The Best Man on the Planet, page 6
His nanny. That explained their unusual dynamic. What Casey had sensed was possessiveness on Miss Brock’s part about him was more like motherliness, though a rather cool variety.
“I hired her to help me out at the house. Without her, I’d live on takeout, surrounded by dust mites and mothballs.” He swigged down the rest of his whisky, barely shuddering. “It’s important to me that I die at home.”
Casey’s brain lagged, then doubled back. “What do you mean ‘die at home’?”
“Oh, I neglected that part. An artery in my brain is ready to hemorrhage. When it does, I’ll have another aneurysm.” He tilted his head down. “I don’t think I’ll survive this one, it’s large, in a bad spot. For reasons I won’t bore you with, clipping and coiling aren’t options. So.” He blew air out of his lips and skidded his glance around the bar. “My time could be limited. How limited, that’s a fun little mystery. Given the size of the aneurysm, maybe within the year. On the off chance a miracle occurs, I’m not giving away every cent. I’ll have enough to live comfortably into old age. But why should I leave everything in a will? Someone else in my position might travel the world, but I’ve done that. This is what I want my final days to be about.”
A foul heaviness rocked Casey’s stomach. She knew it wasn’t from the wine, even though that had the slight aftertaste of diesel fuel. Final days. All of his behavior clicked into place.
“I’m disturbing you,” he said. “If anything happens to me, you’ll be paid for six months.”
She barely registered his comment. “There must be something that can be done.”
“There isn’t,” he said, with finality. “Now you know why I don’t get to know anyone romantically, as charming as I’m sure your roommate is.” He waved his hand and leaned over the bar. “Barkeep! How about a pint of that chicory stout?” Then he smiled as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “How’s it feel to talk to a walking dead man?”
Casey couldn’t respond. It all seemed surreal, made up, like he was about to elbow her and say he was messing around.
The bartender delivered Mr. Foster’s ale and he tapped the mug’s edge against her barely-touched wine. “Bottoms up. Don’t look so distressed. I’m not going to be a loss, not like those people you’re researching. I have one thing that’s valuable, money, and I’m making a difference with it before it’s lights out.”
He took a sip of his ale, and she joined him with a sip of her own, though it was the last thing she felt like doing.
“This is why I’ve acted a bit uncivil with you. I’ve been trying to keep a distance from everyone, form no attachments, but I guess it isn’t working, because I enjoy your company.” He shifted, the side of his knee coming to rest just barely on hers. She pretended she didn’t notice. “Though I’m not sure you enjoy mine.”
She wanted to say she enjoyed his company as well, but the words were bound up in her throat, and she could only say “Sure,” sounding like she didn’t quite mean it.
He leaned in, as if sharing a secret. “Cheer up. We’re doing good things.”
Casey tossed her bag on the couch, where Astrid was sprawled out, immersed in a sitcom.
“He might die.”
“Really?” Astrid gaped at the TV. “Spoilers, Case!”
“Not that. Mr. Foster. My boss.” She shoved Astrid’s feet aside and sank onto the couch.
“Wait, what? The rich guy who won’t meet me? Is it cancer?”
Casey woozily laid her head on her roommate’s shoulder. “Brain thing. An aneurysm ready to burst. It’s unbelievable everything he’s gone through and now this. He says nothing can be done. That’s why he’s giving away everything.”
They took in the antics of the sitcom actors, trying to process the darkness that had crept into their young, death-free lives.
“That’s nuts,” Astrid said. “By the way, now probably isn’t the best time to tell you we got a rent increase.”
When Casey didn’t respond, Astrid patted her on her leg. “Sorry about the guy, Case. Are you into him?”
Casey grabbed her tote, pressing it to her chest. “Into him, Astrid? What is wrong with you? Not everything is about finding a boyfriend!”
In her bedroom, she undressed and crawled into bed despite the early hour, planning to take a short nap. Sleep promised to temporarily blot out everything he’d told her.
11
Casey was returning from lunch (Miss Brock had given up on offering to make it for her) and had dodged a stroller the size of a small nation when she saw a tall, beautiful woman, the kind you couldn’t help but notice, striding down the sidewalk.
The woman looked like an Icelandic Goddess with a high-cheekboned face radiating between sheaves of long platinum hair. Despite the still-brittle air, she had on a knee-high beige pencil skirt that showed off magazine-worthy legs. As the woman walked, Casey watched a couple of men on the sidewalk ogle her and almost start shaking like fat-bellied puppies.
The woman stopped at the mansion, eyeballed her phone, and stared up at its facade. Casey approached her curiously.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“That depends,” the woman said, turning to her with eyes as transparent blue as perfect snorkeling waters. “Who are you?”
“I work here.”
The woman extended a milky hand. “Sharon, Samuel Foster’s executive director. I also administrate the foundation. You write the reports then?”
“Yes. Casey. Nice to meet you.”
“Tragic stuff,” Sharon sighed, unconvincingly. “Is the owner of this eyesore home?” She flashed an alabaster smile at her witticism.
Casey led her up the stoop and into the foyer. “I’ll go look for him,” she said.
All the way up the staircase, her legs mutinied against the climb, mounting each step with defiant leisureliness, as if they were filled with the irrational hope that the woman would get frustrated with the delay and leave. Casey didn’t know why her body was being so uncooperative.
“Someone named Sharon is here to see you,” she told Mr. Foster after eventually reaching his study.
“Sharon? Here? Now?” He looked slapped, pale and unmoving, and he pushed up from his desk with a groan and walked stiffly out.
Casey dawdled down the hall towards her office, but as his footfalls descended the creaky stairs, she doubled back, crouched down, and crab-legged close enough that she could see the tops of him and the woman through the banisters. She watched as Sharon brushed a flap of hair from Mr. Foster’s forehead in a way that conveyed she was more than a business associate. A pang of jealousy sprang up harshly in Casey’s chest, taking her by surprise to the point where she wobbled on her heels.
“You left me no choice, Sam,” Casey thought Sharon said. “You refuse…” She couldn’t make out the rest of it.
Mr. Foster looked as if he was trying to corral Sharon towards the front door, but she wrested away from him.
“We must talk about what’s happening,” she said. “You can’t keep ignoring me. The way you’re acting…” Her words garbled. “I care about you and we need to…”
Mr. Foster forcefully grabbed Sharon’s arm, then turned as if he might glance up to Casey’s hiding spot. She scampered backwards. Soon, she heard a door close.
Returning to her desk, she left the door open in case she could pick up on anything else, but her office was so far from the staircase she doubted it would happen. She tried to concentrate on her research, but her mind kept worming its way downstairs. She gave up working, or at least working on what she was getting paid to work on.
Not wanting to risk researching him on the computer he’d bought for her, she retrieved her laptop from her tote bag, and pulled up a webpage she’d discovered in her earlier cyber sleuthing.
The site was called Smart Set. The picture, dated six years ago, showed Mr. Foster at the Morgan Library and Museum’s Annual Spring Luncheon. He was listing towards a tall, dazzling blonde, his fingers peeking round her waist. The caption read: “Samuel Foster and Sharon Luna enjoy the afternoon.”
Obviously the woman in the picture was the same one as downstairs. The pair’s body language in the photo strongly hinted they might have been a couple at the time.
Sharon Luna, poured into a white pantsuit with gold trim, was not what Casey expected a man who’d claimed no interest in female beauty would have gone for. But perhaps it was Sharon Luna who’d soured him on beauty if it wasn’t accompanied by good character.
Casey was mesmerized by this version of Mr. Foster, one in a silver sateen suit and red tie, with neatly-coiffed hair. A silver suit! She couldn’t imagine him ever having such a sense of sartorial savior faire.
But something about his expression in the photo mystified her, as it had the first time she’d seen it. This time, she hit the zoom button. His bottom lip didn’t have the diagonal slant she’d become accustomed to. He must have mild palsy left over from his stroke two years ago.
Then it hit her what she’d found so different about him in these old photos but hadn’t been able to pinpoint. It was in his eyes. They glittered with an ice-cold, appraising superiority. Despite his occasional gruffness, she had never seen this brand of arrogance in him. His health situation must have changed him, snuffed the arrogance out of him, and his self-reckoning about the way he’d been living his life had altered his face in a subtle but profound way.
A search on Sharon Luna brought up a business profile. Former job titles included: Director Investment Banking and Capital Markets; Executive Principal and Portfolio Manager; Executive Director Global Family Offices. There were degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. There was nothing about the Foster family or the Remembrance Foundation.
A rapping at the door startled her. She cagily closed her laptop and turned her attention to her work computer as Mr. Foster entered.
“So you met Sharon.”
“Hmm?” Casey hoped her expression was confused, as if she barely remembered letting the woman inside.
“She oversees the estate and the foundation, but lives in Geneva now. I wasn’t expecting her.”
“Ah.” Casey put on a face as if engrossed in an article, though she couldn’t read what was before her. “Nice to meet someone from the foundation.”
He stood silent for a few moments. “Is something wrong?”
“Just busy.”
“Understood. I’ll leave you to your work.”
“Oh, one thing. I’m fighting a rent increase I think is illegal. If you don’t mind, I’ll be late tomorrow so I can file papers in housing court.”
“Rent increase?”
“You know, that thing those of us who aren’t millionaires pay.” She grinned, but there was a tinny edge to her voice.
“Why bother with all that? I’ll give you a raise.”
She made direct eye contact. “Not everything is about money, Mr. Foster. Sometimes it’s about trying to make a wrong situation right.”
His neck jerked back slightly, as if she had thrown something at him. “I’m aware of that,” he said calmly, but there was a flare in his dark eyes. “I only thought I’d make the offer.”
“I shouldn’t have put it that way,” she said, unable to completely curb her irked tone. “But you hired me for ten grand a month and that’s what you’ll pay me.”
“Then I expect you’ll be late tomorrow.” He did a half-bow and left.
Casey sat feeling idiotic. She should have graciously accepted his offer. What a load of drama this job had come with so far. She looked back on her former life of clickbait and poverty with some nostalgia—at least that had been predictable.
As she tried to concentrate on the next victim’s obituary, her thoughts strayed again to Sharon intimately brushing Mr. Foster’s hair from his forehead.
12
The Third Victim
Hurricane Eliza was coming, predicted to be one of the biggest hurricanes to ever hit the northeast. The Long Island Sound was less than a mile away from Sea View Health Care in Lock Haven, Connecticut, but the government didn’t mandate that its elderly residents be evacuated. The risk of transporting delicate patients in a storm was worse than the risk of them riding out the storm, said officials. The storm was being downgraded to moderate, said officials.
The officials were wrong. What the officials didn’t say was that a mandatory evacuation for the thousands of nursing home residents in the storm’s path would cost tens of millions the state didn’t have.
At Sea View, the staff was down to less than half the normal amount. There were nine aides, a janitor, two cooks, and a supervisor. There were fifty-three elderly residents, many disabled or with dementia, all needing round the clock care.
As the storm raged in, bringing an unexpected ten-foot surge, the Long Island Sound slopped around the hallways and skulked into the patients’ rooms. The water was dark and smelled foul, with shiny flashes of fishes. The janitor waded through the hallways with an overtaxed mop until its spongy tentacles were submerged and the water was to his knees.
Workers began to abandon their posts, and by nine p.m., there were only three employees left— Maria Torres, who was an aide, and her supervisor, and the janitor. Maria and the supervisor gave the residents their schedule of pills, changed their diapers and, when the cooks bolted, prepared meals and tried to feed the patients, many of which couldn’t feed themselves. They called 911 several times, but only got through once. Help was coming, they were told. But help wasn’t coming, at least not soon enough.
Maria did not regret her decision to stay with the residents, some of whom she’d grown fond of. But she was worried about her six-month-old daughter, Bella, who was with a babysitter. She wasn’t able to get through on the phone, and was met with constant busy signals. Since her house was several miles from the Sound, she prayed they were all right.
At midnight, the generator flooded and the center was plunged into darkness. There was no backup generator. Some of the residents began to holler and Maria, wielding a flashlight, went to them one by one. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll all be fine,” she told them, holding their hands, making sure they got water, giving them their pills.
The electric bariatric lift used to hoist the heavy patients no longer worked, so Maria, who was only five-five and weighed less than one hundred twenty pounds, enlisted the janitor to help manually turn the residents so diapers could be changed.
Maria prayed by them. A few residents who hadn’t spoken coherently in years began to pray too. It was seventy-two hours of cold, wet, and dark chaos before their prayers were answered. Members of the National Guard came in with big wading boots and yellow raft boats.
Maria and her two colleagues were hailed as heroes and awarded Medals of Honor by the mayor. It was only by their courageous work, and a lot of luck, that none of the residents died. Nevertheless, the state touted its non-plan as a lifesaving plan. An investigation was opened and, so far as Casey could tell, went nowhere.
Six months after the storm, Maria was strangled to death in her bed. News reports showed her former boyfriend had been questioned and released. Casey also found a domestic violence arrest on the man, but the report did not name the victim.
In Maria’s sister’s living room in Milford, not far from the nursing home, which had taken a year to reopen, a little girl in a white jumper and red tutu flung herself at Casey’s knees.
“I found a puppy, I found a puppy, I found a puppy in the gaaaarden.” It came out a breathless singsong.
Maria’s sister, Magdalene, pulled the girl back and tried to force her squirming body onto her lap. “Our neighbor’s puppy got loose last week,” she translated over the toddler’s thicket of curls. “Bella can’t stop talking about it.”
“Oh, did you see your neighbor’s puppy?” Casey asked her.
“Ahhhh… The puppy came to my house. She’s my puppy.” The girl shoved her fist in her mouth and eyed Magdalene slyly.
“No, not your puppy. Matias! Come get your cousin! I’m trying to have a conversation.”
A boy of about eight clomped into the living room.
“Take her. Give her some crackers.”
“Nooooo,” Bella wailed, looking at Casey for help.
Magdalene wrangled Bella and the boy out of the room, and Casey could hear their chattering in the kitchen. Magdalene returned to her seat on the couch.
“She’s too young to remember her,” she said, tearing up again. “She calls me mommy, even though I tell her ‘Maria is your mommy and she’s in heaven.’ So I let her call me that. She has two mommies, I guess.”
“I’m so sorry. We’ll do everything we can for her.”
“So you say… this charity will help her?”
“Yes, a foundation for the loved ones of crime victims. It will pay for her care and education until she’s eighteen. The people who run the foundation will contact you.”
“How much money?” Magdalene’s eyes were wide open.
“It should be enough for her care. I don’t determine how much.”
The woman was dumbfounded, and then clasped her hands together. “This is God’s work. Maria was so good. Always helping everyone, and a single mother. It’s the man she was dating who killed her. Bella was in her crib. What kind of sick bastard does that? Now he’s gone, ran off. The police say they don’t have enough evidence. He used to hit her! She got rid of him and he was angry about it. Son of a bitch.” She crossed herself. “Forgive my language.”
“Your sister is a hero,” Casey said, careful to use the present tense. “Thank you for telling me so much about her and what happened. Is there anything she was passionate about, a hobby or cause? We’d like to make a donation in her honor.”
Bella came tearing back into the room, chucked a monkey toy on the thick carpet, and pitched onto her stomach.
“I want robots!” she squealed.
“What was your mommy passionate about besides you, sweet cakes?” Magdalene asked the girl, who laughed as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard and rolled around. “Well, there’s the widow who lives next door to Maria’s old house. She’s almost blind. Ninety years old. Bless her. Maria helped her out a lot. I go over to check on her now. She doesn’t have any family. Still gets around pretty good, but I don’t know for how long.”
