Blackout (26 page)

Alice watched in wonder as residents she’d never seen smile before laughed out loud while petting the animals. The dogs and kitten seemed to enjoy the attention.

“Here pooch, nice pooch,” Mrs. Jones cooed. Alice couldn’t help smiling herself. Mrs. Jones rarely spoke.

The volunteers, Alice, and Yolanda gently eased their way down the hall, always stopping to let anyone pet an animal who wanted to.

At the rotunda, the two teams split up and went down different halls to visit residents in their rooms.

They’d only walked a few steps when the woman with Alice began sneezing violently.

“Oh, oh,” she said, handing Alice the leash for the other two dogs as she dug into her purse for a handkerchief. “Darned allergies. I need to go find some water to take my medicine with. I’ll meet you down the hall,” she said between sneezes.

Alice felt sorry for her, but soon became distracted by a resident talking to the cocker spaniel. This was the most fun she’d had since she’d come to Merry Hills.

She glanced down the hall and realized she was near Dana Griffith’s room. Since the arthritis in her knee had acted up, she hadn’t left her room. Alice decided to go there with the dogs to cheer her up.

As she approached the room, she heard a familiar voice. “I haven’t got time for this. You can make your way to the bathroom without assistance. Your knee’s not that bad.”

Alice stood in the doorway staring at Nancy. How could she? How could she be so mean? The Lab seemed to sense Alice’s distress. He nuzzled her leg and whined.

Nancy turned around abruptly and saw them. Rage turned her face into an ugly mask. “Get out! Out! Are you spying on me or what?”

Maybe the dog gave her the courage to stand her ground. “If you weren’t doing anything wrong, you’d have nothing to worry about, would you? You’re the one who should leave. I want to show Mrs. Griffith the dogs.”

Nancy approached menacingly. The Lab growled low in his throat. Alice patted him reassuringly as Nancy scowled at the animal, then brushed by Alice, bumping her into the Lab. Alice watched Nancy rush down the hall, then turned toward Dana Griffith. She appeared shrunken, defeated, compared to the last time Alice had seen her. And she looked scared.

Anger coursed through Alice. White-hot, cleansing anger. Suddenly she was mad at everything.
It wasn’t right
, she thought,
what some people did to other people. People who were helpless and dependent, like Mrs. Griffith. Something should be done
, Alice fumed to herself.
And I’m going to do it.

After Maxwell left, Betty went to the kitchen to see if Margaret had gone yet. A cook and two dietary aides stood in a corner talking softly to each other as Betty came through the door. They quickly went to different parts of the kitchen and began doing chores.

“Margaret still here?” Betty asked.

The cook nodded and pointed toward the dietary office.

The door was closed, and Betty hesitated. To knock or not to knock.
The hell with it
. She opened the door.

Margaret stopped in the process of putting a framed picture into a box. “You!” she said, eyes narrowed. “You bitch. What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Betty repeated with honeyed tones. “I want to see you leave. Do you know the amount of harm you’ve done here? You realize the decub rate went up because of bad nutrition? I’m not the bitch. You are.”

For a moment, Betty thought Margaret would fling the picture at her. She stood her ground as Margaret slowly lowered her arm and put the photo into the box. “Get out,” she said dully. “You can at least have the decency to let me pack in private.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘decency.’” Betty shot back. “I’ll give you five minutes.” She turned around and closed the door behind her with more force than necessary.

She stood a moment, catching her breath. For some reason she felt better. Maybe because she had vented a little of her anger. She watched, amused, as the dietary aides scurried around, scrubbing things. The cook stirred something in a pot, humming softly to herself.

Within five minutes Margaret opened the door, and carrying her purse and the large box, she left without another word to anyone. Betty smiled at the other three women and went back to the halls. She felt sorry for Maxwell. Now he had the added duty of hiring another manager.

Yolanda announced the gardening program over the intercom as Betty started to make rounds. She missed seeing Lettie walking the halls, and Thomas. When she passed the rotunda, she heard Rita explaining to the new aide he had to knock on any closed doors and announce his presence at any open ones before entering a resident’s room. A federal law made it mandatory.
What would the Feds say if they knew about Maxwell’s little scheme,
Betty wondered.

She checked her watch. She hadn’t seen Ma in a couple of hours. The three-to-eleven sitter should be arriving soon, and Betty wanted to talk with her again. Her first impression hadn’t been too favorable.

When Betty entered her mother’s room, Betty Senior lay dozing with the TV on. The sitter, Dottie Maguire, sat reading a movie magazine. When she saw Betty, she jumped up and then didn’t seem to know what to do. A little bird of a woman, Betty had noticed on first meeting her that she couldn’t sit or stand still. Hands fluttered, feet tapped, eyelids blinked rapidly. Betty wondered how this woman would be in a crisis.

“Hello, Ms. Cranston,” the sitter said. At least she kept her voice down.

“How is everything?” Betty whispered.

“Fine. Everything’s okay. I mean, I haven’t been here long, and everything’s fine…”

Betty stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “I won’t stay since she’s asleep. Remember, under no circumstances are you to leave this room.”

“Oh, I won’t, Miss Cranston. You can depend on me.”

I hope so
, Betty thought as she turned away.
I just want to take Ma and leave here. Go as far away as we can.
She toyed with the idea as she went to the medical records department. But she knew she wouldn’t. She was responsible for more people than just her mother.

In medical records she retrieved the closed files of Ida Perkins and Mrs. Lacy. Back in her office, she went through each scrap of paper. No particular bit of information jumped out at her. Dr. Henderson had attended them both. Nothing in the Social Histories told her anything except neither had a living relative.

She made a note of each one’s lawyer and closed the files.

Jenny’s voice came over the intercom, startling Betty. “Your nephew’s on line two.”

“Thanks!” Betty grabbed the receiver. “Where have you been, Jerod?”

“Sorry, Aunt Betty. I’ve been really busy.”

“Has the crime increased so much in our town in the last couple of days?”

“Yeah. A drug bust. A big one.”

Betty sighed. “Anyone we know personally?”

“Nope. Listen, I haven’t had a chance to chase down anything yet, but I will as soon as we hang up. And I talked to the chief again about your suspicion of foul play out there, but he’s not buying it. No evidence. He’s got other fish to fry.”

Betty had a pang of doubt. But then the images of all three women lying on their backs, arms folded, passed in front of her closed eyes. And Ma. She took a deep breath.

“He’s going to appear foolish when I’m proved right.

“Maybe so.” Jerod said in a noncommittal voice.

He doesn’t believe it, either,
Betty thought.
He’s just humoring his old aunt
.

“So there’s nothing you can do?”

“You want me to come out and question people?”

“No. No, of course not. We need to keep this quiet until this madman is caught.”

His sigh came over the line. “Then what do you suggest, Aunt Betty? I can work on finding out about Allison Armstrong, but there’s not much I can do about your suspicions about a serial killer, now is there?”

“I guess not,” Betty admitted. “You’ll call me as soon as you have anything on Alice, I mean Allison?”

“Of course I will.”

“All right, then. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up the phone with a greater sense of frustration than before.

Betty saw the nursing-center van pull into the parking lot and drive around back. She decided to go see what the men had purchased.

When she arrived at the rear entrance near the maintenance office, they were piling boxes in the hallway with the contents written on the carton facing the wall.

“We decided to do Betty Senior’s room first,” Donald told her.

“Good,” Betty said. “Should we tell her, do you think? It might reassure her if we do.”

Maxwell paused after putting down a carton with a light in it. “We’ll do what you think best about that.”

Would it make her feel better or worse,
Betty wondered.
Probably better,
she decided.
Ma liked to be in on things, might be upset later if she found out about it and hadn’t been informed.

“I’ll tell her,” Betty said. “Are you going to leave these cameras in the hallway?”

“No, of course not,” Maxwell said. “We’re bringing everything in, then we’ll lock up the cameras in Donald’s office.”

“Okay. I’ll leave you to it and go see Ma. We’ll get no assistance from the police, by the way. Even Jerod doesn’t seem to really believe me.”

Maxwell shrugged. “I’m not surprised. We’ll have to try to manage on our own.”

Betty nodded and turned to leave, a sudden feeling of being overwhelmed descending upon her.

In her mother’s room, Betty found Ma awake and shooed the sitter out. She sat down in the visitor’s chair and felt some of the tension ease out of her body.

“What’s going on?” Betty Senior asked.

Betty told her about Maxwell’s plan.

“You mean I’m going to be a movie star?” Betty Senior joked.

Betty laughed ruefully. “You can look at it that way. Please do. You don’t mind, then?”

“No. It will be reassuring. Is someone going to be watching twenty-four hours a day?”

“There’s no way we can do that. Not enough people.”

“Oh. You mean if someone attacks and kills me, you’ll have it on tape.”

“Ma!”

“Well, let’s be realistic here. This will only help catch someone after the dirty deed is done.”

“But you have a sitter. This is just a little insurance. And whoever’s doing it might slip again and put your or someone else’s arms in that strange position without attacking you. Or do something else suspicious.”

“I guess so. I understand there’s a limit to what you can do. I really do.”

“Would you like to transfer to another home?” Betty asked softly. She realized she didn’t want her mother to leave. Selfishly, she needed her to talk to, but she wanted even more for her to be safe.

Betty Senior remained quiet for a while. Then she said, “No, I’ll stay. I really don’t think I’m in much danger, especially with a sitter and with all the other people in and out of this room all the time. It would be hard adjusting to a strange place and different people. And really, I don’t want to miss anything. You know what a busybody I am.”

Betty laughed again, stood up, and lightly kissed her mother’s cheek. Affection for her overcame Betty as she turned to leave.

She had tons of paperwork to do, so she went back to her office and worked steadily at it until Donald came by.

“Everything’s set in Betty Senior’s room,” he said. “Did you tell her what we’re really doing? She couldn’t say anything with the sitter there, if you did.”

She nodded, then told him to keep an eye on Alice. Donald still protested her innocence as they walked down the hall to find her.

Alice sat waiting for Betty in the activities room. As Betty gazed at her, a sense of urgency came over her to learn the truth about Miss Allison Armstrong. If that was her real name.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you home.”

Alice fidgeted as Betty drove them home. She wanted to say something about Nancy, but decided it would be better to wait until they weren’t in the car.

When they walked into the house, she got up her courage and blurted out, “Something has to be done about Nancy. She’s being awful.”

“What did she do this time?” Betty asked, seeming to be surprised by Alice’s assertiveness. “Let’s sit down in the atrium.”

After they were settled, Alice said, “She told Dana Griffith she didn’t need help going to the bathroom, she could walk. Dana looks bad, beaten down. You have to do something about her!” Alice’s voice rose in pitch, and she tried to calm down.

“All right. Alice, it’s not that I don’t believe you,” Betty soothed. “The thing is we have to have more than one witness, or Nancy can sue us for wrongful termination. Do you understand?”

“All I understand is she’s hurting the residents and you won’t get rid of her.”

Betty stood up. “I’ll see what I can do tomorrow. Right now, I’m hungry, so let’s have some dinner.”

They ate the heated-up frozen dinners in silence, and Alice went to her room as soon as the few dishes were finished. She couldn’t relax and decided to take a hot bath. She wanted to stay up late again so she could call Aunt Ginny.

After her bath, she stretched out on the bed, and the next thing she knew, when she glanced at the clock, it was three in the morning. Should she try to call this late?

Sighing, she padded into the kitchen and picked up the phone. But the same thing that happened the night before happened again. No answer. When she got back into bed, she couldn’t go to sleep for a long time. What would she do if she couldn’t reach Aunt Ginny? She had no idea.

First thing the next day at work, Betty went to visit her mother and again told the sitter to take a break. She smoothed the bed sheets and said, “I hear your video camera has been installed.”

“Yep. Donald hooked it up. Even the sitters don’t know.”

“Good. Now we have to figure out how to monitor them between the three of us.”

“Wish I could help,” Betty Senior said.

“So do I,” Betty said, patting her arm even though her mother couldn’t feel it. “But I’m afraid you doze too much, and the logistics would be impossible.”