“You’ve done a good job.”
“No I haven’t. I just answered the call.”
“That’s all you could do.”
“I know.” She turned around. “Still.”
They started walking along the beach in the direction of Sunset Cove.
“Do you know if they found anything else back there? Any other possessions or evidence?”
“Jake.” She stopped and looked at him. Her eyes still looked pretty, even when they were inside dark circles.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“Should what?”
“I don’t know if I should be giving you material like this. I just know that Simeon will come around and tell me that I should be talking about our managed care options. Instead of our deaths.”
She held her hands to her eyes. He pulled them away.
“Mel, I’m still a reporter. But I’m asking about Charlotte as her friend.”
She looked up.
“I just imagine you writing something gloomy about how we should have had a nurse with her, so she wouldn’t have gone walking alone.”
“I won’t.”
“I wish we had.” They walked up wooden steps off of the sand and toward Mel’s office.
“You couldn’t have known her condition.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“So did they find anything else?”
“No, I remember that.” She’d collected herself. Dried her eyes. “I remember that the teenagers just saw Charlotte there, lying down. And then they couldn’t wake her up. That’s what they told the police, too.”
“What about in her home?”
“We can’t go in there. Each resident uses different terms. Charlotte set hers so that only her daughter could enter the apartment. I told Charlotte’s daughter what happened before you got here. She seemed better off than me.”
“OK.” He wrote it down-they’d only found Charlotte’s body on the beach. He looked at her face. He wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to Charlotte. “Did the hospital say anything?”
“Well, they are sure it was natural, guessing from her history. Charlotte had so many different conditions. I remember once I stopped by to ask her something and I had to use the restroom. She had even more medication than most of our other residents. Some of it was for the back pain. But some of it was for more serious conditions.”
Mel had been speaking normally, but now she started looking down again as they entered the office. Then she started crying.
“Are you OK?”
“I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t even know her. I don’t know any of them.”
On the flat screen television, a commercial played above her head.
“You knew her some.”
“I don’t know her.” She took a tissue and wiped it against her nose.
“And it’s OK. It’s normal.”
“The worst part is that I think she knew. She must have known that it was her time. So she took one last walk…”
She stopped and shook her head. Her forehead was wrinkled and she bit her lower lip. He wanted to kiss it.
“What else Mel?”
“She always loved the beach, you know. It reminded her of her husband.”
“Why?”
“He used to take driftwood. She told me this once. And he’d carve something for her from it. It sounded nice. I’m sure that’s why…”
“Why what?”
“I think she walked out there to die.”
She swallowed and then stood up. She went around her desk and started taking files and straightening them out. She took the papers on her desk and filed them, but she couldn’t keep it up. She walked over to him and put her head on his shoulder. He patted her on the back and thought about what Charlotte had told him.
“I should get going,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“I really don’t know why.” She walked away and messed with the papers again. “I should be used to it by now.”
“It’s good you aren’t.” He walked out the door.
From the top of the hill, he could see the edge of the beach and then the water beyond it. The police hadn’t found anything. If they had, they probably couldn’t tell him. It made sense that Charlotte would walk out. Maybe the fear had gotten to her. Maybe she had just given up and gone into the night. They said that losing the will to live could be enough. He’d been eating chocolate when it happened.
He started walking to his car and looked down the hill one last time. Then, he looked again, closer. A large woman with thick gray hair was yelling at a man. It was the man with the red-brimmed hat, the one he’d seen outside Building B. The woman waved her arms around and yelled again. She looked like she was about to hit his hat off of his head. The man walked away quickly in Jake’s direction.
He walked with his head turned down to the ground, the top of the hat facing toward Jake. Jake couldn’t see the man’s face, only his stooped shoulders and carefully polished shoes. When he reached the top of the hill, he looked at Jake and seemed to swallow. He looked back at the woman, who was pulling a weed out of the sidewalk. Then he tried to walk past.
“Sir,” Jake said. “How are you? I met you earlier outside Building B. We’d thought there had been an accident in Charlotte’s room. Do you remember?”
“I do,” he said and started to walk.
“It was my photographer, Gary. He was locked in a battle with his camera strap.”
“I see. And you are?”
“Jake Russo. What’s your name?”
“I have to be going.”
Jake pulled out his notebook.
“Did you know Charlotte well?”
“I suppose so. Why?”
“So you heard what happened to her?”
“What?”
“That she died last night, walking on the beach.”
“I didn’t know,” he said and brought his hand to his chest.
“You didn’t know she’d died? Then why didn’t you say something when I asked if you had known Charlotte well.”
“What do you mean?” He swallowed.
“When I asked, I used the past tense, Mr…”
“Samuels,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I heard about it this morning.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Yes, I knew her. I was sorry to hear what happened.”
“Were you surprised?” He pressed the pen point on the paper.
“I should go. Please. Please let me go.”
Jake looked past the man for a moment. The gray haired woman was holding a weed in her hand, staring up at them. She looked away when Jake’s eyes met hers. The red brim on Samuels’s hat seemed to darken, like he was sweating through it.
“It just seemed unusual,” Jake said. “So sudden.”
“We’re all mourning.” He tipped the hat. “It was good to meet you.”
He ducked down and started walking again, surprisingly quickly. Jake looked back to see the gray haired woman halfway down the hill. She dropped the weed from her hand and bent down to pull another. Jake looked toward his car. Then he got out his notebook and started walking toward the woman instead.
CHAPTER 15
She started talking before he even said hello.
“You should know a few things about that man. Abram Samuels likes to put up a front.” She had a voice like a cough. Brooklyn, old Brooklyn. “Did you know his son is a hairdresser for a living? Abram will be happy to tell you about himself, but his son is living somewhere in New Jersey giving women perms for a living. Abram is a very handsome man of course. But his son is pretty.”
When she stopped he told her his name.
“Ech,” she said. “I’m Sheryl Goldfein.”
Sheryl Goldfein. He remembered what Charlotte had said about Sheryl. She’d roll over you. He wasn’t sure what had happened to Charlotte, but he could say he agreed with her judgment of character. Sheryl didn’t wait for him to write down her name.