Timmie's breath whooshed out in relief. "He has no pattern."
"None that's ever shown up."
Timmie didn't thank him. That would be too much. "I need you to check another name, Conrad. Paul Landry. He's the new CEO here."
"The one with his name on this order somebody went to great lengths to try and get back."
"The same."
"What dates, bellissima?"
That caught Timmie up short. "Um, I don't... know."
"How long has he been at your little medical center there?"
An easier answer. "Four months. I know because he got here about two months before I got home, which would make it July."
Conrad hummed to himself as he riffled through papers. Out in the entryway the doorbell rang. Timmie held a hand over the phone and yelled for them to come in.
Conrad cleared his throat. "A problem, cara."
Timmie forgot the door. "What?"
"You think this man is responsible, maybe, for the cardiac arrests?"
"I was kind of hoping he was." More like desperately hoping, but that wasn't important. "Why?"
"Because the deaths started three months before he arrived, that's why."
* * *
Timmie was on her third cigarette, and she still hadn't settled down. "It's not fair," she complained.
Slouched in his own chair with his feet at right angles to Timmie's on the coffee table, Murphy didn't even bother to open his eyes. "You'd consider it fair that Landry killed old people?"
"I consider it unfair that there aren't any answers at all."
"There are answers," Murphy allowed as he shortened his own cigarette. "You're just not ready for them."
"Shut up."
"The golden boy has been in town for the entire run of this show."
"So have Mary Jane Arlington, Tucker Van Adder, and the entire population of the town."
"He also knew about Charlie Cleveland."
"Same answer. This never happened before at a hospital Alex ran."
"Which means it never happened before at a hospital where Mary Jane worked or Davies researched. But then, the three of them had never been sitting on their third strike before, either."
That didn't make Timmie feel any better.
"There is one good thing," Murphy mused, eyes open and wry. "At least you know you're not doing it."
Timmie snorted and ground her cigarette out in the ashtray. "Evidently nobody's doing it. But everybody's killing themselves trying to cover it up."
She was going to have to go back in. Just the thought of it made her stomach curl. She was going to have to get those lovely nurses over in Restcrest to admit that old people had been dying under their very excellent care, and that they hadn't done a thing about it. And then she was going to have to try to get the truth from them about just who might be responsible.
The doorbell rang again, and Timmie lurched to her feet. "I don't suppose we can hope that Micklind has a smoking gun on him."
"Wouldn't that be a smoking syringe?"
Timmie opened the big front door to find Micklind scowling at the porch floor.
"Detective?"
He didn't look up. "You missing a lizard?"
Timmie opened the door to find Renfield considering her with a wide-eyed lack of interest from a position across Micklind's highly polished wing tips. "Sorry," she said, retrieving him. "He likes shiny things."
Micklind's eyebrows lifted. "Then he is yours?"
"My daughter's. She considers anything cute and furry a cliché. This is Renfield, eater of flies, who is supposed to live in her fish tank upstairs."
"Uh-huh."
Timmie draped Renfield over her shoulder and held the door open. "Come on in. We were just talking about you."
It took Micklind a moment to move, all the while casting a wary eye toward the chameleon that glared at him from beneath Timmie's left ear. "You're going to put him away, aren't you?"
It was Timmie's turn to admit surprise. "You don't like chameleons?"
Micklind's wrestler's neck darkened a little above that regulation Arrow shirt and half-yanked maroon tie. "Uh, no."
Timmie fought a smile. So Micklind was human. How nice. "I'll just be a minute, Detective."
By the time Timmie made it back downstairs, Micklind had usurped her place on the couch and was glaring at Murphy much the same way he had the lizard.
"I've obviously missed the small talk," Timmie ventured, sweeping a pile of papers from a third chair and pulling it over. It occurred to her that if she kept having to seat guests in the house, she wasn't going to have any floor space left. "To what do we owe this honor, Detective?"
Micklind didn't look appreciably easier now that Renfield was safely out of sight. Even ensconced on an ugly, droopy couch, he straightened himself up to interrogation posture and pulled out a regulation police notebook. "A couple of things," he said, considering it. "First, Vic Adkins."
Well, he had Timmie's attention. "He was murdered," she said.
"Yes, ma'am," Micklind admitted, looking back up with calm cop eyes. "He was. And his wife didn't do it."
Timmie recognized an apology when she heard it. She settled into her seat for the ride. "And?"
"And I wanted to talk to you about who it might be."
"Isn't it a little late?" Timmie asked. "From what I heard, nobody could convince Van Adder there was a problem. Case closed. And when a coroner's case is closed in Missouri, it stays closed."
Now she got that twitch of incipient smile. "Yes, ma'am. Unless it's a cop. Then we can do pretty much what we want. Now, you want to go over this all again?"
Timmie considered him for a minute. She thought about reaching for another cigarette, but she really hadn't wanted the last one. She only smoked the damn things as a last vestige of rebellion.
"One question," she said, also ignoring the urge to scratch her staples. "Why?"
Micklind spared a quick look Murphy's way. Murphy waved him off. "I'm off the clock till you tell me, hoss. I'm just as curious as you are."
It still took Micklind a few minutes to let go. When he did, it was facing that notebook, which he held in his hands like an archaeological find. "I hear you were at Charlie Cleveland's today."
"Word does get around," Murphy allowed.
"Victor visited him before he died, too," Timmie said. "Most amazing thing. Charlie kept trying to confess, only Victor wouldn't let him."
Micklind nodded equably. "Victor wasn't allowed to let him. Charlie's had his problems. The decision was made to just let him be."
"He needed to confess," Timmie said. "But that's not why you're here. You're here to tell us that Victor found out that Charlie wasn't so delusional about people offering to kill his father for him, aren't you?"
Finally Micklind raised his eyes, and Timmie discovered the detective lurking there. "Yes, ma'am, I am."
"How?" Murphy asked.
Micklind lifted the notebook Timmie had assumed was his. "Found this in the locker room the other day. It's Vic's. Seems he was carrying on his own investigation after all."