Evil At Shore Haven. Alice Zogg
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who gave me a clean bill of health when I had my yearly physical three months ago.”
He seemed embarrassed and said, “I totally understand. I introduce myself to all new residents to let them know that I’m available.”
“Thanks again, but no thanks.”
“Just checking,” he said, making a hasty retreat.
Huber thought; did I intimidate the young doctor?
Dr. Wang was riding the elevator down to the ground floor and thought, why did I let myself get rattled by that R. A. person? She’s just an old woman, and I’m an established doctor, for crying out loud! In his mind, he replayed the short conversation they’d had and could not recall anything unusual about it. So why the tense feeling? Forget about her, he told himself, as he exited the elevator and walked over to the assisted residents’ building to tend to his patients.
Breakfast was buffet style and R. A. helped herself to bacon, scrambled eggs, a piece of toast, and a cup of coffee. That was more food than she was used to eating in the morning, and she hoped that she would still have an appetite for lunch. She shared the breakfast table with a married couple, Jim and Jane, who immediately introduced themselves and welcomed the newcomer into the community. The woman was a youthful appearing blonde, and he, three years her senior, had dark-brown eyes with pure white hair. They both were fit for their ages.
Jane wanted to know, “What does R. A. stand for?”
“I’d rather not say. I dislike my first and middle names, so initials will have to do as we don’t use last names.”
Jane, who was fast approaching seventy, giggled like a schoolgirl and said, “With us it’s the reverse. We prefer our simple first names since Jim’s last name is a tongue twister.” She leaned close to Huber and whispered it into her ear. The latter paid keen attention, memorizing every syllable.
Then she said, “I saw you the other day at the front desk with your golf gear. Is there a golf course nearby?”
“Only about 10 miles away. Do you play?”
“Occasionally.”
Jim said, “We’ll take you along on our next round.”
“Thanks, but I’m without my clubs; I haven’t moved all my stuff yet.”
The conversation continued along those lines. They wanted to know if she played tennis. When she told them she’d replaced tennis with racquetball decades ago and that her tennis game was rusty at best, they maintained that playing mixed-doubles would be less challenging. Jim suggested that she partner up with a resident called Bill.
“I’ve already briefly met someone named Bill. I wonder whether that’s him,” R. A. remarked.
Jane said, “If he looked like a jock, it must be ‘our’ Bill.” And she giggled again.
The chat then got to more personal matters, and Huber learned that the pair had been married for over four decades and still kept their romance going strong. When they touched on the subject of her own status, she produced a sad face and shared that she was recently widowed.
For some reason that prompted them to finish their last bites of breakfast in a hurry and as they got up Jim said, “We’ll organize a match against you and Bill soon. I promise.”
The second they were out of sight, Huber slipped her smartphone out of its pocket and stored the couples’ last name in her “Notes” application. That one was easy, she mused. Other names may take a bit more finesse to extract.
Then she went for a quick stop to her room to change into flip-flops before heading to the beach. However, she had another visitor.
The woman at her door introduced herself as Emilia Munoz and said, “I’m the maintenance director. I supervise housekeeping and maintenance staff.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Emilia was dressed in a black pantsuit and kept her long hair pulled away from her face in a neat bun. The woman seemed to live and breathe authority.
She stated, “The housekeepers clean your room and bath once a week, and the maintenance people are responsible for repairs, upkeep, and they’ll assist you with hanging pictures, carrying large packages to your studio, and so forth.”
“I’ve met a couple of the maintenance employees when I selected furniture from your storage room. They did a great job of moving them for me.”
“Good to hear. If you find fault with the way your place is cleaned, or if there is any other problem with housekeeping or maintenance, you go through me.”
“Understood.”
The maintenance director then asked, “Are you planning to do your own laundry, or shall my staff take care of it?”
“I’ll do it myself, using the convenient laundry room on the ground floor.”
“What about sheets? We have a linen service for that.”
“Thanks, but I’ll also wash my own sheets.”
“As you wish.”
Ms. Munoz left and R. A. thought, I wouldn’t want to cross that woman if working under her supervision.
The maintenance director decided to take the stairs down to the next floor rather than riding the elevator. She liked to make unannounced spot-checks on her domestic staff. At the moment, they were cleaning the third-floor apartments. As she descended the stairs, she pulled a white glove from her pocked, slipped it over her right hand, and then glided it over the stair railing. Inspecting her gloved hand, she thought, just as I expected: a layer of dust. Someone messed up! I’ll see to it, she vowed, and hurried down the last few steps before hunting down her culprit on the third floor.
R. A. noticed a video surveillance camera as she passed through the beach access doors. On the previous day, she had been too preoccupied chatting with Andi to pay attention. This time she did not walk along the path, but headed straight to the ocean. Once on the sand, she slipped off her flip-flops, and carried them barefoot down to the water’s edge. She spotted a few surfers farther south, but except for an occasional seagull flying overhead, there was not a soul to be seen at the stretch of beach immediately parallel to Shore Haven. She rolled up her jeans and carefully walked on the strip of rocks between sand and water, and then waded in the shallow ocean. The water felt ice cold. She immediately thought of Mrs. Ralph and that the Pacific had certainly not been any warmer at the beginning of March. Shaking her head, she walked back toward the community grounds.
She sat down on an empty bench and gave her assignment some serious thought. The best way to start her investigation was with old Mrs. Ralph. She mulled over the profile Andi had given her of the lady: age 74, widowed, former columnist for a local paper, in good physical health, recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Her late husband was president of a major bank. Kirk is her only child.
About the drowning, she deduced the following: It stood to reason that Mrs. Ralph left the premises of the community alone. Otherwise, the security camera would have caught another person in her company. If she was killed, the murderer was either not a resident or staff member of Shore Haven, or if so, met her at the beach. Her dead body was discovered a few days later, clad in a bathing suit. She must have planned to either lay out on the beach or bathe in the ocean. Both prospects would have made her adventure pretty chilly at the beginning of March. According to her son, the lady did not know how to swim and was afraid of any large body of water, be it a pool, lake, or sea. The theory that she had forgotten that she couldn’t swim would have been plausible had Mrs. Ralph suffered from severe dementia, but her son assured Andi that the mental illness was in its early stage.
The whole thing made no sense. Huber sighed and told herself, this is only the first day of my investigation; I’ll get at the truth eventually. Then she breathed in the fresh ocean air, listened to the gentle sound of the surf, and enjoyed the idyllic moment.
CHAPTER 6
Lunch