Best Place to Die (24 page)

‘That could be tough. Considering Doyle's dead, and . . .' She shuddered. ‘And Ms Preston too. I dreamed about her last night, only she wasn't falling from Nillewaug but from the Trade Center. Nine eleven was the first time I ever wanted to leave New York. It wasn't long after that Ada and Harry moved into this place.'

Lil had never made that connection, but, thinking back, she and Bradley moved in 2002 and Ada and Harry took the adjoining condo a few months later. Before then they'd had a town house in Brooklyn Heights. Ada rarely spoke about 9/11, and whenever it came on the news she'd be shaken by it. The general reason she gave for the move was Harry's deteriorating health, his heart and lungs and a rapidly progressing dementia. They'd both married men considerably older than themselves, and moving here in their mid fifties had made Lil and Ada two of the youngest in Pilgrim's Progress. But to hear Rose, she wondered if part of Ada's exodus from New York had to do with that awful day – living in that part of Brooklyn, one stop from downtown Manhattan; it must have been terrifying.

‘Do you think someone is trying to clean house?' Rose asked.

‘It's possible,' Lil said, noting how quickly Rose's mind shifted topics . . . like her daughter's.

‘You do know that the fat man wasn't the brightest bulb in the box?'

‘You don't think he was competent.'

‘I thought he was reading a script,' she said bluntly. ‘And once he knew that I had no real money, no “assets to protect for my children and grandchildren” . . . He used that phrase a lot. And don't get me wrong, I am blessed in my family, love them dearly, but if I had a lot of cash I'd blow it on trips to the casino. Which, I cannot believe Ada neglected to tell me, are perfectly possible given that Pilgrim's Progress has weekly trips to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Do you go?'

‘I don't, but back to Wally Doyle. He wanted you to put your money into a trust?'

‘Yes. And it was clearly the point of the interview, like one of those horrible salesmen trying to trick you into a time share by offering you a free vacation. Everything else had been a lead up. I remember having to stop him to say I had no money and he was wasting his time. That it was Ada who was underwriting that ridiculously expensive place. It's strange . . .'

‘What?'

‘It's almost as if he didn't believe me. Although –' she clicked her tongue – ‘that's not quite it . . . he had trouble accepting what I was telling him, and kept pushing the trust. He could set it up, he's sure my children would want it . . . I told him “no” repeatedly. But thinking back, I could see how just his persistence would get most people to say yes, just to get him to shut up.'

‘Hard sell.'

‘Very. But I don't think this helps your story much. And I doubt Alice would even remember meeting Doyle. And honestly, I don't think she has much money, either. You need to talk to someone who actually went for it.'

‘You're right,' Lil said, remembering what Kyle had told her about his grandmother and how he'd arranged for her to stay at Nillewaug. ‘You have someone in mind?'

‘Maybe if I saw a list of names.'

‘What's the matter?' Lil asked, seeing tears through Rose's glasses.

‘It's nothing. I was in that place for four months and didn't really make friends. Maybe I never gave it a chance, but I was so angry. It's funny, I lived all my life in an apartment in New York that wasn't much bigger, but moving to Nillewaug . . . it felt like prison . . . or worse. The place before you die. I know that I don't have a lot of years left. Even just talking about Nillewaug – and what a pretentious name – it makes my chest ache.'

Lil cut her a worried look.

She cracked a smile. ‘No, I'm not having a heart attack. But heart sick, in a place like that there's no hope. You're there to die, and before you go they're going to strip you of anything worth taking. Like cows to slaughter . . . it was an abattoir.'

‘Really?' Lil laughed.

‘I do love my crossword puzzles. Do you get
The Times
delivered?' she asked.

‘No.' Thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea, if for no other reason than to study the reporting and prose styles of the reporters, Lil told her she'd get it started.

Rose shrugged. ‘I don't think I was much help.'

‘No, you were.' And that was the truth although not in the way Lil had anticipated. But again she was left with more questions than answers. She thought about Wally Doyle, pushing past the horrible images of his mangled face. Seeing his fat frame stuffed in a navy suit, sitting next to his pretty blonde wife at church, and then remembering him in the dark purple-and-white Raven's uniform, an unstoppable behemoth. Rose had made a critical observation – Wally wasn't that smart, certainly not the type to mastermind a complex financial fraud. Jim Warren on the other hand – absolutely. And Dennis Trask with his sprawling empire of car dealerships – without a doubt. Even Delia Preston, although she was likely more of a cog in a larger machine. Still, there was something about Delia, remembering the fierce intelligence that shone beneath her polished exterior. All of it snuffed out, and someone trying to make it look like an accident.

Ada called out from her condo, ‘Lil?' She was carrying a stack of papers. Behind her, Alice followed, having changed into a pink tracksuit that still had the size sticker on the leg and her matching pink running shoes. ‘You need to see these.' And she handed Lil a stack of forms.

After years in Bradley's office, Lil immediately recognized the Medicaid statements. They all bore Alice's name, reassured the recipient ‘This is not a bill' and then itemized services billed over the prior month. In this case ‘Skilled Nursing Facility' i.e. a nursing home at the per diem rate of a hundred and ten dollars – thirty-three hundred for the month. Lil's pulse quickened, realizing that this was potentially a smoking gun. ‘Rose, Alice was your next-door neighbor at Nillewaug, correct?'

‘Yes.'

Lil looked at the redhead who stood transfixed by a clump of yellow and white daffodils that had bloomed overnight. She thought back to last fall. ‘Ada, do you remember when we met with Delia last year?'

‘Of course, why?'

She stared at Alice; this was not someone who could be deemed capable of living on her own. She needed constant redirection, would be unsafe around a stove, probably need some help dressing. Although so far that hadn't seemed a huge issue. ‘Rose, the building you lived in was considered independent living?'

‘Yes, why?'

‘Something doesn't make sense . . . didn't Delia specifically say they wouldn't take someone who had dementia as a resident?'

Ada nodded. ‘She was vague, said something about “a significant degree of”. But then –' and she too looked at Alice – ‘maybe it wasn't so bad when she moved in. Delia did say that once they took someone they'd provide care for the long haul. Maybe she wasn't showing signs when she moved in. Or maybe Kyle was able to keep it under wraps.'

‘Maybe.' Still holding the forms, Lil felt connections take hold.

Ada commented: ‘I wonder how much money's involved with this Medicaid scam. Just for Alice, thirty-three hundred a month, just shy of forty grand a year. How many people in that building were they doing that for?'

‘It wasn't a nursing home,' Lil said. She scanned down to the signature lines and next to the space for
attending MD/DO
the name:
Norman Trask, MD.
A supposedly retired surgeon signing forms for patients who weren't in a nursing home –
what was in it for him?

‘Sure felt like a nursing home,' Rose said, looking at Ada.

Lil's head swam as the line of investigation she needed to pursue took shape. Get a list of the residents, find out how many were on Medicaid, try to contact either them or their families, download policies and definitions for nursing homes, get the rules for Medicaid eligibility . . . And something else . . . ‘Ada?' She walked away from Rose to the far side of the little stone wall that provided the border for the seating area. Ada followed. ‘I don't think Kyle's been entirely honest with us.'

‘About?'

‘Think about it. His grandmother is too demented to be in her own apartment. She's getting billed nursing-home-level care for services she's not receiving. He must have known about that. What if?'

‘What if he's part of it?' she stated. ‘It seems he would have to have known something. But he seems so nice. In my heart I can't believe he's faking that. Look at how hard he's trying to help people, and how devoted he is to Alice.'

‘Maybe. Or maybe he's trying to cover his tracks . . . Ladies?' Calling back to Rose and Alice. ‘I need to make some calls. Ada, are you all set?'

‘We're good,' she said. ‘Do what you need to do.' A worried expression crossed her face. ‘This is giving me the creeps, Lil. Maybe you should leave this to the cops. Call Mattie and tell her about this.'

‘I think she already knows. She was the one who told me that they were investigating fraud. I think I'm just catching up.'

‘No.' Ada persisted. ‘Someone killed Delia, lit fire to a building with six hundred residents and God knows what else. Lil, I'm worried. We have to be careful. Whoever's behind this is not fooling around.'

Lil felt her fear, and realized she was right. The rational part of her mind was saying –
this is none of your business, this is dangerous.
‘I want to find out what happened. I need to.'

Ada gave a crooked smile. ‘I know. And you want to be the first with the story.'

‘Yes.'

‘Good. So how can I help?'

K
yle Sullivan gave a weary smile to the Latina cleaning woman as she exited the fourth-floor conference room in the Safe Harbor Pavilion, aka the Alzheimer's and dementia building. Inside were law-enforcement agents, four in suits and the tall silver-haired local Chief of Police. Next to him was a short woman in a navy suit, whom he recognized from after the fire.

He watched the cleaning woman as she headed down the hall and felt badly for her; she was probably out of a job having worked in the now uninhabitable central residential building. Several brief conversations with the facility's HR director, Frank Stillman, had left him confused, angry and scared. As the only available member of Nillewaug's executive team Stillman – from Kyle's perspective – had largely thrown up his hands. ‘
How am I supposed to know?
' he'd told Kyle after one of the other nurses had asked if there'd be paychecks on Friday.
And how the hell
, Kyle mused,
did this land on my shoulders?
He pictured his glamorous sister, Kelly. She'd make some quip about his bleeding heart and ‘
God-given right to save the world, while simultaneously making yourself miserable
.
You're a fucking saint, Kyle,
' she'd say. ‘
One of the last good guys . . . and we all know what happens to them.
' And she'd mime a gun to the side of her head and pull the trigger.

The cleaning lady stood by the elevators. As she got in, their eyes connected briefly; she shrugged. He wondered what her name was, having passed her countless times over the last five years. He didn't know it, and wondered if that made him racist –
maybe a little.
He thought back through all the hospitals and health-care facilities he'd worked in, first as a trainee, then as a registered nurse, and now as a nurse practitioner. How many cleaning and hospitality women had he passed, most of them with skin darker than his or with thick accents from Eastern Europe. While rarely discussed, there was tremendous institutionalized prejudice in health care, where almost all the top jobs went to white men, and up until a few years ago nursing was for women. And again old conversations with Kelly played in his mind. ‘
Become a doctor for God's sake. They're the ones with power. Why would you become a nurse? It's kind of a faggy thing to do Kyle, do you have something else you want to tell me?
'

‘
No Kelly, I'm not gay.
' Beyond that, there was no point in trying to explain something she'd never understand. Yes, he could have gone to medical school, but nursing, actually taking care of people – physically, emotionally, even spiritually – was what he'd always wanted to do. But now, running on two hours sleep since Saturday, he was less certain.

There was more, too, as he stared at the closed conference-room door; an almost unbearable anxiety. So much that needed to be done. The phone hadn't let up since the fire, and he felt a crushing guilt at having put it on the answering machine last night. He'd pleaded with both of the night nurses to take incoming calls. ‘
Are you kidding?
' one had responded, and the other had clearly stated: ‘
Sorry, not my job. And not yours either, Kyle.
'

The door opened and a tall young woman in a gray suit appeared. ‘Mr Sullivan, we're ready.'

Kyle followed her into the familiar room, with its brass-edged walnut table and comfortable mauve chairs. The vertical blinds were cracked open letting in a soft light.

He was shown to a chair in the middle of the long side of the table facing the windows. Across from him were two men, one black, one white, both with close-cropped hair and dark suits. To their left was the short, curly haired detective he'd seen the morning of the fire and her tall partner. Grenville's uniformed Chief of Police was at the other end. In the corner at a forty-five-degree angle from him was a youngish man with a camera on a tripod. Introductions were made, and as Alice had taught him as a child, he repeated each name as he shook their hands – ‘Agent Fitzhugh, Agent Connor, Detective Plank, Detective Perez, Chief Morgan'.