Murder Is Uncooperative

Murder Is Uncooperative

Merrilee Robson

Copyright © 2016 Merrilee Robson
Author photo © Amber Bishop Photography
Cover image © Shutterstock

ISBN: 978-1-68201-031-0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First edition: September 2016

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by
North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.
P.O. Box 451
St. Cloud, MN 56302

www.northstarpress.com
www.merrileerobson.com

For Stuart

Finding an apartment can be murder.

I'd looked at three that day.

The first had just been rented. The ad for the second had described it as having “spacious rooms.” I thought it might work for my father's wheelchair. What the ad failed to mention was that those rooms could only be reached by climbing three flights of stairs.

The third was a basement suite, chilly even on a warm September morning, with a smell of mold I was sure was not going to go away.

Later, disappointed, I trudged slowly up the stairs of our rented townhouse. I could hear my son crying before I even opened the door.

My father was lying on the floor, blood from his head spattering the black and white tiles.

Ben threw himself at me, and I hugged his sturdy little-boy body as I sank to my knees next to my father.

“Grandpa fell,” Ben choked out between sobs. “And his head is all bloody, and he won't talk to me.”

Dad's face was pale and his white hair was streaked with blood. I desperately touched my father's neck, looking for a pulse.

I'd taken some first aid training, but I wasn't really sure if I could detect a pulse. My own heart was thudding too loudly.

I was relieved to see Dad open his eyes and move his legs.

“Becky!” he said, making a move to get up. “Thank goodness you're here. Ben . . .”

"Dad, don't move,” I said. “We need to get an ambulance.” I grabbed a wad of tissues from my purse and pressed them gently to where the blood was flowing from the wound on my father's head.

“Grandpa, are you better now?” my son asked. “Does your head hurt?” Ben passed me the portable phone he'd been clutching, and I was surprised to find myself talking to an emergency dispatcher.

“The ambulance should be right there,” the woman told me. “Is your father still unconscious? The little boy said he was bleeding.”

I could hear sirens now. I remembered to thank the dispatcher as the ambulance pulled up in front of the townhouse and two paramedics joined us in the tiny hall.

They knelt beside my father, carefully checking for broken bones. One of them removed the wad of bloody tissues.

“Nasty gash,” he said. “We'll need to take him to the hospital to get that looked at.” He eased Dad onto a gurney, then turned to look at Ben. “You did a fine job calling us.”

Ben had been watching the action with fascination. The attention from the paramedic made him suddenly shy, and he grabbed my leg and looked up at me.

“I called 911,” he said, “and the lady talked to me. She said I should open the door when the ambleeanse came. I know you said not to let strangers in the house, Mommy. But Grandpa still wasn't awake, and the 911 lady said it would be okay. I was glad you came home, Mommy.” Ben's voice started to tremble. I could see tears gathering in his brown eyes.

“We would have been able to trace the call anyway,” the paramedic said, “but the dispatcher said he told us his name and address and everything. He was crying, but he did great for such a little kid.”

"We learned at pre-school,” Ben said proudly. “And Mommy and Grandpa and I practiced with my toy phone. Because my daddy doesn't live with us anymore and sometimes Grandpa and I are all by ourselves.”

“You did good, buddy,” the paramedic told him. As he climbed into the driver's seat he said, “We'll be taking him to VGH Emergency,” referring to the closest hospital. “Drive carefully if you want to come and meet him there. You seem a little shook up.”

I wanted to head right out. But I knew that visits to emergency rooms usually involved long waits. I really didn't want Ben to spend hours in a chaotic waiting room, exposed to all sorts of germs and seeing the evening's casualties as they were brought in.

But I needed to be with my father too.

Well, Ben did have two parents. I grabbed the portable phone to call my ex-husband.

Of course I got Dave's voicemail.

Hearing the voice of the man I once loved still gave me a shock. His message sounded so warm and cheerful too.

“Dave, it's Rebecca. I've got a bit of an emergency here. We're all okay but Dad had a fall and needs to go to the hospital. I was wondering if you could take Ben for a while, maybe overnight. I don't know how long it will take for Dad to get checked out. I don't want Ben up till all hours while we wait around.

“Um . . . I guess we'll head over to the hospital now. I don't think I can have my cell phone on in there but we'll be at VGH emergency. I'll check messages when I can. Talk to you later.”

Going anywhere with a four-year-old was never easy. I gathered up the bag I kept for any excursions with Ben. It held a
warm hoodie, a complete change of clothes, wet wipes, a basic first-aid kit, a few storybooks and toys, a small pillow and blanket. I added some juice boxes, a banana and raisins, grabbing the keys to Dad's blue Toyota from the bowl on the kitchen counter.

I tried to keep myself calm and to sound cheerful as I strapped Ben into his car seat. “Let's go see how Grandpa is doing.”

The emergency room reception was packed with people. Several generations of an Indo-Canadian family conversed quietly together. The women's clothes made bright splashes of pinks and greens in the otherwise drab waiting room but the worried looks on their faces told a more somber story. A young man in a soccer uniform sat with his leg elevated on one of the chairs, with an ice pack on his knee. A pregnant woman walked up and down, an angry, pained look on her face. A man walked beside her, trying to talk to her, but she wasn't answering him.

I was told my father was being X-rayed. The receptionist directed us to some uncomfortable chairs with stiff plastic seats. An unpleasant smell of disinfectant tried unsuccessfully to cover up something nastier.

“Where's Grandpa?” Ben asked. “I thought we were coming here to see him.”

“The doctor is checking him. We'll see him when they've finished.”

“Mommy, will Grandpa be okay? His face looked funny when he fell. I was scared.”

Well, that was the question, wasn't it? I assumed my dad's arthritic legs had given way on the stairs. His joints were damaged and he was often in a lot of pain. While he could sometimes walk, he was finding it harder and harder to get around. The wheelchair he used to resort to only on really bad days was being used more
and more often. But our townhouse had lots of stairs. That's why we needed to find a new place to live.

But how badly had he hurt himself? There was definitely a head injury, but what if he'd broken something? Or what if he hadn't just tripped and fallen? What if he'd had a stroke? or blacked out for some reason?

My father was still relatively young and reasonably fit despite his debilitating disease. But there were any number of things that could go wrong. He wasn't ready to move into a care facility but he needed someplace where he could get around without difficulty. I worried about him being alone when I was out. He didn't know many of the neighbors in the townhouse project. We really needed to find someplace else to live.

By the time we saw my father, he'd been X-rayed, scanned, and given almost a dozen stitches. An intravenous tube ran into his arm and a thick bandage covered the wound on his head. But he seemed much better, alert and able to talk with us.

I lifted Ben up onto the hospital bed, where he snuggled up next to his grandfather, patting his face and giving him a soft kiss on the top of his thick bandage. My father wrapped his arm around my little boy and kissed him back.

“The scan didn't show any serious damage,” the emergency doctor told me, “but he's got a nasty cut on his head. We couldn't identify any fractures but there are a number of contusions that will likely cause him some pain.”

The doctor frowned at the chart in his hand. “I gather he fell down some stairs,” he said. “I'm very surprised that a man in his condition is living in a home with stairs.”

Tell me about it, I almost snapped. While Dad had his IV fluids and I'd been plying Ben with regular snacks, I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast.

"Yes, I was just looking for another apartment today,” I replied.

“That's good,” the doctor said. “We'll keep him here overnight anyway, but I wouldn't feel comfortable sending him home to a place with stairs. It really isn't safe.”

We stayed with my father in his curtained cubicle in the emergency ward, talking quietly until Ben and I had reassured ourselves he was okay. Ben was snuggled up beside his grandfather, and his breathing was starting to become slow and regular. I could tell Dad needed to rest too.

So when the nurse came into Dad's cubicle to examine him again, I got up to go. I leaned over to kiss him goodbye and to pick up my son.

“I should get Ben home,” I said. “And you look like you could use some beauty sleep yourself. We'll come back again tomorrow.”

“You get some rest too, Becky. You look tuckered out. Oh, and I never got a chance to ask you about the apartments you looked at. Were they suitable?”

“Not really,” I told him. “But I'll look again tomorrow. I left a message at that housing co-op I applied to when I broke up with Dave. I think they have wheelchair-accessible apartments and they're supposed to be affordable too. It looks nice from the outside.”

“Hmmm,” my father said. “Nice place with really low rent? It sounds too good to be true. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with that place?”

“I think they get government funding to help keep the rents low. But they have a long waiting list.”

My father looked a little sad. “You know your mother and I were really looking forward to retiring early, but now I wish
we hadn't. We thought it'd be our only opportunity to travel before my old legs got too bad to move around. But if we hadn't taken early retirement, I probably would've had more money to help out.

I touched his hand. “Dad, at least you had a bit of time to enjoy retirement with Mom before she died. Don't worry. We'll be fine.”

Dad's pension was lower than it would have been if he hadn't retired early. And my income had taken a hit lately, too. I was sure we'd be fine, as I told him, but finding an affordable home would really help.

Before leaving the hospital, I checked the waiting room to see if my ex-husband had managed to get there. No sign of him, and he hadn't answered my message either of the times I had stepped out of the hospital waiting room to check my voicemail.

I carried Ben to the car and strapped him into his seat in the back. Then I turned my cell on and called Dave's number again. I got his voicemail.

“Hi, Dave. They're keeping Dad in the hospital overnight and maybe a bit longer, but he seems to be okay. I'm taking Ben home. Talk to you later.”

We'd been in the hospital for hours but it wasn't that late. The days were growing shorter, but this early in September there was still light as we left the hospital emergency room. The traffic was fairly heavy with people heading into downtown Vancouver for a Friday evening.

How long had it been since I'd had an evening out, I wondered. Certainly not since the divorce, and probably not for a while before Dave and I split up.

I carried my sleeping son to the rented townhouse and managed to get the front door open without waking him.

My father's blood still stained the black and white tiles in the front hall. I planned to clean that up as soon as I got Ben to bed. I carried him up the steep, narrow stairs to the top floor, where he and I shared the small bedroom.