Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,33
including herself—was the subtle art that made Rhonda a dogged bloodhound of an investigator. It was a gift.
“Excellent,” Bell said. “I’d like you to poke around a bit. Talk to the staff about Harmon Strayer’s death. If there’s any blowback, you can reassure the director that it’s just a routine inquiry—because, quite frankly, that’s what it is.”
“Do you remember the news stories about that Alzheimer’s place back East? Couple of years ago? Turns out this crazy nurse wanted to put the patients out of their misery. So she added a little something—a lethal something—to their morning orange juice. Her motives were pure. But she still went to jail.”
Bell shook her head. “As a friend of mine used to say, there’s only room for one God. And the job’s already taken.” She moved the stack of papers. It was a signal to Rhonda that the meeting was almost over. “Strayer’s death certificate said natural causes. Nothing suspicious. So this is probably a waste of time. But I’ll still feel better if we go through the motions. Maybe we can help Darlene’s partner find some peace—once she knows that both deaths were accidental. So just gather up any details you can find about the old man’s passing. And anything else that’s going on out there.”
Rhonda used a thumb and a finger to flash a small round O of acknowledgment. “If it happens at the Terrace,” she said, “you’ll know about it.” She turned at the door. “Oh, and I meant to ask—how’s Carla doing? She’s back, right?”
Bell had not said a word to her about Carla’s return. Rhonda just knew it, the way she knew about everything. Sometimes a gift could be a nuisance, too.
* * *
It took Carla a good five minutes to shed all the winter gear in which she’d wrapped herself in a futile defense against the cold. She lifted off her earmuffs, pulled her knit cap off sideways, unwound her scarf, struggled out of her long wool coat, peeled off her mittens, and untucked her trouser cuffs from the tops of her sopping-wet boots. It felt to her like the slowest and least-sexy striptease in the history of the world as she removed one heavy item after another and then hung it on the coat tree next to Sally McArdle’s desk.
“I think,” Carla said, “I’m melting on your carpet.” The snow sliding off her boots was steadily darkening the beige.
“Don’t worry about it. Winter’s winter.”
McArdle hadn’t gotten up when Carla came in. Carla knew why. She knew because she’d grown up in this town, for the most part, and when you’d grown up here, you knew things like the fact that Sally McArdle had had her left leg amputated on account of her diabetes on the day after her fifty-eighth birthday, which was ten years ago. Getting up and down was difficult for her.
Wow. I know two different people who’ve had a leg amputated, Carla suddenly realized. The other was Clay Meckling, her mother’s boyfriend. He had been trapped beneath a heavy beam after an explosion. Two people: What were the odds? Infinitesimal, probably. Well, maybe not in Acker’s Gap.
Why hadn’t it struck her before? Maybe because she never thought of either one of them—not Clay, and not this old woman—in terms of lack. They were strong, both of them. You did not focus on what wasn’t there. You focused on what was.
Or maybe it wasn’t as noble as all that. Maybe she was just obtuse. Inattentive. Preoccupied with her own problems—such as the fact that, while she’d slept better last night than at any time in the past six months, she’d still woken up with a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, like something dark and greasy that hadn’t gotten washed down the drain when it should have.
“Have a seat,” McArdle said. Her voice was gruff, but it was an abstract, professional-grade gruffness. It didn’t mean that she didn’t like you. Carla knew that, too. She had spent a lot of her Saturday mornings here when she was in middle school and the first two years of high school, rooting through the stacks, searching for a book for a class assignment—or, more desperately, for a book that would verify that there really was a world beyond this one, a world beyond the narrow streets and throwback attitudes of a small mountain town.
McArdle used a stubby finger to point to the gray folding chair alongside her desk. “Sit,” she said, repeating the order.