Still 7 days ’til the end

I took Sorrow home, drove to Mancelona, and then over to Bellaire, to the nursing home where Marjory’s aunt stayed. It was north of town, up a winding road, nestled into rolling hills—a long, low red brick building under tall oaks and fir trees.

Inside the outer double doors, the walls of the facility were covered with flowered wallpaper in muted lilacs and soft pinks. The woodwork and doors were a natural oak. Photos of wildflowers decorated the long corridors. It was a cheerful place. Much better than many I’d visited.

The young woman seated behind a front desk was dressed in a white uniform with a blue sweater draped across her shoulders. She smiled and asked if she could help me.

When I asked to see Cecily Otis, she looked back at another woman in the office, behind a big glass window, then turned and smiled up at me.

“Cecily doesn’t get much company. You must be the woman who called last week.”

There was no denying who I was, nor reason to.

“She’ll be pleased that you came to see her. Were you a neighbor?”

I shook my head.

“A relative … ?”

I shook my head again and she gave up trying to get information from me. She laid a map on the counter and drew a blue line leading to Cecily Otis’ room: 178. As her last gesture of help, she leaned forward to point me in the right direction.

Room 178 was at the back of the building. I passed windows that looked out to the woods, and to a grassy lawn, now covered with leaves, where Adirondack chairs sat in friendly clusters. There were picnic tables, even an in-the-ground grill, the kind state parks provided. Not a bad place. It seemed more a hotel than grim home for the elderly, except for the long halls with wheelchairs standing at angles, and the bins of dirty linens, a stack of bed pans, and the faint odor of medications.

The sign outside room 178 said: Bed 1: Cecily Otis. The sign beneath it read: Bed 2: Wanda Harcourt. So, a double room. Cecily had a roommate. It might be best to talk to Cecily somewhere else, if the roommate was there. I’d had interviews, in the past, with people in nursing homes—one for a local history story in Ann Arbor, where the roommate wanted to join in and take the conversation wherever he wanted it to go, causing me a wasted hour of time and coming away with little of value from the shyer man I’d gone to interview.

Cecily Otis of Bed 1 sat hunched in a wheelchair next to the rumpled bed. Her head was almost pink, scalp showing through fuzzy, white hair. She wore a pretty rose-covered robe with a frilly collar over what looked like a hospital nightgown. I guessed Cecily didn’t have a lot of things of her own, and no one to bring them to her. Her back was bent so her head jutted out, turtle-like. She wore wire-framed glasses too small for her face.

I stood near the end of her bed, smiling and waiting to be noticed. She looked over at me, then turned her turtle head back to a glassine envelope she was trying to open, with what looked like sewing needles inside.

“Damn thing,” she swore and threw the envelope at a rolling tray near the wall. She sat slouched and angry for a few very long minutes, ignoring me.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Need the god-damned nurse,” was all she muttered. “Get me a nurse. That’s how you can help me.” She turned her head. “What in hell you doing here anyway, standing there like that? You think I’m some kind of bug on a windshield? What do you want with me?”

Behind the curtain surrounding Bed 2 came a weak, disgruntled “Shh.”

“Shh, yourself.” Cecily raised her voice and shushed back. “How’d you like having some idiot standing over your bed staring at you?”

“I didn’t mean to stare,” I said, gathering my dignity about me, and readying myself to take on a true harridan.

“What do you call it then?”

“Not staring. I came to talk to you.”

She glared at me, suspicious. “About what? Not Medicaid. Better not be any more shenanigans about that issue. I’m as entitled as the next person and nobody’s kicking me out of …”

I shook my head and shuffled my feet, calling on patience. A thing I wasn’t long on.

I introduced myself and told her I was there about the death of Marjory Otis.

She leaned back and gave me an incredulous look. “Marjory? You mean to tell me Marjory’s dead? Why, the girl can’t be more than fifty-three or four …”

“Fifty-two,” I corrected.

“Whatever. She’s got no reason to die. If anybody should be dying, it’s me. Look at how I have to live now, and my gallbladder gone—they grabbed that when I got my first green stool. Then they took a lot of other things, telling me I had to have them out but I’ll tell you …” She raised one bony finger and shook it toward me. “They better not be selling off my organs or I’m gonna get a lawyer and sue everybody I can find.”

I nodded, hoping to steer the conversation back around to Marjory.

“Could we go someplace where we could talk privately?” I finally asked.

Cecily, who had the kind of face you see on old women who haunt backwoods bars—with heavy lines, mean eyes behind tiny glasses, squashed nose, and thin lips—shrugged and wheeled her chair past me without a word. She rolled into the hall, down a few doors, and into an open room with a TV high on the wall, tuned to a soap opera no one was watching. Only an old, nodding gentleman lounged in a far corner chair. He paid attention to nothing.

Cecily Otis motioned me to a chair, then wheeled around to face me. “What do you want to know about Marjory? And how in hell did she die, anyway? Probably something to do with that stupid witch stuff she got herself into. I heard all about it. Reading cards and telling fortunes.”

“She was murdered.”

The old woman’s mouth dropped open. “Murdered! Oh, my good lord. That’s what the world’s coming to. Just as well I’m on my way out. Good riddance to all of this.” She gestured around at nothing in particular.

“She was found in Deward.”

“Nope. Nope. Nope.” Again she reared back. This time she shook her head hard. “Oh, no you don’t. This is some kind of trick you’re playing. Marjory hated that place. Probably because of Winnie, her mother. Winnie liked going out there. Got so bad she left her kids alone for days and camped out in Deward. Got it in her head, when she went ’round the bend, that she had to be close to her ancestors. Just ’cause some of her people used to be in loggin’ out there. Like that made her special. Crazy woman.”

“Winnie’s kind of what I wanted to ask you about. And about Marjory’s brothers.”

“And who in hell are you again?”

“Emily Kincaid. I’m with the Northern Statesman newspaper …”

She waved at me then put her hands on her wheels to get away. “No damned reporter. You can’t fool me. You’ll get me to say things that’ll make me look bad, then I’ll have those pappa … rats … whatever, chasing me around.”

I reached out and stopped the woman, determined to get something from this weird struggle.

“I’m also working with the local police to find out who killed Marjory,” I said, using every trick I knew.

She frowned hard then slowly turned the chair back to face me. “You with both of ’em? Never heard that one before.”

I hurried on before I lost her.

“First of all. About Winnie. Marjory thought her mother ran off with a tractor salesman.”

Cecily nodded. “She did. Left her kids behind for me and Ralph to finish raising, as if I didn’t have enough of my own stuff to take care of.”

I let the “stuff” bit go. “I’ve looked into the allegations—about the tractor salesman—and it doesn’t seem to be true.”

She frowned. “Then where in hell’d she get to?”

“Who told you it was a tractor salesman? And who first told you she was gone?”

She thought awhile. “I think the kids told us she was gone. They’d been out to Deward hunting because that’s where she usually was, but they didn’t find her. Went back day after day for a couple of weeks before coming to us. Don’t know who said she ran off. All’s I remember was a tractor salesman she met at a gas station and then just up and left. Can’t remember beyond that. I know I called the police. Maybe it was the police said it? Or maybe even one of the kids. I can’t remember now, too long ago. You can’t expect a woman my age to be holding on to all that old stuff. Didn’t change the fact that me and Ralph had to pay for everything for her kids. Told ’em, when you’re eighteen you are out of here. Only one worth anything was Arnold. That boy’s makin’ something of himself. You hear? Runnin’ for state senator. Arnold got to college. Always was my favorite. Arnold …”

She took a swipe at her nose, then glared hard through those too tiny glasses that made her eyes look pulled together and huge. “If you want to know the truth about Marjory, well, let me tell you a few things about that girl. Nothing good there. Not a damned single thing. After all I did, she ran off just like her crazy mother. Always thought she’d end up in a mental hospital. The way Winnie did.”

I took a long breath and promised myself I’d be gone soon.

“Not that I ever wished her a bad end—like she must’ve got. It was just the way they all were. Ungrateful. Even Arnold, I helped him out with some college money but you think I ever hear from him?” She shook her head and made a face. “Not a word. Not a thank-you. Not a kiss my ass. Nothing.”

“What about Paul?”

She made a disparaging noise. “Don’t mention that one to me. Only thing I ever heard was he got himself almost killed in some accident.”

“But,” I prodded. “… he lived?”

“Far as I know.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“How in hell would I? Not one of those little bastards ever come to see me. Left my house and that was that. Ralph always said we should’ve turned ’em over to the state and be damned to them. I was the one kept sayin’ ‘Oh Ralph, but it’s your family.’ See what family gets you? Ralph’s gone and those three could be a comfort, but you think they’d call me or drop by to visit?” She shook her head, answering yet another of her own questions.

“Did Marjory have friends in the area?”

“Friends? Nobody she brought home. I had enough to do without having a bunch of kids mess up my house.” She looked at me hard and shook her head. “Friends. Nobody special I remember. One girl she talked about, when she did some kind of volunteer work at the hospital. But that one went off to college and never came back.” She thought a little longer. “Nope. No friends. Marjory wasn’t that kind—you know, popular. Kept to herself.”

I was out of questions. The tractor salesman was at least blown out of the water. No evidence he ever existed. I thought now that Paul was still alive, or had been the last Cecily heard. I knew poor Cecily had a whole bunch of ungrateful relatives and was assailed by doctors selling her off, piece by piece—which made me wonder what a dirty mouth might be worth on the black market. It had been an instructive half hour and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I offered to push her back to her room, promising myself not to run her hard into a wall. She turned me down. I got the idea she had people to see and brag to about the woman who just came to see her, and maybe get a few pity clucks over losing her beloved niece to murder. I hoped that was all Cecily Otis would be able to wring from our meeting. It didn’t cheer me any to know I’d just spoken with the woman who’d made Marjory’s life hell.

I got in my car and threw my purse to the floor on the other side. Something was wrong. I looked for the things I’d laid on the seat next to me: the roses, my camera, and photos. The seat was empty. I bent down; moved my purse to see if they had fallen to the floor. Nothing. I searched the back seat. Maybe I’d moved everything and forgotten. I did that often enough. Too much on my mind.

Nothing. My camera was gone, along with the photos, and every one of the dead roses.