W: The Planner, The Chosen (25 page)

Kris was so stunned that she did not know how to respond. She had always known that Michael was odd, separatist and quiet. Now she sat in a blazing hot office with her foot still throbbing listening to him tell her that he was on a mission from God to save the world.  If she had taken any medication, she would have been sure that she was having auditory hallucinations.

Her shock must have registered on her face, because he finished writing her prescription and then handed her some samples. “These will help with the pain and the swelling until you get your credits restored. Take one every twelve hours. Here is a thirty-day pass key for the elevator. Stay off the stairs. This note will give you permission to travel by golf cart to the train stop for thirty days. When you are not actually working, keep your shoes off. I will send a note over to the dietician to change your food, but there is about a ten day lag time before it becomes effective so, in the meantime, don’t eat anything on this list. I will order the X-ray and the test for the gout. You need to be here tomorrow afternoon for both so that we can make sure that the diagnosis is correct.  Can you stand?” He held out his arm to support her, and she stood up.

A wave of gratitude flooded over Kris. “Michael, I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much for doing this….”

“That’s my job, Kris.  And it is also my pleasure.”

After Michael had locked the door, he helped her into the electric golf cart and drove her back to her building. “You’re a Christian, aren’t you, Kris?”

“I like to think so—my mother doesn’t seem convinced,” she paused. “Of course that might be because I have never lived out my Christianity in a way that impacted anyone’s life, including my own.”

“Maybe it’s time you started. I teach a little group on Thursday nights at my unit. It’s a Bible study. We are working on the book of Daniel. Why don’t you join us?”

“I would like to. I really would.  But I am tied up on Thursdays right now,” she didn’t want him to think she was blowing him off.  “I am helping my parents with something.”

“I heard about the trouble your father got into.  I am really sorry.” Noticing the surprised look on her face, Michael gave her one of his slight smiles. “News travels fast here. Everybody knows about everything that happens to everyone. When will it be over? “

“About ten more days.”

“Do they need anything?”

“Actually,” Kris hated to ask for anything else, but she did anyway. “My mother really needs her pills for her high blood pressure. She ran out, and she can’t get her prescription refilled until the credits are reinstated.”

“Give me the unit numbers of the people who lost their credits.  I will go out there the day after tomorrow and see what I can do to help.”

“Thank you. I will bring the list with me tomorrow.”

Kris limped out of the golf cart. “Thank you, Michael—for everything.” In the reflection of the glass insets of the doors she could see the cart pulling away as she scanned her palm to open the main doors. Gratefully, she turned to her left, inserted the elevator pass into the slot, and waited for the doors to open to carry her to the third floor.

T
he next ten days were uneventful as Kris took her medication and stayed off her foot. All the sanctions had now ended for Kris, her parents, and their friends, and life had returned to what now passed for normal.

As the days went by, files continued to accumulate on Kris’ desk. Every day she got calls from other agencies about paperwork that still needed signing to transfer the deeds to the properties, or more often, paperwork that had already been signed and notarized but lost in the endless chain of red tape between her desk and the county clerk’s office. She was working long hours against what seemed to be a tight deadline, although she could not understand the sense of urgency. Every person in Smart Seniors was there to stay, so why was it imperative that all of the deeds be recorded in the next thirty days—as Leonard Scott and Pat Kilmer were now demanding?

Now that her disciplinary actions were over, her thoughts turned again to Ron and Luisa Edmonton. How had their home ended up transferred to the FMPD?  Did they fall on hard times? How could they? Ron had built a hugely successful practice, and he had made a lot of investments with the money he had earned—stocks, real estate, insurance policies. It just simply did not make sense that he could have lost everything. Did they get a divorce? That was always possible—Kris had certainly seen her share of seemingly happy couples end their marriages suddenly. But that did not explain why the county’s official public records’ office had only a warranty deed transfer to FMPD on file. People as well off as the Edmontons sell their homes when they get divorced—they don’t give them to Uncle Sam. Mainly, Kris wanted to know how it was that Leonard Scott was living in their home.

She needed to find them, but how could she? A call to directory assistance did not uncover any phone numbers for a Ron or Luisa Edmonton in Phoenix or the surrounding areas. She tried to remember the name of Ron’s practice—after searching on-line she found a pain management practice with a familiar-sounding name, and she dialed that number.  When she asked to speak to Dr. Edmonton, the receptionist put her on hold for a while and then came back to the phone to tell her that no one by that name worked there. Kris searched through her phone hoping she had kept a mobile number for them in her address book, but she hadn’t—after she had started her job as a Planner she had emptied out her address book thinking that she would never need those numbers again.

One evening as she was working late in her office sorting through file folders trying to determine which documents were missing in order to complete each file, she had a thought. Going into the FMPD’s data base, she typed in “Ron and Luisa Edmonton” and hit the search key. The database searched for a few seconds and then returned one listing.  The name “Ron Edmonton” was crossed out in red but there was a listing for Luisa Edmonton, living in a Smart Community just west of Scottsdale. Kris clicked the name to get the description: “white Caucasian, female, date of birth May 15, 1964, light blonde hair, green eyes, 5 feet 3 inches, 125 pounds—NOR.”  “That’s got to be her,” Kris murmured.  “There can’t be two Luisa Edmontons fitting that description living right here in the Phoenix area.” NOR—no other residents; maybe Ron had left her.  Kris jotted down the unit number and Division where Luisa lived. No telephone number was on file. That was fine; the location was fairly close to the address of the former home of Heather Miller, a Division 1 resident whose household furnishings still needed to be inventoried. Tomorrow afternoon she would do the inventory so that she could turn in the list for the file, and then she would drop by and see if she could find Luisa at home.

Kris could not wait to finish the inventory the next day. She was supposed to count the cutlery, the glasses, the dinnerware, the number of napkins and napkin rings and candle holders—everything, but instead she guesstimated.  Ever since the party at Leonard Scott’s house she had felt very uneasy about these inventories—every time she did one she had the distinct feeling that she was creating a potential shopping list for some bloated mid-level bureaucrat. Now she just wanted to get this over with before it got so late that she lost any chance of catching Luisa in her unit.  She did not want to take the shuttle that curried her to the commuter train because it kept a record of all the stops that she made. Instead, she left the house on foot and walked the two and a half miles to find Luisa. Now that her foot had healed, she found that she was so used to walking/trotting that she made pretty good time. Unlike Smart Seniors, this Smart community was not gated, and individual unit doors opened directly to the outside.

Kris’ heart was pounding as she knocked on the door of the unit number she had written down the night before, and Kris suspected that anxiety had more to do with her rapid heart rate than the recent exercise she had completed.

The door was opened by a familiar, petite woman.  “Luisa. I don’t know whether you remember me. I’m Kris Mitchell. I helped you and your husband purchase the home at 246 Monte Alegre. I know this is unexpected, but I work for the FMPD now, and I saw your name on a list of residents here, and…well, I just thought I would come by and say ‘hi’.”

“Of course, I remember,” responded Luisa in her trademark Eastern European accent. “Won’t you come in?” She opened the door to admit Kris. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Actually, I would love some water, thank you.”

Luisa pulled a plastic mug out of the cabinet and went to the water cooler. “So nice of you to come by. Ron is not here…he is gone.” Kris’ mind raced—“gone”.  Did that mean “gone” as in he had died, or “gone” as in he had left Luisa, or just “gone” as in he had stepped out for a while?

She responded carefully.  “I’m sorry to hear that. I was hoping to say ‘hi’ to him too.” She drank the water that Luisa provided and then took the seat that was offered to her.

“I have got to say, I was really surprised to see that you were living in one of the communities here. What made you decide to sell the house?”

“We didn’t decide to sell.” Luisa sat with her hands folded in her lap, looking down. She seemed much older than her fifty years and certainly much older than the last time Kris had seen her. Of course, it had been six years now.

“We got a notice that the house was being taken under eminent domain. The federal government needed the property. Ron was furious. He said that nobody was going to take his house; he would keep them tied up in court until Hell had iced over. A few days later, he went to work one morning, and he never came home.”

Kris was stunned. “I’m so sorry, Luisa. What happened?”

“Nobody knows. I called the police, the FBI even. A few days later, the police told me that they had found evidence that Ron was having an affair with his PA, and they believed that he had left the country with her. Someone cashed out all of our bank accounts. Since he was not dead, I could not access his life insurance. Without his signature, I could not sell his stocks or the real estate to free up cash. I could not probate his will—his partner still has the practice. He said that Ron had signed a document giving him sole ownership. Suddenly, it was like Ron had never existed.  He took care of everything for us, and when he disappeared and all the cash was gone, there was nothing that I could do.  The government did not offer me any money for the house; they offered me this unit instead. So I came here.”

“Do you believe that he left with someone else?”

“I don’t think so. Ron was good; I never had trouble with him that way. We were very close, but even if he did fall in love with another woman, he would have never walked off and let them take the house. That just wasn’t his way—he would have fought for the rest of his life just to make the point.”

“Luisa, before Ron disappeared, did he go to the Gulf Coast to help the toxin victims?”

“Yes,” Luisa nodded, “he spent two months there.”

“Did he tell you anything about it? About what he saw or any theories he had about everybody dying?”

“No,” Luisa looked down.“He didn’t say anything. We never talked about his work.” From her demeanor, Kris could tell she was lying.

“My brother is a journalist, Luisa,” now Kris was lying, but only a white lie—he was, after all, a former journalist.  “Would you be willing to talk to him about what happened?”

“No,” Luisa looked up shaking her head. “There is nothing to say. I have been through this before.” Kris looked surprised. “I am from Romania, remember. My father died in one of Nicolae Ceausescu’s prisons. Many people went to work in the mornings and never came home. Their families never knew what happened to them. I thought I had left all of that behind when I came to the United States, but apparently I had not.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Kris asked.

“Every morning at mass I light a candle for my husband. That is all anyone can do.” Luisa stood to her feet. “Thank you for stopping by. It was very nice to see you again.”

The door shut behind Kris as she stepped out of the unit. As she made her way to the street she realized that she was shaking—her palms felt cold and sweaty. She had to hurry back to the house where she had been working earlier to catch the shuttle to take her to the commuter train by 5:30—otherwise she would stuck there waiting until at least 7:00. 

She arrived back at her office by 6:30. On the edge of her desk was that shrinking stack of files that still needed attention. She was working late every night now to finish the files in order to meet the Division’s deadlines. Fortunately, all of the residents’ signatures were now in, and all of the property transfers to FMPD had been recorded. Now, she was just finishing the inventories of the household items. She sat down to type her inventory list for the Miller house into her computer but her fingers would hardly cooperate. She could not stop thinking about her conversation with Luisa. Everything around Kris had become so bizarrely strange within the space of just a few months. Now finding out that Ron Edmonton had vanished after being sent to treat victims of the Gulf toxins just added to the weirdness. Maybe she was living out some strange 21
st
century version of
Through the Looking Glass
where she had actually stepped into one of Keith’s paranoid fantasies.

Looking down, Kris saw the message light on her phone. She would take a break from the inventory to listen to the messages. There were three, all from the same person.  A soft shaky female voice had begun calling at 8:00 A.M. and had called back twice since.

“Ms. Mitchell, my name is Penny Sutherland. My husband and I got a notice that our house is being taken for eminent domain. The notice said that the Federal Municipal Planning Division would be furnishing us with new housing in Division 1 of Section W. They gave me this number and your extension and told me to call you to make arrangements by the end of the week. Please call me back at 505-555-5555.”

The second message was basically a repeat of the first, but the third was a little more urgent. “I really need for you to call me back. We have three children in school. I need to get them enrolled in their new school. My husband has a job here. I need to know where we are going.”

“What is this lady talking about?” Kris muttered.  “Children in school; husband with a job? Honestly,” and suddenly she was sorry that she had stopped to listen to the messages. The woman sounded so frantic that Kris decided to return the call. A 505 area code meant Albuquerque, New Mexico or north of there; maybe Santa Fe or Taos. New Mexico was on daylight savings time; Arizona was not—dinner should be over, and she should be able to get in touch with Penny before the hour got too late, if she called right away.

“Hello,” a small voice answered the phone. Kris thought he sounded about eight.

“Hi, I am Kris Mitchell. I am returning your mother’s call. May I speak to Penny, please.”

“Just a minute,” the small voice replied.

“Hello,” Penny didn’t sound much older than her child.

“Penny, this is Kris Mitchell. I am sorry to call you back so late, but I’ve been out in the field today. I got back and found your messages, and they sounded pretty urgent so I wanted to return your call as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” answered Penny, “I really need to find out what is going on. I have three kids, my husband is working, and we just got a notice yesterday in the mail that we are losing our house to eminent domain.”

“I am very sorry to hear that.  Where do you live?”

“We live close to Taos, New Mexico. We are on a private piece of land next to the Kit Carson National Forest. The letter came from the Department of Agriculture. Our land is being absorbed into the forest. The letter said that we will be provided with new housing in Section W Division 1 and gave me your number and extension to call. I am trying to figure all this out—we only have thirty days to move.”

“I appreciate your predicament, Penny, but I am afraid you have been given some bad information, and I really apologize for that. Section W Division 1 is a seniors’ housing community. We don’t handle any families here, just retirees.”

“Are you sure?” Penny asked, “because I called the number on the letter for the Agriculture Department and talked to them before I called you. They gave me your number, too.”

“I am positive.  Our rules don’t even allow children to spend the night.  Wherever you are going, this is not it. I am really sorry. But here’s what I can do—I will talk to the Division Director and see if he knows whom you need to contact, and then I will call you back.  It may take me a few days, but I will see what I can find out for you.”