Only the two of them evidently hadn't gotten it right that time. The unit folded, and they declared bankruptcy, leaving behind some seriously displeased creditors and more than one cranky customer. They had given the press the usual, "a great idea that needs better funding" line, and then split town.
And four years before that, they'd done the same in Philadelphia. The pictures looked younger, brasher, more hopeful. The results were dismally the same.
And now, they were the toast of Puckett with the same song and dance.
Murphy smiled. It wouldn't hurt to get in touch with somebody involved in the other Alzheimer's units. See what might have happened, what tastes were left in what mouths. It might not even be a bad idea to venture deep into the bowels of Price University labs and see just what the dark, intense Dr. Davies looked like now that he was working on a possible third strike.
It might even be a good idea to ask Leary out to dinner. Just to ask what she'd found out. And then he'd tell her what he'd found out. For the first time that day, Murphy laughed.
Chapter 12
"What difference doe that make?" Timmie demanded when given the news two days later.
"What do you mean, what difference?" Murphy retorted, now close to seriously enjoying himself as he walked down the hall alongside her. "Money and power and status. Tough stuff to give up, Leary."
"Alex isn't giving anything up. He's trying again."
"With somebody else's money."
That stopped Leary dead in her tracks and spun her around. "I imagine you've already figured out why a guy trying his best not to go bankrupt would be killing off his paying customers?"
"That's what this visit is all about."
The two of them stood face-to-face about halfway along the connecting tunnel between the hospital and Restcrest, where Murphy was due for an appointment with not only the good doctor himself, but Mary Jane Arlington and Joseph Leary, their newest resident. Or client, as Mary Jane had put it.
Murphy hated the word "client." The minute the public relations queen had used it, Murphy knew he wanted to find dirt under Restcrest's rugs. He just hadn't realized he'd have so much trouble getting Leary to help him.
"I won't be party to a witch-hunt," she insisted.
Murphy started walking again. "I'm not hunting anything. I'm doing an in-depth piece on the wonders of Restcrest and the Neurological Research Group. I'm tying that in to the character piece I'm doing on your father."
Leary followed along, her heavy shoes thunking on the tile. "Which is the only reason I'm coming along."
Ten feet from the open fire doors into Restcrest, she stopped again. Stood there, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. She was wearing jeans today, old, worn ones, with an oversized pea green sweater and what looked like heavy brown work boots. She also sported a black-banded Mickey Mouse watch with the dial against the inside of her wrist and those tiny four earrings in each ear. Other than that, she was unadorned. A straightforward force of nature.
"I just think we need to look into the main hospital more," she protested, sneaking a look past the doors as if somebody might hear her. They probably could. Her urgent voice echoed down the hall like a soft wind. "I still haven't had a chance to look at the death stats, but I didn't see anything at all that indicted Restcrest."
"You've had two days," he reminded her, just to see her get mad.
She did. "You're right, I have. I also had a six-year-old with the flu and a backed-up toilet. I'm afraid in situations like that, murder just has to take its turn. Its turn will be right after work tonight, after I finish making my daughter's Halloween costume, and probably after dinner tomorrow night."
"Dinner?"
Suddenly Leary was the one looking like a six-year-old. "Yes. Dinner. You know that word."
"You can't read a printout while you're eating?"
She ducked her head, shoved her hands in her pockets, and headed off again toward Restcrest so fast that Murphy almost missed her answer. "Not when you have a date."
"A date?" he demanded, knowing damn well he was reading her reaction right and following hot on her heels to prove it. "Tell me you're not going out with the golden boy. Tell me, if you are, that you're just doing it to grill him for me."
Leary stopped. She glared. She spun back along her original course like a comet snagged by a vagrant sun. "I'm going out with him to talk about family and memories and the outside world."
"And murder," Murphy insisted, watching her neck mottle.
"Don't be ridiculous."
Murphy found himself grabbing her arm. As if it would make a difference. As if she weren't a big girl and knew just what she was getting into, or he wasn't the last person to offer advice to anybody on the planet.
She turned on him like a mad cat. And, suddenly, smiled.
Not at him. And not with any warmth.
"Ms. Arlington," she said with almost-clenched teeth to a spot over his left shoulder. "Nice to see you."
Murphy spun to see the perfect Junior League poster child clacking their way in her Bruno Magli shoes, her pageboy bouncing with her step, her trim figure wrapped in something gray and Ann Taylor. The public relations queen looked confused.
"Are you helping Mr. Murphy?" she asked Timmie, clutching her soft leather daybook to her chest like a baby.
Murphy quickly let go of Timmie and watched her smile grow the way a prizefighter's did before the first bell. "Only with my dad. I don't have to be at work for another couple of hours, and Mr. Murphy asked if I might sit in. I'm going up to visit Dad while you all do... whatever it is Mr. Murphy plans on doing."
Ms. Arlington nodded, her hair bobbing just once. "I see. Well, thank you. That's... um, generous of you."
"No it isn't," Timmie assured her as she turned on down the hall toward the patient wings. "I'm here to make sure nobody bothers my father."
Ms. Arlington didn't know quite how to react. Murphy did it for her. "Helluva nurse, I hear," he said, taking hold of Ms. Arlington's arm and walking her the other way. "But don't ever pull a gun on her. She'll drop you like a rock."
* * *
Murphy was going numb. There was just so much PR babble he could ingest in one sitting without wanting to make Stooge noises. And Mary Jane Arlington was fonder of PR babble than Ross Perot was of pie charts. For the last hour she'd guided him on a micromanaged tour of the wonders of Restcrest as if he were a first-time visitor to a space station, all the while dispensing Alzheimer's statistics like Pez.
"We've begun to find early Alzheimer's indicators in people as young as twenty," she was saying as she walked. "Which makes you wonder how many more people out there are gestating the disease like time bombs ticking away in their brains."
She also made Murphy want to count backward from a hundred and recite the state capitals, just to make sure he still could.
The unit, Murphy had to admit, was impressive. Set up in a daisy pattern, it contained a complete twenty-patient unit in each petal with support services tucked into the core area. The sections were open and airy, with walking paths laid out around the perimeter of the central activity area for the people who needed to roam, and other paths snaking through a well-tended garden outside within very secure high walls. Semiprivate bedrooms circled the outside along with frequent and well-identified bathrooms.