It took Mrs. Tertz so long to answer the bell that I thought she might be out. When she finally came to the door, her face flushed from the heat, she apologized, but said she’d been on her back porch writing letters. “It faces east, so by this time of day we get a bit of breeze back there. I practically live out there in the summer. What can I do for you, dear?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Mrs. Frizell’s situation. Do you have a minute?”
She laughed softly. “I suppose. But if you think a wave of your hand will solve Hattie Frizell’s problems, it only shows you have a lot of growing up to do. Come on in, though.”
I followed her along a minute, highly polished hall to the kitchen. The air in the house, heavy with Pine Sol and furniture polish, thickened in the kitchen to an unbreathable density. Little beads of sweat were staining the neck of my blouse by the time Mrs. Tertz had the back door unlocked again. I followed her thankfully onto the porch.
It was a wide, pleasant space, with furniture covered in a chintz whose flowers had faded from years of use. A rolling cart held a television, a hot plate, and a toaster oven. When Mrs. Tertz saw me looking at them she shook her head regretfully and explained that they had to be wheeled into the kitchen at night.
“It used to be that Abe and I left them out here all summer long, but there are too many break-ins these days. We can’t afford to put walls up to make the porch secure, so we just do the best we can.”
“You don’t keep a dog still? Mrs. Hellstrom told me you used to buy black Labs from Mrs. Frizell.”
“Oh, my. Yes. And my grandchildren are playing with dogs descended from some of those Labs. But you know, it takes a lot of strength to walk a dog that energetic. When our last old boy died five years ago, Abe and I decided we just didn’t have the stamina for a new one. But we miss them. Sometimes I wish—but Abe’s got arthritis, and my back’s not so good. We just couldn’t do it. How’s Hattie doing? Marjorie told me you’d been by to see her.”
“Not well. She’s restless, but not responsive. I don’t know what will happen to her.” A few weeks in bed could be a death sentence for a woman her age, but Mrs. Tertz didn’t need me to spell that out.
“One of the worrying things is her finances. She’s going to need long-term care if—when—she heals enough to leave Cook County. Chrissie and Todd want to mortgage her house, but they don’t know where the title is.”
Mrs. Tertz shook her head again, worried. “I hate to think of Hattie losing that house on top of losing the dogs. I don’t think she’ll last too long if that happens—if she knows about it, I mean. But I can’t help you with money for her, dear, if that’s what you want: Abe and I just make ends meet every month on our social security as it is. And now with property taxes going up…” She clipped her lips together, too worried to talk about it.
I reassured her hastily. “But the scary thing about her finances is how she has her money invested. That’s really what I wanted to ask you about. She sold her CDs at her old bank in February, took a loss, of course, because of the penalties, and put the money into some bonds. Very high-yield—but not paying anything these days. You wouldn’t know why she decided to do that, would you?”
Mrs. Tertz shifted in her chair. “We never talked about money together, dear.”
I eyed her steadily. “Chrissie Pichea and Vinnie Buttone have gone around the neighborhood offering people financial advice. They may have persuaded her to buy those bonds.”
“I’m sure anything Chrissie did was with the best intentions. I know you two girls haven’t seen eye-to-eye on Hattie’s dogs, but Chrissie’s a very good-hearted neighbor. If she sees me struggling with my groceries she always races over to help me get them into the house.”
I smiled, trying to keep hostility out of my face as well as my voice. “She probably thought she was doing Mrs. Frizell a good turn, getting her to trade in her CDs for something that would pay much better. Has she ever offered you a similar deal?”
Mrs. Tertz was so loath to discuss the matter that I began to worry that she and her husband had sunk their savings into Diamond Head junk as well. As we continued to talk, though, it became clear that all she wanted to do was protect Chrissie.
“I’m sure Chrissie is a wonderful person,” I said earnestly. “But she may not be very experienced with risky investments. I’ve been investigating financial fraud for almost ten years now. Someone could have—have pulled the wool over her eyes, so to speak—persuaded her they had a great product for old people. And in her desire to kelp her neighbors she might not have had the experience to see there was something wrong with the product.”
It sounded too thick to me, but Mrs. Tertz was relieved to think that “you girls” only wanted to help each other out. Telling me she’d just be a minute, she disappeared back into the murky air of her house.