Blackout (28 page)

“Foster? Yes. I took him on a tour of the facility. I don’t know who could have given him a tip. Very few people know about my suspicions—you, Ma, Alice, Donald, and Thomas. None of them would have any reason to do such a thing.”

“I agree about everyone,” Maxwell said slowly, “with the possible exception of Thomas. If he’s not the killer and he believes you, he may think this is the only way to find Lettie’s murderer.”

Thomas wouldn’t do this to me, would he?
Betty wondered, her mind churning. “But the authorities most certainly will order an autopsy now,” she said. “Thomas won’t have any choice like he did when they thought it was natural causes.”

“That’s true. Maybe he changed his mind. There’s one other person who could have tipped Foster.”

“Who?”

“The killer.”

“Oh,” she gasped. “I didn’t think of that. But you’re right. If this is some psycho, they may want everyone to know. Damn!” She opened her desk drawer and pulled out the bag of trail mix. She offered him the package, but Max waved it away. Shaking out a handful, she stuffed it into her mouth, realizing while she did it the tension had become almost unbearable, and she was falling back onto old habits. The hell with it, she thought, tossing another handful into her mouth. She could feel the stuff landing in her stomach to be churned up and dissolved by the excess acid there.

She took one last mouthful and put the mix away. Even chewing felt satisfying. She closed her eyes briefly and took several deep breaths. When she next gazed at Maxwell, he was rereading the newspaper article.

He finished and looked up at her. “We need a plan of action. Why don’t you call Foster and ask him about his source? I expect the police will be here any time now.”

Betty nodded. “Jerod’s on his way, but we only talked about Alice.”

“Well, they can no longer ignore this. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.” He stood up and began to pace.

Betty reached for the phone. On hold, she got out her bag of trail mix again and a Diet Coke.

Finally, Foster answered.

“Betty Cranston, Foster. Could you please explain to me why you didn’t try harder to contact someone before printing that inflammatory article?”

“Oh, um…” he stammered. “I did try to reach you and Katherine—”

“Katherine’s out of town. I’ve been here during working hours, though. How did you get the anonymous tip, anyway?”

“A letter in the mail. The police have it now. I expect they’ll be in touch with you shortly.”

“I’m sure of it,” Betty responded dryly.

“I was only doing my job, and if it’s true—”

“What if it’s not true, Foster? Did you think about what chaos we’ll have here after everyone in town reads your article? It’s like yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater.” Betty zipped up the trail-mix bag and threw it back into the drawer. The action did little to relieve her stress. “You get to write your charming little article with a self-righteous
freedom of the press, the hell with the consequences
attitude and then stand back while everyone else deals with the problems you’ve caused. What are you trying to do, get a job with the
National Enquirer
?” The minute the words escaped her mouth, she regretted them. Much of her anger was at the situation in general, not Foster in particular. “Look,” she said in a softer voice, “I really wish you’d tried harder to get in touch with me before you wrote that.” She checked her desktop for messages from him, but didn’t see even one. “I don’t have any messages you called.”

“I, uh, I didn’t leave any. I called and asked for you or Katherine two or three times.”

Betty sighed and moved the phone to her other ear. Maxwell’s eyebrows had about raised up to where his hairline would be if he had one. She turned her gaze away from him and began straightening up her desk.

“All right, Foster. You owe me a favor for what you did. Remember that. I’ll be in touch.” She hung up the phone none too gently and glared at Maxwell. “You have something to say?” she asked as she dumped several pieces of junk mail into the wastebasket.

“Not me,” Maxwell said. “You handled it.”

“Damn right.”

“How did he get the tip?”

“A letter in the mail. He gave it to the police. They should be here any minute, I expect.”

The intercom buzzed. “There are three families out here who want to speak to someone about the morning newspaper article,” Jenny said.

“We’ll be right out,” Maxwell told her.

When they arrived at the reception area there were five groups of relatives, and Jerod and another policeman had arrived.

“I’ll deal with these folks,” Maxwell said in Betty’s ear. “You take care of the police.”

Betty nodded. She greeted the families briefly, then motioned Jerod and the other man to come into her office. Jerod looked the same as the last time she saw him—tall, thin but muscular, brown hair, and blue eyes with crinkles around the corners although he hadn’t yet reached his thirtieth birthday. He loved the outdoors. If he wasn’t at work, he fished, hunted, and hiked.

“This is my partner, Allen Bacon, Aunt Betty,” Jerod said. Betty shook hands with Allen and led the way to her office. After the three of them were settled, Jerod slapped a piece of paper onto Betty’s desk and asked, “Did you write this?”

She picked it up, then dropped it after reading the first sentence: WHY IS NO ONE INVESTIGATING THE MURDERS AT MERRY HILLS?

“Should I be touching this, Jerod?”

“It’s only a copy,” he snapped at her.

“Oh, all right.” She picked it up again. “Of course I didn’t write this. What made you think I had?”

“I thought maybe you were desperate to get us to investigate.”

She gave him a disapproving glance. “You should know me better than that. I wouldn’t do anything to bring adverse publicity to Merry Hills, and this certainly has.”

“I know that, but I remember how badly you wanted me to check into it. If you didn’t write it, who would you guess did?”

Before answering him, Betty quickly scanned the rest of the short letter:

Two lives snuffed out at Merry Hills this past week and an attack on a third have all gone unreported to the police. Someone needs to investigate now!

Written before Lettie died, she noticed.

“I have no idea why anyone would do this. Unless the killer has a reason.”

“That was typed on an old manual typewriter, not an electric model,” Jerod said. “See how the letters are uneven? Are there any typewriters in the building we could check out?”

Betty thought for a moment. “There’s one in the activity room. Yolanda keeps it because a few of our residents like to type letters to friends and relatives on a manual typewriter. Those electric machines make them nervous.”

Jerod said. “Let’s go and see it. Then I need to talk to you about Allison Armstrong. Allen here is going to be starting the Merry Hills murders investigation while I check out Allison’s story.”

“So, it’s officially now a murder investigation?”

Jerod scowled at her. “Yes.”

“All right. Let me remind you again, Jerod, Alice’s memory is sketchy at best. And if you push her too hard, she may forget everything once more.” She wished now she’d never involved her nephew in Alice’s problems. But how was she to know where it would lead?

“I’ll be careful,” Jerod said, his tone impatient. “How’s Grandma, by the way?

“The same. Not too happy about people being murdered in their beds and the police not investigating.”

“She knows what you suspect?”

“Of course. She’s the first person I go to. You know that. I’ve hired sitters around the clock. How was I to explain that to her?”

Jerod shrugged, not from indifference she thought, but because he didn’t know how to answer. “You know why we didn’t investigate before,” he said defensively.

“Yes. You wouldn’t believe your own aunt, but now you’ll believe some anonymous letter-writer.”

He wouldn’t look her in the eye. “It was the chief’s decision,” he muttered.

Allen spoke for the first time. “Can you give me a quick rundown on people, dates, and what you think happened? Then we’ll go check out that typewriter.”

Betty turned her attention away from her nephew and explained everything that had happened. When she began telling how Lettie had died, she was surprised by the overwhelming sadness she felt again. Without thinking, she opened the drawer with the trail mix but then quickly shut it. She clasped her hands in front of her and stared at them as she continued. She left nothing out, even telling them about the video cameras.

When she finished, the three of them went to look at the typewriter. “Alice, I mean Allison, should be in that area, and I can introduce you,” Betty told Jerod.

The activity room was empty, though. Allen examined the typewriter without touching it, then pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. After putting them on, he rolled a piece of paper onto the platen and typed the first line from the anonymous letter. He removed the page and placed the two pieces of paper next to each other. With Betty and Jerod looking over his shoulder, he compared the type.

“Could be a match,” Allen said. “We’ll have to take this machine back to headquarters for the lab guy.”

“That’s fine with me,” Betty said.

“I’ll give you a receipt,” Allen told her as he picked up the machine.

They headed back toward the front of the building.

“Let me put this in our vehicle,” Allen said, “and then I’d like to see the video setup.”

They saw Maxwell at the reception desk giving a little speech to a group of people, reassuring them, offering to help them transfer loved ones if they wanted to. He fielded questions calmly, and most of the family members quietly moved down the hall to check on their relatives. One woman was not convinced and demanded her mother be moved. Maxwell escorted her to the admissions director’s office to do the paperwork, then came back in time to greet another group of families.

Allen arrived back inside and he, Betty, and Jerod went to the administrator’s office. Betty knocked on the locked door, and Donald opened it a crack. When he saw the officers, he looked surprised, but motioned everyone inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.

Betty introduced them and they all looked at the video screens.

“There’s Ma,” Betty said, pointing to one of the monitors.

Betty Senior lay as still as always, apparently watching TV. A smile crossed her face briefly. The flighty sitter sat, watching too, with a constant grin on her face. Betty felt sad again, watching her ma watch TV, not able to do much else.

A motion at the edge of the camera’s range caught everyone’s eyes. Alice came into view. Betty wished she could hear as well as see. Betty Senior smiled. She and Alice talked back and forth.

Suddenly, the sitter got up and left the camera’s range. Alice sat down in the vacated chair.

“Where’d that nutty sitter go?” Betty fumed. “I hope she didn’t leave the room. Come on,” she said to Jerod. “It’s time for you to meet Alice.”

After Alice left Betty’s office, she felt her newfound confidence seeping away. She went down the hall, uncertain what to do next. She looked up and down the corridor, fearful of bumping into Nancy.

The urge to phone her aunt had become overwhelming. Alice didn’t know how much longer she could stand working at Merry Hills.

She started off toward the activity room, stepping around a Wet Floor sign and over the cord of the floor machine. The man who operated the equipment stared at her, making her skin crawl. He was a spooky little guy with thinning hair, squinty eyes, and he always smelled of floor cleaner.

No one occupied the activity room when she got there. She sat down at Yolanda’s desk and placed the call, her hands sweating, heart pounding.

After three rings, a woman answered. “Hello.”

Alice couldn’t talk. She could hardly breathe.

“Hello?” the voice said again.

“Aunt Ginny?” Alice whispered.

“Hello, who’s there?” The tone sounded impatient.

“Aunt Ginny, it’s me, Alice.” She swallowed hard. “Allison.”

“Allison? Allison, is that you?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s me.”

“Where are you, honey? Oh, where are you? Are you all right? We’ve been frantic.”

“I’m in California. And I’m all right. How’s…how’s Dad?” She gripped the phone so hard her hand ached, scared to ask the question, scared to hear the answer.

“He’s okay. Oh, Allison, honey, we’ve all been so worried about you. What happened to you?”

“I…I had amnesia. Tell me about Dad. Please, I have to know what happened to him. I’ve been calling for two days and no one answered. Is he there? Can I talk to him?” Desperation flooded through her. She felt so close but so far away.

“Oh, we went away for a while, got home this morning. And no, honey, he’s not here. But you have to tell me where you are, give me a phone number so he can call you and come get you and bring you home.”

Home. It sounded wonderful, even though it would be Aunt Ginny’s home. She closed her eyes a moment, thinking about it. Then she suddenly realized she didn’t know Betty’s phone number.

“I’m staying with Betty Cranston, but I don’t know her number. Please, Aunt Ginny, tell me about Dad.”

“I need to know about you first, Allison. What town are you in?”

“Valley— Oh, I have to go.”

Yolanda entered the room. Alice quickly hung up the phone. Yolanda barely glanced at her before going to one of the supply cabinets to get out a ball of red yarn. “For Mrs. Lewis,” she said over her shoulder as she left.

Alice breathed a sigh of relief, but didn’t dare press her luck and call Aunt Ginny back right away. She’d try her again at lunch break. At least she knew Aunt Ginny was there and her father was all right. So many of her questions remained unanswered, though. It seemed like Aunt Ginny hadn’t wanted to talk about her father. Was he in jail? Hiding from the police? The activity area remained empty. She picked up the phone. She had to know more.

The line on the other end was busy.

Alice hung up slowly, then headed down the hall again. She decided to go visit Betty Senior. A big smile crossed the old woman’s face when she caught sight of her. A feeling of awkwardness overcame Alice.