PARK RIDGE
A Senior Center Murder

PARK RIDGE

Chapter Two

When he got to the Park Ridge Senior Center on Western Avenue, Gordon Williams discovered parking was at a premium. From the looks of it, the Park District crowd had overflowed into the Center's lot. As a former stockbroker who had commuted on the cramped Chicago and Northwestern line, no, it's the Metra now, every day into the city to work, he considered himself so lucky on such a fine day for late February that he didn't grouse and didn't mind the walk.

The long low building bared its red brick façade behind leafless trees and shrubs. In another month or so the lilacs would be in bloom, now only random clusters of green showed in beds where daffodils and tulips would soon be popping into color. From across the street at the middle school he heard shouts as a gym class chased soccer balls. Taking a letter from his pocket, he placed it in the mailbox by the curb. Then he stopped to read some of the inscriptions on the memorial bricks just outside the entranceway: "In honor of," "In memory of," "Happy Anniversary," and "Tip Top Tap Dancer."

It was close to 10:00 a.m. when the seventy-two-year old signed his name in the attendance notebook in the lobby. He paused at the receptionist's desk to kibitz with Gloria. His light blue ballcap, souvenir of last year's Senior Olympics, sat too tall on his head, the brim still flat. He took it off, rubbing his hand across his bald head and then removed his sunglasses. His eyes bright behind his bifocals, he asked if the trip to the House on the Rock had sold out yet. Told there were eleven seats left, Gordon took it as his mission to fill them.

The Center was laid out in a T-shape, the entrance toward the bottom of the stem. Gordon followed the stem south down the hall to the large open Recreation Area. If he'd gone farther down, past the library, past the large, multi-purpose room with a stage used for banquets, dances, and plays, he would have come to the crossbar of the T where classrooms of varying sizes were located. His neighbor Angela was back there doing yoga. Or was it Book Discussion Group today? Too many activities for him to keep all the days and times straight.

Crossing to the kitchen area he stopped at the counter where two urns sat beside a tray of plastic cup holders and liners. He snapped a liner in place, filled his cup with decaf coffee, adding creamer and sweetener. Setting the cup down, he fished in his pocket for a quarter which he dropped in a wooden box. He stirred his drink, then slurped it through his bushy white moustache. He looked around at the folks playing cards or talking quietly. He knew most of them by name, all of them by sight. Light poured through the large windows which formed the west wall of the room. Roughly five round tables on this side of the room, four players to a table, maybe seven more tables on the other side of the Recreation Area. Evidently a good morning for cards. He approached the group closest to him hoping to entice someone to play pool.

Although several people were just watching the players, waiting for the class in word-processing or AARP's - 55 ALIVE Driver Safety Program to start, Gordon couldn't find anyone willing to shoot a game with him. Undeterred he began asking folks if they were going on the bus trip to the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. He patiently worked his way from table to table, going on about the fourteen-room house built on top of a rock - about the bell gallery, the waterfalls, the massive fireplaces. "They've got this room, the Infinity Room they call it, that hangs over a valley. You're up about fifteen stories! There's other stuff like the Streets of Yesterday, you know, like that setup at the Museum of Science and Industry, with old shops and gas lamps. There's a huge sea monster, organs and old music. Think there's something like two hundred fifty dollhouses. Gonna be a great trip. Only eleven seats left."

Irrepressible, that's what his wife called him, can't stand to see people sitting around, always recruiting more people for the team. When it came to these trips, like the House on the Rock or to Cape Cod, Gordon was the travel agent's unofficial point man. "You folks got your tickets yet? There's gonna be ... ."

He went back for a second cup of coffee before tackling the last group on the west side, the table nearest the Billiards Room. Hard-core, he thought to himself. Ellie Montgomery had her back to him. She was a wide woman whose body hung over either side of the chair. Under her ballcap her faded red hair fell in loopy waves across her shoulders.

Across from Ellie with his back to the wall just under the clock sat Jack Buchtel. Gordon took his time stirring his coffee and looked out the window. Hotheaded Jack with his typical short man's bluster coupled with an acid tongue had a hard time being civil to anyone but the Director. Don't know how those other folks put up with him. Not Gordon's favorite person. The other two people at the table were Margaret Neal, an overly-polite, scrawny vegetarian lady with sharp, inquisitive brown eyes, and that tall stuffy fellow everyone called "the Professor."

Gordon finished his coffee, sighed, and walked deliberately up to their table. He started by asking about a partner for pool, willing, if need be, to settle for Ellie. When they declined, he rattled off his sales' pitch for the House of the Rock trip. Gordon could tell the way her face lit up that if it weren't for peer pressure, Margaret would take his arm and hop on the bus right now. He was sure of it. The Professor pretended to think about it as he stared out the windows. Even Ellie made noise although not encouraging. As anticipated, grumpy Jack railed on about the cost of the trip, how not everybody in fancy, upper-middle-class Park Ridge was rolling in money, especially now that they were retired. When Jack had apparently run out of spleen, Gordon headed for the Billiards Room to forget all the angry rot. Maybe after a few games of 8-ball, he'd visit with the folks on the other side of the room. For the moment his frustration had the upper hand.

Murder

That noisy bastard, all the time harping on about going here or taking a trip there, check out my tan, see the keychain I got…. Thinks the whole world is made of money. Thinks if he's doing it everybody should be onboard with the idea. See my cap for biking in the Senior Olympics? Got a medal in my pocket for third place at horseshoes. You got an arm on you, don't you? Might even loosen up that arthritis. Bet you could have beaten me if you'd only tried. Why don't you get up and get involved in something? The Olympics had golf, tennis, bowling, swimming… you would have at least gotten a t-shirt. What do you think - is yellow my color?

"Goddam son of a bitch!" I slammed my palm on the table. I followed him into the Billiards Room. He was leaning over the table. When I came in he said, "About time! Want to play the rest of this game or start over?"

I got a cue stick from the rack. "New game. You rack."

I waited until he had both hands on the rack, centering its nose on the table. When he straightened up, I swung the heavy end of the stick as hard as I could, catching him just at the base of the skull. I removed the rack and scattered the balls, running the cue ball to the other end. Then I looked at the stick in my hands. Couldn't see anything but took my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped it off. Then I shoved the stick into his hands.

When Jack came back from the restroom, Ellie and the Professor looked at each other for cues as to what could safely be said. Neither wanted to set him off again. They decided to take no notice of his absence.

"So are you just going to sit there? Or are we playing cards? Whose deal is it?" Jack took the deck from the Professor, who had been mindlessly cutting and re-cutting.

Margaret snatched the cards from Jack. "It's my deal. Where have you been for twenty minutes? You banged your fist on the table and stomped off without a word. We've just been sitting here, waiting for you."

He lifted his hand as if he wanted to slap her, then laid it back on the table. He chewed on his mustache. "It's none of your business where I was."

The Professor intoned with his snootiest attitude, "Au contraire, mon frere. I think it might be."

Jack snarled, "Shut your mouth, smart ass. I'm not in the mood."

An hour later as Gloria, the receptionist, made her way down the hall for tea, she glanced into the Billiards Room and found Gordon's body. She rushed over to him calling his name. She checked for a pulse, for the rise and fall of his chest. Then she called for the paramedics.

"Something always happens when Teresa's out of the office," she thought to herself.

She paced the hall waiting for the ambulance. When they arrived she pointed to the Billiards Room saying, "Down there."

The sound of sirens brought people out of their classrooms and into the Recreation Area. Older members, voicing their own fear of heart attack or stroke, asked, "Who is it?" Younger members in deep denial of their own mortality anxiously asked, "What's happened?"

When the EMTs had placed Gordon on a gurney, they wheeled it out through the front doors. The receptionist watched them leave, then turned to the woman who was holding onto her. She patted the hand on her arm. "Helen, don't worry. They're doing everything that can be done. Why don't you just go back to class? I'll come around and let everyone know when I hear something." She gently pushed the woman away. To the others standing in the lobby, she repeated herself. "Please go back to whatever you were doing. I'll let you know if I hear anything."

She trailed behind them as they moved toward the Recreation Area, sort of shooing them along every time they paused. When most had returned to their activities, Gloria got herself a cup of tea. The people at the tables erupted with questions.

"Gloria, is it true that it was Gordon Williams? We didn't want to gawk and we couldn't see what was going on."

"Yes. Mr. Williams was playing pool. Apparently he suffered a stroke or had a dizzy spell and collapsed. As he fell he must have hit the back of his head on the edge of the pool table."

Resilient as most seniors are, Gloria could see that this still hurt and frightened them. On her way back to her office, she herself paused, slightly spooked, before entering the hallway. A glance into the Billiards Room, where one moment Gordon was alive and the next he wasn't, caused her to turn to Jack Buchtel at the table nearby.

"Awful isn't it?" she asked in a delaying effort. The players kept throwing down cards and picking up tricks in turn. Finally Margaret broke the silence.

"You said it was a dizzy spell? He fell and hit his head?"

"Could have been."

"That must have been one heck of a game of pool you two were playing, Jack," said Ellie.

"I wasn't playing."

"But you joined Gordon in the Billiards Room. I watched you walk in there."

"No, not 'playing' at all, evidently, since he's dead. What did you say to him?" asked the Professor.

"I didn't say anything to him."

Margaret, who couldn't see the hallway from her seat, had assumed he'd merely gone to the restroom. "He stormed out of here to go play pool?" The Professor smirked, "Ah, but friend Jack says he wasn't playing."

"Yeah, Margaret," said Ellie. "Our impulsive 'friend Jack,' as the Prof puts it, also known as the Furious Troll, was with Gordon in the Pool Room."

"But he wasn't playing," repeated the Professor with a peculiar tone. He turned to his left and said to Ellie, "I like that 'furious troll' phrase. Nice touch."

Jack glowered. "You bastards."

Still ignoring Jack, the Professor asked, "What do you think he was doing in there, Ellie? He wasn't playing - and Gordon is dead." She assessed her card-playing buddy. After years of playing together, she sometimes felt she could read his mind. "My money's on Jack killing him. Maybe gave him a good shove, guy fell and hit his head. Or maybe Jack whacked him. You know, picked up one of those sticks, hauled off and …."

"For the love of God keep your voice down," Jack insisted while not denying that he'd done just that.

"Well, as the Professor says, you didn't go in there to 'play,' now did you?"

Margaret had been listening with her ears but also with some primal nerve attuned to bloodlust. Her eyes read the keen, yet far-sighted look in the Professor's eyes as if he saw …. Saw what? She turned to Jack with something akin to wonder on her face. "Then it's true?" When Jack wouldn't answer her, she exclaimed, "Jack! It wasn't an accident like Gloria said?" She glanced at the nearest table of card players and lowered her voice to a whisper, "It was m-u-r-d-e-r?"

His chin jammed into his chest, Jack sat with his hands folded on the table. Margaret looked at the Professor who was still staring out the bank of windows over the rim of his glasses. This unflappable man made a good partner. He was smart; she was smart. He didn't take risks and neither did she. But this was different. Surely he didn't think that they should cover up what Jack had done. That would be very risky. Risky and wrong.

Pleading with them, Jack said, "Look, you're the only ones who know I was in there. It was an accident. I didn't know what I was doing."

" 'A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain,'
A Comedy of Errors. Mr. William Shakespeare."

"In English, Professor," demanded Ellie.

"It means that apparently our friend here has done something. As Margaret said," then he mocked her by whispering, "m-u-r-d-e-r." Then he continued in normal voice, "Something that each of us has wished at one time or another that we had done."

With questions that couldn't be asked, that they really didn't want to hear the answers to, they agreed to call it a game and have lunch. Ellie waddled off to the restroom to test her blood sugar and take her insulin. Margaret lifted a cloth bag to the table and began pulling out a pile of produce. She'd eaten one banana earlier. She brought out two more bananas, one for now and one for later, one gigantic Red Delicious apple cut into wedges in a plastic bag, and three servings of vegetables: raw broccoli in a bag, sliced tomatoes in a Tupperware bowl, and a cold baked potato wrapped in tin foil.

When Ellie came back she scoffed at the "vegetarian voodoo." Then, she unloaded her brown lunch sack: bologna on rye with Miracle Whip, two bags of Fritos, two cans of Pepsi.

Beside her the Professor shook out one of his paper napkins and spread it on the table in front him. Then, he popped the lid off a small Tupperware container of tuna fish, and spread it on two slices of whole wheat. He got up to get himself a cup of coffee.

Jack, who had demolished one baggie full of grapes while playing cards, brought another bag from his jacket pocket and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the other. He called to the Professor to bring him a cup, too.

The women ate in silence. The Professor ate his sandwich with one hand while reading Archeology Review. Loosening a forkful of potato, Margaret looked at the others and spoke, "If we keep sitting here like we don't even know each other, somebody's gonna take notice. If we want to keep this a secret, we can't afford for people to start talking about us."

The magazine was curled into a jacket pocket, lunch debris cleared away. Conversation was awkward, accompanied by glances around the room. Carefully they started talking about Gordon, before he died and how he died. They were careful not to speak too loudly. They reassured each other that he had gotten what he deserved - that he had been obnoxious, so damn pushy, so incredibly critical of anyone that wasn't like him. A dangerous current of anger seethed just below the surface of their words. They resented Gordon's judgment that they were 'lazy,' his pronouncement that they were 'anti-social' because they played cards everyday. "Hmm. To put that in Pool Room parlance, one might say that he had balls."

There was that peculiar silence that occurs when you know you shouldn't laugh but by God, the Professor had got it just right. So they laughed. Out loud. Drawing attention to themselves on a day when a man had died. They straightened up. "Shame on us," looking from the corners of their eyes at those seated near them. They went on to make other puns, keeping their laughter at a quiet giggle-level.

It was Ellie who insisted that Gordon wasn't the only one at the Center with an attitude that needed adjusting. "I can think of five people right off the top of my head that I'd love to … you know." She challenged the others, "If you were gonna, you know, the M-word," squinting one eye and cocking her other eyebrow, "who would you pick?"

The Professor jumped on it with relish. "Presuming, of course, that the perpetrator would not be discovered, and, therefore, not apprehended? If I didn't think that I would get caught, I would select as target for my exercise the esteemed (but not by me) Benjamin Wilson, resident computer guru. I loathe that man." He lingered on the word loath as if he were rolling something nasty on his tongue, getting ready to spit. "Margaret, how about you? As our table's token vegetarian, our placard-wielding 'do no harm to animal life forms' crusader, do you, too, harbor a murderous fantasy? Who would you choose?"

His mocking tone put her off. An angry response surfaced but then she looked at him more closely. What was he asking? Then she realized, This has nothing to do with what I eat. No, he was asking her if she was like him, if she had ever felt what he felt, what he was feeling just now as he was talking of it - a bitter ice-white, ice-cold anger. She reached inside for that anger and the picture that came to mind caused her eyes to half-close in pleasure as she said, "Sophie Wagner." Then, she opened her eyes and turned to Ellie, "And you'd pick the 'Princess' herself, Sheila Marshall."

"Damn right I would." Ellie couldn't always follow the fancy words the Professor used to cover his feelings. And she sure as hell wasn't put together like mousy Margaret who went into a flurry of excitement over everything but couldn't follow through - like taking a trip to the House on the Rock.

As if Gordon Williams had not died, or for that matter, had not ever existed as a real human being, their conversation for the rest of the afternoon concerned the possibility of actually getting away with "it," you know, the M-word, and the risks involved. They each allowed themselves the rare luxury of fantasy, violent retaliatory fantasy. The admissions made out loud - that each harbored a deep, focused resentment - had an amazing effect. The Professor's face darkened, hardened. His casual slouch straightened, his normally quiet hands gestured emphatically. Ellie unintentionally spit from excitement when she catalogued the crimes committed by the "Princess" Sheila. Margaret positively glowed at the prospect of revenge.

Listening to them, Jack - accused, tried, declared "not guilty" by these his peers - found himself in the awkward position of already having done what they were fantasizing. A queasy stomach, shaking arthritic hands, and an urge to shout a confession of his crime, limited his participation, even his comprehension. When Ellie pressed him to tell them, "If you hadn't done it already, who would you choose?" he had to leave the table to vomit.

This sobered them all. They left off fantasizing and returned to dispassionate dealing, receiving, bidding, melding, and taking tricks. But each covertly examined the other faces for a sign that the action they had contemplated was possibly more than fantasy.