He pushes a button, and the scanner begins to whir. “Its wrinkling and aging algorithms are based on photographs of a population cohort of two thousand people,” he continues. “Once we download the photo, the AP morph will take just fifty-five seconds to generate the final product.”
“Fascinating,” I say. Skip the jargon, Doc, let’s just see if the thing works. “I’m so eager to see the results.”
“I CAN’T LOOK AT IT NOW, I’m trying to drive,” Franklin says.
Franklin had picked me up at the corner of Cambridge and Blossom streets, near the “dentist,” and as we head for Swampscott I’ve described how Mom’s plastic surgeon demonstrated his age progression software. So far, Franklin hasn’t questioned why I happened to be in Dr. Garth’s office. He may think it’s all part of Mom’s recuperation, since he knows I just paid her a quick visit. Fine with me. Franklin knows a lot about my life-hard to avoid since we share an office-but my personal consultation with Dr. Garth can stay private.
I stare again at the peculiarly haunting images generated by the AP computer. Dr. Garth had put the whole page on the scanner, so it’s not just Dorie, but her whole prom court that transformed through computer magic from eighteen-year-old high-schoolers to thirty-eight-year-old whatever-they-ares. They still have lithe and toned teenage bodies, wearing wannabe-sophisticated gowns and embarrassing tuxes, but now they’re unsettlingly stuck with middle-aged heads. Puffing jowls, receding hairlines, narrowing eyes, the early etchings of lines and wrinkles.
“It’s creepy,” I say. “But I have to tell you, this computer version of Dorie is right on the money. You’d recognize her from it. You’d think it was a real photograph, you know? I guess it really works.”
“Did he do you? Charlotte at sixty-six?” Franklin asks, making a woo-woo face. “Maybe you just don’t want to go there. Might be too scary.”
“Very funny,” I say. “Ve-ry funny. But since you’re being so unnecessarily mean to me, I guess it’s time to tell you I had him do a shot of you, too. I was going to save it as a surprise for Stephen. So he could see what he’s in for.” I pretend to rummage in my bag. “Want to see it?”
Ignoring me, Franklin turns his Passat into the parking lot in front of a yellow brick building, low and stubby and vintage 1950s. It’s as boxy as a file cabinet and just as interesting. A soldier-straight row of identical shrubs lines the extra-wide concrete path to the entrance. Instead of steps, two wheelchair ramps lead to the double framed glass front door. A stolid white sign announces Beachview in boldly painted black letters, although the nursing home where Dorinda Sweeney worked is nowhere near a beach.
We push a plate-sized silver button and the automatic doors swing apart, allowing us into an overbright lobby. It’s insistently cheery, so resolutely upbeat it instantly makes me sad. A massive arrangement of fake yellow gerbera daisies and white carnations sits on a lace-covered round table in the center of the room. Clusters of upholstered couches, chairs and love seats, empty, await absent visitors. Some decorator no doubt pitched them as “conversation areas,” but there’s not a person to be seen. I sniff, trying to identify the familiar yet unfamiliar fragrance. Disinfectant? Onion soup?
Franklin is already checking out what appears to be the reception desk, though there’s no one there to receive him. A phone and a guest book sit unattended on a curving wooden counter. The swivel chair behind it is empty.
He turns to me, questioning, and points to a doorway behind the counter. “Should we knock?” he whispers. “There’s no bell or call button.”
I dig into my tote bag, and pull out my cell phone, flipping it open and hitting redial. “I told her we’d be here at eleven,” I say, tucking the phone between my shoulder and my cheek, and checking my watch. From behind the door, we hear a phone ring and then someone answering.
“Beachview,” I hear it first, muffled, from somewhere out of sight, and then clearly in my ear.
“This is Charlie McNally,” I say. “I’m in the lobby? We had an appointment with Miss Soltisanto, and-”
The door behind the counter opens. A harried-looking woman in a thin beige cardigan, white blouse and a dowdy flowered cotton skirt bustles into the lobby. She seems to be carrying her entire office with her-legal pad tucked under her arm, pencil behind one ear, and eyeglasses on a chain layered on top of a necklace of jangling keys. Another brass key bounces from a plastic spring around her wrist as she offers me the hand that’s not holding her cordless phone. With that motion, the legal pad plops to the ground. “Amelia Soltisanto,” she introduces herself as she leans down to pick up the pad. “Administrator of-” She glances at the phone, a flashing green light signaling it’s still on. With a brisk gesture she clicks the cell to Off.
“Sorry,” she says, “Emergency with the water heater. Luckily, laundry time is over and we-” She holds up one finger, as if she’s just thought of something. She ducks behind the reception desk, picks up the phone and punches three buttons. “It’s me,” she says. “Plumber’s on the way. Twenty minutes.” She hangs up, uses her pencil to make some sort of notation on her legal pad, then turns her attention back to Franklin and me.
“Sorry,” she says again. “It’s only Virginia on duty today. And Joe B. of course. And Kiley, in at two. If she decides to show up.” She smiles brightly and tucks her pencil back in place, patting her spirals of gray hair as if checking to see if more pencils might be stored among the curls. She’s a combination of pack rat and air traffic controller.
I’m exhausted just watching her. I risk a glance at Franklin, who’s leaning against the counter and taking in the whole performance. I can tell he’s trying not to smile.
I open my mouth to remind her of what we need, but Amelia Soltisanto’s phone interrupts, trilling insistently. She holds up one finger, and this time Franklin actually laughs, which he quickly transforms into a cough.
“Hold please,” the administrator says. Putting one hand over the phone’s mouthpiece to shield her voice, she gestures with her head toward a door marked Client Services. “I pulled the records you asked for. In there. That’s all we still have.” She sighs as if trying to make a decision, her eyes darting to the phone, to the door, then back to us. “I have to-I can’t-” Back to the phone. “Hold please.” She holds up a finger, then points us to the door. “Fifteen minutes.”
WE’RE GETTING NOWHERE FAST. Franklin and I, shoulders touching, are sitting at the client services desk, turning the pages in an oversize logbook, a ledger-lined compilation of time sheets. It contains the hour-by-hour arrivals and departures of every employee at Beachview. A page per employee, a page per day. Thanks to the efficient Amelia, the book including the night of the murder was already pulled from the shelves of similar forest-green volumes archived behind us. I figured there’d have to be some record of who was on duty that night. Turns out there is-and there isn’t.
“The good news-doesn’t this handwriting all look the same? It does to me.” I turn the heavy logbook to Franklin, pointing out several daily entries. I twist it back to me, and flip to the front to reconfirm the date. “And for the entire seven months, back to the beginning of this group of time sheets, Dorinda K. Sweeney signed in at midnight, and out at 7:00 a.m. And looks like no one did it for her.” I turn the book back to Franklin, keeping my fingers in place to mark several of Dorinda’s pages. “See? Every day. Including the night of the murder.”
“The bad news…” I pause. “The bad news, who knows when these pages were filled out? They’re not numbered, and-look.”
It takes both hands for me to flip the book over so we’re looking at the back. A back that reveals two flat metal discs. I know they’re what’s holding the book together.