Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,40

paused. Bell could imagine Rhonda looking around nervously, making sure no one was listening. “I was sitting in the director’s office when the nurse came in and said an aide had found her. The dead woman’s name was Polly Delaney. Eighty-eight years old. Only been here a week. They think it’s natural causes—but it’s just weird, you know? Three deaths so close together? Even if Harmon Strayer and Delaney were older than dirt—and suffering from Alzheimer’s to boot—it’s still a hell of a coincidence, timing-wise.”

“You said three.”

“Yeah. Turns out there was another death here about three weeks ago—a woman named Margaret Jacks. Same deal. She was in her early nineties, she’d been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a long time. No family. Lots and lots of health issues—any one of which could’ve taken her down any minute—but still.”

Bell did not respond right away. She closed her eyes. An ominous feeling was rising inside her, a dark tide of dread. Maybe it was just this latest news from Rhonda. Maybe it was residual shock over Darlene’s death. Maybe it was the persistent chill of winter, which she never quite managed to shake off until midway through the spring. Maybe it was the darkness that seemed to prowl around just outside her window, nosing the lock, probing the seal.

Or maybe it was something else.

Chapter Six

I don’t have time for this. And it’s none of my business, anyway.

That’s what Bell had been telling herself since 9 a.m., over and over again, as she drove along the fog-misted two-lane road the next day. After forty minutes she crossed the Muth County line. Ten minutes after that, she pulled into the large parking lot of Thornapple Terrace. By now the fog was beginning to break apart, departing this earth one misty bit at a time, drifting fitfully up toward a white sky that looked as if it might, at any second, unzip into a snow sky.

Bell did a quick exploratory visual of the scrupulously well-plowed space. She was here for a conversation with Bonita Layman, Thornapple’s executive director, even though—as Bell reminded herself again—this was officially none of her business.

Which Layman, if she were so inclined, would be fully justified in pointing out to the Raythune County prosecutor, perhaps with umbrage in her voice—again, fully justified: This was not Bell’s jurisdiction. Moreover, even if it were, there was no evidence of any crimes having been perpetrated on the premises, nothing that would give Bell the right—legal or moral—for any sort of inquiry, formal or informal. Rhonda, after delivering the bulletin yesterday about another resident’s death, had added that she’d found nothing unusual or suspicious about Thornapple Terrace. The staff, she said, was somber at the news of Polly Delaney’s passing, but no one had taken her aside to whisper a warning that something untoward was afoot. Delaney, Strayer, and Jacks had been old and sick. Their deaths were perfectly normal. Perfectly plausible.

Bell had to agree.

Yet here she was.

She had engaged in a modicum of professional courtesy at her office that morning before setting out. At her request, Lee Ann had gotten Steve Black, the Muth County prosecutor, on the line. He was in his mid-sixties, and had occupied his office for three and a half decades. His greeting to Bell was effusive and overloud and far too familiar, just as she had expected it to be, because it always was:

“Belfa Elkins! Lady, it’s been way too long.” His Southern drawl had a cartoonish edge to it, as if he’d learned his accent not from his upbringing down near the Virginia border but from Hee Haw reruns.

“Hi, Steve. Sorry to interrupt your day.” She had put him on speaker. She needed to twirl a pencil between her fingers as she talked, a way of diverting the surge of distaste she felt at the sound of his voice.

“Interrupt my day? Lordy, Miss Belfa, you just made my day. What can I do ya for?”

“I was thinking about heading over to Thornapple Terrace this morning. To have a chat with the director. Just wanted to keep you in the loop, in case I run into anything you need to know about.”

There was silence on the line. When Black spoke again, his voice was a tick less friendly. “Really. Well, I know I don’t need to tell you this, darlin’, but that place is the first new business we’ve had starting up in this county in—hell, I don’t know how long. Years, for sure. They employ a good number of