I took off my Cubs cap. We went inside and found the nursing station down a carpeted corridor. I had been here before to serve papers. It was clean, well lit. There was a slight bustle of chatter behind the counter between a large woman in white with a chart in her hands and a smaller, heavier woman with red hair that looked natural. The red-haired woman was on the phone. The large woman was reading to her from the chart.
“December eighth,” the red-haired woman said. “Chart says that’s when the Flomax should stop.”
The person on the other end was talking. The redhead looked at the woman with the chart and rolled her eyes upward and then said, “It’s your signature… Will do.”
She hung up and looked at Ames and me.
An old woman, white-haired, wearing a light blue suit moved next to us at the desk. She leaned on a cane and looked straight ahead at the big nurse.
“We’re here to see Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.
“You were here a few months ago,” said the large woman with the chart.
“I served some papers,” I said.
“And you’re going to serve papers on Dorothy?” she asked protectively.
“No. Just want to see her. She called me. My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is Ames McKinney.”
“Pleased,” said Ames.
If he had a ten-gallon hat, I’m sure he would have taken it off and said, “Ma’am.”
Ames is hard to resist. I’m not.
“May I ask what she wants to see you about?” asked the large woman.
I looked at the pin above her left breast. It said she was Gladys Sprague.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m asking.”
“My pills,” said the woman with the cane.
“Not for an hour, Lois,” said the large nurse patiently. “One of us will come to your room.”
“It’s lunchtime,” the woman with the cane said.
“When lunch is over, come back here or someone will come to your room,” said the redhead.
“You won’t forget?” said the woman with the cane.
“It’s all on the charts,” said Gladys the nurse with a smile. “We won’t forget.”
“My tissues,” said the woman with the cane.
“We understand,” said the large nurse.
The old woman started up the long corridor.
“Mr…” Gladys said.
“Fonesca. And this is Mr. McKinney.”
“Right. I’m guessing,” said Gladys with a sigh. “Dorothy told you she saw someone murdered here last night.”
“Yes,” I said.
“No one was murdered here last night,” said the redhead. “And no one died. We get about a death a month, sometimes more, but not yesterday and no murder.”
“I’d still like to see her,” I said.
“Sure,” said Gladys. “She almost never gets visitors. She goes to lunch in forty-five minutes. Her room number is one eleven. We like Dorothy. So does everyone else. She helps with the bingo numbers on Tuesday and Thursday, never complains. I don’t know what’s with this murder business. We have a social worker on call. Dorothy will get a visit from her later this afternoon.”
“Our residents sometimes…” the redhead started and then went on, “sometimes exercise their imaginations. They want attention, a sense that they are still a part of things.”
“It’s not necessarily an unhealthy sign,” said Gladys.
“Remember Carmine Forest?” asked the redhead.
Gladys shook her head and said to us, “Carmine, what was it, three, four years ago?”
“Three,” said the redhead.
“Carmine,” Gladys went on, “claimed vampires were stalking the halls at night, turning the residents into vampires.”
“Said he could prove it,” Gladys continued. “Said the residents were getting pale, losing blood. Even claimed he had seen fang marks on their necks.”
“Which closed almost immediately after they were bitten,” said the redhead. “He started painting crosses on the doors with Magic Marker.”
“Permanent black marker,” said the redhead.
“Got ugly,” said Gladys. “Mrs. Schwartz and Mr. Wallstein complained that it was an attack by anti-Semites. They called a rabbi. Carmine called a priest. Rabbi and priest got together and calmed things down.”
“Carmine demanded an exorcism,” said the redhead. “Priest said the Church didn’t recognize the existence of vampires.”
“Carmine wrote to the pope,” said Gladys. “No answer.”
“Then he sent in a letter of resignation from the Catholic Church and said he was going to become a Hindu because they believed in vampires and would send someone to deal with it.”
“Did they?” I asked.
“We’re still waiting,” said Gladys.
“Oh,” said the redhead, suddenly remembering. “What about Carla Martin?”
“One one one,” I said, starting to move away from the nursing station.
“One eleven, right,” said the redhead.
Ames and I went in search of Dorothy Cgnozic’s room while Gladys and the redhead recalled whatever Carla Martin’s delusion had been. We found the room at the end of a corridor and around a bend. The door was closed. I knocked.
“Come in,” came a woman’s voice.
I tried the door.
“It’s locked,” I said.
“Who are you?” came the voice.
“Lewis Fonesca. You called me this morning.”
Silence. Then the sound of something padding on the other side. The door opened.
Dorothy Cgnozic was not small. She was tiny, maybe a little over four feet high. She was wearing a bright yellow dress. Her short white hair was brushed back and she had a touch of makeup on her almost unlined face.
She looked at me and then up at Ames.
“Come in,” she said, looking past us down the corridor in both directions.
We entered and she closed and locked the door before turning into the room. We moved past a bathroom on our right and around her walker with the yellow tennis balls on the feet The room was big enough for a bed with a flowered quilt, a small refrigerator, a low chest of drawers with a twenty-four-inch Sony television on top of it and three chairs next to a window that looked out at the tops of trees about forty or fifty feet away.
“Sit,” she said.
We did.
“This is my friend Ames McKinney,” I said.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Ames said.
“And you, Mr. McKinney,” she answered. “You may call me Dorothy.”
“Ames,” he said.
“If you-” I began.
“Would you like some chocolate-covered cherries?” she asked.
“One,” said Ames.
There was a low table piled with books, a Kleenex box and a pad of paper with a sheet on which I could see neatly handprinted names. She got a small candy box from the one-drawer table at her side, opened it and held it out to Ames, who took one. I declined.
“I don’t know which room it was,” she said, putting the candy box back and sliding the drawer closed. “I may
