Death at the door, p.7
Death at the Door, page 7
The email box served as a public-facing catch-all. In addition to being the contact email on the website, it was where all emails to resigned, fired, or—apparently—deceased employees ended up.
I stared at it for a moment. I could delete it. I could click on it, and get the dentist’s name and number so I could call and explain that Cordelia was no longer a patient. But the longer I thought about it, the more an invasive thought formed. When someone died, it was usually up to the next of kin to cancel credit cards and dentist appointments. Cordelia didn’t have a next of kin, at least not that I knew of. Did that mean she still had open accounts in her name?
TrendCelerate had canceled her insurance, but what other reoccurring appointments did she have set up? She hadn’t been dead long, just a few months. If she had an annual dental cleaning, there could be other visits I needed to cancel.
“Cordelia?” I whispered. “You here?” I didn’t get a response, which wasn’t a surprise. I hadn’t felt her presence in the office today. I could wait until later, when she was around, but that created its own problems. If she got too close to the computer, hard drives, monitors, and power supplies tended to get wonky and overheat. After the emergency personnel swarming the building yesterday, the last thing I wanted was to trigger the fire alarm and summon the fire department.
“Here goes nothing.” I knew the benefits portal address, because for the first time in my adult life, I had my own medical insurance. Cordelia’s username was likewise easy to figure out. I typed in “Cordelia.Graves”, clicked the button for “Forgot password,” and followed the instructions.
As I suspected, her insurance account was suspended, but there was a complete list of doctor’s appointments past and future, prescriptions, and balances. Luckily, her balance due was zero. Then I clicked on the HSA button and blinked in surprise. I didn’t understand half of my benefits. HDHP, HMO, PPO, HSA, it was all a little confusing. Even my 401(k) didn’t make a lot of sense. I’d accepted all the defaults without asking what “vested” meant.
What I did understand was the number on the screen in front of me, and it was a lot. Like a lot, a lot. At least for someone like me who’d never had more than a few hundred dollars in their checking account between paychecks, it was a lot. Cordelia’s health savings account alone had more money than I’d ever personally seen in one place. It made me wonder what she had in her actual bank account, assuming she still had one.
Out of curiosity, I clicked on the 401(k) link. It prompted me to enter the PIN that had been texted to me. Since I didn’t have Cordelia’s cell phone, I couldn’t log in. For all I knew, the account had already been emptied.
Back on the main page, I scrolled through previous doctor’s visits. While she’d been on the TrendCelerate plan for years, she didn’t have many medical claims outside of an annual dental appointment and a few spotty checkups here and there. For the record, I wasn’t being nosy. Okay, I was being a little nosy. Feeling guilty, I logged out. I made a quick call to the dental office—my original reason for crawling down the insurance rabbit hole in the first place—and tried to put everything else out of my mind. But I couldn’t.
Why did Cordelia have so much money stashed away in an HSA? Was she saving for an emergency? Shortly after I’d moved in, she’d shown me an envelope hidden in her silverware drawer stuffed with a thousand bucks in cash. Was this another one of her hiding spots? How many other stashes did she have? And where did all the money come from?
Cordelia’s death had been ruled a suicide, but I didn’t believe it. People killed themselves for a host of reasons, but Cordelia hadn’t checked out over money troubles. If she’d had depression or suicidal ideation, there was no record of it in her medical files. And then there was the sparse prescription list in her history. She got the flu shot every year, but there were no painkillers or sleeping aids. Where had she gotten the pills she overdosed on, if not from a doctor?
“You still here?” I looked up to see Quinn standing over my desk. “It’s past five. You can go home. Everyone else left for happy hour ages ago. I’m surprised you didn’t go with them.”
“Oh?” This was the first I was hearing of an office happy hour. I was a little miffed that they hadn’t invited me. But what was Quinn’s excuse? “Why didn’t you go?” I asked.
“I told you. I don’t drink. There’s no bigger wet blanket than a sober boss at happy hour.” Quinn nodded at me. “It’s a good thing you didn’t go out with them. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Ruby. You don’t have to ruin your life with drugs or alcohol to have fun.”
The words “Yes, Mom” almost slipped out of me. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any children of her own, but in that moment, Quinn struck me as maternal. I recalled she had a niece who lived with her, the one whose pictures she had in her office.
On rare occasions, she reminded me of my own mother, who’d instilled the “drugs bad, booze bad” message in me and my sisters at an early age. It must have sunk in, because none of us were party kids.
“Yup, that’s great advice,” I said, turning off my computer and hastily gathering my personal belongings. I was glad she hadn’t caught me when I’d been poking around Cordelia’s medical history. “I was just leaving. See you tomorrow!” I grabbed my bag and hurried out of the office before she could ask what had kept me so late.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CORDELIA
After my visit to the morgue, I’d paced around our apartment, trying to figure out what I could do with the knowledge that Marty had been murdered. Should I try to find his killer by myself? Fat lot of good that would do anyone. I couldn’t capture them alone. I couldn’t turn them into the police. And I couldn’t testify against them in court.
I could enlist Ruby’s help like I did last time we’d stumbled across a death that the authorities hadn’t invested any effort into solving, but that meant putting her in danger again. I wasn’t so selfish that I was willing to put my roommate, and my only living friend in this world, in harm’s way. Been there, done that, learned my lesson.
Even if I had air in my lungs, or had lungs for that matter, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the police to do their job. Marty was a low-level drug dealer. The cops weren’t going to waste their time looking for his killer. If I had any doubts, finding a pill bottle that hadn’t been collected at the scene of a murder was proof enough that the police didn’t care.
As I weighed my options, I realized that something was wrong. Ruby should have been home from work by now. So where was she? The only clock in the apartment was on the fritz, but I could tell from the light coming in through the living room curtains that it was later than usual.
All sorts of horrible scenarios flashed through my head. Color me paranoid, but yesterday, Marty had been going about his business and today his body was lying in a drawer in the city morgue. I wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to Ruby.
Sure, I could have blinked myself back to her location wherever she was, but that took a lot of energy I didn’t want to waste. I wouldn’t be much good to Ruby if I found her in trouble, only to get whisked off to that dreamlike state where I was treated to some of the worst memories of my life playing on perpetual reruns, until I recharged. No thank you.
Instead of taking that risk, I hurried out of the apartment, tracing the steps Ruby should have taken to get home. I studied every bus that passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of her in the crush of commuters, fully absorbed in whatever podcast she was listening to with no idea that I was working myself into a panic. Just as I reached the TrendCelerate office, the front door opened, and Ruby stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“There you are,” I said. “I’ve got so much to tell you. Let’s go home.” I had no idea how I was going to explain what I’d learned at the morgue using only refrigerator magnets, but I was up to the challenge.
Ruby froze. “Cordelia?”
“I’m right here,” I replied.
I spotted a dime on the ground. I carefully palmed it so no passerby would see a coin floating in the air, brought it to Ruby’s eye level, and dropped it. The coin bounced on the sidewalk, glinting as it caught the light.
“Hey, there you are,” she said, scooping to grab the dime. She tucked it into her pocket. “Thanks. I hope you had a better day than I did,” Ruby said, chatting amicably as we headed down the sidewalk together. “It was totally dead all day. Oops! No offense! I meant totally quiet. Then after work, everyone went out for happy hour, and didn’t even invite me.”
“Sorry. They can be such jerks,” I said. I wished she could hear me comforting her. Then I realized that we were heading in the wrong direction. “Uh, Ruby? Bus station is back that way.”
She kept walking.
“Seriously, are you turned around or what?”
I couldn’t tap her on the shoulder, not unless I wanted to be out of commission for the rest of the day. I settled on tugging on the strap of her bag instead.
Ruby stopped abruptly on the busy sidewalk, causing a man behind her to curse as he dodged around her. “What?” she whispered.
“Who are you talking to?” a woman asked, drawing even with her.
Ruby looked over to see Melissa from work sidle up next to her on the sidewalk. “Oh, hey. I didn’t see you there.”
“No kidding. You looked spaced.” Melissa looked around. Her eyes were glassy. “Who were you talking to just now?” Her steps were unsteady from whatever she’d had at the bar. Even so, she was tall enough that Ruby struggled to keep up with her pace.
“No one,” Ruby said. She needed to get better at lying. In the age of Bluetooth, it was easy to pass off conversations with yourself—or your friendly neighborhood ghost—as an ordinary phone call. “You look like you had fun at happy hour.”
Melissa dismissed her with a wave. “Both Blair and Seth ‘accidentally’ left their wallets at home.” She made air quotes around “accidentally.” Despite having everything handed to him, Blair wasn’t a generous person. Seth was big into practical jokes that weren’t funny to anyone but him. I came to the same conclusion that Melissa had. They’d forgotten their wallets on purpose. “When they weren’t paying attention, I slipped out and stuck them with the tab.”
Blair wasn’t one of my favorite people. He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a stick up his ass. He wasn’t half as smart or handsome as he thought he was. He was a walking, talking embodiment of a mediocre white man. He was the kind of guy who’d never offer a seat on the bus to a pregnant woman, assuming that he ever stooped so low as to take public transportation.
There were benefits to being a ghost, such as being able to teach entitled jerks like Blair a lesson. One of these days, when he was sitting down, I’d tie his shoelaces together. Then I’d follow him home, scrub his toilet bowl out with his toothbrush, and short out his cellphone charger. But not today. Today, Ruby needed me.
“That was mean,” Ruby objected. “How are they supposed to pay?”
I worried that she’d do something stupid, such as go back and try to bail them out, even after they all went out to happy hour without inviting her.
“Not my problem,” Melissa said, shrugging. “And really not yours. Don’t worry. They’ll be fine. They’ve got their phones.”
“True,” she agreed, relaxing a little. “If Blair can Venmo me twenty-five dollars for a half-eaten sandwich, he can figure out a way to pay the bartender.”
“Good on you,” I told her. I’d once offered Blair a hundred dollars to walk into Boston Harbor and never come back. He thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. I was proud of her. I’d much rather see her taking advantage of Blair than be taken advantage of by him.
Melissa raised one eyebrow. “That must have been one hell of a sandwich.” She looked up and saw a bus pulling in to the stop halfway up the block. “Well, gotta run. See ya at work tomorrow.” There was a long line of people already waiting. She got at the back of the line and waved at us. Well, technically, she waved at Ruby, but we both waved back.
After the bus loaded and left, Ruby ducked into the now-empty bus stop to study the map mounted to one wall.
“Where’re we going?” I asked. I assumed Ruby had a destination in mind. Even if she’d gotten turned around, she had to know that this wasn’t our normal stop.
She pulled out her phone, and I took a step back before I could accidentally fry its circuits. “There,” she said, comparing her phone to the map. I couldn’t tell if she was talking to herself or to me. She traced her finger along a street, and then double-checked that we were at a bus stop that matched the number on the map.
“Okay, but why?” I asked. Of course, she didn’t answer.
Twenty-five minutes later, we found ourselves in a suburban neighborhood with tree-lined streets and older cars parked along the curb. We walked up the steps to a small row house with a blue front door. There was a narrow swath of lawn out front, littered with toys ranging from a toddler’s bouncy horse to a purple Hula-Hoop sized for an elementary school–aged kid.
Ruby knocked on the door. Inside, a dog barked, and I could hear a television playing loud cartoons. A harried-looking woman with a young child on her hip opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Hi. My name is Ruby Young. I work for TrendCelerate, downtown?” She paused. “I got your address from the Beantown Deli.”
I glanced over at Ruby. “Beantown Deli? Why were you at…?” Then I understood. This was Marty’s house. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I noticed that the woman and child both had the same warm brown curls that Marty had, but not his goofy grin. Then again, they didn’t have a lot to smile about at the moment.
“This is a spectacularly bad idea,” I grumbled.
The woman deflated. The child she was holding wiggled. She put him down, and he dashed toward the bouncy horse, climbing up with chubby little arms and legs and squealing with delight. The bouncy horse reminded me of the coin-operated one Harp had been sitting on in front of the pawnshop, only smaller and sun-bleached. The little dog we’d heard barking rushed toward the door. Before it could escape, the woman stepped out and let the door slam close behind her.
“Trenderate?” she asked.
“Close enough,” Ruby said. “It’s TrendCelerate. I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Spencer.”
“Miss,” she corrected her. She sat on the top step where she could keep one eye on Ruby and one eye on the toddler playing in the yard. “Marty’s my brother.”
“I’m sorry, I assumed…”
“Silly Ruby, don’t you see the family resemblance?” I asked her. From what she’d told me, I knew she lived with her mother and younger sister back when she was in Baltimore, before she moved to Boston, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Marty and his sister lived together, too.
She cut her off. “Happens all the time. I’m Hazel. That’s Luca, my son.”
“And you lived here with Marty?” Ruby asked.
“Marty and his daughter lived here with us,” she said in a biting tone that made me wonder if she’d been entirely happy with that arrangement. I didn’t blame her. If my brother crashed at my place for more than a few days, we would drive each other up the wall.
“I liked him.”
“He was very likable,” Hazel said, with a touch of mirth in her voice. “Everybody’s friend, that’s our Marty.”
“Uh-huh,” Ruby agreed, sitting on the step below her. “Awful shame.”
Hazel nodded. “Thank you.” She looked at Ruby, her body language asking loud and clear, “Is that all?” even though she didn’t voice it.
“You’re not gonna interrogate his grieving sister, are you?” I asked Ruby. “You shouldn’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Besides, Marty’s barely been gone a day. And Hazel looks exhausted.”
I didn’t know how I would react if something bad—really bad, final bad, not-picked-up-by-the-cops-again bad—happened to my brother. Ian was a pain in my ass. Always had been, always would be. But he was my baby brother. We were all either of us really had in this life, and now he didn’t even have that anymore. I wondered for the millionth time how he was doing. Last I’d checked on him, he was in prison in upstate New York.
I’d gone to visit him once after I’d figured out that if I thought hard enough about a person, I could pop to wherever they were. No more TSA or budget airlines with no legroom for this ghost. No siree. Who needed to fly when I could teleport anywhere in the world in an instant?
My timing could have been better, though. I popped into my brother’s cell when he was, let’s just say, otherwise occupied. I would never look at a Time magazine the same way again. On the plus side, he did look happy, so I left it at that.
“I was the one who found him,” Ruby blurted out.
“You?” Hazel studied her features.
Ruby nodded.
“Tell me. Did he look peaceful?”
Ruby put her hand on Hazel’s knee. “He did,” she said as kindly as possible. “They say overdoses are quick and painless.”
Hazel shook her head. “He didn’t overdose. He didn’t do that shit.”
“Are you sure?” Ruby asked.
I didn’t want Ruby getting involved, but if she was hell-bent on investigating, she needed all the facts. As soon as we got a minute alone, I’d figure out how to let her know that Hazel was right.
“Trust me. He learned his lesson. He promised me he’d never use again.”
“Where have I heard that before?” I muttered. Addicts rarely changed. How many times had I promised myself I’d never drink again? How many times had I meant it? But my resolve never lasted long.
“How can you be sure?” Ruby asked.
“He’s my brother. I’m sure.”
