at the door overlooking the parking lot. “Which way do you want to go?”

She didn’t hear me. “See over there to the left?” She pointed beyond a row of vans. “Behind those dogwoods is where the shed is. They’ll be there now, waiting.” She inhaled deeply. “Holy crap, I can smell the smoke.”

“Then we’ll go this way,” I said, taking her arm and heading to the right. Before long we were off the nursing home property and in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. It was a new subdivision of brightly colored Victorian style houses. We followed a freshly paved sidewalk bordered in granite.

If I had assumed that B.A. would trudge along dispiritedly, I was wrong. She soon picked up speed, swinging her arms forcefully. Seconds later she broke away, silently striding ahead. I didn’t attempt to keep up, figuring she wanted to work out her frustrations. When she increased her speed, going so fast I feared she’d walk right out of her shoes, I called to her, “Betty Ann, wait!”

Head down, arms pumping, B.A. charged down the street like King Kong on the loose. Then as quickly as she started, she stopped, allowing me to catch up. We fell into an easy stride. I patted her back. “Just think, you’re out walking while those poor souls are back at the shed barbecuing their lungs.”

“It’s only one victory. The war rages on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m saying I know better. When the craving hits, you don’t care about promises. You forget everything. You’ll even pick up a butt from the street, yellow with dog pee.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“I would, if I hadn’t had a cigarette in awhile.” She closed her eyes. “It would be the finest smoke of my life.”

Her face had such a look of rapture, I had to get her mind off smoking. “Guess who I’ll be interviewing on Wednesday?”

“Who?”

“Veronica Klinger. I’m invited to Chestnut Hill for tea.”

“Lucky you, tea with the dragon lady. Be careful she doesn’t poison you.”

“By the way, how well did you know Dr. Klinger?”

“Not much. She came to the nursing home from time to time for psych evals.”

“What’s that about?”

“When someone starts acting gaga, administration needs an evaluation from a shrink. It’s standard procedure even if the resident is ninety-eight years old. Everything is documented at a nursing home. You get a pimple on your butt, it goes in your chart.”

“But isn’t it natural at ninety-eight to get a little gaga?”

“Not necessarily. In any case, they have to rule out physical causes first. If that checks out okay, you need a psych eval. The shrink comes in, asks a few questions like ‘Who’s the President?’ and then sends a bill for four hundred fifty dollars.”

“So Dr. Klinger did your evaluations?”

“She did. She had a way of addressing the residents as if they were school kids and she was the teacher. You know how she enunciated every word? ‘Can you tell me what holiday we celebrate in July?’”

It was a pretty good imitation. “Did the residents respond to her?”

“Most were so happy to have company, they’d welcome Jeffrey Dalmer. By the way, I don’t approve of how Mr. Guskin, our Administrator, is handling the murder. He’s decided to not tell the residents. He’s cut out any references in the newspapers.”

“If it’s any consolation Chief Alfano is releasing the name of a suspect. It’s some vagrant who was hanging out at the park. Apparently, Spencer Farley caught him once outside Dr. Klinger’s office.”

“Humph. That’s no vagrant. Don’t you know who they’re talking about?” She flashed me a Cheshire Cat smile.

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Betty Ann, do you know something about the murder that I don’t?”

“Hah! You should pay me for all the juicy tidbits I provide.”

“How about I buy you a drink instead? Now tell me right now.”

“Don’t get your undies in a twist. Do you remember Rusty Favazza?”

“From high school? The football player?”

“The same. That so-called vagrant is none other than Granite Cove’s boy hero.”

The image of the limping man carrying a case of beer on his shoulder suddenly flashed in my mind. “I think I saw him walking on Main Street.” I gave her a brief description.

“That’s Rusty.”

“Unbelievable.” It was hard to connect the disheveled stranger to the former handsome high school athlete. Back then, Rusty Favazza was our version of the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady. His performance with the Granite Cove Lobstermen resulted in a full scholarship to Boston College. Rusty was a god, idolized by everyone, particularly women. “How in the world is Rusty connected with Dr. Klinger?”

“Before he got kicked out of BC, Rusty met her at a frat party. At the time she was a student at Wellesley, a couple of years younger. If you recall, Rusty was used to women throwing themselves at him. When beautiful, brainy Vivian gave him a chilly reception, I imagine he was intrigued.”

“Maybe I should have given him a chilly reception,” I said. “He never noticed me anyway.” A skinny sophomore, I tutored in the high school writing lab where Rusty was sent for help with his English essays. I secretly swooned over him, the high cheekbones, the curly copper hair. Not only was Rusty gorgeous, he had a sense of humor, unlike many jocks, and he never took himself seriously. When sports writers labeled him “New England’s best high school quarterback,” he shrugged. Football, he told everyone, was his ticket out of Granite Cove.

“Basically, Rusty was out of his league,” she continued. “Vivian was Chestnut Hill, and he was the housing project. Yet it was a definite case of opposites attracting.” She gave me a sly look. “I hear they had a sizzling affair.”

I stared in disbelief. “Dr. Klinger and Rusty Favazza? Get out! Where are you getting this information anyway?”

“Tiny has been moonlighting a couple nights a week at The Sacred Cod where Rusty’s a regular. Tiny’s become his confessor.”

The funky wharfside restaurant is known for its generous drinks and fresh seafood right off the boats. “Rusty’s a regular?” I asked.

“When his disability checks hold out.”

“How is he disabled?”

“Fractured pelvis from working on a tuna boat in California. During a storm, the mast split and fell on him.”

“Poor guy,” I said. “Still, I still can’t imagine Vivian Klinger and Rusty Favazza getting together. Talk about polar opposites.”

“She wasn’t a Ph.D. back then. She was a sheltered college student living at home. I don’t have to remind you about his effect on women.”

“Everyone had a crush on Rusty,” I said. “Remember Ms. Snelson, the guidance counselor who drove him to Maine to tour Bowdoin? What a scandal when it got out they’d stayed at a motel.”

“Uh huh. Rusty swore he’d slept in the car.”

“Right. Come to think of it, I wonder what Rusty saw in Dr. Klinger. She couldn’t have been what you’d call a fun date.”

She sighed. “It was probably one set of glands calling to another.”

“Is that why she eventually settled here?”

“To rekindle an old romance with an alcoholic ex-con? Is that what you mean?”

“Rusty’s an ex-con?” I asked.

“According to Tiny, who gets it from the source, the sword fishing was just a cover for drug smuggling. Rusty did two years in prison.”

“Sounds like he’s been on a slippery slope.” I thought about high school heroes and the pressure to live up to the public’s expectations. We demand much, and when they fall, we take it personally. “If all that is true, why in the world did he come back?”

“He claims he ran out of choices. He got out of prison and didn’t want to go back to the life, so he came home. He was living at the shelter downtown until his disability checks from California got transferred to Massachusetts.”

“But it’s so weird that Dr. Klinger ended up here in Rusty’s home town.”

“Rusty introduced her to Granite Cove. One day they borrowed her old man’s sailboat and headed down the coast. When they sailed into Granite Cove harbor, she fell in love with the place, said she wanted to live here someday. Perhaps her vision included Rusty as well. Who knows? Her old man had other plans for her that didn’t include marriage to a wharf rat.”

We came to the end of the sidewalk, finding ourselves confronted by a busy thoroughfare. I looked at Betty Ann. “Are you ready to go back? We can cross here and continue our walk. I’ve got a few more minutes.”

“I’m ready to go back.”

We turned and retraced our route. When we got within sight of Green Pastures, I said, “Are you okay? What about tonight if you crave a smoke? What will you do?”

“I’ve got a video program I watch. It’s all about replacing negative conditioners with positive conditioners.”

“You mean like reaching for a candy bar instead of a cigarette?”

She laughed. “Don’t I wish. No, it’s basically what we just did. Since I associate lunch with smoking, I substituted a positive conditioner—walking. Right now it’s a piss-poor substitute as far as I’m concerned, but the program claims I’ll actually come to prefer the positive.” She kicked a rock at her feet. “If only I had a better reward system.”

“Are you kidding? How about a healthy heart?”

“I’m not talking about the health aspect. I’m talking about something else.”

“No more dog breath?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Let’s say I quit for good. Know what my reward will be?”

“You tell me.”

“Jonah. When Tiny tells the court our home contains no secondhand smoke, there’s a good chance we’ll be awarded Jonah.” She closed her eyes. “Does that sound like a win-win situation?”

I tried to come up with something encouraging to offset the bleak picture she painted. Yet I could not, because my attention was drawn elsewhere. In a remote region of my mind, associations were forming. They’d been set in motion when Betty Ann discussed negative and positive conditioning. Although my brainstorm needed time to percolate, I felt I was onto something.

I had stumbled upon a solution to Raul Phipps’s neurosis.

“Egads! What in the name of God…?” Yvonne’s face registered dismay as she examined a stack of photos recently delivered by the lab. “Are these yours, Rose?”

Without turning from my monitor, I said, “Are you referring to Mabel Snodgrass’s birthday party?”

“No, this looks like some kind of dog, if I had to guess.”

“Oh, then that must be Raul.”

“What kind of dog is it?”

“He’s a miniature Hairless Peruvian. Worth a fortune.”

“If he appeared at my door in a blizzard, I’d throw water on him.”

“Even if you knew his owners were Mr. and Mrs. Phipps of the Miles O’ Tiles fortune?”

“Oh, that’s who he is.” She held the photo at arm’s length. “I’m sure he’s got his positive qualities. It’s like abstract art. Seen with an uneducated eye, it appears bizarre. Yet when you develop an appreciation, a whole world opens up. I imagine it’s the same for exotic dog breeds. Mr. and Mrs. Phipps no doubt discern qualities that the average person cannot fathom.”

“He’s been going toity in Mr. Phipps’s shoes,” I said.

She sighed, placing the photos on my desk. “I suppose he’s got his reasons.”

“He may. In the meantime, I think I’ve found a solution to the problem.”

“Good. I’m glad you’ve gotten over your obsession with the murder.”

I flashed a goody girl smile and at the same time felt a twinge of guilt. My interview with Veronica Klinger would take place during working hours. Yvonne would not approve. On the other hand, how many nights had I worked at home past midnight doing the housekeeping hints column?

I picked up a photo of Raul from the pile; it was a close up. He resembled the mutant from the movie
It’s Alive!
The puckered skin was the color of a slug.