J. Jance - Fire and Ice

I thought about Donita back at Silver Pines. Hadn’t she said something about the receptionist job being one she could do without knowing how to type?

“I suppose I could have sold drugs,” Mama Rose continued. “I had all the contacts in the world to do that, but I knew firsthand what drugs do to people. And I wouldn’t do that, either, so when I was well enough to work, I cleaned other people’s houses, the same way my grandmother did. I didn’t have enough money to get an apartment. I couldn’t squeeze out enough money to pay for my treatment and pull together enough for the first and last months’ rent at the same time. One of my clients-one of my old clients-helped me find a room to rent over a friend’s garage. And for my birthday that year, he gave me a card with a Powerball ticket in it.”

“The winning ticket,” Mel breathed.

“Exactly. When I won, I offered to split it with him fifty-fifty, but he turned me down. I still remember what he said to me, ‘Honey lamb, if you do that, I’ll never in this world be able to explain it to my wife. So you just go out and do what you want, and whenever you do something good for someone else, do it for me, too.’

“I couldn’t get his words out of my head,” Mama Rose continued. “I found an investment counselor and put the money to work to earn more, but then I tried to think what else I should do. It was a big responsibility. I asked people for advice about that, including the guy who gave me the ticket-who’s still my friend, by the way. ‘Work with the people you know best,’ he said. ‘Someone gave you a chance to get out of that mess. Maybe you can do the same thing for someone else.’

“That made sense to me, but I don’t think he meant that I should give them a free ride. He meant I should help them help themselves, just like he had with me. The problem is, when you’re trying to get out of that kind of mess, either drugs or prostitution, no one really trusts you. No one wants to give you a job. You have no place to live except maybe some rat-infested subsidized housing.”

I had seen plenty of those in my time, and I’m sure Mel had, too.

“I came up with the idea of buying some property and starting a shelter,” Mama Rose continued. “I wanted to create a group-home situation, someplace safe where women from the street could live while they made the transition back into real life. The Silver Pines was for sale at the time, and I made an offer to buy it. The place was affordable and I thought it would be a good place to put my shelter. Except, after I bought it, Planning and Zoning turned my plans down cold. They told me they didn’t want ‘that kind of place’ or ‘those kinds of people’ inside their precious city limits.”

“So you went around them and built your shelter anyway,” Mel said.

Mama Rose smiled again and nodded. “I certainly did. I already owned the park itself. As the people who rented the spaces moved on or died, I bought up their mobile homes one by one. I was always fair. I always paid at least the asking price and sometimes even more because I wanted to own them all. And now I do. I own every single unit in the park, and I rent them to people who would have trouble renting otherwise, and it’s all still inside the city limits.”

“And sometimes you let them work off the rent,” I said.

“Occasionally,” Mama Rose said. “Not all the rent, only some of it. They have to have real jobs as well. But if they can’t earn enough to keep a roof over their heads, I let them work for me. Some people do office work. Some work outside doing maintenance-yard work and painting. It’s on-the-job training for people who have never used a lawn mower or a paintbrush. By helping with upkeep, residents can take pride in where they live, but they all know they have to live by my rules-by Mama Rose’s rules. That means no hooking and no drugs, no exceptions. I believe some people call it zero tolerance.”

To me, it sounded a lot more like tough love.

“I believe Donita mentioned that when it comes to collecting the rent, you only take cash,” Mel said.

“That’s right,” Mama Rose replied.

“How come?”

Mama Rose shrugged. “People who have been living on the street, who don’t have jobs and have never touched a lawn mower or a paintbrush have never opened a checking account, either. Besides, checks bounce. Cash never does.”

The story was starting to make me smile. The city had objected to the idea of Mama Rose’s charitable intention to open a shelter, but she had outfoxed them and done it anyway. In the process, she had outmaneuvered the naysayers by marching over or around their roadblocks. And how had she done it? By using the oldest ploy in the book-plain old garden-variety capitalism.

“I’m guessing the local city fathers would still like to put you out of business?” I asked.

“They certainly would,” Mama Rose agreed. “Probably some of the city mothers as well, but it turns out I have something they don’t have.”

“What’s that?” Mel asked.

“Better lawyers.” Mama Rose beamed. “I happen to have the big bucks here,” she added. “I’ve got plenty of money, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

It was nearly eight-thirty when Joanna finally arrived at Caring Friends, the privately run Alzheimer’s group home in Palominas. On the drive out, she had called Peggy Whitehead’s home phone and left a message for the head of the county health department, letting her know about a possible problem at the facility. When she arrived, she had to wait while three separate ambulances drove out of the yard and toward the highway with their lights flashing. Tom Hadlock hurried forward to bring her up to speed.

“Those were for the other residents?” Joanna asked, nodding toward the disappearing aid cars.

“Yes,” Tom said. “We couldn’t very well leave them here. According to the EMTs, they’re all dehydrated. At least one is severely malnourished, and another one has bedsores.”

“How many patients in all?”

“There are six rooms altogether. One is apparently unoccupied at the moment. One belongs to the woman who’s gone missing. The other four patients, all women, are being transported to area hospitals. The most serious one has been airlifted to Tucson Medical Center.”

“Do we know who’s in charge and where he or she is?”

“She,” Tom replied. “Her name’s Alma DeLong. She evidently lives in Tucson. We’ve tried contacting her. Left a message on her machine.”

Tom handed Joanna a piece of paper. She leaned back inside her Crown Victoria and switched on the reading light. The paper was a three-fold full-color brochure about Caring Friends. It showed several silver-haired women, smiling and neatly dressed. One showed them eating at a table in a tastefully decorated dining room. Another showed two women seated on chairs on a sun-drenched front porch. A third showed a woman standing in the shade of a huge cottonwood tree while looking into the far distance.

At the bottom of the back page of the brochure was a photo of Alma DeLong. She was an attractive-looking woman, probably somewhere in her fifties at the time the picture was taken. According to the brief bio under the photo, she had spent years working in the area of health-care administration before taking on the management of Caring Friends.

“What about the attendants?” she asked.

“The one who was here at the time and called in the missing persons report has no papers, no ID, and no driver’s license. She’s been taken into custody by ICE.”

“At least she called in the report,” Joanna said.

Tom nodded. “But if there are charges to be filed, by the time we finish our investigation and get around to doing that, Immigration will probably have put her on a bus and shipped her back to Mexico.”