What a thought. Actually, I respected and loved the elderly, and if they had sex, more power to them. They should live life to the hilt. Me, I guessed I was a wee bit jealous that they were having it—and I wasn’t.
This time I looked around to make sure no one could hear me and whispered, “Okay, Uncle Walt, you are going to have to explain that one. What does sex have to do with Mr. Wisnowski dying?”
Uncle Walt paused again. I wondered if he was adjusting the suspenders on his pants. He did that when he was thinking.
“It has everything to do with it. She—Helen, that is—came breezing into town about six months ago. She’s a widow. We’re mostly single or widowers at the center. Moves in with Sophie Banko. You know her, Pauline. She lives over on the corner of Pine and Maple Avenue. That big white house with—”
Sophie? My Sophie?
“The black shutters,” I managed to say so as not to sound too interested. “I remember her.” Of course I knew her, since she was my new case! “Didn’t she have a son who went to school with Mary?”
“The convent?”
“Uncle Walt. Behave. I think they went to Saint Stanislaus School together. They were grades ahead of me.” Mary was knocking on the door of forty. No, wait. She passed through last November. My mind was acting as if I was approaching that door soon, but I had years to go. And don’t get me started on that ticking-clock thing. In a few months, on March 24, I’d be passing through the door of thirty-five. I planned to sneak in the window so no one would notice.
Surely my mother would remember, though, and have some blind date over for dinner—and me.
“Forget the son. Loser, that one. Anyway, Helen sashays in, with that lilac hair of hers and that car—”
“Maybe you’re just interested in her set of wheels?”
“Pauline, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
My face flushed. I hoped Goldie was doing all right and not waiting for me. Then again, this was the clinic. Waiting was a way of life. “Sorry.”
“So, soon as Henry takes a liking to her—he also takes her out to dinner. You know that fancy restaurant down by the water?”
“Madelyn’s.” I knew it very well since my old boyfriend used to take me there. Of course, after his incarceration, I stopped dating him.
“Right. Henry was always the swinger of our crowd. Well, he starts bragging about . . . you know.”
Geez.
“I’m thinking he’s got to be having problems in that department, like most of us. Old Man Richardson with a prostate the size of an eighteen-wheeler’s inner tube. Benny, who works as an usher in the movie theater, says he hasn’t had working parts since the eighties. Mr. Kisofsky pees about every twenty seconds, and truthfully, I’m not exactly Valentino when it comes to that department either, Pauline.”
That was more than I needed to know. More than I ever wanted to know. “I still don’t get—wait a minute. You mean Henry started using medication to help—”
“Viagra. At first I guessed he got his doctor to prescribe it. I don’t think that anyone should use that kind of stuff, Pauline. Let nature work or not. Then again, Henry smiled more than any of us, even when he was losing at poker. Even started to walk faster and not shuffle like so many of us do. Made us all wonder and feel a little pea green with envy.”
I had to once again laugh to myself—then delete those thoughts.
“Do you think he took too much or there was something wrong with the medication—”
“No, it had to do with the way he got the medication. I realized he couldn’t afford a prescription ’cause he told me his insurance wouldn’t cover it—not many of us on fixed incomes, with the stinking insurance we can manage to pay for, could afford the stuff. Especially prescription coverage. The government should be ashamed of themselves for the way they treat us old folks. Oh, but Medicaid covers it. Covers Viagra for those folks. Imagine. Geez. The pills run into the hundreds. Thirty pills for about three hundred bucks. Criminal.”
Criminal?
Was Uncle Walt insinuating that Henry got his Viagra illegally?
Suddenly I felt chilled even though I’d cranked up the heater. Although I had several questions to ask, he said my Uncle Stash had just arrived with his usual fanfare so he had to hang up. Illegal Viagra? Murder? Sex and the seniors? I allowed myself another chill and watched a shadow darken my window. Gulp. I grabbed my purse to use as a weapon if need be and then turned to the right.
Damn!
Outside stood Joey the Wooer.
Thinking of sex was not a good thing right now, because I could swear the old geezer was ogling me.
After I’d given a nice, polite smile to Mr. Tino and said I had to hurry inside to see how my friend was doing, I sat there in the waiting room, waiting. I thought about Joey the Wooer. The clichéd Italian Stallion. There was something about him. He’d actually looked as if he was going to talk to me when I had scurried off. I kinda liked the old man, but felt loyal to my uncle. And if they were both after Helen, well, I had to root for Uncle Walt.
The nurse opened the door. “Ms. Sokol?” She looked around the room. “Ms.—”
I looked up. “Here. Right here.” Then I jumped up. “How is he?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Good.” I knew Goldie was being Goldie and as evidenced by her reaction, he had to be all right. After all, if he were near death, she wouldn’t be wearing that frown of annoyance. I followed her to the examining room and stopped at the door. “Oh, my.”
Goldie lay sprawled along the examining table, his long limbs hanging off three sides. His eyes were shut and the mascara had formed darkened circles beneath. What a sight. I stepped closer. “Gold. Gold, Hon, you all right?”
One eye fluttered open. He groaned.
“Let me take you home now.” I noticed a prescription slip in his hand. “Here, I’ll take that and get it filled. You can sit in the waiting room until I get it. Antibiotic?” I eased the paper free of his grip and looked at it. “Yep. This will fix you up in no time, Gold.”
He opened both eyes and sighed.
I got him up and walked him to the waiting room. On the way, he stopped at the desk to take care of his copayment. Through the window in the reception desk, I saw Mr. Tino signing in. He’d come back in after scaring the stuffing out of me in the parking lot. Geez. The guy must have bunches of health problems to be here so much. Not so unusual, I thought, when I reminded myself how Uncle Walt went off to the doctor at the drop of a hat. I nodded to Mr. Tino on the way out, but I was too busy getting Goldie comfortable to be able to stop and chat.
But Mr. Tino had given me the warmest smile.
“Comfortable, Gold?” I tucked the zebra comforter around his neck once I’d settled him back at his apartment.
He gave a weak smile and nodded. Poor darling.
“I’ll make you some Jell-O. That should be easy to swallow. You need nourishment.” After he shut his eyes, I went into the kitchen and rifled around until I had the individual glass dishes filled with cherry Jell-O. When I went to put them in the fridge, I gasped. Goldie’s refrigerator was nearly empty. In fact, the kitchen was nowhere near as organized as Miles’s. Goldie wasn’t the chef type. This led me to the conclusion that the two belonged together soon, or Goldie might starve to death.
But that left me in an awkward position.
I couldn’t impose on my two best friends and stay in Miles’s condo if Goldie moved in. But I also couldn’t cough up the bucks for a down payment on a place of my own yet. Each month, like excruciatingly painful clockwork, I had to pay a car loan—for a hefty-priced Lexus—that I didn’t own. A “friend” had me cosign her car loan—then hightailed it (in style) out of town. With my addiction to shopping, my savings account was quite sparse. Lately, I vowed to fatten it up, but Fabio only paid when the job was done.
I needed to nail Sophie Banko soon, and find out more about Mr. Wisnowski. Was there a connection? Not exactly my line of work. Besides, I had nothing to report to the cops yet and didn’t want my previous dealing with them, when I’d almost bought the farm, to make them treat me like some whacko.
“Pauline? You still here?”
I hurried to Goldie’s side. “Yep. Your Jell-O is now solidifying. I added ice cubes instead of cold water so it works faster.”
He looked up, grinned and took my hand. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”
“Stop that. That’s what friends are for. Besides, look at all you helped me with on my first investigation.” He had been a doll.
He pulled himself up and tucked the comforter under his arms. I guessed he’d had enough of the “dying scene” and decided he was going to make it. “What’d Fabio give you this time?”
I was dying—no pun intended—to tell him. Tell him and ask what the heck I should do next. But should I really burden such an ill man? “Prescription fraud, Gold.”
One eyebrow rose. “Interesting.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and took his arm. Ever since I was a kid, my mother used to tickle, oh so very gently, our arms when we were sick. Turned out it annoyed my siblings, but me, I loved it. Even stopped my bloody noses when Mother tickled my arm. I especially liked the bottoms of my feet tickled. Very soothing. Goldie needed soothing, but I drew the line at feet. Without a word, I rolled up his gold silk pajama sleeve and set his arm next to me on the bed. Gently I rubbed. Goldie sighed like a kid whose mom had just hugged him.
“Yes, it seems as if it will be an interesting, if not more complicated case.”
“Um.”
Shoot. Not getting me anywhere. “Actually, Gold, my uncle thinks Mr. W was murdered for interfering with some Viagra fraud ring.”
His arm stiffened. He turned to look at me. Beneath the now smudged mascara and heavy pancake makeup—deep bronze tone—a smile cracked across his coral lips. “You shittin’ me?”
“Actually, no.” I proceeded to tell him the entire conversation I’d had with my uncle, not leaving out that all I had left was Sophie Banko to investigate. What I did leave out was that “my” car loan payment was due in a few weeks and I needed the money from this case, and a bit more, actually.
Goldie sat up straighter. “You don’t want to hear this, but you need to hang more at the senior citizens center. Only way to find out the dirt. Can’t rely on your uncle who isn’t a skilled investigator.”
I froze. “And neither am I.”
Now he tickled my arm. “You’re coming along. You’re a fast study. You’re going to do a bang-up job on this one like the last.” He smiled. “Besides, Suga, you got balls.”
I leaned back on the pillow while Goldie sat up with his silky golden legs over the side of the bed. “Last? I was nearly killed—”
A shriek of horror filled the room. Startled, I jumped up, then quickly fell back when I realized it had only been Goldie’s cry of anguish at reliving the horror of my nearly being shot. He took my arm and started tickling more.
“Yep. You need to infiltrate the SS center and spend more time at the clinic. Maybe you could—Oh . . . my . . . God. Goldie Perlman, you are a genius. Suga, you are going to have to . . . Yeah, that’s it!”
Famous last words.
Goldie had more wigs than the wonderful country singer, Dolly Parton.
I found this out after he’d sent me to Biniker’s Drugstore, the local old-fashioned kind with a real soda fountain, to buy chemicals. Not just any chemicals, but hair products. Despite his throat ailment and maybe because of the whopping dose of Motrin he’d taken, he perked up enough to embroil me in a plan.
So here I stood in his bedroom, looking in the mirror—and seeing my mother in ten years.
Oh . . . my . . . God.
The wig he lent me was a short bob that he styled with a curling iron, but not until he’d bleached it and recolored it a lovely shade of white. I’m glad he didn’t go with the purple tint that Helen wore. At least I didn’t look like I was trying to emulate the elderly flirt.
However, I did look something like my late grandmother in a shirtwaist housedress that fell inches below my knees. Goldie had left his sickbed to raid the closet of his neighbor, Mrs. Honeysuckle. I hadn’t met the woman before, but could see she too had a fondness for Goldie. Being in her late seventies—I guessed by the wrinkled complexion and natural (I assumed) gray hair—she had several outfits to borrow.
Although I looked like my mother in the future, I couldn’t picture her in the polyester dress. The base color was yellow with tiny birds, darker yellow birds, flocking about the bodice and skirt. Tiny buttons went down to my waist and took nearly an hour to fasten. But the part that made me hesitate, okay, make that argue with Goldie, was the nylons. They were opaque tan, with built-in wrinkles. Goldie insisted they made me look more authentic. And who would have guessed that I’d fit in Mrs. Honeysuckle’s black shoes with the one-inch, thick, square heels? Okay, they were very comfortable and a “senior” fashion statement.
Goldie was a cosmetics whiz, as evidenced by his looks. I’d tried to learn from him in the past how to brighten my ever-so-pale complexion and make my gray eyes stand out. I often thought I looked too Polish. But now, leaning near for a few seconds, I had to blink past the wire-rimmed glasses he’d stuck on my nose.
“I look ancient.” My heart thudded at the thought that this was how I was going to look in fifty years. Not even a computer could have enhanced this kind of image. All I could think of was, I better get married before all this happens. In the meantime, though, I’d decided to become a career woman. Still, I’d tuck this image of myself in the back of my mind in case the marriage thing became a desire.
Goldie turned to give me a high five. “Perfect.”
“I’m not sure I can go through with this.” I stepped closer. “Don’t you think someone will recognize me?”
“Do you?”
“Recognize myself or think someone else—”
“Yeah, recognize yourself.” He leaned back, tugged at the belt of his gold and black paisley robe and tapped a finger to his lips. “I wouldn’t.”
After copious nudges from Goldie to leave and a half glass of chardonnay followed by a Budweiser, I found myself standing in the doorway of the Hope Valley Senior Citizens Center, looking very much, I hoped, not like myself.
I heard a shuffling sound and turned to see Mr. Richardson, whose prostate I hoped had shrunk, and Benny, the usher from the movie theater, coming up the sidewalk. The building was level with the sloped walkway, and so there weren’t any front steps.
They both stopped—and stared.
I gulped loudly and tried to smile, although the makeup Goldie had pasted onto my face was nearly ready to crack. Suddenly I thought of Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.
“Hello, sweetie,” Benny said.
I couldn’t distinguish the tone. At first I thought he used it as if I were a thirty-something dressed for Halloween. Then he winked.
There is a God.
Mr. Richardson scuffled forward. “You’re new around here.”
As if I had dementia and didn’t know that. I nodded.
“Come on, sweetie,” Benny said, taking my hand from the door. He paused.
I looked down. Goldie had forgotten my hands! They didn’t look over seventy. Then again, my eyesight had to be a thousand times better than the folks who came here. Benny was in motion again, opening the door for me.
“We’ll introduce you and get you a nice, warm cup of coffee.” He stepped aside. “With those hands, you look used to having someone take care of you.”
I sighed.
“Passed away, did he?”
He who? Oh, my husband. “Several years ago,” I replied.
Once inside, it looked as if the world were running in slow motion. Men sat at tables playing cards, chatting and laughing. A group of women sat in rows of chairs ever so slowly doing arm exercises instructed by a young guy in a black leotard. Maybe I could have come here as that? But no, I stood between the two elderly gentlemen, disguised as an aged female, yet felt as if I stood out like a tick on a white dog.
I was introduced to everyone, fed melba toast sans butter, sugar-free cookies, and dried prunes. All was washed down with very weak coffee laden with Equal and nondairy creamer. My stomach flipped several times as I cruised the room by myself.
There in the back row of the exercise ladies sat Sophie Banko, rolling her arms as if she thought the slabs of fat hanging off would tumble to the ground. At least I thought it was her. I had to lift up my fake glasses to be sure. Looked just like the photo in my file.
Bingo.
I’d introduce myself as soon as her arms thinned. I swung around in time to see Uncles Walt and Stash walk in like an Oreo cookie with a Helen Wanat filling sandwiched between the two.
Suddenly I had to get out of there. I started to hurry, and then got a suspicious look from Benny. No one in this room except maybe Mr. Leotard traveled at that speed. I slowed, shuffled and tried to get to the door. Benny grabbed my arm and yanked me toward my uncles!
“Hello, fellas. Meet our new member.” He turned toward me with a look of horror on his face. I readied for him to say, “Your niece,” but all he said was, “I never got your name, sweetie.”
“Pau . . . Peggy. Peggy—” I felt the fake sagging boobs Goldie had fashioned sag a bit more. “—Doubtme. Peggy Doubtme.” I pronounced it “Doubtmay” as if I were French. “Real name is Margaret, but I go by Peggy,” I rambled nervously. “My mother, God rest her soul, refused to call me Peggy and when someone would call on the phone asking for Peggy, Mamma would say, ‘You mean Margaret.’” I chuckled. Alone.
Uncle Stash took my hand and shook it vigorously. He winked and said, “Nice to meet you, Peggy.”
I tried to ease backward so Uncle Walt wouldn’t get a direct look at me. He stood there staring.
Oh, boy.
Suddenly he took my hand from his brother’s and said, “Very nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy yourself here, and don’t hesitate to ask me anything. Anything at all.” He dropped my hand.
I gulped.
He smiled.
Did he know?
Helen leaned in close. “Keep your distance, Doubtme.” The words came out slowly, nearly silently and without her lips moving.
Benny interrupted with, “Get her another coffee, light and sweet, Walt. Peggy’s a widow and used to being waited on.”
Uncle Walt gave a slight bow and moved away, followed by Uncle Stash. I leaned against the wall and shut my eyes.
“Call 911! Call 911!” Benny shouted.
My eyes flew open in registered nurse mode. “What? What’s wrong?”
He shook his hands as if to erase his words. “Holy mackerel, Peggy. I thought you was gonna pass out on us.”
Oh, boy, again. I really had to have my wits about me in this place. Doing surveillance on Sophie to see how unhealthy she really was and did she need all the meds she got and trying to find the truth about Mr. W’s death was a hell of a lot harder than tailing a workers’ comp case.
After an hour, I had forced down the third cup of coffee Uncle Walt had brought me, played six games of gin rummy with a mixed group of seniors, and watched my Uncle Stash flirt with every woman in the room. All the while, I made up a fake family of three married children, six male grandchildren, and a dead husband who had been a math schoolteacher all his life.
Then, I set my sights on Sophie.
Thank goodness my uncles didn’t seem to recognize me. I said a silent thanks to Goldie and my favorite saint, Saint Theresa, although I knew I should be mentioning something to Saint Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes.
Sophie walked to the food table, but not before several men came up to her to chat. Geez. Maybe size doesn’t matter. She sure seemed popular with the males.
I wove my way through the gang now dancing the polka. Before someone could commandeer me to dance, I sidled up to Sophie. “Nice place this here is.”
She turned, looked at my waistline. Goldie had stuffed some old sweaters into my underwear to make a wonderful elderly potbelly, but I was still only a size nine. Sophie was in double digits.
“Yeah, good cookies.”
I made small talk with her until the cookie tray was empty and my stomach ached. I swore I wouldn’t eat desserts for weeks even if my mother made my favorite homemade chocolate cake with one-inch-thick frosting and eight ounces of cream cheese in it.
I leaned nearer to her. “So, any of these guys capable of any action?”
At first she hesitated, then she turned to me. “If they aren’t, things can be fixed.”
I readied to ask what she meant when I felt a hand on my arm. I turned to see Joey the Wooer. Great.
His smile nearly melted the last sugar cookie I held in my hand.
“So, Sophie, who’s-a the new bellisima?”
Sophie introduced us and then split. I tried to get away, but found myself alone with Joey. Who would have thought a woman the size of Sophie could disappear so fast? Maybe she and Joey were in cahoots. Maybe they were working on the Viagra scam. Maybe he helped her commit prescription fraud.
But he looked so damned dapper compared to every other man in there.
Before I could think of a question to trip him up, he said, “Bellisima, will you do me the honors?”
Before I knew it, I was polkaing across the room in the arms of Joey the Wooer, all the while thinking I might be in the wrong profession.
Also, how I was insane to come here.
And, Joey smelled good.
Damn good.
What the hell?