The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (16 page)

‘Maybe I should wear a fluorescent jacket, too. Today is Thursday, field-trip day, and my name is Great-great-ancient-grandma Jumpity-Jump. If you’ll permit me, I’ll get off
here at the new Opera House. Thanks for your kindness.’

She left the worried woman behind and went home to lie down. Not that Sunset Grove was her home. It was just a logical solution for those who weren’t dead yet. ‘Waiting for the
crematorium,’ as Reino put it. And he had, in fact, died. Reino, that dirty talker and kiss stealer, the man who thought that Siiri was the prettiest girl at Sunset Grove. The Ambassador had
told them at the card table about Reino’s death. He said rather offhandedly that his friend was dead,
neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen,
and Anna-Liisa had added that there was,
after all, no other way out of the Group Home.

Siiri finally got hold of Tuula, the only one of Irma’s children who wasn’t an accident. Tuula had been around the world a couple of times, first to spend Christmas
on an island somewhere in the Pacific, then to conferences in Mexico and South Korea, and that’s why she hadn’t answered when Siiri had tried to call her. Tuula was a doctor, a real
scientist, and always in a great hurry, a specialist in prosthetic coatings and the outer ear canals of children, although Irma and Siiri had never understood how the two things were connected.

‘Mother’s situation is sad, of course,’ Tuula said on the phone. ‘But there’s not much we can do about it, she’s so old. Luckily, she receives good care at
Sunset Grove. She’s safe in the Group Home. I used some of my connections and got her a quick diagnosis of rapidly advancing dementia. Sometimes you have to wait for months if you don’t
know the right people. But they responded quickly at Sunset Grove, thank goodness. We can’t take care of her. You might not know, but I have two horses, which is an incredible amount of work,
although it’s fun, too, of course. But as I’m sure you can understand, they take up all my spare time.’

So it was true. Irma was in the closed unit and had been for weeks, while her daughter was flying around researching outer ear canals and her darlings were celebrating Christmas in the Tonga
islands. All these weeks, while Siiri had done nothing but fret, not knowing what else to do but break into Irma’s apartment with a total stranger, an angel boy, to steal a green folder that
had already been stolen from her once before.

Irma’s daughter didn’t understand at all when Siiri said that the entire dementia story was an invention of the head nurse and things like that happened all the time at Sunset Grove.
Siiri tried to explain the whole thing thoroughly, the reasons, and the results.

‘What complaints?’ Tuula asked, clearly beginning to feel nervous when Siiri told her how Irma had been a thorn in the side of the staff. She told Tuula about the county
administration, the ETE Centre, and the Loving Care Foundation. And, of course, the green folder and the constantly increasing number of pills.

‘What are you going on about? Finnish doctors don’t just prescribe things willy-nilly. Besides, complaints about treatment aren’t filed through the ETE Centre. Don’t you
mean the regional centre? Are you feeling tired, Siiri, dear?’

Tuula hadn’t yet had time to come and visit Irma in the closed unit and didn’t know what it was like there. She told Siiri to trust the experts in the medical profession and she was
glad when Siiri asked if she could obtain permission for her to visit Irma.

‘Yes, you have plenty of time for such things. I’ll let the office know that they should give you a visitor’s pass. I won’t be able to make it until maybe the end of next
month; I’ve got such an awful lot to do at work after all these conference trips. And then there are the horses. But I don’t feel guilty about it, since Mother won’t even know to
miss me there in the dementia ward. She doesn’t even remember her own name.’

The telephone call had brought no one any joy. Luckily there were still angels in the world, like Mika Korhonen, a true gift from heaven. He had cleaned Irma’s apartment assiduously, like
he’d promised, thrown out nine years’ worth of old flour and rye crisps, and put everything back in its place. Although he didn’t seem to like it when Siiri called him an angel,
because he wasn’t just any angel, he was a specific kind of angel. He belonged to an international club that combined motorcycling and philanthropy. But Siiri couldn’t take any interest
in Mika’s hobbies. Motorcycling sounded dangerous to her. The main thing was that for some reason Mika wanted to help them, unlike every last one of Irma’s darlings, whose only offer of
help was to hustle Irma off to the dementia ward.

‘It’s for Tero,’ Mika said. ‘He died for no reason.’ He had been in a hurry, couldn’t even stay for a cup of instant coffee. As he was leaving he said he was
going to meet Tero’s good friend Pasi, who Mika called a snitch. Pasi ought to be taught a lesson, but Mika was going to have to take care of that himself. Siiri certainly didn’t intend
to teach anyone any lessons. She didn’t really even know this Pasi, because he’d spent most of his time at Sunset Grove in his office handling something to do with funding and billing
matters.

‘And I’m not teaching anybody any more, that’s for certain!’ Anna-Liisa said as they played a game of double solitaire. ‘You have no idea what it’s like
teaching the forty-two grammatical case constructions of Finnish to a classroom of pre-teens. At that stage of life a person doesn’t yet understand the usefulness of learning grammar. And yet
it’s so extremely important. Do you know what the ablative case is?’

‘No, and I don’t want to. It said in the paper that you shouldn’t tax your brain with unnecessary information. You should concentrate on essentials as your mental capacities
start to deteriorate.’

They almost had a fight about this, and in the end Siiri had to apologize, realizing that she had offended Anna-Liisa. As a token of her forgiveness Anna-Liisa gave her a comprehensive lecture
on the fascinating grammatical case constructions of the Finnish language.

‘. . . and then there’s the comitative case, which, of course, means with, as in
kissoineen
– ‘with their cats’. Is that clear?’

Siiri had no use for the comitative case at the moment. She wasn’t with Irma, and being without Irma was no way to live, and there didn’t seem to be anyone who could help her solve
this problem. Mika Korhonen was concentrating on Pasi, Irma’s daughter didn’t understand the problem, and even Siiri’s granddaughter’s boyfriend Tuukka hadn’t called
in ages. It felt like the whole world had shifted onto the Internet somewhere, a place where Siiri couldn’t go. The only point of light in the darkness was shut up in that closed unit. And
soon she was going to get in there, and see Irma.

Reino’s funeral was held on a weekday, the same week that the temperature finally fell below freezing and the continuous rain changed to snow. The snow had been falling
around the clock for three days and traffic was a mess. City workers were in a hurry to clear a route for the cars, so they were dumping the snow on the pavements and courtyards. With Zimmer frames
and wheelchairs it was impossible to travel even a couple of metres.

So the residents of Sunset Grove hired two vans, designed especially for elderly passengers, with the Ambassador’s taxi coupons. Anna-Liisa, Siiri and the Ambassador took one and in the
other were the Partanens and the Hat Lady, who had recovered from her cardiac infarction and started going from door to door in the retirement home. Siiri and Anna-Liisa assumed she was going
begging, hoping for some coffee and sweet rolls, but she claimed she was on Jesus’s business. And when she came to visit, it didn’t take her long, in fact, to fish out a Bible and start
grilling her host on personal matters.

‘I haven’t yet come to a decision,’ Siiri had told her, trying to be tactful, but that was a mistake. The Hat Lady had been giving her the full treatment ever since, thinking
she was easy pickings. She’d got to be quite a nuisance, and Siiri took care to make sure they didn’t travel in the same van.

There was no car access to the front door of the crematorium. The vans had to drop them off along the street and the drivers offered no help with the slog to the entrance; they just dumped the
chairs and Zimmer frames in the wet snow and sped off. The old people took so long getting to the door, nudging each other along through the snowdrifts, that they were late for the ceremony. Clumps
of snow stuck to the wheels of their chairs and Zimmer frames and made them nearly impossible to push. The Ambassador’s cane got stuck in the handle of Anna-Liisa’s Zimmer frame, the
Hat Lady fell into a mound of snow, hat and all, and Margit Partanen looked like she was going to have a heart attack.

‘It’s all right, we’ll all end up at the crematorium eventually!’ the Ambassador shouted gamely.

Finally, the chapel verger, a frail-looking woman with no coat on, hurried over to help them. By the time she ‘d hoisted all the wheelchairs, Zimmer frames and old people inside she was
soaked with sweat. They crammed themselves into the small foyer to take off their coats and hats and unwrap the flowers they’d brought. There was no bin for the wrappers – there never
seemed to be, in any church or chapel. Anna-Liisa left her Zimmer frame by the coat rack, thinking it would only be in the way and that since it was red it wasn’t suitable for the
occasion.

The old crematorium was a gloomy place, small but echoey and unadorned. The door at the other end of the hall was particularly ghastly, because it led to the oven. Siiri had never liked the way
they slid the coffin on rails into the oven and left the pall bearers standing there watching it go. She always imagined the rising flames and pain of purgatory, although Anna-Liisa said that the
body was burnt with heat alone, without any flames, and it all happened automatically at the press of a button, like making coffee. Siiri thought the funerals at the Hietaniemi chapel were better.
The building there was designed by Theodor Höijer, and was unusually beautiful. She didn’t know who was responsible for the dismal design of this crematorium.

There was hardly anyone else at Reino’s funeral besides them. The residents of Sunset Grove sat on the left in the fourth and fifth rows, not wanting to be too close to the coffin as it
rolled along its final track. On the other side of the aisle there were just two men, relatives of the deceased, whom they had never seen before.

‘We’re his nephews,’ one of the men said, nodding politely.

‘Ah. Here to get your inheritance,’ the Ambassador said, somewhat inappropriately, but the two men smiled.

‘Uncle Jaakko didn’t really leave anything. Everything he owned was spent on the retirement home.’

‘Are we at Jaakko’s funeral?’ asked Eino Partanen, who wasn’t even wearing a dark suit, just tracksuit bottoms and a pullover.

‘But it was good that he was there at the retirement home. We didn’t have to worry about him.’

‘This is Reino’s funeral. Would you be quiet?’ Margit Partanen hissed at her husband, wishing there was a mute button on his wheelchair.

The funeral was an unusually bad one. They almost felt sorry for Reino. The pastor kept his speech short, however, and the nephews didn’t start reciting poetry next to the coffin, but the
Hat Lady fell asleep in the middle of the ceremony, and it took them quite a long time to get the wheelchairs to the coffin. Since Reino had always been the one to say a few words about the
deceased, there was a little moment of uncertainty over what to do once they were all next to the coffin.

‘To the memory of a card partner and a good fellow,’ the Ambassador said finally, or rather mumbled, which annoyed Anna-Liisa.

‘Whose bedfellow? Jaakko’s?’ Eino Partanen shouted to his wife as they went back to their seats, but just then the organ started up a hymn, so they were spared from explaining
it to him. No one sang, since Irma wasn’t with them, and, once again, Siiri felt unsettled. Irma would have so enjoyed this outing if she weren’t lying in the closed unit, tied to her
bed, with no idea that anything fun was happening.

A deadly dull memorial reception was held in Restaurant Perho on Mechelininkatu. The service was always slow there because it was staffed by students from the restaurant school. On one visit,
Siiri hadn’t got the salt she’d asked for until the bill came, and this time they waited twenty minutes for their coffee.

The nephews were snow dumpers by trade, making their living by shovelling snow off rooftops and dropping it on people’s heads. They were very quiet men, but Irma would have managed to show
enthusiasm even for them. She might have asked them something funny about what snow dumpers do in the summer. Now Anna-Liisa was assiduously taking the reins.

‘When there’s this much snow, you can’t get anywhere with a Zimmer frame. We’ve had quite enough snow in our lives, we don’t need any more.’

A snow discussion of sorts ensued, but Siiri didn’t participate. She looked out of the window and tried to wash away the gloom with weak coffee. They didn’t even serve cake, these
stingy nephews of his. The elderly group took the tram home, since no one had a mobile phone and their attempts to have the restaurant staff order a van for the disabled didn’t quite work
out.

When she got back to Sunset Grove, it dawned on Siiri that their friend had been known as Reino and yet the nephews had kept talking about their Uncle Jaakko. It was quite possible that
they’d gone to the wrong funeral!

‘
Döden, döden, döden
,’ she said to herself and laughed out loud until she gave herself a stomach cramp.

The doorbell rang so loudly and insistently that Siiri nearly jumped out of bed, dropping her newspaper on the floor. She pulled on her dressing gown but forgot her slippers as
she hurried to open the door, a little nervous, since she didn’t usually have unexpected visitors, at least not any who rang the doorbell. She had to stop for a moment and hold on to the
dining table because the buzzing in her head had turned unpleasantly loud from her sudden movement. She shouted ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ to keep the visitor from leaving, then was instantly
ashamed of herself because it would have been more sensible to shout something else.