Authors: Gin Jones
Betty glanced at the puzzle lady in the corner of the room. "Daisy has an apartment at Wharton Meadows. Since her stroke, she's needed a bit more supervision than they can provide, so she's staying here for her rehab. She can't wait to go back there."
Josie nodded. "She's afraid they won't let her return if she's gone too long. All that anxiety isn't good for her, but I suppose the fear is motivating her to do all her rehab exercises."
"They must be raking in a fortune at Wharton Meadows. I used to do some bookkeeping for similar facilities, and the profit margin is substantial if they can keep the spaces filled." Betty glanced at the puzzle lady again. "From what Daisy has said, it's practically standing room only for their various activities, there's a two-year waiting list for apartments, and it can take almost that long to find a parking spot to visit anyone there. They could probably double their profit if they could expand across the street."
"Now I'm even more sure it was murder," Josie said. "That Wes Quattrone guy is a jerk. I don't know why Annie puts up with him. He may be the face of the operation, doing all the networking and schmoozing, but she's the brains. She makes everything happen."
"She's definitely got a brilliant mind for numbers," Betty said. "I took some continuing education classes with her, and she could always explain the difficult concepts when the instructor left me confused."
"Maybe I should have a chat with Wes Quattrone." Helen tucked away her yarn and hook. "Annie offered to give me a tour of Wharton Meadows. I'm sure I can finagle an introduction to her husband while I'm there."
"So you
do
think it was murder," Josie said triumphantly.
"I'm just considering all the possibilities," Helen said. "And trying to set your minds at ease. Your new friend Daisy isn't the only one who should avoid unnecessary stress."
* * *
Helen peered out the front door of the nursing home. The skies were even darker than when Helen had left home this morning. What the forecast had predicted would be nothing more than the typical April showers was turning into a monsoon. Her light windbreaker was no match for the current downpour. She knew Jack had an umbrella in the car and would be perfectly willing—eager, even—to escort her under its protection, but she hated all the fuss. Perhaps if she stalled a few minutes before she went outside, there'd be a break in the rain. She could use the time to call Annie and arrange her tour.
Helen looked up the number for Wharton Meadows and placed the call to arrange for a tour. She'd no sooner hung up than Jack came running up the stairs with the huge, sturdy umbrella he kept packed in the trunk along with the other supplies he considered absolutely necessary to any self-respecting professional driver.
Once she was settled in the passenger seat, Jack asked, "Where to?"
"Wharton Meadows," Helen said. "I'm taking a tour."
Jack put the car in gear. "You aren't planning to move there, are you?"
"Absolutely not." She brushed a few stray drops of water off her jacket. "And if my nieces start asking me about my interest in assisted-living facilities, I'm going to know who ratted me out."
"You know I'd never do that," Jack said with only a tiny note of reproach in his voice. "Besides, if you were seriously thinking about moving there, I wouldn't enlist your nieces to help encourage you. I'd do everything I could to talk you out of it."
She could always count on Jack to know the inside scoop on local people and places. "It seemed like a nice enough place when I had lunch there yesterday."
"It's not a bad place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." He pulled out of the nursing home's driveway. "There are too many people crammed into too little space. You'd never have the peace and quiet you like."
"Is that all?"
Jack came to a stop at a light. "I can't really explain it, but I've just got a bad feeling about the place. It doesn't make any sense because it's been a great addition to Wharton. The residents are happy and reasonably healthy for their ages, and the owners do hire a lot of local people, so it's good for the economy. They've even got a good record with all the oversight boards. It's getting a little crowded, and I've heard some grumblings about the waiting lists for some of the facilities, but that could just mean it's such a great place that everyone wants to live there."
"So, what's the problem?"
Jack pulled up next to the entrance to Wharton Meadows just beyond the
Dear Crossing
sign. "It's the owner. Wes Quattrone. I don't trust him. At first, I thought it was because he was an outsider, but that's not it. His wife comes from California too, and she fits in great, a definite asset to the entire community, not just to Wharton Meadows. I like her just fine. Everyone does. But not him. He's a jerk and doesn't care about the town or the people. He hides it pretty well most of the time, but I bet he's got some real skeletons in his closet."
The tour took about half an hour under the guidance of a perky woman in her fifties. The facilities were impressive but definitely straining at the seams from over-enrollment. Not that the tour guide pointed out that fact, and Helen might not have noticed if she hadn't already heard about the expansion plans. She'd also noticed some signs of wear and tear inside the buildings, which surprised her a little since the landscaping was maintained with such perfection. Perhaps it was just a matter of timing, and she'd just happened to be here when the grounds had undergone their spring cleanup. In another few weeks, the grass would be less precisely cut, and weeds would have sprouted in the flowerbeds.
According to Helen's guide, Wes Quattrone was anxious to meet Wharton's most famous retiree, so the last stop on the tour was his office suite that took up most of the top floor of the administrative building. In the reception area, his assistant, a mousy-looking middle-aged woman, was dwarfed by an extra-large executive's desk chair and an equally oversized desk cluttered with electronics and framed pictures of happy residents.
The assistant immediately jumped to her feet and raced around to the front of the desk, disproving Helen's initial impression that the woman was small and unremarkable. She was actually quite tall and potentially quite impressive looking, but her hunched shoulders and timid nervous manner suggested that she didn't see herself as big and powerful. "You must be Helen Binney."
Helen nodded.
"He's expecting you," the assistant said as she opened the door.
Quattrone was seated behind his desk—it was even larger than the assistant's but free of any visible electronics, and he dominated his surroundings instead of being dwarfed by them—talking into his Bluetooth headset. He waved to acknowledge Helen and gestured for her to come inside. He held up one finger to indicate he'd only be tied up for another minute.
The office was easily four times the size of the substantial waiting area, unaffected by the overcrowding that the residents experienced. The desk and chair were dark and unremarkable other than their size, revealing nothing interesting about their occupant. The decor was functional and clutter-free but could have been found in any corporate executive office. The only impressive architectural feature was an almost unbroken expanse of windows that wrapped around the corner of the building, providing an excellent view of the entrance to Wharton Meadows. Helen found it interesting that Quattrone had sited his office where he could look outside the community rather than at the buildings and people he was responsible for.
The windows also gave Helen a new perspective on the community garden. From the second-floor vantage point, she could see how the rainwater had accumulated in the low spots, creating little canals in the pathways between the slightly raised beds. The next time she could visit her plot without sinking to her knees in mud, she'd probably find another pea plant missing, washed away in the floods.
Helen turned her attention from the garden to the display in front of the windows. A banquet table held an architect's model of what an expansion to Wharton Meadows would look like. Helen wandered over to take a closer look at it while Quattrone was occupied with his call. She had a feeling he'd be tied up for more than a minute.
The model consisted of two three-story buildings in the same unremarkable style as the ones in the existing property, plus a much larger structure that, if the expansion happened, would be Wharton's first ever multilevel parking facility. A cutaway in the model of the residential buildings showed that there were apartments on the upper floors and medical offices on the ground floor.
How on earth would they fit all of those structures on the garden's land which couldn't be more than two acres? Helen looked more closely at the property lines the architect had drawn on the plywood base. They made it clear that the proposal wasn't just for the garden land but also the farmhouse parcel on the corner. The architect had noted that the project could be divided at the property line so as to allow the work to be done in stages if and when each parcel became available for purchase.
Quattrone ended his call and strolled over to the mock-up. He was of average height and weight but seemed somehow wider than most people. His shoulders appeared unnaturally broad, which could have been due to the tailoring of his conservative navy suit, but she didn't think that completely explained his appearance since his face was also broad. His medium-brown hair had artificial blond highlights. It was about an inch or two too long for his otherwise conservative appearance, which she suspected was an intentional choice, adding just a touch of "bad boy" to his image.
"It's great to meet you," he said, holding out his hand. "What do you think?"
Helen shook the hand that was almost too wide for her to grip. "I think it's ambitious."
"Can't get anything done without a little bit of ambition," he said. "You, of all people, should know that. You wouldn't have ended up in the Governor's Mansion without a good deal of ambition."
"I left that to my husband. He had enough for both of us."
"I don't believe that." Quattrone winked at her. "I know a mover and shaker when I see one."
"You should get your eyes checked then."
"Oh no," he said with a laugh. "You're not fooling me."
He was as blind as Detective Peterson, Helen thought, except that he gave her more credit than she deserved instead of less. Still, there was no point in antagonizing him. Not until she'd gotten what she needed, which was to find out how desperate he was to purchase the garden land.
"Let's say you're right." She waved her hand at the architect's model. "Is this what I should be moving and shaking?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to say we'd like an earthquake," he said, "but yes, this is the future of Wharton Meadows. There's so much more I could offer our residents if we had just a little more space. Most of the specialized services our guests could use, especially for advanced dementia patients, are only available in residential facilities closer to Boston, too far for their families to visit them. If I could expand across the street, everyone would benefit. I've considered building in a number of locations within about a five-mile radius where I could run a shuttle between the sites, but every time I found an interesting parcel of land, a particularly persistent local developer snapped it out from under my nose."
"Sheryl Toth?"
"That's her," Quattrone said. "I don't know how she did it, but she always managed to get whatever she wanted, and she wanted pretty much every bit of undeveloped land in Wharton."
"No one is that good a land speculator," Helen said. "Or that lucky."
"Exactly my thought," Quattrone said. "But you know how it is in small towns. If you weren't born and raised here, no one wants to do business with you. Unless you're willing to pay them off, of course, but that's not my style."
Actually, Helen thought that seemed like exactly his style. It certainly wasn't his blustery personality that had made him successful.
He continued. "I thought my actions—and the cash that I've brought into the community by hiring locals—would speak louder than words, but it's like everyone here is deaf. I bought Wharton Meadows five years ago, and I've worked hard to make it successful, but the Chamber of Commerce still can't spell my name right in their newsletters."
"Five years isn't all that long."
"It's enough to see how this town works and whose palm needs to be greased," Quattrone said. "Unfortunately, that didn't get me the same inside information that Sheryl had. She had the local real estate brokers in her pocket. They told her about available land before it was officially placed on the market. From what I've been told, the land for Wharton Meadows was the only parcel she'd ever coveted but failed to get. And that was just because it was never listed for sale. The property owner had run up some debt, and a venture capitalist bought up the mortgage. A few months later, he convinced the owner to do a deed in lieu of foreclosure. Apparently they sweetened the deal by promising to name the administrative building after him."
And look how well that had turned out, Helen thought. She vaguely recalled seeing a name over the front door as she entered, but no one—not even Quattrone or the perky tour guide—called it anything other than "the administrative building."
Quattrone didn't seem to notice Helen's lack of response. He just kept talking. "When I heard about the town inheriting the garden land, I knew I finally had an even playing field. Sheryl didn't have an unfair advantage this time."
"I would have thought there'd be more opportunity for her to do backroom deals in a political setting rather than less."
"Normally, there would be, but I have some solid incentives to offer the selectmen if they choose my project. Towns can take factors other than the best price into consideration when determining whether to sell their land. Having a state-of-the-art memory loss facility would be great for the town. Besides, I happen to know that one of the selectmen needs advanced dementia services for a family member, and another one has been encouraging more commercial use in the town. I can pay more for the land than any residential contractor and still turn a profit. Unfortunately, there's an even bigger challenge ahead of me now. It's one that you might be able to help with."