“Six months,” he said. “Two months shy of her ninety-second birthday. Of course, mentally she’s been gone much longer than that. Alzheimer’s, you know.”
The office door opened. Kristin came in carrying a cup of coffee. With a wary look in Bobby’s direction, she placed the cup on the desk and then hurried back out as if worried that the man’s temper might flare up once more.
He took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat. “Why?” he asked. “Why do you want to dig her up? Hasn’t she suffered enough? Can’t you leave well enough alone?”
“Some serious deficiencies have come to light at Caring Friends in the last few days,” Joanna explained.
“I know,” he said. “I heard about that. Philippa Brinson took off. I never met her. She must have arrived after Mother…”
The remainder of the sentence drifted away unfinished.
“There were problems with some of the other patients as well,” Joanna continued. “Serious health issues. Helpless patients were left alone and unsupervised. We need to see that the people who did this accept responsibility for their actions.”
“My sister started it, didn’t she,” Bobby declared. “Is Candace the one who came up with the bright idea that you should dig Mother up?”
Joanna glanced in Deb’s direction. Her detective gave a small nod.
“Yes,” Joanna said.
“It figures.”
“So you and your sister aren’t close?”
“You could say that,” Bobby replied, crossing his arms over his chest.
Joanna waited to see if he would say anything more. Finally he did. “Look,” Bobby said, “I admit it. I was stupid when I was young-really stupid. I ran with some bad people and did some really bad things. I ended up doing time. When I got out, I had nothing. I had no job, no education and nowhere to go, so I came home, carrying all my worldly possessions in a single duffel bag. My mother was still living in the little house on Black Knob where Candace and I grew up. She was living there on Social Security and her widow’s pension from PD.”
That meant Bobby’s father had probably been a miner-underground or open-pit-for Phelps Dodge.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face when she opened the door and saw me there. She just beamed. She was so happy to see me. She called me her baby. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve been praying every day that you’d come home and here you are.’ And so I stayed. Like I said, I didn’t have much of an education and I wasn’t really qualified to do anything other than make license plates-I was pretty good at that. But Mother helped me get odd jobs here and there-carrying out groceries at Safeway, cleaning people’s yards and garages, detailing their cars. That way I was able to help with the bills, and we got along fine. For a while. For quite a while.”
He paused for a moment, as if he wasn’t ready to go on with the story. Finally he did. “Then Mother started slipping,” he said. “At first it was just little things, like putting her purse in the freezer or not being able to remember whether or not she’d eaten lunch. Then, one night, I came home and found her in the living room cussing like a sailor and breaking up the furniture. That’s when I knew I couldn’t handle it any longer.”
“And that’s when you went looking for Caring Friends?”
Bobby shook his head. “Actually, no. Mother had already found it on her own. She had been looking for places to go if she ever needed to. She wanted something that wouldn’t break the bank, a place she could pay for out of her Social Security and her pension. And Caring Friends was it. She was already signed up and on their wait-list. Once they had an opening, they admitted her.”
“That was when?”
“Three years ago.”
“Your mother’s death certificate says she died of sepsis,” Deb Howell said. “Your sister claims she had bedsores.”
“How would Candace know anything about it? Was she there every day, holding Mother’s hand and feeding her lunch? No, ma’am, she was not, but I was. I went there every single day and I didn’t see any sores. This is all sour grapes, you know. That’s why Candace is doing this. She wanted me to take Mother home. When Caring Friends started going downhill, Candace said keeping Mother there was just a waste of money, but Mother liked it. The place was familiar. Besides, Candace doesn’t understand what Alzheimer’s does to people. You have to watch them like a hawk. They’re like little kids, you know. They get into everything.”
“So you knew the people running Caring Friends sometimes used restraints?”
“They had to,” Bobby said with a shrug. “Otherwise the patients would just run away-like that Brinson woman did the other night.”
“You said Caring Friends started going downhill,” Deb put in quietly. “Does that mean it used to be better than it is now?”
“Lots better,” Bobby said. “Then the new people took over. They started letting people go-you know, the workers-the aides and the cleaning ladies and the cooks. After they took over, the food wasn’t as good as it was before and the place wasn’t as clean. But Mother didn’t want to leave. And since Mother had put me in charge of her affairs, there wasn’t a thing Candace could do about it. Then when she found out about the house-”
“What about the house?” Joanna asked.
“Two days after mother died. We hadn’t even had the funeral yet, and Candace sent a real estate lady over to see about listing the house. I told her to take a short hike. You see, Mother had set up something that gave me a lifetime…” He paused, searching for the word.
“A lifetime tenancy, maybe?” Joanna offered.
Bobby nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it-a lifetime tenancy. It means I can live in the house until I die. Then it gets sold and the proceeds are divided up among the remaining heirs.”
“And Candace thought this was a bad idea?” Joanna said.
Bobby half smiled. “I’ll say,” he said.
“Do you remember anything about your sister requesting an autopsy at the time?” Joanna asked.
Bobby shook his head. “Not a word. All she wanted was to get Mother buried as fast as humanly possible.”
Joanna glanced at her watch. The Board of Supervisors meeting would be starting in a matter of minutes.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to go soon, Mr. Fletcher,” Joanna said. “I have another appointment.”
The man lumbered to his feet. “You do understand, don’t you?” he asked. “I just want my mother to be left in peace.”
“I think I do,” Joanna said.
He let himself out. “He’s a lot different from what I expected,” Debra said, once the door closed behind him.
“You mean he’s a lot different from what his sister led you to believe.”
Debra nodded.
“Do you have the sister’s address?” Joanna asked.
“Sure,” Deb said. “It’s right here in my notebook.”
“Read it to me.” Joanna said, pulling her computer closer. “Let’s see what Zillow has to say.”
When Deb found the address and read it, Joanna typed it into a Web site. A few minutes later she nodded. “Interesting,” she said. “Look at this. The home at that address is currently valued at $784,000.” She did a few more clicks. “And here’s the photo from Google Earth. Foothills location. Swimming pool. This lady has way more money than her poor brother does, but she’s ready to sell the house out from under him.”
“If she has enough money to live in a house like that, how come she claimed she couldn’t afford to have an autopsy at the time of her mother’s death?”
“Because she didn’t really care that much back then,” Joanna answered. “But now she’s got a chance to get that autopsy on our nickel.”
“But why?” Deb asked.
“My guess is that once Caring Friends hit the news, Candace saw a chance to make some money out of the deal. She’s hoping we’ll help her make a case for a wrongful death suit. And she probably figures she won’t have to go to court-that just threatening to do so will be enough to get Alma DeLong to send some money Candace’s way just to get her to shut up. And I’m guessing if we scratch Candace’s surface, we won’t have to go very deep to find
