Mrs. Galloway thought for a moment, then smiled to herself. “I was married to the principal. We kept things fun.”
Natalie grinned. “You had love at school.”
“Not everyone did,” Mrs. Galloway said. “I watched teachers burn out left and right. I hear it’s even worse now. People no longer respect that profession. Especially the government.”
Elena’s ears rang at the mention of the government. Was it possible that everyone could smell Millbrook government corruption, even if they didn’t have the words to speak on it? Maybe it was an open secret.
“What do you think the government is up to?” Elena asked.
Mrs. Galloway tossed her white hair. “What aren’t they up to? They’re trying to manipulate how our children think! They’re on the internet! They’re on the airwaves!”
Her heart sinking, Elena realized she’d met a quasi-conspiracy theorist, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was always some truth to what these people said. “I get what you mean,” she said, nodding. But soon, Elena and Natalie managed to slip away and head to another table, leaving Mrs. Galloway to complain about “mind control” to whoever else was at her table.
But Mrs. Galloway’s comments had reminded Elena of something. The people in the retirement facility had been a part of the Millbrook fabric for many, many years. Not all of them had memory problems, like Carmen did. Their bodies were failing them, but their minds were as sharp as whips. CouldElena learn more about what was going on at Cranberry Cove through the Christmas party at the retirement facility? Was that ridiculous to suggest?
When she finally mentioned her thoughts to Natalie, though, Natalie said they had to go for it. “I thought today would be a wash,” Natalie whispered, taking photographs of the residents from the corner. “But it might be instrumental to our investigation.”
Elena bit her tongue to keep from smiling too brightly. Natalie had begun to speak like a hard-hitting journalist. Elena wondered if Natalie was trying to imitate Elena, or if she’d picked up the verbiage from the internet or television shows. It didn’t matter. She was the perfect partner.
Next, they interviewed other retired folks: Ben Mason, who’d run the grocery store for thirty-five years and could tell you how much the cost of a loaf of bread had changed during that time, and Mary Conrad, who’d had seven children, four of whom had died tragically in a house fire back in 1983 and one of whom had gone on to be a best-selling author of children’s fantasy books. “I don’t really understand what the big deal is about fantasy,” Mary said to Natalie and Elena. “Who gives a crap about all those dragons?” Elena and Natalie had to stifle their laughter behind their hands.
But it was when they encountered Greg Treutner that things got especially interesting. The nurse in charge of him introduced him as “the mayor of Millbrook,” and he grinned proudly, his face ancient and sagging and filled with moles.But there was something regal about him, Elena thought, something that spoke to a previous handsomeness that had probably had all the women in Millbrook talking about him. It was perhaps part of the reason he’d been voted in in the first place. People loved a good-looking politician.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mayor,” Elena said, shaking his hand.
“You must be the newspaper woman’s daughter,” Greg said. His voice sounded like tires on gravel. “What’s her name? Carmen.”
Elena smiled, grateful that Greg’s memory was intact. “That’s right. She’s been in charge of things at the paper for years and years. I’m helping out these days.” Elena gestured toward Natalie’s camera and added, “We both are. Trying to take over where my mother left off.”
“I’m almost one hundred years old,” Greg announced, as though he hadn’t heard her. “They’re going to throw me a big birthday party in February to celebrate. I never liked having a birthday in winter. February is a cruel, cold, thankless month.”
Elena laughed good-naturedly and thought,How am I going to get him to talk about corruption in Millbrook?She’d have to placate him.
Admittedly, it took a little while to get there. They talked about Greg’s grandchildren, his hobbies, and his obsession with birds. He could name every bird that lived in Millbrook County when they migrated south, and when they came back. Natalie wavered on her feet, as though she’d let her knees lock. But still, Elena pressed on.
At the retirement party, a few residents had gotten up to perform short Christmas sketches or sing songs. It looked as though one of them—a woman named Rhonda—was the taskmaster, having installed herself as the theater troupe leader. When an older woman forgot her lines for the mini-pageant, Rhonda lost her mind and told the other woman that she wouldn’t be cast in the play next Christmas. Things got rowdy after that. A few nurses came in to calm the woman who’d forgotten her lines. Rhonda was sent away and told to collect herself.
Greg shrugged. “What do you expect? We lived all our lives in our separate houses, only seeing one another when we wanted to. Suddenly, we all live together here. All our personalities come together, bubble up, and reach a breaking point. We’re old, but we’re still ourselves.”
Elena thought it was one of the more poetic things she’d ever heard. Greg’s sharp gaze gave her the confidence to ask the question heaviest on her mind.
“When you were mayor in the seventies,” she pressed, “did you ever experience any corruption? Or did you notice it going on?”
Greg took a breath and gave her a look that again showed her precisely what he’d looked like back then: domineering, intelligent, powerful. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t want to get anyone from the past in trouble,” Elena said firmly. “I want to get a better picture of what life was like back then, if only to learn what it might be like now. I want to figure out how deep corruption goes and how it might ruin normal people’s lives.”
Greg slid a finger across his gray eyebrow. “If you want to find corruption? Look all around you.” He gestured vaguely at the room where they sat and at the window that looked out onto the forest. “For a town to run, there’s corruption. For something to be built, there might be corruption. Everyone is out for their own capitalistic gain, and to get what you want, you might have to manipulate someone else, who also wants something else. We’re all alone on this journey of life. We’re all selfish.”
Elena leaned back in her chair, surprised at how forthright he was. She also wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with him. She thought of James Murphy, of Natalie, of her mother; she thought about her career in the Middle East and how much she’d ached to do a smidge of good.
“I hear you,” Elena said finally. She felt she had to agree with him, at least on some level, to keep the conversation going. “Let me ask you this. What does Cranberry Cove mean to you?”
Greg erupted into ominous laughter. Elena glanced at Natalie, who was equally as buggy-eyed. It took a little while for Greg to calm down, and by then, a few of the residents had turned to look at what all the commotion was about.
“That was a thorn in my side all through the seventies,” Greg admitted. “I thought I’d never have to hear about it again.”
“What was so awful about it?” Elena asked.
