Long In The Sleuth

Chapter One

Ouch. Take it easy, Bernice, I said, rubbing my shin. You almost tripped me.

Bernice Baum, in neon green yoga outfit and Nikes—the better to get to the food fast—pushed me aside with her cane as she made for our table of four. For a woman with memory problems, she certainly had no difficulty remembering where the food was.

Talk to the wall, as my late mother used to say. Bernice paid no attention to me. She shuffled to her usual seat and plunked herself down.

It was 11:30 am—lunchtime at the Melvin and Sarah Witberg Memorial Menorah Retirement Residence in Aurora, Minnesota. The elegant dining room, with its crystal chandelier, white starched napery, menu cards and thick beige carpet (so as to prevent a fall), echoed with the buzz and chatter of some 200, give or take, senior citizens. A window, stretching the full length of one wall, revealed an acre of surrounding land, with artfully scattered paths, benches and statuary. In summer, this was a well-manicured garden, but right now, it was covered by a thick blanket of Minnesota snow.

I had been living at the Menorah for almost a year now, and the scene in the dining room seemed very much as usual. How was I to know that this particular lunch would set in motion a set of circumstances that would result in me, Ellie Shapiro, in my so-called golden years, becoming involved in murder and almost giving my son Josh a heart attack?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The crowd had started milling around the dining room entrance at about 11. That was because lunch was a highlight of the day. (Breakfast and dinner were the other two highlights.) Residents started parking their walkers a good half hour before the doors opened, eager for Maurice, the 30-ish year old maitre d’, to let us in.

Not that we were particularly hungry; we’d enjoyed the abundant breakfast buffet just a few hours ago. Bagels, lox, blintzes, hash browns, Israeli tomato and cucumber salad, French toast made with fresh challah… anything you could want. The food and the way it was served was one reason the Menorah was the place to be if you could afford it and couldn’t manage anymore on your own. You could even order breakfast in bed, delivered on a tray with flowers, just like at the fancy hotels.

No, what the residents of the Menorah were hungry for at lunch time was the socializing and gossip that was served up along with the brisket, pickles and knishes at tables where you were seated with your assigned meal mates.

In short, the dining room was where the action took place.

At our table, Pearl Green, the resident prima donna, gave Bernice a disdainful look.

"Some people just can’t wait to eat," she said, with disgust. Bernice didn’t seem to mind. She not only tolerated Pearl’s scorn, but followed her everywhere. I suspected Pearl actually liked being held in such awe, even if it was only by muddled Bernice.

Carefully made up, with her blond hair impeccably styled as usual, Pearl sat opposite Riva Mannheim, a dignified, grey-haired woman in her mid 80s with a slight European accent, who ignored her. Riva’s habitual air of distain, though, said everything.

Riva didn’t seem to enjoy the company of anyone at all, other than her small, noisy Jack Russell terrier, Schultz. (Maybe she enjoyed the company of her only daughter, but we had no way of knowing; her daughter lived in Israel.) She had coolly rebuffed every effort on my part to be friendly, making me feel like a social reject. You had the feeling that she would prefer to be called Mrs. Mannheim rather than by her first name, but this was Minnesota, after all, not Berlin, so Riva it was. She was lucky it wasn’t Dahling.

The fourth one at the table was me.

And who am I?

Well, I’m in my 70s, though exactly how far into my 70s I’m not revealing. Let’s just say my AARP membership is longstanding. My face has the odd bag and line here and there, but on the whole I don’t look too terrible. I have all my teeth and hair and plenty of energy. I’m healthy, except for asthma, which with the help of my trusty inhaler seemed to be well controlled. Moreover, I can still fit into a size 16. Well, an 18… but without an elastic waist, I’ll have you know. (What can I tell you? I like to eat.)

In particular, I take a great interest in the doings of others. Some people call that being nosy (the nerve); I prefer to call it joie de vivre. My philosophy in life is that you can laugh or you can cry. I prefer to laugh. Of course, good food helps too.

Now Maurice served the first course, chopped liver.

At the next table, our neighbors, three women and Sam Levin, were discussing their ailments, real and imagined, loudly enough to be easily overheard by us and by anyone else nearby.

My eyes seemed a bit yellow this morning, said Joyce Kramer, in a worried tone. I wonder what that means.

Maybe you have jaundice, Sadie Diamond offered eagerly. Or liver cancer. Marla Sacks had liver cancer and her eyes turned yellow. It was terrible.

She sighed. Marla lasted only a month, screaming in pain.

Joyce hastily pulled out a compact to examine her eyes again.

It was uncanny. The diseases they came up with always seemed to be related to what we were having for lunch, as if the menu had been specifically planned to make me lose my appetite. And it took a lot to make me lose my appetite!

Sam, who took full advantage of being one of the few males among many women, spoke up. Now, I have no medical problems. In fact, I’m better than ever, in a lot of ways, he leered, patting his full head of slick black hair. If you know what I mean.

Just in case we didn’t, he told us. I know how to make a woman happy.

Jeez, I thought. Sam in bed. The stuff of nightmares.

At our table, Pearl leaned in closer, and stage-whispered, I heard that Sam is having an affair with someone here.

Bernice’s eyes lit up. With who?

Nobody, Bernice, I said. People just like to make things up. It’s like that joke: Mrs. Smith says to Mrs. Jones, ‘I have a secret. I’m having an affair.’ Mrs. Jones answers, ‘Really? Who’s catering?’

The joke fell with a thud. Pearl ignored it, Bernice looked blank and Riva said nothing. She nodded, as if that just confirmed her opinion of the gossip-hungry, low-life ignoramuses around here.

Bernice got up to go the restroom, stumbled past Sam’s table, pulled herself up with the aid of the tablecloth and headed off in the general direction of the door.

Never mind Sam. Pearl was onto another topic. I heard that there’s a good-looking guy volunteering in the Community Archive. And he’s not married.

I pretended to be fascinated by the roast chicken now being served. But Pearl was shrewd.

You visited the Community Archive last week, Ellie, she pointed out. I heard you spent a lot of time reading stuff there. I can’t believe you’re so interested in genealogy. It must be the new guy, right?

Fortunately, before I could think up an evasive answer, Pearl, in drama queen mode, had suddenly decided that the food wasn’t up to her exacting standards. She poked the chicken with a fork and grimaced.

This chicken is inedible! she intoned, waving away invisible crumbs. Take it away! I’ll have the brisket and knishes instead. I hope they’re better than this garbage.

I squirmed in my red plush upholstered chair and pretended to be somewhere else. This was so embarrassing! Pearl had worked up a full head of steam and was lambasting the long-suffering maitre d’, Maurice.

For heaven’s sakes, Pearl, keep your voice down, I whispered. But it was hopeless trying to stop her. Pearl was enjoying herself. She now turned her attention to me, as if instructing a lesser being.

You can’t let the staff get away with this kind of thing, Ellie, she said in a self-satisfied tone. You have to keep them in line. We’re paying enough here for proper service.

Stone-faced, Maurice removed Pearl’s plate. She’d actually eaten half the so-called inedible chicken. I winked at him, hoping he’d catch my meaning—She’s nuts. What can you do?—and not take offense: He winked back. He knew.

As Maurice strode to the kitchen bearing the discarded plate, the place buzzed with shocked delight. There was nothing the residents of the Menorah Retirement Residence loved better than a scene, and here was Pearl throwing a tantrum… again. This would give the mahjong yentas something to talk about at today’s game. There was little enough excitement around here, unless you counted Pearl’s outbursts and the occasional whine of ambulance sirens.

Pearl, who was forever reminding one and all that her father had been part of the Roosevelt administration and that she had not one, but two grandsons who were doctors, as well as a granddaughter engaged to a lawyer—"an observant Jewish lawyer"—as she frequently reminded us—was a constant and dependable source of wicked gossip. Occasionally, the gossip was even true.

Sometimes I thought that if I had to listen to Pearl kvetching about the food, or any of the other myriad things she found to whine about, one more time, I would come right out and ask if she had forgotten her medication, and then move to another table. But changing tables was considered a social no-no because it offended people. Pearl was the burden I had to bear for moving into the Menorah Retirement Home, where meal times meant putting up with table mates you didn’t get to choose.

So why, you might ask, was I here? I knew the answer only too well: because I had little choice.

When Manny had died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving poker debts I had never known about, my two grown kids had offered to help me out.

Come stay with us, urged Tami, who lives with her husband and two children in a chaotic mess in Miami. (I love them, but no thanks.) That left my first-born, Josh, who is well into his 40s. He works in hi-tech, is ridiculously wealthy and demonstrates no signs of wanting to settle down or be burdened in any way by an elderly mother with asthma.

He showed his concern, though, by insisting that I live at the Menorah, which he pays for in full. I was grateful; it was generous of him, though I hesitated for a long time before agreeing to move in.

I finally gave in, and not only because of the asthma. Living by myself, after 55 years of marriage, was lonely. So here I was, apparently doomed to spend the rest of my life sharing a dinner table in a plush retirement home with two women who drove me nuts, and one who clearly thought me not worth bothering about.

Good thing I liked to eat.

Chapter Two

Pearl, the scene over to her satisfaction, settled down and waited for her brisket. But Bernice was puzzled.

Why were you so rude, Pearl? Turning to me, she whispered hesitantly, Pearl was rude, wasn’t she, Ellie?

Yes, she was, I agreed. Bernice needed confirmation about just about everything. Satisfied, Bernice adjusted her plus size yoga pants and smiled vacantly.

Pearl sniffed, but didn’t bother to reply. She had little time for poor, addled Bernice though she enjoyed ordering her around. She inspected her long, manicured nails, paying particular attention to the huge diamond ring her late husband, a furniture manufacturer, had provided.

Maurice appeared with a fresh plate which he deposited in front of her.

Here you are, Mrs. Green, he said. Brisket and knishes.

That looks good! I’ll have some too, Maurice, please, said Bernice, batting her eyelashes girlishly, as she did at every opportunity. In fact, I’d noticed that when she’d gone to the rest room a few minutes ago, she’d taken a detour via the kitchen, no doubt in hopes of flirting with him. I was a little surprised that she remembered where the kitchen was. The poor woman was so clueless that she had tried to sit down at Sam’s table by mistake when she returned. I’d had to steer her back to her place.

Bernice, leave Maurice alone. Anyone would think you were in love with him, said Pearl. Bernice blushed. Of course, she was in love with Maurice, as Pearl knew very well. So were half the women in the room. What competition did he have? He was about 50 years younger than any of the other men around, and he wasn’t married.

Most of the rest of the women mooned over Sam, the only widower in the place who could still drive at night and had a full head of black hair. Was it hair dye or genetics? None of the women really cared. It was there, where hair should be and wasn’t on other men his age, and that was all that mattered.

That, and his 12-year old Cadillac, which, he liked to joke, would be bar mitzvah next year.

Personally, I found Sam a bit too full of himself, and Maurice, I knew, had a boyfriend downtown. But who was I to deny anyone the thrilling joys of unrequited love?

(And if truth be told, Pearl was right: I had my secret fantasies focused around that mysterious but gorgeous guy called Hal, who volunteered in the Community Archive. He was good-looking for his age, smart and charming with silver hair—yes, real hair. Sadly, he hadn’t as yet paid me the slightest attention. But a girl can dream.)

Pearl seemed to have nothing more to complain about for the moment, and was concentrating on her meal, which was actually quite good.

Truthfully, none of us really could complain about the food or about anything else either. The Menorah Retirement Residence was the best in the city and the staff members, in true mid-Western style, were generally gracious and helpful. The suites were roomy; there was a pool, gym, an internet facility and nursing staff on call around the clock. (Although why they want to keep us alive longer is beyond me. The faster we go, the faster management can sell another suite.)

The flies in the ointment were, well, us.

When people live in close proximity, whether in a college dorm or an apartment house, they will almost certainly get on one another’s nerves. And here, they really, really did.

You’d think that by their eighth decade, people would have learned to behave like adults. Uh uh. Living at the Menorah was like being in seventh grade all over again, only with cataracts and a walker. Cliques and in-groups abounded—not to mention gossips.

There were the popular girls, the mean girls (the two categories often overlapping), the socialites, the bridge fiends—and also, I had to admit, a lot of perfectly nice people. The luckiest were those who boasted a husband still alive, preferably with all his marbles. There weren’t too many of those. Next were the ones with attentive offspring living nearby. But the most exalted status at the Menorah belonged to that rare and coveted individual, the eligible widower. Like Sam.

Where did I fit in? Well, I didn’t really. I’m not in the mean girl category; I’m pretty cheerful and optimistic by nature and enjoy laughing at nonsense rather than getting angry.

But I wasn’t one of the popular girls either, since I’ve never been rich or ever lived in the fancy part of town. My husband Manny wasn’t a highly respectable professional. He was a salesman.

I’m not attracted by Feldenkreis or Senior Yoga or Chair Zumba, and mahjong bores me stiff. I like rock music rather than golden oldies, even though I’m what you might call a golden oldie myself. My passions—baking, enjoying food and people-watching—are rather solitary occupations. The truth is that I just hadn’t found my place yet at the Menorah Residence. I know it was crazy at my age to feel like a 17-year-old who hasn’t been invited to the prom, but sometimes that’s just how I did feel.

That didn’t mean, though, that I was ready for a rocking chair. Though my kids obviously thought I was well-meaning but helpless, I was determined to prove them wrong. My motto: I may be old; I may have asthma, but I’m still alive and kicking. And if I can nosh on a few rugelach and enjoy a good laugh from time to time, I’m not complaining. Well, not much.

Bernice, who had a healthy appetite, was now eating with relish. These knishes are terrific.

Hmm. Pearl had shifted her admiring glance to her armful of bracelets. What do they know about making knishes properly?

I grinned. Insult the knishes and I’ll take it personally.

Did you make the knishes, Ellie? Bernice perked up.

I helped, I admitted. This was false modesty. Actually, I had pretty much made them all myself. I had learned to make them from my mother, who had been an immigrant from Eastern Europe. Knishes are baked, round, savory pastries filled with cheese, meat, buckwheat, or as in the ones that I had made, mashed potatoes and fried onion. They’re our version of empanadas or calzones, and they always go over big at the Menorah.

They are good, said Riva, unexpectedly. This was high praise; Riva usually had little