Uh-oh.
“I do find it interesting,” Jody said. “I’ve always been drawn to eminent domain law.”
“Oh? Something in your background?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“It seems like the rich stealing from the poor?”
“I’m not that naive,” Jody said with a grin.
“Yes, no reason to single out eminent domain. But the Mildred Dash case seems to command your attention.”
“I suppose that’s because it’s sort of a classic situation: a large developer and a holdout old lady standing her ground. All she’s asking is to continue living in her apartment, where her life unfolded. The place holds special significance for her.”
“It holds a special significance for Meeding Properties, too.”
“I understand that,” Jody said. “I guess it’s the familiar story, and the familiar emotion-sympathy for the old lady guarding the gate against progress.”
“I suppose you could call it progress. Meeding is going to build a lot of retail space and condominiums and overcharge its tenants. Meeding will make a lot of money.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Jody said.
Coil raised his shoulders and crossed his arms as if hugging himself. “Not for Meeding. Not for us.”
“Especially not for us,” Jody said. “It’s just that there’s the valiant old lady fighting insurmountable odds.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem, Jody.”
“But this seems to be exactly what it seems. “Meeding Properties is gigantic; Mildred Dash has lived in her apartment for twenty years, and there she stays while demolition goes on all around her building. She seems to have enough legal claim to hold the developer at bay.” Jody couldn’t help herself. “She must have a lawyer who knows about malleability.”
Coil’s mild blue gaze fixed on her and his smile held. Such a charming man. “Mildred Dash isn’t an old lady unless you count forty-eight as old. She’s a cutthroat corporate attorney with inoperable pancreatic cancer. And she doesn’t want to live in her apartment, she wants to die in it.”
Inoperable cancer. Jody could think of nothing to say other than, “Oh.”
“These things are unknowable. If she does get her wish and dies at home, it might cost Meeding Properties millions of dollars. Millions,” he repeated. “The clock is already ticking on that money.”
“Oh,” Jody said again.
Joseph Coil nodded a smiling good morning and moved toward the door. He paused going out. “Keep thinking malleability, Jody.”
“Yes, sir.”
I’m malleable, she added, to herself, not without a certain degree of disgust.
Sal Vitali called in just before noon. The call was on his cell phone, but Quinn was sitting at his desk in the Q amp;A office. Pearl and Fedderman were across the room at their desks. Fedderman was working the phone. Pearl was on her computer. Knowing she owed her mother a phone call, Pearl had waited until she knew it was time for This Is Your Life reruns at Golden Sunset and her mother wouldn’t be able to answer her phone.
Pearl left a cryptic message and hung up, feeling better. Feeling free. Obligation fulfilled. Her mother and Jody could explore their relationship without her.
But Pearl’s mother wasn’t watching This Is Your Life. That was because her granddaughter had taken a long lunch and then a long cab ride, and here she was in the spacious carpeted lobby of Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New Jersey. Handshakes, smiles, and stiff hugs had been exchanged.
Jody found her maternal grandmother to be a heavyset, formidable-looking woman with a rigid hairdo and searching dark eyes. She had on a perfume that didn’t mingle well with the food scents wafting in from the nearby dining room.
The two women were seated facing each other, Jody in an uncomfortable wooden chair with upholstered arms, her grandmother in the corner of a soft leather sofa.
Jody noticed all the liver spots on her grandmother’s arms and then glanced around. “This looks like a nice place.”
“Let me tell you, sweetheart,” said her grandmother, “if I may call you that, you being the one precious issue of my barren offspring, that perhaps it looks nice but so, when you first arrive, might hell.”
“You mean the people-”
“Are disguised as people, if you mean the staff, and some of the inmates, if I may call them that. People? I would say right out of Dante’s imagination.”
“Really? Everyone I’ve talked to seems nice. And Pearl-Mom-said you have your own apartment.”
“Own cell, I would say with knowledgeable accuracy. Like they have on Devil’s Island.”
“That’s terrible,” Jody said, “that you should feel that way.”
“You’re such a smart girl. If only your mother would listen and learn.”
“Mom can be stubborn.” Jody stared at her grandmother, looking for herself in her, perhaps seeing it, trying to figure out what she thought, how she felt.
“Are you all right, sweetheart?”
“Yes.” Jody forced a smile. “Maybe we should go into the dining room and have some lunch.”
“That isn’t food they serve in there. Come to my apartment and I have at least, learning of my granddaughter’s arrival, prepared some good and healthy soup. Not without crackers. Even croutons.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
Jody’s grandmother produced an aluminum cane that had been propped out of sight against the back of the sofa. She planted the cane’s rubber tip in the carpet and began struggling to her feet. Jody rushed to help her.
After a little dance they were both standing. Jody’s grandmother was breathing hard, even softly wheezing. “That’s fine, dear. Thank you. There are some people I want you to meet, so I can show you off, then we can have our soup and talk about your mother. Did I say croutons?”
“I think you did,” Jody answered, and found she had to move fast to keep up with her grandmother, who walked surprisingly fast for a woman with a cane.
The office’s air-conditioning unit was humming and rattling away, making phone conversations private. Fedderman wouldn’t be disturbed by Quinn speaking in a normal conversational voice.
“Whaddya got, Sal?”
“Victim’s full name is Deena Maureen Vess,” said Sal’s gravelly voice. “Neighbors say she worked at Roller Steak. That’s a restaurant where the servers zip around on skates while they juggle the food. Deena had a collision and broke her ankle. They liked her at Roller Steak and were holding her job for her.”
“She have any special friends at the restaurant?”
“Naw. She’d only been there a few weeks.”
“Love can be capricious,” Quinn said.
“From what we heard, there was no capriciousness there with Deena. At least we know now what the roller-skate key on the body meant. The killer’s sick joke.”
“Nift mentioned at the crime scene that he probably used the ankle to torture her. That’d be broken bone end against broken bone end. He might have thought that was funny, too.”
“Holy crap! We do need to catch this guy. What do you want for me and Harold to do now?”
“Have some lunch, then chat again with Deena’s neighbors. Widen your canvass. See if there’s anywhere in the area where the killer might have bought a roller-skate key. You don’t see many, if any, people using the kind of skates that require a key these days. There can’t be that many places where they’re sold.”
“Nift call with any more info from the lab?”
“I’m still waiting,” Quinn said.
He didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes after his conversation with Sal, the desk phone rang. Caller ID said it was the morgue. Nift.
