She sat a moment and ran through her story. Knowing nothing of Hilda Frieslander’s death, she had driven to Marco Island. I’m the daughter of Reva Contay, she would say, Hilda Frieslander’s friend and colleague. I’m in Naples for a few days and thought I’d look up my mother’s old publishing friend.
She lifted the cold key lime pie off the passenger seat and got out. Surveillance cameras had been installed under the building’s second-floor windows. Someone would be watching as she approached the entrance.
At the door she balanced the pie, pushed the button, and looked through the glass. A guard seated at a desk waved to her, and the lock clicked. She shoved in. “Hello,” he called. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes, I hope so.”
As Brenda crossed the marble floor, she thought of James Rivera, how he would know when to use “can I help” or “may I help.” Electric candles flickered in wall sconces; potted palms and gilded French empire chairs stood along walls with fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
She stopped before the desk. “My name’s Brenda Contay,” she said. “I didn’t call ahead, and I’m completely ignorant of how things work here.” The guard glanced at the pie. When he again looked up at her, his face was that of a weathered cowboy. He wore a pilot’s shirt with epaulettes and a name tag, Dewey.
“Who’s the pie for?” he asked.
“She doesn’t know I’m coming, and I haven’t seen her in years, but my mother—”
The loud, nagging sound of a car’s security alarm started up in the parking lot.
“Damn.” Dewey got up. “That’s gonna be Mr. Dartell. He sets it off every time he pushes the wrong button on his key ring.” The guard started jogging for the entry. “Back in just a sec.”
As he went out, a bell dinged, and an elevator door opened. A woman stepped out, rummaging in her purse. She was more doll-like than anyone Brenda had ever seen. Tiny and frail, dressed in a pale-pink summer frock and white stockings, she looked like someone you had to protect.
“Gotcha!” She had found something in her purse and held up it up. An asthma inhaler. “Can’t go anywhere without this,” she said. “Red tide makes me miserable.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Brenda said.
“Nobody seems to,” the woman said. “They say it’s got to do with an algae bloom. Whatever that is. You start coughing, wheezing. Terrible.” Brenda shook her head. “Who are you here to see?”
“Hilda Frieslander. She and my mother…”
The woman clucked her tongue. Her face assumed a practiced look of sadness, and as though reproved, the horn outside stopped. “You knew Hilda?” she asked.
“My mother used to work with her. In New York.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Is she sick?”
“She killed herself this past Thursday. They found her in her bedroom. She had this set of instructions with her on the bed. From the Hemlock Society.”
The woman closed her eyes. After a moment, she looked at Brenda. “We all loved Hilda,” she said. “She was so smart. She was our brain trust here, she knew so much. She ran our book club until her eyes started to go. Diabetes.”
Now she stepped close to Brenda. “She hated bingo,” the woman said, as though confiding a dangerous secret. “‘Bingo’s not my style,’ she used to say. Hilda’s style was books and horses. But she had macular degeneration and type 2 diabetes.” As she spoke, the woman’s expression had changed from socially correct to one of true loss.
“Were you surprised when you found out?” Brenda asked.
After a moment, the woman said, “I was and I wasn’t.” She thought about it. “As I say, Hilda was very smart. Perceptive. She had these strokes last year—” The woman frowned, searching her memory. She snapped her fingers. “Subarachnoid hemorrhages, Hilda called them. She had to have surgery.”
The front door clicked. The guard was holding it open for a man in his seventies or eighties. Head erect and shoulders back, the man didn’t look at them and crossed the lobby to the elevators. With his back to them, he pushed the button.
“Hi there, Mizz Duffy.” Dewey sat at the desk. “Remember your inhaler?”
She held it up. “I was just telling this nice young woman about Hilda.”
“Is that who the pie’s for?” he asked.
“Excuse me, I have Mass—”
The woman turned and walked for the entrance. Dewey watched until she was outside before looking at Brenda. “Depression gets ‘em before cardiovascular or cancer,” he said.
“Do you think that’s why Hilda Frieslander took her life?”
He shrugged. “Who knows for sure why someone does that? She liked to bet on horse races. She lost some money lately, but that wouldn’t do it.”
“You mean she was wealthy?”
Dewey rocked back in his chair and looked at her. “We’re right on the beach,” he said. “You don’t live here unless you can afford it.” He glanced again at the pie.
“Was she alone? Did she have company?”
“Jimmy Rivera was in earlier Thursday. He said she seemed okay when he left.”
“Who’s that, a friend?”
“He’s with All Hands on Deck. They do odd jobs for people. Drive people that can’t drive anymore. Take ‘em shopping. He’s a good guy. He came and did cooking for her, read her books. Her eyes were going.”
Dewey leaned forward on the desk. “She told him to bring a small turkey, and he should buy one of these plastic bags you roast ‘em in?” The guard leaned back. “That’s how she did it. With the bag.”
Heart racing, Brenda shook her head. She held out the pie. “It was for Hilda,” she said. “It won’t keep, and someone should have it.”
“Well, aren’t you nice.” He took the pie and set it carefully on the desk. “You and Jimmy Rivera are gonna get me fat,” he said. “On Thursday, he comes here, then he remembers Mrs. F is diabetic and lactose intolerant. He gave me a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.
