CHAPTER FIVE
Marcus had expected “lavish” to mean chandeliers and piano music piped through every hallway.
Cedars Retirement Home offered both, plus a kind of hushed, scented calm that made him acutely aware of every scuff on his shoes and every crease in his jacket.
The place felt curated — more private club than care facility, all brushed brass and tasteful watercolors of imaginary coastlines.
The night receptionist was a young man with an earnest moustache and the expression of someone who had never, not once, defied a rule. When Marcus flashed his badge, the moustache bristled.
“Ms. Herman is on duty. But she’s finishing her rounds. I can tell her you’re—”
A voice floated across the lobby — warm, Germanic vowels, lightly amused.
“—Paul, it is fine. FBI men do not need to make appointments.”
Ulrike Herman swept into view like someone stepping out of a film frame. Tall, pale-blonde hair in a severe coil, scrubs under a slate-grey cardigan, the kind of posture that suggested she had stared down surgeons and out-stubborned them. She held a tablet to her chest like a shield.
Her eyes flicked over the badge, then over Marcus. Something eased in her shoulders.
“Agent Reid. You called earlier.”
“Thanks for seeing me at this hour.” He offered a hand. She took it — firm grip, cool fingers, a quick assessing glance that made him feel slightly more rumpled than he was.
“Come,” she said, tilting her head toward the hallway. “The office is this way. You prefer coffee? Tea? Something stronger?” A faint lift of an eyebrow.
“Coffee’s fine,” Marcus said. “Thank you.”
Her office was small but cozy — too many plants, a lamp that cast amber circles on the walls, two deep chairs facing each other like sparring partners. Through a half-open door, Marcus could see what looked like a tiny kitchenette.
She poured him coffee with a competence that suggested she ran the place more than the director did. When she sat, she folded one leg over the other and arranged her cardigan neatly, as if preparing for an interview she fully intended to control.
“So.” Ulrike clasped her hands. “You come at this hour about Mr. Hayes. I knew him well.”
“Knew?”
She frowned. “I’m sorry. It’s some mistake on my part perhaps. I thought you were aware. Mr. Hayes died this evening.”
Her face softened immediately — not grief exactly, but the worn tenderness of someone who’d shepherded many people through final hours. “He passed quietly. Peacefully. The attending doctor says it was natural causes. And his daughter did not come.”
Marcus watched her. “You called her?”
“Many times. Late afternoon, again early evening. She was not… enthusiastic.” A tight smile. “I did not have much hope she would come, but I had to try.”
Marcus leant across and showed her the last number on Jennifer Hayes’s phone. She leaned toward him and he felt a strange warmth, as if she was too close.
“Yes, that is my cell. I had tried many times before from the landline so this was a… a last-stitch attempt?”
“Last-ditch.”
“Ditch? Really?”
Marcus shrugged. “And you say you knew Mr. Hayes well.”
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. “I was for a long while his ‘key carer,’ as administration calls it. I knew his rhythms. His bad days, his worse days. His sweet ones.” A pause. “He was not always easy. Dementia is like the tide — sometimes it leaves treasures on the shore, sometimes wreckage.”
“Did he have any altercations with Jennifer tonight?”
Ulrike gave a dry huff. “Altercations require two people to make contact. She has not touched her father, in any sense, for years.”
Marcus leaned forward. “They didn’t get on.”
“Oh, that is diplomatic. No — they were estranged. Bitterly so. And before you ask, I do not know why.” She ticked points on her fingers.
“Maybe he treated her mother badly. Maybe he treated her badly. Maybe breakfast cereal preferences tore the family apart. Who knows? People’s private sorrows do not always have narrators. ”
“But you think it was serious,” Marcus said.
“I think,” Ulrike said slowly, “that for a daughter to refuse her father’s death-bed — even when I told her he had spoken her name — it must be something large. Something with a great weight. I believe Miss Hayes will regret it, though.”
Marcus took a breath. There was no gentle way to say it. “Ms. Herman… Jennifer Hayes is dead, too.”
For a moment, everything in the room froze — even the plants seemed to hold their breath.
Ulrike’s eyes widened. “Dead? When?”
“About four or five hours ago. Homicide.”
She closed her eyes as if absorbing a blow. When she opened them, something fierce sat behind the shock. “She did not deserve that. But whatever her father did, he also did not deserve to die believing she would not come.”
“Perhaps he died in hope,” Marcus said quietly. “We can’t know, can we?”
Ulrike exhaled hard, bracing an elbow on the arm of her chair. “My God. Poor woman. Poor man.”
She sat like that for a moment, then straightened, regaining her composure with a small shake of her head.
“Your message referred to Leo’s visitors, I believe,” she said. “He had only one. His neighbor Peggy.”
“Like an old neighbor?”
She smiled. “She is certainly old, but… she has the suite of rooms next door to Mr. Hayes.
They were…" A smile warmed her whole face. "Sweethearts. Or as close as two people with that much history and that much frailty can be. They would sit every morning together in the garden. She calmed him. Even when the dementia worsened, he recognized her. Her name, not his daughter’s.”
“Maybe I could come back tomorrow and speak to her? You see, I’ll be honest with you, there are… elements of Miss Hayes’s murder that suggest it had something to her relationship with her father. If I can find out what caused the estrangement…”
He wondered why he was being so frank. Scrap that, Marcus knew damn well why he was being so frank. And it was bordering on unprofessional.
Nevertheless, Ulrike rose from her seat with a smile. “Come. We can see her now.”
Marcus rose. “Are you sure? It’s very late.”
A small, warm smile tugged at the corner of her mouth — the first sign of softness not worn by grief or professionalism.
“Agent Reid, in a place like this, late is relative. And besides—” She gave him a slow, appraising once-over, eyes bright with humour.
“For you, I think Peggy will be pleased to talk.”
He cleared his throat — unnecessary, but instinctive.
“Well,” he said lightly, “lead the way.”
Ulrike held the door for him.
*
Ulrike led Marcus down a quieter corridor — carpet thick enough to muffle footsteps, sconces glowing with that expensive, amber light places like this used to reassure the wealthy that age would not be allowed to look undignified.
The doors all bore soft, elegant plaques: Rose Suite, Bay Suite, Willow Suite.
Peggy's was Thistle, though nothing about the hallway felt thorny.
Ulrike knocked twice, gently.
A rustle answered — then a voice, papery but bright:
“Come in, darling, unless you’re here to make me do physiotherapy. In which case, go away.”
Ulrike smiled as she opened the door. “No physiotherapy. Someone much nicer.”
“Ha! We’ll see.”
Peggy’s apartment was small, but it felt like stepping into the memory of a much larger life.
Bookshelves sagged under the weight of hardbacks from every decade since the fifties.
Photographs — black-and-white wedding portraits, laughing children at beaches, a younger Peggy in sunglasses holding a glass of wine somewhere improbably glamorous — covered every wall.
A brass étagère displayed souvenirs: a blown-glass fish, a miniature Eiffel Tower, a programme from the 1968 Boston Pops.
And in the center of it all, perched neatly in an armchair as if expecting royalty, sat Peggy.
She was tiny — birdlike — with a cloud of white hair pinned in a hasty knot, eyes bright as cut glass, a silk scarf knotted at her throat like she’d refused to grow old in anything less than Technicolor.
She brightened at the sight of Ulrike, then noticed Marcus behind her and broke into an expression of delighted appraisal.
“Well. You brought me a tall one.”
Marcus laughed. “Evening, ma’am.”
“That accent… hmm.” Peggy narrowed her eyes. “Not from here. Virginia? Something with hills.”
“Er, New York City, ma’am,” Marcus said, bashfully. “Bensonhurst.”
“I’m losing my touch. What’s your name?”
“Marcus Reid.”
“Well, Marcus Reid, come sit. Handsome men are always welcome, provided they don’t try to sell me life insurance.”
Marcus sat. The chair creaked under him; it clearly wasn’t used to this scale of visitor.
Ulrike settled on the sofa beside Peggy. Her tone gentled. “We came because we need to talk about Leo.”
Peggy’s smile dimmed, just slightly. She folded her hands in her lap, bracing herself. “He’s gone then.”
Ulrike nodded. “Just after midnight. Peaceful. I was with him.”
Peggy exhaled — not quite sorrow, not quite relief. A soft resignation. “Well. That’s that, then. I won’t pretend it’s a shock. He was slipping in and out like a porch light with a dying bulb. Poor man fought as long as he could.”
She tilted her head toward a photo on the wall — a slightly younger Leo, upright and white-haired, with a mischievous grin.
“He used to drive me to the harbour at five a.m. in summer so we could watch the fishing boats come in. Never wanted me to tell the others — thought it made him look romantic. He liked his reputation as a curmudgeon.” Her lips quirked. “I’ll miss him.”
For a moment, her voice trembled. She steadied it with a quick sip of water, then fixed her sharp gaze on Marcus.
“You’re a lawman.” It wasn’t a question. “I can spot them from a mile.”
“Guilty,” Marcus said, a little sheepishly.
“I knew it. You all have the same polite look, like you’re about to ask whether anyone saw a suspicious person lurking near the gardenias.” She leaned in. “So ask me properly, dear. Why are you here?”
Marcus glanced once at Ulrike, who gave an encouraging nod.
He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to say… Leo's daughter, Jennifer, also died this evening. Not by natural causes."
Peggy froze.
Then her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh.”
Her eyes brimmed, not from sentiment — from shock, the kind that strikes deeper than expected.
“That poor girl,” she whispered. “Good heavens. Murdered?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Peggy sat back, rattled. “I… well. I didn’t like the way she treated her father — God knows I didn’t. But she was obviously an unhappy soul. And no one deserves… that.”
Ulrike reached over, rested a hand over Peggy’s. “We know.”
Peggy shook her head, gathering herself.
“You know, she did visit once or twice. Years ago. When we first moved in here. Leo couldn’t stop talking about how clever she was — top of her class, top of her profession, whatever it was she ended up doing.
Finance? Yes, that’s it. He was so proud.
” Peggy’s expression tightened. “Then she hit thirty and did what all the thirty-year-olds do now — goes to see a therapist. Next thing you know, her father — her father — is a manipulator, a narcissist, a controlling tyrant who ruined her ability to have meaningful relationships.” Peggy snorted.
“As if anyone’s had meaningful relationships since the cellphone. ”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You think the therapist put those ideas in her head?”
“I think,” Peggy said crisply, “that some therapists earn their money by finding problems where none exist. Jennifer adored her father until someone told her not to. And after that… nothing. No calls. No visits. And Leo — he’d pretend not to care, but he did.
Of course he did. He cared deeply. I’d go so far as to say it was a wound that never ever healed. ”
Marcus let the silence sit a moment. “You were angry about it.”
“Angry?” Peggy huffed. “I was furious. The ingratitude! That man paid for her college, her degree, her first apartment. And then she cuts him out like an expired coupon.”
Marcus nodded slowly, filing the information away. “Was anyone else angry? As in… publicly?”
Peggy’s eyes lit with sudden recollection.
“There was something. Yes. It made the papers — the Boston Chronicle, I think.” She wagged a finger at the ceiling as though chiding her memory.
“Jennifer’s firm supported some local charity — very nice people, wanted to buy a little transporter bus to take lonely old folks out on day trips. Picnics, museums, the coast.”
“Sounds like a good program,” Marcus said.
“It was. They needed fifty thousand to buy the van. Jennifer arranged the funding — her firm donated the whole amount.” Peggy pursed her lips. “Then someone found out she refused to see her own father. That she was… unashamed of it, apparently. And the charity sent the money back.”
“Returned the donation?” Marcus asked, surprised.
"Oh yes. Caused quite a scandal. They said they didn't want any association with someone who'd done that to her family. Not when… what did they call it? Elder abandonment. That’s it. Not when elder abandonment was such a problem. I remember thinking it was absurd — turning down money that could do so much good. But some people…” Peggy gave a short, pointed shrug. “Some people are unbending. Sprung of the oak, not the willow, that’s what my grammaw used to say. Once they decide a thing is wrong, nothing moves them. Mind you, you ask me, Jennifer was that type of soul herself. Maybe she… kind of met her match with someone a little bit too like her.”
Marcus leaned back slightly, thoughtful. “Maybe so.”