Welcome to Golden, Chapter 9

Ruth was still upset after Billy left. The thought that Golden would be shut down was unconscionable. She had remembered what it was like to be in the dark, watching the whole world pass by and not be able to participate. In the three weeks she'd been there, she had come to see Golden as a precious gift that had been given to her.

Fred stayed with her to comfort her, but he had even more to lose than she did. Ruth did not even try to hide the worry that was going through her mind. The more she thought about it, the more desperate the situation seemed.

“Do you think that Billy will tell them about this?” she asked, feeling guilty that she was more concerned about herself and the others still in Golden than about Lily being assaulted.

“He's your flesh and blood, of course he'll make everything right, Billy's a smart kid,” Fred said.

“My flesh and blood? What do you mean, he's got to be old enough to be one of my kids and while I may have forgotten some things, I haven't forgotten my own children.”

“Oh Ruth,” Fred said. He sat her down on the sofa in Lily Perez's living room. “I thought you knew. Billy is your grandson, he got you into Golden. He's paying your way in here.”

“He couldn't be my grandson, he's an old man, just like us.”

Fred laughed a little and stood. He had honestly thought Billy would have told her, but apparently the doctor had his reasons.

“That's just what he looks like here, in the Real World he's in his mid-thirties,” Fred said. “Don't you worry about Billy, he'll take care of things on the outside, and if he's smart, he'll have my daughter to help him out. She knows how to take care of things like this.”

It was then that Ruth started crying. She had never really been emotional, but everything caught up to her. Her grandson was one thing, but it finally struck her that Lily was gone forever from Golden. Lily with her cute smile and beautiful black hair. Ruth was sad that she would never see Lily again and angry at her own selfish thoughts.

“Are you going to be okay to do this? If not, you're going to have to tell me now.”

“No, I'm good. We need to get started on this,” she said.

The two of them talked about the list of people they could eliminate from the beginning, which included the both of them, Jerry and Dan, Carmen and Kenneth, Nancy, Vince, Peggy, Teresa, Steve the lawyer and, of course, Gloria. There were a few others Ruth remembered being at the club. They came up with a list of fifteen people who weren't in Larry's at the time, or were there and left, with at least six people who were in the club, but may have left before or just after Lily did.

“So tell me what you remember, what time did Lily come in?”

Ruth closed her eyes, taking herself back. But she went further than Fred had asked.

“Lily had only been to Larry's once or twice. The people scared her, she was horribly shy. She was afraid that they would think she was an old woman.

“You know, she was married to the same fella for fifty-nine years. Her husband died last year and she lost their little house. It wasn't long after he died that she said her body started to go, the tremors started first. Her condition got even worse soon after. They stuck her in an awful nursing home, and she waited to die. She said she had made her peace, and her kids all came to visit, and then they stopped coming. Then one day, she woke up and found herself in Golden with Dr. Watson, Billy, staring at her. He brought Lily to you and you made her feel so welcome. She loved it here, but was shy talking to people. Plus she couldn't control the environment like some of us can.

“I met her one day in the park, I was having a balloon fight with Chuck Hoyt and we accidentally hit her. She was an old woman still and I asked her why she didn't make herself young, and she said she liked how she was. That didn’t seem right to me. I’d seen her before and she was young. I badgered her a little and she told me that Anne Knox had come after her and she got flustered and talked into turning herself into an old woman and couldn’t concentrate well enough to change back. So I offered to teach her, she said no. The next day, she found me in the park again and asked me to help her. So we met every now and then after that and I helped her practice. She got pretty good at it. That Joslin fellow kept right on bugging her, though, asking her to go out with him, except he was much too crude.

“So this afternoon, I talked to Gloria and she said she had talked Lily. I asked her if she wanted to get together for dinner, but she said that she was going over to Lily's house for dinner and help her get ready for her date. That's it! She had a date.”

“Who?” Fred asked.

“Gloria didn't say, but I assumed it was a man,” Ruth said. “I got to the club at about eight, I love to dance and Jerry and Dan are great dancers. We were drinking a bit, but were actually dancing more than anything else. Lily came in about eight-thirty and got a drink. She seemed to be looking at the door quite often, now that I think about it, like she was expecting someone. I talked Dan into asking her to dance, but she refused. She left pretty early, like nine-thirty or so. She didn't seem too upset, but she had that look about her.”

“The one where she looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was?” Fred asked. “I'm familiar with that look.”

“Anyway, she got up and left, I talked to her quickly and she said she'd tell me all about it tomorrow. I didn't think much about Lily until you and Dr. Watson — Billy — told me something was wrong.”

After a moment of silence, Ruth made the suggestion that they go over the apartment once again to check for more clues. Ruth wandered off to the kitchen while Fred stayed in the bedroom to examine Lily's ghost. He checked the wounds closely, fascinated how a violent attack appeared in Golden as compared to Real Life. He surmised that Lily had never seen a stab wound before because the wounds themselves looked as if it was a bit of Hollywood television magic, and from the more wholesome shows older folks liked to watch instead of the newer, more realistic ones.

Regardless, the wounds still gave some information. Each were at least an inch and a half in length, so that would narrow down the weapon from something bigger than a pocketknife to smaller than a meat cleaver. He made a mental note to check in the kitchen to see if Lily had any missing knives. Fred examined Lily's breasts, which appeared young. Apparently, she had figured out how to manipulate Golden well enough to make them appear youthful. Her bra, obviously, was missing.

A sexual attack? Possibly, Fred thought, or maybe she had taken it off and was getting ready for bed. If that were the case, though, she would have put on a night gown — unless her visitor wasn't unwelcome. Her panties seemed to be in order, except that Fred was bothered by their appearance. They were nice, pink lacy underwear, the type of underwear that a younger woman would wear when she was expecting someone else to see them.

There were no other marks on her body and there didn't seem to be any sign of struggle around the bed. Fred looked around the room for a night gown, or at least Lily's bra, but could not find either. The room was furnished tastefully with a queen size bed, bedside table with a lamp, a couple of chairs and a vanity table. Fred's heart skipped when he thought about the reflection in the spoon and he hoped that there might be a reflection in the vanity mirror. When he stood in front, though, all he saw was the room behind him.

There was a bathroom off to the side of the bedroom and Fred ventured a look inside, almost expecting the results of a violent scene, but only finding the missing bra and clothes on the floor and several hairpins in the sink. Still no nightgown, though. It didn't make sense, he thought. If Lily knew her attacker and was planning a night of hanky-panky, she would have done things different. All women do. She would have had a sexy negligee ready for when she would “slip into something more comfortable.” There would have been greater use of makeup and hairspray, maybe a perfume. But there was nothing to indicate Lily had used any of that stuff. It could have been that she was having a passionate encounter, but it didn't make sense that her clothes were in the bathroom and her body in the bedroom. It didn't seem like normal behavior to Fred, but, he thought, what's normal? And where was the knife? The knife might be the key, he thought, because while something could be carried out of the room, the computer program would not allow it to be destroyed until the diorama was reset.

Fred was sitting on the edge of the tub, thinking these thoughts and looking around the bathroom. He noticed Lily's robe hanging on the back of the door and something on the floor that looked like pieces of paper, but it wasn’t paper, he discovered three flower petals. He picked them up and began to examine them, about an inch long, white and narrow.

“Hey Fred!” Ruth shouted from the living room. “I think I found something that may be of help.”

Fred rendered himself an envelope and put the petals inside, then into his pocket. When he walked into the living area, Ruth was sitting in an armchair going through the pages of what looked to be a handwritten book.

“Is that what I think it is?” Fred asked.

“I don't know?” Ruth said. “Do you think it's a diary?”

Fred grinned, a diary could give a lot of clues as to what led to Lily's attack.

“Listen to this,” Ruth said, she had the book opened to a point half-way through. “This is the last entry, 'Ricardo makes me feel like I have never felt before, even with Fidel.' Fidel was her husband.”

“I knew that, go on,” Fred said, sitting and pulling out a joint.

“You really should give up that nasty habit.”

“I know, but it helps me think. Go on read what she wrote.”

“Ricardo has helped me so much in the last couple of weeks. He showed me how I could make myself beautiful again, more than the doctor or Mr. McKenzie ever could. He said it was because they didn't want me to believe I was beautiful. Ricardo says that Mr. McKenzie is a fraud and that all he wants is to control people in Golden, that's why he acts like such a dictator. As for the doctor, he said Dr. Watson doesn't know what it's like to be old. I told him that Dr. Watson was old, all he had to do was look at him. Ricardo laughed and said that Dr. Watson was younger than our children and that they just made him look old to make the residents trust him more. That's why you couldn't trust him because the doctor's a liar. I don't know, I like the doctor and Mr. McKenzie, but Ricardo has helped me so much. He's made Golden bearable. No. More than that, he's made Golden into a paradise.”

“Looks like Ricardo doesn't care that much for you,” Ruth said.

“Or Billy for that matter,” Fred countered, acting nonchalant. “You can't please everyone. Any idea who Ricardo is, the name doesn't sound familiar.”

“There is no Ricardo in Golden,” she said. “I made it my mission when I got here to meet everyone.”

“Is there anything in there that describes him?”

Ruth shuffled through the pages stopping at several but quickly moving on. Finally she found a passage that could help, dated from two weeks before.

“I met a nice young man named Ricardo today. I was in the park sitting on a bench and feeling sorry for myself. My session with Dr. Watson didn't go so well today, I told him I was missing Fidel, but he didn't offer much comfort, or at least it didn't feel like much comfort. He said that nostalgia for our former lives was to be expected and he suggested that I try to get out and meet more people in Golden. It's just that I haven't been able to look the way I want to here. He promised me that I'd be able to have a beautiful new body, but I haven't been able to do it, except for short periods of time. He scolded me and said it was because I didn't want it bad enough. Nothing could be further from the truth. I want to be pretty again in the worst way. I see all the girls around here using Golden to make themselves look young again, and they make it look so simple. But I just can't. I can't. Ricardo says he may be able to help. He is so handsome, like Desi Arnez. His hair is slicked back and he has a pencil thin mustache. His accent isn't thick, so I knew he’s not a recent immigrant. He wore a light blue Guayabera and chinos that showed he was very fit. I imagine that outside of Golden he is old and fat, but here he is very handsome.

“I was sitting on the bench trying my best not to cry and he walks up and asks if I'm okay. I knew with that accent he was from Cuba and I asked him where he was from. 'Havana' he says, 'but I left when I was a small child when my mother and father whisked me off to Florida.'”

Ruth stopped reading and looked to Fred.

“Who is this guy? He doesn't sound like anyone I've seen here.”

“I'd say that it's probably our killer,” Fred said. “And it sounds like he has a pretty good grasp of how to change himself in Golden to fit his needs. The thing is, this guy purposely changed his image to take advantage of Lily. We are dealing with someone who is well versed in the art of deception. I have a feeling it's not going to be easy to find him. Does Lily have any other entries on her last day?”

Ruth thumbed through the book to the last page with writing.

“It says, 'Going to the Lounge with Ricardo tonight. I can't wait to show him off to everyone. I haven't told anyone about him, I wanted to keep it my secret. My only worry is that he has found someone else, he hasn't come around in a couple of days, but he left me a note saying to meet him so that we can dance. Oh, it's been so long since I've gone dancing.'”

“This guy never showed up,” Ruth said. “No wonder she looked so sad.”

“The best theory we have right now is that she left to come back here, maybe met this guy here or in between here and there, took him upstairs and the rest ... well, we know how it ended.”

Fred looked at his watch, by Golden time, it was about 3 a.m. All the residents would have gone home and to bed by now, and sleep wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought. But there was one more thing he needed to check. He went to the kitchen, which was spotless and almost looked as if it had never been used. He knew that wasn't true, though, because there was a dish towel hanging from the handle on the stove and an empty coffee cup sitting on a paper towel on the Formica counter. Lily was obviously one who cleaned her kitchen mess directly after a meal. She kept a neat apartment, which made the missing knife from the knife block easy not to miss. They were good knives, Wusthof, Fred saw. Rarely on something like kitchen knives are there brand names in Golden, but Lily obviously wanted a set, knew what they looked like and how they were used. Missing from the block however, was one of the carving knives, Fred guessed that its blade was probably about an inch and a half wide.

“Did you find the missing knife?” Fred said as Ruth walked into the kitchen.

“No,” she said. “The assailant wouldn't be able to make it disappear, I know that, but could he take it from here?”

“As long as this room is in lockdown, that knife will exist somewhere in Golden,” Fred said. “Pretty sharp, eh? That was your grandson's idea. I got a notion that if we find that knife, we might find who did this. But, we've got other leads to follow.

“Who did Lily talk to last night, before leaving the Lounge? Do you know?” he asked.

“I think she was talking to Gloria before she left. Those two were pretty close, so she might have some clues as to what was going on with Lily.”

“We'll go around and talk to Gloria first thing in the morning,” Fred said standing. “In the meantime, I've got to get some sleep.”

Ruth suggested that they split up their investigation. She offered to talk to Gloria and Frank, and some of the other people in the club if Fred would talk to those who weren't in the club.

“That includes Joslin, Anne Knox, Cal Everitt and Dale,” Fred said, glancing at her sideways.

“I know you can do better with them than I could — those four really don't like me. Well, they don't like you, either. But at least they don't try to scare you. Besides, your list also would include Noah, Marjorie, Lillian and Paul. Those are very sweet people.”

Ruth gave a weak smile, hoping Fred would agree to the division of duties. He couldn't help but agree.

Ruth didn't move from her spot in the armchair. Fred held out his hand in a gesture to tell her it was time to go. She closed the book and took his hand.

“Do you think we should tell everyone?” she asked.

“No, they'll find out soon enough. We have to be careful what we say to people. Except, maybe a little bit of chaos would help us out — maybe shake the bushes a bit. But we don't want folks to panic over this.”

“Isn't this a perfect time to panic?” Ruth said, she smiled despite herself. “This killer is still out there, I mean, in here. I feel like I'm locked in a cage with a man-eating lion. Any one of us could be next.”