“The story is that she had been a socialite in New York City. I don’t know about that, but this place is the result of her excellent business sense and her dedication to the center. Her insistence on high standards of care built our reputation and, by the time she died, we were as well known off the island as on.”
“And her son?” Susan asked.
“He graduated from Yale Medical School where he specialized in geriatric medicine. He became the head of our Board of Directors and married a nurse. And ever since then, we have continued to have family members on staff and involved in our future. We are quite proud of our history.”
“I can see why you would be,” Susan said.
“You see, we are unique. We remain-and hope to remain-unconnected with any of the many large, impersonal for-profit companies that are building nursing homes faster than they can staff them. We are very proud of our staff-to-resident ratio. It is the highest in the state.”
Susan noticed the reference to the future, but decided to wait to bring it up. “How do you find staff here on the island?” she asked.
“Oh, most of our staff lives on the mainland and commutes by ferry.” Astrid Martin glanced down at her watch. “Perhaps I can show you around as we chat,” she suggested, standing.
Susan got up immediately. “Of course!”
“You might want to take along our admission forms as well as the rest of our information. You might not know it but we are the only nursing facility of which I’m aware that gives its prospective residents and their families the Medicare comparison form.”
Susan looked down at the pile of papers she had just grabbed from the desk. “Thank you,” she muttered. She had no idea what a Medicare comparison form was. “I’ll study them when I get home.”
“Then we had better get going if you’re going to catch the early afternoon ferry. We’re a fifty-bed facility, not counting our small Memory Impaired Unit-and obviously your mother has no need for that-so there’s quite a bit to see.”
Susan, who had made no plans of any sort, merely smiled and followed the other woman from the room.
The Perry Island Care Center was bright and clean. Nice smells emanated from its stainless steel clad kitchen. There were flowers (plastic, but it was early in the season, Susan realized) on the tables in the spacious dining room. Attractive paintings lined the walls of the hallways. Bulletin boards announced upcoming events, trips to the Museum of British Art at Yale, and shopping expeditions to the Once in a Blue Moon Outlet Mall right outside of Hancock as well as weekly Friday afternoon musicales in the Art Therapy Room. The nursing stations were staffed by cheerful young people who seemed to be working rather than chatting among themselves. The residents looked well cared for and, those who weren’t asleep, appeared happy and content.
There was no mention of the murders.
Perhaps she would have learned more if she had been allowed to wander about on her own, talking with both employees and residents, but Astrid Martin was not about to let that happen. She led Susan from place to place, drawing her attention to the many advantages of the Perry Island Care Center and comparing it to other unnamed institutions that placed profit before resident care.
Forty-five minutes later, Susan thanked Astrid Martin for the tour and walked out of the front door into the chilly daylight feeling discouraged. She had learned nothing and wasted time that would have been better spent helping her daughter take care of the twins. Thinking of Ethan and Rosie, she perked up immediately. She would catch the next ferry and, after stopping at the drugstore, head home. She’d pull some of the cilantro-spiked chicken chili-Chrissy’s favorite-from the freezer, bake a pan of cornbread, and then help out with the twins. The relaxing family evening she had hoped for last night might only have been delayed. Stuffing the papers Astrid Martin had given her in her purse, she hurried back to the car.
She was surprised to find a young man leaning on her trunk and smoking a cigarette as he studied the macadam with the sullen expression that so many young people seemed to adopt these days.
“Pardon me,” Susan started.
He raised his eyes from the ground, but his expression didn’t change.
“You’re leaning on my car,” she explained.
“I wasn’t hurting it,” he said.
“But I’m afraid I might hurt you when I back up. I want to make the next ferry,” she explained, wondering why he didn’t just move.
“Oh.” He looked over his shoulder at her car and then back at her. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Well, if you could just wait someplace else,” she suggested, concerned about how long this might take.
“I…Yeah, there she is.” A smile transformed him. “My girl,” he said, looking over Susan’s shoulder as he moved away. “She works here.”
Susan turned and realized that the young woman who had been sitting at the desk in the entrance was walking toward them. “Do you need a ride?” she offered, seeing another opportunity to learn about the care center.
“No. We’re fine,” the young man assured her, without turning around.
Well, she had tried her best, Susan thought, getting into her car.
EIGHT
IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR CLUE’S ENTHUSIASTIC GREETING, Susan would have thought her house abandoned when she arrived home. The kitchen sink was full of dirty dishes and she stopped long enough to fill the dishwasher and turn it on before she started upstairs.
Except for the wicker laundry basket full of clean, folded, and sweet smelling baby clothes, the hallway was deserted. Susan thought she heard wind chimes and peeked in the open nursery door. The sight that greeted her was so close to what she had envisioned when she created this room that, for a moment, she thought she had imagined it.
Ethan lay on his back, feet flying in the air, staring up at the nearest knight marching toward the castle, apparently fascinated, and certainly content. Shannon was sitting in the rocking chair giving Rosie her bottle as a CD of the Sonos Handbell Ensemble played. Shannon looked up at Susan and smiled.
“Is Chrissy lying down?” Susan whispered.
Shannon shook her head no. “Out after the dogs.”
“What?”
They both looked down at the babies, who seemed to be completely disinterested in their conversation. “She ran after her dogs,” Shannon explained, turning up the volume a bit. “Someone left the gate to the backyard open and they ran away.”
“Oh no!”
At Susan’s cry, both babies stirred but settled back down almost immediately. Ethan’s eyelids began to close and Rosie sighed deeply before getting back to the serious business of eating.
“When?” Susan asked. “How long has she been gone?”
Shannon looked up at the Cow Jumping Over the Moon clock which hung over the door. “About half an hour.”
“She could be anywhere. I’d better go help her… unless you need me?”
“I’ll be fine here.”
Susan didn’t wait around to hear more. She charged down the stairs and out the back door, pausing only long enough to fill the pockets of her jacket with dog biscuits. Clue trotted behind her and Susan was careful to latch the gate, trapping her dog in the backyard. Susan then ran down the driveway and stopped. There was no sign of either her daughter or Rock and Roll. Which way had they gone? She decided to jog around the block. If she didn’t run into them, or someone who had seen them, she would come home and call the police. The mastiffs had visited Hancock on a few occasions, but they didn’t really know their way around. They could be anywhere.
The afternoon was waning and the warmth of the day disappearing. Susan pulled her jacket tight across her chest and began to speed walk. Early bulbs poked up in gardens, their cheerful color relieving the dull brown that predominates in New England in the spring, but she didn’t stop to admire them. Up ahead, a neighbor appeared, walking a large Irish wolfhound. Susan, who knew the dog’s name was Sage but wasn’t as familiar with its human walker, waved and hurried toward her.