Twelve
Sarasota has a slew of retirement communities and assisted-living facilities, and Bayfront Village is one of the most exclusive. Its main building is a pink brick monstrosity constructed in a vague mix of Gothic spires, Mediterranean arches, red tile roof, and Art Deco turquoise trim. I drove up a fake cobblestone drive and pulled under a portico, where a uniformed valet courteously opened the door for me. As he drove off to park my Bronco in some secret spot, wide glass doors automatically sighed open when they felt my presence. Inside, the cavernous lobby appeared to have been decorated by a committee of feverish designers who saw an opportunity to unload all the mistakes former clients had refused. Overstuffed sofas upholstered in fox-hunting scenes kept company with Hindu statues and gilded rococo. Plaster cherubs with fat cheeks mingled with sleek Danish modern and ruffled chintz.
Silver-haired men and women were moving around, some going outside to cars drawing up under the portico. A lot of them pushed little three-wheeled canvas walking aids that looked like empty doll carriages. I wasn’t surprised. The decor alone was enough to give them vertigo. Most of them wore sweaters, in spite of the fact that it was sizzling outside.
Feeling obscenely young and fit, I passed an easel supporting a large cardboard sign giving the week’s activities. The sign was outlined in flashing lights, a tacky way of attracting attention, in my opinion, but I read it as I went by. One of the events being announced was a talk by Dr. Gerald Coffey, entitled “Help for the Heart.”
I went up to the front desk and told a calm young woman in a tailored black suit that I was there to see Cora Mathers.
“Is she expecting you?”
“No, I should have called, but I just took a chance and came over.”
“I’ll call her. What’s your name?”
“Dixie Hemingway, but she doesn’t know me. Tell her I’m her granddaughter’s cat-sitter.”
“Her granddaughter’s cat-sitter?”
“I take care of her granddaughter’s cat when she’s out of town. She left without giving me a number where she could be reached, and I’m hoping Mrs. Mathers knows how to contact her.”
She nodded and punched numbers into a phone pad. I could hear buzzes on the other end of the line, and after nine or ten of them, I was ready to turn away. The young woman didn’t seem fazed, however, so I waited. After what must have been thirty rings, a voice answered. The young woman explained my reason for coming and then listened intently while the person gave a lengthy response. She said, “Okay, Mrs. Mathers, I’ll tell her,” and put the phone down.
“She says to go on up,” she said. “She’s on the sixth floor. Turn right when you get off the elevator, her apartment is number six thirteen.”
The elevator was mirrored, so on the ride up I smoothed my hair and tried to brush some wrinkles out of my shorts. At the sixth floor, I stepped out and turned right, and saw a tiny woman with wispy white hair planted in the middle of the hall waving a heavily freckled arm side to side like a highway construction worker. She wore a pair of wide-legged shorts in an exotic parrot print, with a bright red blouse that fell loosely over her thin hips. Her pale legs were as scrawny as a child’s, and she would have had to get on tiptoe to be five feet tall.
“Here I am,” she called. “Come on.” She was beaming at me with such a sweet face that I felt a stab of yearning for my own grandmother.
When I got close, I said, “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Mathers. My name is Dixie Hemingway.”
She turned into her doorway and crooked her finger at me to follow. “I know,” she said. “Debby told me when she called. Are you related to Ernest Hemingway?”
“No, afraid not.”
Taking tiny steps that moved her along in minuscule increments, she said, “I wouldn’t regret it if I were you, he wasn’t a man with a strong character. Oh, he was strong enough when he was young, all that swagger and boasting, but when the going got tough, he couldn’t take it. Shot himself, you know. Got old and shot himself. Being young is easy, you know, anybody can do that, but it takes guts to be old.”
We had now made it through a small foyer lined with framed botanical prints. Her apartment smelled like chocolate chip cookies.
I said, “Oh, this is lovely.”
I wasn’t just being polite, it really was. To my left was a bar in front of a small galley kitchen, and I could see a spacious bedroom to the right. Directly in front was an airy living room with a glassed wall across the back. The floor was pale pink tile and the walls were a deeper shade of pink. A pale green linen Tuxedo sofa sat in front of a glass-topped coffee table, and a couple of armchairs in a muted green and pink chintz faced the sofa. Between the kitchen and the sofa was a skirted round table with two pale green ice-cream chairs. The effect was graceful and serene, enhanced by white wicker and greenery on a narrow sunporch that ran across the back of the living room and bedroom.
“It is nice, isn’t it? I’m so blessed to have it. Marilee bought it for me, you know. Sit down and I’ll make us some tea. You’re in luck, I just finished making chocolate bread.”
I took a seat at the round table and said, “I never ate chocolate bread.”
“Well, it’s my own invention. Marilee gave me a bread-making machine, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago now, and I use it every week. I start it and then at just the right time I throw in some chocolate chips. I won’t tell anybody when I throw them in, that’s my secret.”
She mini-stepped around the bar to the kitchen, where she clattered down two mugs from a rack and poured boiling water into a fat brown teapot. “I keep water simmering all the time,” she said. “You never can tell when somebody may drop by for a cup of tea.”
“You must have a lot of friends here.”
“Well, not a lot, but a sufficient amount. You don’t want too many people coming and going, but enough so you don’t feel alone. Of course, Marilee stops by pretty often, too, and that’s nice.”
She put the tea things on a tray and added a plate of fist-size hunks of brown bread studded with dark bits of oozing chocolate. Next to freshly fried bacon, the scent of hot melted chocolate may be the most tantalizing smell in the world. I got up and carried the tray to the table.
“It’s Marilee I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Mathers.” I said.
“Call me Cora.”
“Do you happen to know where she’s gone? She forgot to leave me a number when she left.”
She pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. “This is about that Frazier fellow, isn’t it?”
“Sort of. I’d like to let her know about it before she comes home.”
Pouring tea into our cups, she said, “Well, dear, I expect she knows by now, don’t you? I’m sure it’s been on all the news. Here, butter some bread while it’s hot. I don’t slice it, I just rip off chunks of it. I don’t know why, but it seems better that way.”
While Cora watched intently, I smeared butter on a hunk and took a bite. I closed my eyes and moaned. “Oh God, that’s good.”
“Better than sex, isn’t it? Of course it’s been a long time since I had sex, so I may not remember it clearly. I’ll bet you have plenty of sex, pretty young woman like you.”
I sipped some tea and avoided her eyes. “Cora, have you heard from Marilee?”
She swallowed a bite of bread and took a sip of tea before she answered. “I don’t imagine she’ll be wanting to talk to me right now. Not with that Frazier fellow dead in her house.”
“You knew him?”
“I never met the man.”
My head felt like it had been twisted like a doorknob and allowed to spin back into place. I buttered another bite of bread and chewed it slowly while I studied Cora’s face. Her eyes were overhung by crepey eyelids, but they were bright and alert. I said, “Why don’t you think Marilee will want to talk to you?”