Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

“Indeed I do. Would you like to go somewhere for a cup of coffee or tea? Or would you be in trouble for being gone too long?”

“Oh, no, they don’t pay any attention to me, as long as I show up for supper. I’ll just tell them I ran into a friend and we grabbed a bite to eat.”

She suggested a family restaurant on the outskirts of the city. Once we settled into a booth, she leaned toward me and said, “Now, dear, I must forbid you to put anyone in that damnable place.”

Her tone was so sweet and her face so unperturbed that my jaw dropped at the mild expletive. It felt as if Tweety Bird’s granny swore at me. “Augusta!” I waggled my finger at her.

She smiled. “There’s still some pepper in the old girl.” Then her face became solemn. “Ms. Bonaparte—”

I interrupted to give her the correct pronunciation and said, “But call me Angie.”

“Angie, Padua Manor is a horrible place. It’s understaffed and the staff they have don’t care. They’re lazy and some are even mean. Like Mrs. Rogers.”

“She abuses the residents?”

“Not so that you can file a complaint. She skates just this side of the laws and regulations. But she never does anything nice or helpful. It’s always about stretching out a dollar with her, at the expense of decent food or regular baths or even such things as changing a diaper. Mean old bat!”

“Why are you living there, then? Surely you have other options.”

“I do … but my sister, Myrna, doesn’t. Her husband died and left her piled high with debts. She’s on Medicaid, like most of them, so there are very few options for care. I can’t abandon her, so I stay, and I pay sometimes for little treats and better care for her, and I watch out for her to make sure they don’t neglect her. She has dementia, but she still knows me. They’re happy to take my money and leave me be. I’m their only private pay resident, see, so they gouge me.”

She’s a saint, I thought, to live in that place for the sake of her sister. “Augusta, as I told you, I’m trying to find out what happened in late December to a friend’s husband, Jim Beltran. He was in hospice care there. He had liver failure at a fairly young age, only forty-two. Did you know him?”

“Not to say, knew. But I saw him in his room from time to time. He looked pretty bad, all skin and bones, and yellow. I knew he wasn’t long for this world.”

“Was there anything unusual about his death?”

She pursed her lips in thought. “Nooo. But it was odd, the same night he died, Karl went missing.”

“Karl?”

“Karl Jorgensen. A night attendant. Nice man. One of the few who took good care of us, at least as good as he could. He’d get an extra blanket or hold somebody’s hand if they were sad or scared. He’d come in and talk with me sometimes.” She chuckled. “Said he and I were the only ones in the place that still had our wits about us.”

“And he disappeared?”

“Mm-hmm. Odd, isn’t it? I knew Mr. Beltran had passed, because the funeral home sent the hearse for him and I saw the gurney in the hallway outside his door. Then their man wheeled it into the room, came out a few minutes later with the body all covered up and the paperwork lying on top, and Karl walked him to the door and waited until the hearse pulled away. When Karl saw me in the hallway, he came over and told me to go back to bed, sort of harsh-like. He never used that tone of voice before, in my hearing.” A look of surprised hurt passed over her face. “Then he went back into the dead man’s room. Never came out. Just disappeared.”

I felt my eyebrows rise high on my forehead in amazement. “He just walked out, in the middle of the night, and left the residents on their own?”

She nodded. “I got back in bed, after he chastised me, and never realized. The morning crew was mighty put out that he abandoned his duties, and that he wasn’t there to give his report. Mrs. Rogers was on her high horse about it, too. I heard her berating the poor charge nurse about staff responsibility. But really, what did she have to do with it?”

“How very odd,” I said, wondering what the connection was to Jim-Hank, if any. “What did Karl look like?”

“Well, dear, he didn’t look like a Karl. You’d expect a blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian, with a name like that. But he had dark hair and a dark complexion, too. Stood maybe five-ten. He was stocky, but it was muscle, not fat. I saw him lift some of the heavy residents with ease, more than once.”

“If you saw him on the street, what kind of work would you think he did?”

She thought for a moment. “Bartender. Because, first, he was good at managing multiple tasks; second, he looked like he could handle himself in a fight; and third, he had a way with people, calming them if they were upset, listening if they were sad, helping with things like a checkbook that wouldn’t balance.” She grimaced. “I never was good at arithmetic.”

“Did you ever see him in street clothes?”

“Oh, my, I felt so sorry for him the one time I did that I tried to offer him money. He looked just like a hobo—I guess nowadays you’d say ‘homeless person.’ But he wouldn’t take a penny, said he had nicer things, but there was no sense wearing them to walk to the Manor in the dead of night. He didn’t want to get mugged. So I let it go. But I’m not sure I believed him.”

“I don’t suppose you have a picture of him?”

She shook her head. “No. Sorry, Angie … but there would be one in the office. The staff all wear picture IDs.” She