I guess I can see why, Sunny thought.
“To go back to the evening in question, did you see anything unusual?” she asked.
Elsa shrugged. “I was working in our office. We’re sort of in our own little world, between the clients’ rooms and our facilities.”
“You were here after lights-out for the patients.”
The therapist nodded. “But I didn’t see . . . Oh, wait. I went to the nurses’ station in hopes of getting a cup of coffee or tea, and bumped into Luke Daconto, who was there for the same reason. He’s a very sweet young man. The residents love him.”
She started to smile, but that faded away. “I’m sure a lot of people thought highly of Gardner Scatterwell, too. So many were shocked and saddened when he died.”
Elsa’s face was almost blank as she turned to Sunny. “But I was just . . . relieved.”
10
“One more question I have to ask,” Sunny said as she absorbed what Elsa had to say. “I spoke to Luke Daconto as well. He mentioned being warned about Reese and the need for reports. Did that happen with you, too?”
Elsa nodded.
“Where did it come from? The head of therapy?”
She shook her head. “We don’t report to the same person—different kinds of therapy. I got the word from Rafe Warner. Guess the union has a mole in the administrative offices. The word went out that there was going to be a crackdown on overdue reports, so I made sure that everything I did was up to date.”
That sounded like the Rafe Warner whom Sunny knew. He rescued kittens; no doubt he’d warn people who stood to catch grief from the administrator, even if they weren’t in the union. It even made tactical sense—worker solidarity against Dr. Reese and so forth.
Elsa glanced at her wristwatch, and Sunny took the hint. “Thanks for talking to me. I know those memories can’t have been pleasant.”
“It’s okay now,” Elsa said. “Mr. Scatterwell can’t do anything else to me.”
They got off the bench they’d been sitting on and went back into the building, which was cooler. But after the heat and humidity, Sunny felt as if her hair had frizzed to about three times its normal size. That was annoying enough, but the tape holding the gauze pad over Shadow’s scratches was beginning to come loose. She used her left hand to hold it in place as she made her way to Ollie’s room, where she found Ollie had a new roommate, a pale-faced older man with crew-cut white hair. He lay very still in his bed, his breathing shallow and his eyes closed. But they opened as soon as Sunny came inside.
“Sunny Coolidge,” Ollie said with excessive courtesy, “meet Charlie Vernon. He’s having some breathing as well as walking issues.”
“You’re not going to talk too loudly, are you?” Vernon had an odd voice, hoarse yet breathy. “If I can just lie and take it easy, I’ll be all right. I need to sleep.”
Sunny and her boss exchanged glances. She knew Ollie wanted to talk, but that didn’t seem likely with Vernon there. She leaned over Ollie’s bed. “What do you say you get back in your wheelchair, and I take you for a spin?”
“Good idea,” he replied, reaching for the call buzzer. Camille appeared to help Ollie into his chair while Vernon pleaded that she do it with less noise.
The girl rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to be as quiet as possible,” she told him.
“I just want to rest,” Vernon whined. “It was a tiring trip from the hospital.”
As soon as she had Ollie settled, Camille left and Sunny rolled along right after her. Hope these wheels are quiet enough for Charlie-boy.
Out in the corridor, Sunny asked Ollie, “Any particular direction you want to go?”
“Just get me as far from that moaner as possible,” Ollie directed. “They moved him in while my back was turned. Came in from therapy to find him lying there. The first thing he asked me was if I played the TV too loud. Honest to God, Sunny, I have to wonder if they stuck him in with me as a punishment—or maybe to drive me crazy.”
“I’m sure they’re just trying to fill the beds, not advancing some master plan by Dr. Reese.” She soothed him with a laugh, but Ollie was in a fussy mood.
He turned his pique on her. “Did you have to go questioning Elsa?”
“In a word, yes,” Sunny told him. “And I think she was glad to have someone to talk to, in a way. If you ask me, sounds like good old Gardner was a letch with a lot to answer for.”
But Ollie wouldn’t let it go. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “She’s been through enough. I think she deserved a break.”
“You can’t go exempting people from an investigation just because you like them or feel sorry for them, Ollie. Especially when we still have so little to go on. We have to concentrate on the people parts of the case—motive and opportunity—because we don’t have a clue when it comes to means.”
“I’ll give you means.” Ollie nodded toward a rattling sound coming around the bend from the nurses’ station. A moment later, a nurse appeared, pushing a cart that looked like a miniature pharmacy on wheels.
“That’s everybody’s meds,” he told Sunny in a stage whisper. “Probably enough stuff there to kill a dozen people.”
The nurse gave Ollie a pleasant smile. “Hang on, Mr. Barnstable. I have some things here for you.”
“They’ve got these horse-pill calcium tablets,” Ollie grumbled to Sunny. “Wouldn’t be surprised if ten percent of the death rate around here is from people choking on the damn things.”
Each patient seemed to have an inches-thick binder containing page-sized blister packs of pills, rows of plastic bubbles containing single doses backed with cardboard. The nurse consulted a list, popped the appropriate pills out of their bubbles, and presented them to Ollie.
“Blood pressure pill and your calcium tablets,” she announced.
Ollie grudgingly took a small blue pill and two amazingly large ones, along with the plastic cup that the nurse filled with water. He managed to choke down the big pills but told the nurse, “You should be giving people their calcium in ice cream sodas.”
The young woman laughed. “There’s a thought. But I don’t think it works that way.”
Now that Ollie had taken his medicine like a man, he was free to go wherever he wanted. But when Sunny turned to go down the hallway ending in the therapy room, her boss nixed the idea. “Not down there,” he said. “I’m beginning to think about that place like the line from the old movie.” He did a passable Bela Lugosi impersonation, intoning, “‘His is the house of pain.’”
Sunny noticed, though, that Ollie waved to Elsa Hogue when she briefly stepped into that hallway, and Elsa waved back.
Swinging farther around the nurses’ station, Sunny instead rolled Ollie down the hall to the solarium at the end of the residential ward on this floor. The various rooms were quiet, and Sunny caught glimpses of carefully made beds or a knot of older women watching something on TV. One of the residents sat in a wheelchair, reading a book by the light from her window. She looked familiar, and Sunny realized she was the lady who beat time to Luke Daconto’s music.
She also noted the paintings on the wall, some apparently done by talented amateurs.
Maybe there’s a painting therapy guy, too, Sunny thought. And maybe a needlepoint therapist, as they passed some framed samples of that craft. Just as she was wondering if she’d end up in a place like this someday, the murmuring calm was shattered by a strident voice crying, “I’ve had enough of this crap!”
“Yep, sounds just like me, say, fifty years from now,” Sunny murmured.
Ollie glanced up at her. “What?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Just a passing thought.”