I’ll give whoever named Ocean View Retirement Home credit where it’s due. The place does have what its name promises. From a distance. And only if you look between the buildings on the other side of the street, the backs of which really do have an ocean view.
Inside is a large, tasteful lobby that makes the place look more like a hotel than a nursing home. There are potted palms, plush chairs, and paintings of seashells in pastel shades on the walls. A registration desk stretches along one end of the lobby, behind which sits a woman who appears old enough to be a resident. Gray hair. Mint green pantsuit. Lit cigarette jammed between her lips. She squints through the smoke, watching my approach.
“Welcome to Ocean View,” she says. “How may I be of assistance?”
I look to the doors on either side of the desk. One is closed and marked as being for employees only. The other is propped open, revealing a glimpse of a man pushing a walker down a hallway lined with burgundy carpet. The way into Ocean View.
“I’m here to see Bernice Mayhew,” I say.
The receptionist looks me up and down, assessing my uniform. “You’re not one of our nurses.”
“No. I’m with the insurance company.” I lift the medical bag I brought with me as part of the ruse. “They ordered me to check her vitals.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t tell me. You know how insurance companies can be.”
The receptionist nods, silently acknowledging that yes, insurance companies are terrible and yes, the two of us are just cogs in a vast healthcare industrial complex that puts profits over people every damn time. Still, she hesitates. “We have our own medical staff that evaluates the patients.”
“I’m just doing what I was told,” I say.
“I understand that. But them sending you here at this hour is very unusual.”
“I totally agree,” I say. “You can call the main office, if you want. But you’ll be on hold for an hour and what I need to do only takes five minutes. Check blood pressure, heart rate, temperature. Then I’m gone.”
I take a breath, proud of myself—not to mention a little alarmed—for being able to lie so effortlessly. The receptionist exhales a line of smoke and eyes the phone by her elbow, no doubt debating how much time she wants to waste on this. Not a lot, apparently, because she says, “Five minutes? That’s it?”
It’s all I can spare. I couldn’t get away until Archie brought dinner up to Lenora’s room. I asked him to stay with her while I ran into town to run an important errand. I told him I’d be gone for thirty minutes. Since the drive here took fifteen minutes and the drive back will take the same, I figure I can spend only five minutes with Berniece Mayhew before he starts to get suspicious.
I smile at the receptionist. “Depending on Mrs. Mayhew, it might only take four.”
“She’s in the Dunes wing,” the receptionist says as she takes a drag on her cigarette. “Room 113.”
I follow the burgundy carpet deeper into Ocean View. A directory just inside the door helps me get my bearings. Waves wing on the left, Dunes wing on the right, common area straight ahead. I go right, moving down a hallway that smells like bleach, lemon air freshener, and just a hint of urine.
At Room 111, I slow my pace. At Room 112, I adjust my nurse’s cap and smooth the skirt of my uniform. I then plaster a smile on my face and step into Room 113.
The room is small but tidy. Decent enough to visit, but not a place you want to spend much time in. Berniece Mayhew, though, has spent years here. And it shows. Propped up by pillows and wearing a terrycloth robe, she has the look of someone who doesn’t get out much. Her hair is a shock of white, which stands in contrast to a face darkened by age spots. She’s got a flat nose, chubby cheeks, and a chin that’s nonexistent. In its place is a flap of loose skin that droops like a wet rag on a hook. It sways when she turns to glare at me.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Kit.” The time for lying ended in the hallway. Now I have no choice but to tell her the truth. “I work for Lenora Hope.”
“Are you her nurse?”
“Something like that, yes.”
Berniece turns back to the small TV sitting opposite the bed. Wheel of Fortune is on. My mother loved that show. “How’s Lenora doing?” she says.
“Fine, all things considered.”
She huffs with disappointment. “That’s a damn shame.”
“Would it make you happy to know her whole body’s paralyzed except for her left hand?”
Berniece Mayhew looks my way again, delight dancing in her eyes. “Is she suffering?”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“I’d be happier if she was.”
A wooden chair sits just inside the door. I drop onto it and place my medical bag on the floor. “That’s an interesting thing to say about the woman whose generosity keeps you here.”
“Is that what you think it is?” Berniece says bitterly. “Generosity?”
“The only other thing I can think of is hush money. My best guess is it’s so you wouldn’t tell anyone Lenora Hope was having an affair with your husband. Or is it because you saw something you weren’t supposed to see the night most of the Hope family was murdered?”
Berniece Mayhew gives me a squinty-eyed look, as if seeing me for the very first time. “You’re a shrewd one, I’ll give you that. Bold, too. Just waltzing in here and saying something like that.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” Berniece snaps.
“Which one do you want to tell me about first?”
“I’ve stayed silent since 1929. What makes you think I’m going to start blabbing now?”
“Because someone else is dead.”
Berniece’s eyes narrow. “Who?”
“Lenora’s previous nurse,” I say. “A worker. Just like me. Just like you. I think she was murdered. And I think it has something to do with what happened that night in 1929.”
I pause, waiting to see what kind of response I get. My hope is that the mention of Mary will play to her sympathies. If she has any. I’m about to see if Berniece Mayhew is as nasty as Lenora says she is.
The old woman turns back to the television, where Vanna White, pert and perky in a sparkly dress, turns letters. But Berniece doesn’t seem to be looking at the TV at all. Her gaze is fixed somewhere else, somewhere distant. A moment in the past only she can see.
“Ricardo wasn’t perfect.” Berniece sighs, and contained in that single sound is a lifetime of disappointment. “I knew that when I married him. He had, shall we say, a wandering eye. But he wasn’t mean, even when he drank, which is more than I can say about my father. So I wasn’t surprised when that rich bitch got her hooks into him. She could have had the pick of all those young men working the place. Some were full-time. Some were townies. Some of them fine-looking, too. But none as handsome as my Ricardo. I guess that’s why she set her sights on him. All she needed to do was bat those big, blue eyes at him and he was a goner.”
“Did you confront him about it?”
“Of course. Do I look like some shrinking violet to you?”
I have to concede that no, she does not. “What did he say?”
“He denied it, of course. He was a smooth talker, my Ricardo. Could talk his way out of anything. He tried to convince me nothing was going on between them, and I pretended to believe him. But I had a plan, you see.”
The chair creaks as I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “The hush money.”
“It only seemed fair,” Berniece says. “My husband was carrying on with one of the High and Mighty Hopes. I deserved something for my pain and suffering. So I gave them an ultimatum—pay up or I’d tell everyone exactly what kind of people they were.”
“And they had to decide—”
“The night all hell broke loose.”
Berniece tells me how all the Hope’s End staff was given the night off. That was apparently common every other Tuesday in the off-season. There wasn’t a whole lot to do there once October rolled around. Berniece told her husband she was going into town to see a movie.
“I asked if he wanted to come along, knowing he wouldn’t,” she says. “So I grabbed my coat, hat, and purse and left the cottage.”
“But you didn’t leave Hope’s End,” I say.
Berniece touches the tip of her nose, signaling I’m right. “I waited around outside, hoping to see Ricardo sneaking off to meet her. Sure enough, he left the cottage about fifteen minutes later, sauntering across the terrace and past the swimming pool to the garage. At first, I was surprised. Imagine a place that big, with all those rooms, and choosing to fuck in the garage.”
I jolt in shock. No, Berniece Mayhew is definitely not a shrinking violet. She smiles, pleased to have scandalized me.