Free The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove by Minna Lindgren Page B

were a danger to the children because they were confused and unpredictable and taking
strong medication.
    Siiri and Olavi laughed at that until the tears flowed. Then Siiri went away, without her cane. Although they couldn’t say ‘went away’ any more because it meant
‘died’. At Sunset Grove there’d been a nice woman who had moved into her own apartment on Solnantie because, as she put it, all the people at Sunset Grove were old and toothless.
For a long time everyone thought she had died, until one day she appeared on the same tram as Siiri.
    ‘Oh, you aren’t dead, then,’ Siiri had said, thoughtlessly, and then she had hastened to explain, ‘They said you went away.’

Chapter 11
    Irma had marked on her calendar that it was her turn to reserve a restaurant table for her next class reunion. She asked Siiri to come with her to reserve it because
she’d decided that this time they would have the meeting in a real restaurant instead of Cafe Ekberg.
    ‘Come with you? Can’t you just call and reserve a table?’ Siiri said. She didn’t know Helsinki restaurants and wasn’t sure how she could help.
    ‘I’m not calling somewhere. I’m going in person. It’s more fun that way. And I have to try out the restaurant so I won’t embarrass myself by choosing a place with
bad food. We can take a taxi.’ She was enthused at the idea.
    ‘Don’t you think a taxi’s too expensive?’ Siiri said, since Irma didn’t have any of the Ambassador’s taxi coupons. But Irma’s daughter had told her that
now that she didn’t have a car she could afford to take a taxi every day. Siiri wasn’t used to calling a cab just like that. It made her feel a little guilty. But Irma was more carefree
than Siiri was in many ways. She liked all kinds of little vices, like whisky and cigarettes.
    They went to the Sunset Grove information desk to ask them to call a taxi and were happy to see that for once there was someone at the counter.
    ‘Two euros,’ the woman said before picking up the phone.
    ‘I see. So it costs the same as one emptying of the rubbish,’ Irma said, and cheerfully handed her a fifty-euro note.
    ‘Don’t you have anything smaller?’ Siiri said in horror, and Irma said that when you get money out of the wall it only dispenses large bills. There was nothing she could do
about it.
    They got a taxi, but a problem arrived with it. There was a large-breasted, naked woman painted on the side of the car with a phone number for sex services. Siiri felt that they couldn’t
take such a porn-mobile, but Irma told her to stop being silly; no one was going to mistake them for sex workers.
    ‘Or customers!’ Irma said with a hearty laugh and sat down on a large stain in the back seat of the taxi.
    The next problem was where to go. Irma asked the driver if he could recommend a nice restaurant for students from the class of 1940, but the man clearly wasn’t from Helsinki. Then Irma
remembered the Lehtovaara.
    ‘What’s the address?’ the driver asked. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead.
    ‘Well, it’s on Mechelininkatu. On the corner of Mechelin and something, right near the Töölö library,’ Irma said as she put on her lipstick. With that
information you would have thought that the taxi would get moving, but the driver demanded the address again. He had a little gadget on the dashboard where apparently he had to type in the exact
address before he could start driving.
    ‘Goodness,’ Irma said, snapping her compact mirror shut. ‘Type in “Mechelininkatu eight”. That’s with a C H.’
    ‘Is it eight C or eight H?’
    ‘Not the address, the spelling. Try eight A.’
    And so the taxi started off, but the address she’d given him was wrong, of course. She gave a shout when they passed the furniture store on Mechelininkatu and told the driver to stop. But
the man said that he couldn’t turn left until he got to Mechelininkatu 8, and stubbornly continued