The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove (35 page)

Irma showed them an envelope that had all of the many papers and reports that made up her homecoming-test results. She had been declared a very viable individual, but, even so, her homecoming
evaluation ordered a nurse to visit her three times a week in her home, though she didn’t have one.

‘Some poor nurse has to come and give me food and medicine. If she has time, she can wipe my bum, too, and on holidays I might get to go with her to take a shower.’

Irma had been put on the waiting list for the city nursing homes, but the social worker said her chances were low because she was too healthy and capable. She would be placed temporarily in the
Suursuo Hospital chronic ward unless some miracle happened fast.

‘I was already there once! Am I going to start the hospital merry-go-round all over again?’

Siiri admired Irma’s ability to be so cheerful even in this situation. She didn’t dwell on her difficulties, she just wanted Siiri and Anna-Liisa to read her the death notices and
obituaries. Then she wanted to know who had died while she’d been on her adventure in the Group Home and getting to know the hospitals of Helsinki. Siiri listed them for her again: Olavi
Raudanheimo, Reino, the Hat Lady, and a few others whose funerals they hadn’t gone to. The details of the Hat Lady’s memorial reception at Ukko-Munkki put her in a particularly good
mood. Then some odd instinct made her remember something she’d forgotten.

‘Anna-Liisa, were you serious when you said that you might move in with the Ambassador and give me your apartment?’

Anna-Liisa nodded but looked serious. Unbeknownst to them, she had given the matter considerable thought.

‘There are certain problems that have come up,’ she said, fiddling with the corner of the blanket on the hospital bed, which wouldn’t fold the way she wanted it to.
‘Namely, that Sunset Grove doesn’t allow cohabitation.’

Anna-Liisa and the Ambassador had to be married, if they wanted to live in the same apartment.

‘Why is that a problem? Just get married!’ Irma suggested.

‘Yes, that’s what we thought,’ Anna-Liisa said, still very serious, though Irma and Siiri were positively elated. ‘But it’s complicated, because of Onni’s
past.’

‘Oooh! How exciting! Is he a criminal, too, like me?’ Siiri said, and she and Irma laughed so that it seemed they would never stop, just like teenagers on a tram. Anna-Liisa was
annoyed at their hilarity, so they tried to calm down and listen to her revelations about Onni’s past.

The Ambassador was not a criminal, but an official who’d had a considerable diplomatic career and had lived in many different countries that no longer existed, such as Yugoslavia. The
mother of his children had died long ago. But after that he had remarried and divorced at least twice while abroad, and now he had found out that in Finland they only recognized Finnish
divorces.

‘So he’s a ninety-year-old widower with two wives and a girlfriend? Actually, that’s quite an accomplishment!’ Irma said, and told them about her cousin who had three
brothers and twelve sisters-in-law. Then she started to wonder whether registered lesbian partnerships were allowed at Sunset Grove.

‘In that case, Siiri and I could move into the Ambassador’s big apartment.’

The Ambassador had been so enthusiastic about Anna-Liisa’s bold plan, however, that he had started to get his papers in order. As a diplomat and a Freemason, he was used to taking care of
things with two phone calls and a bank transfer, but clearing up his divorces had proved unusually labour-intensive. Anna-Liisa was afraid that once her Onni’s affairs were delved into, more
scandals might turn up.

‘More scandals? What nonsense are you talking about?’ Irma asked.

By scandals, Anna-Liisa meant children, especially any born out of wedlock, but Irma and Siiri didn’t understand what the Ambassador’s flock of children had to do with
Anna-Liisa’s life.

‘Children want an inheritance,’ Anna-Liisa explained patiently. ‘And if they’re very greedy, the way children are, they’ll prevent our union because they’ll
be afraid that I’m after Onni’s fortune. You see, he’s very wealthy.’

She said this very secretively, leaning so close to Siiri and Irma that their heads almost bumped together. Anna-Liisa imagined that everyone at Sunset Grove, and probably everyone in
Kivelä Hospital as well, envied her and the Ambassador their love and their money. Irma suggested that they write a prenuptial agreement. That way, the Ambassador’s hypothetical children
wouldn’t have any reason to fear her intentions.

‘That’s what I suggested, but Onni refuses to do it.’ Anna-Liisa sighed. ‘He wants to treat all his wives equally. And he’s never had a prenuptial agreement with
any of his other wives, so he refuses to have one with me. He’s certain that the other wives will die first, but as far as I know, all but the first one are still alive.’

‘How fun! You can invite them all to the wedding!’ Irma crowed, and started laughing again. ‘Do you promise to make us your bridesmaids?’

Anna-Liisa burst into a young bride’s laughter and never answered Irma’s question. Only after they had left Irma to rest in her bed and walked down Sibeliuksenkatu to the tram stop
did she suddenly say:

‘There isn’t going to be a big wedding. We’re going to a magistrate.’

Irma’s ninety-third birthday arrived. Suursuo Hospital was full, so she was still being stored at Kivelä. This had caused a chain reaction: Laakso Hospital had
collected several rehabilitated hip-replacement patients who were waiting to go to Kivelä for the homecoming process, which meant that Töölö Hospital had people who had just had
their hip surgery and were lining up to get into Laakso for rehabilitation, and another crowd of patients was at the Hilton waiting to get into surgery at Töölö.

‘Is there a queue for the crematorium, too, do you think?’ Irma wondered as they drank sparkling wine in the hospital garden in honour of her birthday. Siiri and Anna-Liisa had
smuggled in the bottle and glasses, but they hadn’t been able to bring a cake because it would have been too much to carry. The hospital canteen had strawberries for sale, though, and that
made for an excellent ninety-third-birthday celebration. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the traffic was roaring. Irma even smoked a cigarette, and claimed she could feel the
titanium spike glowing in her hip.

The situation at Sunset Grove was an odd one. Virpi Hiukkanen’s sick leave just kept on going, and there was no one to replace her. Director Sundström was completely worn out from
work, walking around nervously and lamenting that she had no time for children in developing countries. But the strangest thing was what had happened to Erkki Hiukkanen. Anna-Liisa had heard about
it from Margit Partanen, who had finally got her husband into the closed Group Home and herself out of being his personal caregiver.

‘And who should she see there but our caretaker, dozing in a nightshirt with the other patients,’ Anna-Liisa said.

Erkki Hiukkanen had been diagnosed with early onset dementia, the kind that happens to sixty-year-olds. He was quite demented and, according to Margit, downright sweet. He told the same three
dirty jokes morning to night and liked doing arts and crafts. He had probably been senile already when he was following Siiri around the city.

‘And when he stole my silver hand mirror and Onni’s
ryijy
rug,’ Anna-Liisa said.

Siiri thought that Anna-Liisa was just speculating about her hand mirror and the
ryijy
rug, but it turned out that Margit Partanen had seen the silver hand mirror in Erkki’s
handbag in the closed unit.

‘He has a handbag?’ Irma said excitedly.

The handbag was stolen, too, but no one knew whose handbag it was. It probably belonged to a resident who had died a long time ago. But Anna-Liisa was very happy to get her mirror back, her
mother’s morning gift, at long last.

‘What should we buy you for a wedding gift, then? I had been thinking a silver hand mirror was a good idea,’ Irma said. ‘Maybe something more practical. Sheets? No –
I’ve finessed it: matching nightshirts! Yes?’

‘Or maybe a frying pan from the Munkkiniemi supermarket? Egg cups? Or a year’s subscription to Donald Duck comics?’ Siiri suggested.

‘I know: the
Kama Sutra
!’ Irma crowed, and she laughed until she had tears in her eyes.

Anna-Liisa let them babble, but finally demanded a chance to speak with a pound of her fist on the bench. It seemed that the Ambassador had used his diplomatic connections to get his divorce
papers from abroad with remarkable swiftness, even the ones from non-existent countries. Every paper had to be dragged to one magistrate or another and only then could they beg for a certificate of
non-impediment and get married.

‘I thought non-impediment was when they have to let you get from one place to another in your wheelchair,’ Irma mused, serious once more. ‘Half the apartments have to have
bathrooms where an invalid can take a shower.’

‘Onni has been very energetic and it looks like we’re going to get married in August, and you can move into my apartment even before then, Irma. But under no circumstances will we
accept any wedding gifts.’

‘It’s a lucky thing that Virpi Hiukkanen is out of the picture,’ Irma said, and she was right. ‘I’m sure she would have prevented us from trading
apartments.’

Anna-Liisa said that she’d sent forms and documents to this place and that and had arranged things very cleverly, so that the Loving Care Foundation couldn’t help but approve the
plan.

‘Onni bought my apartment and now he’s going to be Irma’s landlord!’

‘I didn’t know anybody could buy an apartment there,’ Irma said in wonder.

‘They probably can’t, normally,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘But Onni has connections, and if you buy the place, you don’t have to wait. Otherwise, you couldn’t have
just moved in. There are dozens of seventy-year-olds in poor health waiting in line. And apparently retirement-home apartments are an incredibly good investment, because there are more and more old
people all the time and the rents are going up every week.’

‘Lord, help me! I’ll go bankrupt!’ Irma cried.

She had good reason to worry. Even if her rent was reasonable, her life was getting more expensive in other ways. The hospital homecoming team had ordered so much home care for her that it was
going to cost hundreds of euros a month, if not more.

‘But do I have to follow their treatment plan?’ Irma asked with a sly smile after they’d drunk quite a few glasses of wine. A couple of nurses had come to sit with them, and
one of them said that Irma didn’t have to follow their orders. Because she would be living in her own apartment she could decide herself whether she needed care or not.

‘You mean you did all that work for nothing?’ Irma lamented, and they made a toast to all the craziness in the world.

Mika Korhonen came with a friend to help with the move. It was fantastic, because they couldn’t have managed it without these big, strong men. Anna-Liisa had a tremendous
number of things, and since half of her belongings were books, there was a lot of carrying to do. The poor fellows were drenched with sweat. Siiri told them to take off their leather jackets so
they wouldn’t be so hot, but they refused. Their motorcycles gleamed beautifully in the Sunset Grove car park, and attracted deserved attention.

Anna-Liisa was an efficient supervisor, accustomed to command, and she had a detailed plan prepared ahead of time. She stood in the middle of the apartment with drawings in her hand and issued
clear and audible instructions. Quite a large load of the Ambassador’s possessions went to the dump, because otherwise Anna-Liisa’s treasures wouldn’t have fit. Two walls had to
be cleared for bookshelves, and Mika kindly spent an entire day assembling them. Anna-Liisa wanted the books arranged in alphabetical order according to language area.

‘The German novels on my right, the Russian ones on my left. The Finnish fiction here in the middle at my eye level, and the Finnish non-fiction in the same spot on the other
wall.’

The boys were rattled. They didn’t know which books were fiction and which weren’t. Anna-Liisa was admirably patient with them, and didn’t get upset, even when one of them
thought that Joel Lehtonen’s
Wild Chervil
was a book about plants and the other one asked what language group Thomas Mann should be in.

‘I’m a language and literature teacher. I’ve seen it all.’

The Ambassador was nowhere to be found on moving day. He had gone to his summer house to meet his offspring and former wives from abroad and tell them about the new turn his life had taken
– the marriage, in other words, which was to take effect the following week. The announcements had been made, the non-impediments taken care of, and Irma and Siiri were almost going to be
bridesmaids, or at least go to the Pasila courthouse to serve as witnesses.

‘Should we put ribbons in our hair?’ Irma asked, but Anna-Liisa just snorted and continued issuing orders to her leather-jacketed army.

Irma’s apartment, Anna-Liisa’s old apartment, was quite empty, of course, because her relatives had sold all her possessions. They didn’t hear anything from the darlings, which
Siiri thought was shameless behaviour, but Irma was terribly understanding about it and said that of course they were embarrassed and that was why they didn’t dare show their faces. And they
were so busy, too, because of the summer holidays. Irma seemed unfazed. In fact, she seemed positively thrilled at the chance to decorate her new apartment.

‘Is thrilled the opposite of unfazed? What do you think?’ she asked as she thumbed through the IKEA catalogue.

Siiri couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Irma had always lived among her ancestors’ antique furniture, cherished them like relatives, told stories about them, how her uncle
had spilled liqueur on the card table and left a stain that would never fade, how the bust of Runeberg had made the rounds of the summer cabins, frightening innocent victims, and how they’d
found a wad of currency from the time of the tzars that was of no use to anyone now, in a hidden drawer in the chiffonier. And here she was, blissful at discovering IKEA. She thought the veneer
furniture that you put together yourself was awfully cute. But there didn’t seem to be any rose-print upholstery at all.