Snow Blind Read online

  Medallion Press, Inc.

  Printed in USA

  Published 2008 by Medallion Press, Inc.

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  e MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2008 by Lori G. Armstrong

  Cover Illustration by Adam Mock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fi ctionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 9781933836591

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  My family complains I usually thank them last, so I’m thanking them fi rst: Lauren, Haley, Tessa— every damn day I’m so proud to be your mom. Mr. LGA—thanks for letting me live my dream; you’re the biggest part of it.

  For my Grandma, Mary Maxine Austin Knickrehm: yes, I believed you when you swore interesting things do happen at old folks’ homes, and thank you for planting the germ of an idea in my head. I’m so lucky to have you in my life.

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  anks to Kerry Estevez of Medallion Press for bringing another Julie Collins book to the lineup; to my editor, Helen Rosburg, for ‘getting’ Julie’s voice and letting me stay true to it; and to Adam Mock for another brilliant cover.

  Again, a huge debt of gratitude to my invaluable crit partner, Mary LaHood, who’s been with me on Julie’s journey since day one, who never balks at my tight deadlines and keeps me honest. Gracias to my fellow author and friend Mario Acevedo for the help with Spanish language phrases. Errors in translation belong to me. I bow to the expertise of Jane Wipf Pfeifl e—friend, attorney, judge, voracious reader, supermom, Jane-of-all-trades—my inside source on legal matters in the state of South Dakota: once again you rocked me with your generosity. Ditto to my buddy and author JD “Dusty” Rhoades for answering other lawyerly questions with good humor. Any mistakes are mine to bear.

  A million thanks to Montana rancher Sarpy Sam (www.sarpysam. com) for helping with this greenhorn’s questions. Your insight and knowledge of cattle and ranching in the modern day Wild West were amazingly helpful. Any inaccuracies fall squarely on my shoulders. Dr. Doug Lyle, who never bats an eye when I pose very bizarre questions and is eager and prompt in his responses. Th ank you, doc.

  My fellow First Off enders, Alison Gaylin, Jeff Shelby and Karen Olson; for friendship above and beyond what we ever envisioned. Other writer friends who keep me sane, make me laugh, are great for a good cry or a good drunk, my biggest cheerleaders: Cat Cody, Toni McGee Causey, Mary Stella, Karen Hall.

  Readers, fans, librarians, bookclubs, bookstores…thanks for the support; I am humbled and deeply grateful.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Found in the classified ads:

  WANTED: Elderly Caretaker/Healthcare Worker HOURS: Variable, prefer full-time

  DUTIES: All—from fixing meals to

  fixing the TV remote

  QUALIFICATIONS:

  1) Must be able to follow a strict medication schedule 2) Must be good at locating lost objects

  3) Must listen without complaint

  4) Must provide assistance with personal

  hygiene

  PAY RATE: Volunteer

  “Didja ever notice old folks’ homes smell exactly like funeral homes?”

  Kevin’s blistering look singed my eyelashes.

  “Maybe you could’ve said that a little louder, Julie.”

  “What?” I gestured to the chess-playing octogenarians in the glass-walled room beyond us. “It’s not like anyone heard me. Most of them are deaf anyway.”

  He sighed.

  “I’m just saying …”

  “Enough. Stay back and let me handle this.”

  I hid my smile as he tromped to the receptionist’s desk. Despite a friendship spanning two decades I found it easy to play him.

  My triumph faded when I remembered why we

  were undercover at Prairie Gardens Assisted Living Facility. My best pal and business partner did his 1

  share of playing me, too.

  Evidently my charm wasn’t as pervasive as I’d imagined since he’d taken this case even after I’d argued against it.

  Two days ago we found Amery Grayson dithering in the hallway leading to the offices of Wells/Collins Investigations. The bitterly cold month of February drags along like a three-legged dog in the private eye business, which was why Kevin quickly ushered the lovely Ms. Grayson into the conference room before she bolted.

  I’d always pooh-poohed the iconic PI yarn where a beautiful, mysterious moll sauntered in, reeking of sex and turmoil. At first glance Amery’s bloodshot eyes and trembling mouth evoked sympathy for whatever crisis marred her classic features. At second glance, Amery was all leg, all blonde, and all wet behind the ears. Young and troubled. A bad combo.

  A combo that kicked Kevin’s protective instincts and his hormones into high gear, because the next thing I knew, I was fetching Kleenex, water, and smelling salts for Miz Amery while Kevin patted her hand and encouraged her to pour out her tale of woe. Amery tearfully confided she’d never done anything like hiring a PI—she didn’t know if we could help her, blah blah blah. Her spiel wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard a hundred times before. Somehow I managed to block out her simpering tone and focused on the issue: She feared someone was taking advantage 2

  of her grandfather.

  Vernon Sloane resided at Prairie Gardens, an assisted living/retirement facility. The biggest issue in his life, besides being afflicted with the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease, was the loss of his driver’s license after he’d wrecked his car. A combative Vernon kept trying to sneak out of Prairie Gardens at all hours of the day and night, and Amery had received four phone calls in the last four months after Gramps had been caught wandering around outside the facility looking for his beloved classic Buick.

  Which led Amery to the first problem: her concerns about the management team running the facility and the apparent passing off of
nursing and security issues to volunteers.

  Prairie Gardens boasted a new “in-reach program,”

  Prime Time Friends, where volunteers visited residents at least once a week. Amery wondered why volunteers from an in-reach program would take an elderly man out on supervised, unnsanctioned outings. Why they’d encourage him to cancel doctor’s appointments with the in-house physician and offer to drive Vernon to a specialist outside the facility.

  The situation was getting progressively worse. The last time Amery visited her grandfather, he was more confused than usual, and he consistently called her by her dead mother’s name, Susan. Amery discovered another problem while looking for her grandfather’s missing medications. Crumpled up in his shaving kit 3

  she’d found his quarterly bank statement. Vernon had withdrawn cash totaling more than thirty-five thousand dollars. When Amery asked her grandfather about the

  missing money, he accused her—again referring to her as Susan—of stealing it from him.

  Amery’s hands were tied when it came to Vernon Sloane’s financial affairs. Without guardianship she couldn’t do anything to ensure her grandfather wasn’t being bilked out of every penny of his meager retirement, or legally address his worsening health issues. She’d attempted to talk to the in-house physician, but he refused to tell her anything for fear of violating doctor/patient confidentiality. She’d spoken with the finance office at the retirement center, hoping they’d shed light on whether Vernon used the money to pay in advance for his long-term care. But without power of attorney, she was stonewalled.

  Poor Amery was beside herself with worry and guilt. I let Kevin murmur soothing words that would’ve choked me. He promised we’d look into the situation as he escorted her to her car.

  My opinion differed from Kevin’s. I figured Amery was jealous and angry her grandfather was spending her money and time with someone else, and therefore was trying to make problems. Kevin figured a couple of greedy people saw a confused old man and decided to take advantage, knowing Amery had no legal power to stop them.

  4

  So here we were trying to sort fact from fiction in an overheated, overdecorated reception area that reeked of sour unwashed bodies, tuna casserole, and Lysol antiseptic.

  “Hey, sis.” Kevin waved me over. “Dee is ready to give us a tour.”

  We’d decided to check out the facility by pretending to be looking for a place for our Aunt Rose. Hopefully we could wander around and ask the residents questions after the official tour ended, or else the idea was a total bust.

  I smiled, thrusting out my hand. “Hi, Dee. I’m Kate Sawyer, Jack’s sister.”

  Dee, a dowdy office drone with gooey eyes, wasn’t the type of hard sell closer I’d expected. After she released my hand I withheld a shudder at her wimpy handshake.

  “Nice to meet you, Kate. We’re all set, so why don’t you follow me?”

  We stopped at a set of double steel doors. Dee ran her key card through an electronic reading mechanism bolted beside the door handle. The green light flashed and the locks clicked. A mechanical hum sounded. Very high tech.

  Also very much like Martinez’s various security setups.

  Dee opened the metal doors and bustled down

  the long, empty hallway. She didn’t bother to double check if the doors even latched behind us, say nothing 5

  of if they’d locked securely. Huh. Martinez had me so paranoid about security measures that I almost double checked the damn thing myself.

  Kevin whispered in my ear, “Kate Sawyer? You’ve been watching way too many episodes of Lost, babe.”

  “Yeah? You started it, Jack.”

  “Your fantasy of becoming a Jack and Sawyer

  sandwich doesn’t bother Martinez?”

  “Nope. As a matter of fact he—”

  “I thought we’d start in the wing with the private entrances.” Dee spiraled around and walked backward while she lectured us. She pointed to the metal doors with a decent amount of blank wall space between each one. “These units are like condos. Residents have separate access to the outside and enjoy more autonomy than residents in the other wings.”

  “I’m assuming these residents aren’t in need of daily assistance?”

  “No. Actually, the residents must pass a physical to prove they’re in decent health when they initially buy in.”

  My brain stumbled on the words buy in. But Kevin’s brain worked differently and he asked,

  “What do you mean by initially?”

  “We are in the business of providing long-term care. If a healthy seventy-year-old man buys a private residence, but at some point needs to change to a unit where he’s monitored either part-time or full-time, we can accommodate him almost immediately without a 6

  huge upheaval in the tenant’s life.”

  Kevin flashed his teeth. “Kate and I are both hopelessly undereducated about the differences in the types of units Prairie Gardens offers. Would it be too much trouble to ask you to clarify them for us, please?”

  Nice going, Kev.

  “I’d be happy to,” Dee trilled. “Our purpose here at Prairie Gardens is to provide the type of housing to suit anyone’s needs. We have private residences like these.” She made a sweeping Vanna White gesture.

  “However, the majority of our living spaces are devoted to individual apartments, the one bedroom/one bath, kitchen, and living room type efficiency units, with call buttons and twice daily checkins.

  “In the far south wing are the full-time care units for residents with terminal problems, and those are a basic hospital room with round-the-clock care from a twenty-four-hour nursing staff. And lastly, we have a wing devoted to temporary care, such as recovery from strokes or accidents, where the spouse or caretaker may live on the premises with the recovering party if he or she chooses to, and work in conjunction with the healthcare professionals. Some folks stay as little as four days, some as long as four weeks, but beyond that, they’ll have to move to terminal care.”

  “Are all these buildings connected?”

  “Yes, but only for selected staff. Residents cannot freely float from one unit to the next.”

  “And the ‘buy in’ factor? What exactly is that?”

  7

  Kevin asked.

  “Somewhat like purchasing a house. The resident buys a unit, which includes all utilities and amenities of the facility—use of the pool, spa, weight room, activities, professional services, transportation, meals, medical staff—and they can live here in any of the three housing sections. Let’s say health circumstances change, requiring a move from a private residence unit to a general care unit, or even to the acute care unit. That resident can stay until he or she passes on. If there’s a surviving spouse, the same applies. Then the contract is fulfilled.”

  “And in the case of the private residences? Is ownership passed on to the surviving secondary family members?”

  “No. Then the residence reverts back to us.”

  Whoa. That was just plain weird. I couldn’t imagine shelling out a hundred grand and ending up with … nothing. Then again, the tenants were dead, so what did they care? And probably if their surviving children shoved them in a place like this in the first place, they shouldn’t expect a windfall when Granny and Gramps kicked it anyway.

  Cynical, Julie Ann.

  “However, we understand that kind of cash outlay isn’t possible for everyone, so we do rent the general units by the year, or by the month, or in the case of the temporary wing, by the week.” Dee smiled at me. “Any idea of which type of unit your aunt would prefer?”

  “Oh, our Aunt Rose is a social butterfly, so I imagine 8

  she’d want an apartment right in the thick of things.”

  Dee’s smile dimmed and the dollar signs in her eyes dulled. “Well, then, let’s head over to that section of the complex, known around here as ‘the hive.’” We exited the way we came in.

  We hung a left at the front desk, passed through a set of doub
le doors, and ended up at an unmanned kiosk. Eight long hallways spread out like a spider’s legs. My gaze swung to the end of the first corridor. A single glass door marked the exit. It appeared to be a barred door, but I’d have to double check it to see if it was attached to some kind of alarm system, or if it was even locked. If not, that might be the reason Mr. Sloane was sneaking out so easily.

  I squinted at the ceiling. Plenty of sprinkler heads but not a single security camera. Odd. Why wouldn’t they monitor the hallways? Because people were paying to be here and didn’t want to escape? Well, with the exception of Vernon Sloane.

  It bothered me that the higher priced living area had better security.

  Dee chatted amiably at Kevin. “Here’s one of the efficiency units.” She slid off a stretchy fuchsia plastic armband from around her wrist and rammed a big silver key in the lock. The door swung inward. A Renuzit air freshener couldn’t mask the musty scent assaulting my nostrils.

  The room was bare, save for the hideous orange plaid curtains covering the windows, and a frosted 9

  light fixture hanging from the ceiling. The kitchen was galley-style, located in a tiny alcove off to the left. A miniature breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the miniscule living room.

  “Most of our residents are singles, widows or widowers. The bedroom and bathroom are through here.”

  Dee took three steps and we followed her.

  With no windows in the bedroom, the heavy floral wallpaper, the cloying scent of fake roses, and the low ceiling, I felt trapped inside an oldfashioned hatbox. To calm my nerves, I focused on the dusty ceiling fan while Kevin inspected the bathroom.

  “As you can see, everything—the shower, the toilet, and the sink—are all handicapped accessible. Does your aunt have special needs?” Dee asked politely.