with Bonita Layman,” she said.
The receptionist, an older woman with short gray hair that glinted with bobby pins, nodded. She stood up, smoothed down the front and sides of her pink smock, and came out from behind the counter. She led Bell toward the executive director’s office on the other side of the lobby.
Layman was waiting for her. She stood behind her desk. She got rid of the receptionist with a curt, “Thanks, Dorothy.”
The woman in charge of Thornapple Terrace was not what Bell had anticipated. For one thing, she was young, perhaps no more than thirty, with a round cocoa-brown face and close-cropped hair that lay in tiny flat circles across her scalp. Gold hoop earrings shifted when she leaned forward to shake Bell’s hand. Layman’s dark eyes snapped with alertness and intelligence. And she seemed to be cheerful, whereas Bell had suspected that anyone who dealt daily with the tragedy of Alzheimer’s would of necessity be somber and glum. Dressed exclusively in dark garments. Prone to deep sighs and frustrated frowns. Layman, though, wore a pale green skirt topped by a cream blouse and yellow cardigan, and her smile looked genuine, if a trifle wary.
One more time, Bell gave herself a quick private talking-to about expectations and stereotypes. She had fallen into some bad habits. Bad—and dangerous, too, for a prosecutor.
“I appreciate your time this morning,” Bell said. She sat, taking off her gloves and her coat. She draped the coat across her lap.
The office was simple to the point of austerity. A red Keurig coffeemaker and a square black printer were the only items atop the credenza along one wall. On the opposite wall, two medium-sized prints offered ubiquitous mountain scenes, one set in daffodil-rich spring, the other in iron-gray winter. The director’s desk featured a monitor and keyboard, a small brass lamp, a phone console, and a black mug bristling with sharpened pencils arranged in a tilting spray, each one equidistant from the one next to it.
“As I told you on the phone,” Bell said, “and as I’m sure Rhonda Lovejoy mentioned yesterday, Darlene Strayer was a friend of mine. Shortly before her death, she asked me to look into the circumstances surrounding her father’s passing.”
“I saw the story online about Darlene’s accident. It was shocking. Totally shocking.”
“So you knew her.”
“Oh, yes. She came by frequently to visit her father.” Layman’s small brown hands were clasped on the top of the desk. Her attitude was affable but puzzled. “Your assistant seemed startled yesterday by the death of Mrs. Delaney, but I’m not sure why. Our residents are quite elderly. Many are also gravely ill, in addition to having Alzheimer’s. Sadly, we do see some deaths here. It’s not uncommon.”
“Some, yes,” Bell said. “But three in such a short span? Surely that’s unprecedented.”
Layman cocked her head to one side. Her thinking pose. “We’re a relatively new facility, Mrs. Elkins. We opened about three years ago. So there’s really no precedent here yet. For anything. But based on the statistics at our other facilities, it’s not an anomaly. We sometimes have clusters of deaths. And then there might be a long span—several years, in fact—with none.”
“So you’re a chain?” Bell asked. She knew the answer, having had Lee Ann Frickie do a Google search on the company yesterday, but she wanted to keep the conversation matter-of-fact, focused on numbers, before heading into the hard part.
“Yes. American Care Network is based in Dallas. We have twenty-seven facilities in fifteen states. We expect to open a dozen more by the end of next year,” Layman declared, in a voice that knew its way around a PowerPoint presentation.
“No problem filling the rooms, I suppose.”
“Quite the contrary. We have a waiting list.” Layman offered a small, perfectly timed frown. “Alzheimer’s is the coming storm, Ms. Elkins. Roughly half the population over the age of eighty-five has been diagnosed with it. It’s on track to overwhelm the resources of our health care system—not to mention the patience and stamina of caregivers. In the next forty years, the number of new cases could very well triple. The cost of that? Twenty trillion dollars is the latest estimate I’ve read.”
Bell nodded. Time to move past the bullet points. “Can you tell me a bit about the three people who died?”
“Of course.” Layman reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a file folder. She opened it and used an index finger to find her place on the fact sheet. “Polly Delaney had just recently joined