“No. I have a stash of fresh fruit and cookies in my room if I get peckish before teatime. Have a seat if you want to help me with the puzzle-or if you have more questions.” She looked up and smiled, deep wrinkles almost obliterating her eyes.

“I came here wondering about the murders, but I didn’t know anything about watches being stolen,” Susan started.

“Tally is a sweet woman, but she lived a fairly sheltered life. She knows about crime-well, can anyone who turns on television these days not know the intimate details of the most horrendous events?-but she doesn’t know the criminals.”

“And you do?”

“My grandson is a cocaine addict-oh, not the one at M.I.T., although I’m not so naive as to believe there aren’t a few addicts at every institution of higher learning. It’s perfectly possible to be smart and an addict. Anyway, my grandson the addict has been in and out of jails, prisons, rehabs for the last twenty years of his life. He’d steal you blind-well, he has to feed his addiction-but he’d never kill anyone. He’s been through a lot, but he’s still a good person underneath all the evil drug crap.”

“You think the person who stole things was-is-an addict, someone who worked here and has now left,” Susan guessed.

“Got it in one. And so did I,” she added, fitting another piece of the puzzle into its place.

“Do you know the identity of the person?”

“Yes. Mike Armstrong. Nice young kid. Not that we see many kids here, nice or not nice. But I liked Mike and he’s sort of family here. He was in trouble with the law while he was in high school-graffiti. I don’t approve of vandalism, of course, but he definitely has real artistic talent. Not that talent will make any difference if he gets involved in drugs.”

“And was he?”

“I don’t know. He might have been. I noticed that his eyes were red on more than one occasion. I do know that he was very, very upset the day before he vanished.”

“And when was that? After the murders?”

“The day after the last one. I’m not telling this story very well, am I?”

Susan didn’t want to criticize. “Well…,” she began reluctantly.

“You don’t have to tell me. I know I’m not. My mind is not as sharp as it was, and there are days when I’m confused. Time goes so slowly here and, despite the inane decorations they’re always taping up on the walls, it is not always easy to tell one season from another. But I remember this… I remember the day Mike Armstrong left. And the circumstances.”

Susan sat and quietly waited for Sally to put her thoughts in order and begin her tale.

“We were all upset about the murders. Death is all too familiar to those of us who live with other elderly people. But unnatural death, death intentionally caused by another human being-well, that’s different, isn’t it? We were all on edge.”

“Thinking you might be the next to die?” Susan asked.

“I don’t know about everyone else, but that didn’t concern me much. I wanted-I want now-to know who was killing the other residents, but murder is not the way I expect my life to end.”

Susan thought that was probably true of most victims of murder, but she didn’t interrupt.

“But some residents and staff were very upset, and Mike was among them. I was surprised by his reaction. I mean, a lot of old people get weird and paranoid and of course the murders upset them a lot. But Mike always impressed me as being a pretty tough kid-self-sufficient, streetwise. I didn’t expect the murders to have quite such an effect on him.”

“What had happened?”

“He was a wreck-nervous, on edge. I swear, he looked as though he was going to cry.”

“What did he do here exactly? What was his job?”

“He was an aide, a health care assistant. He helped out in any way he was asked to-feeding residents, helping the male residents get in and out of bed, things like that.”

“Was he good at it?”

Sally smiled. “Sometimes. He was wonderful working with the people he liked, residents as well as staff. But he wore his heart on his sleeve and if he didn’t like someone, they knew it. So he wasn’t always the most popular of the staff, but he did what he was supposed to do even if he didn’t always have a smile on his face.

“But as I said, the murders upset him. At first I thought he was shocked-this was his first job working in a nursing home and he just wasn’t used to people dying. It sounds callous, but if every time a resident died the staff became distressed, things would be much more difficult around here.”

“But murder…”

“Of course we were all upset by the thought that there was a killer among us, but Mike more so than normal-if there is a normal in an abnormal situation…” She stopped speaking and frowned.

“You were going to tell me about the day before he vanished,” Susan reminded her.

“Sorry. It’s so easy to get lost-there is little logic to my train of thought these days, I find. I was telling you about Mike stealing things.”

“He did? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sure. I actually saw him. He was cleaning up after one of our hideous art therapy sessions. The teacher who comes in to help us explore our artistic capabilities-that’s what she calls it; I’d say make messes-had removed her watch while she demonstrated painting on silk. Mike was cleaning up the room after the class had ended. He just slipped it into his jeans pocket. I was walking by and happened to see him.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“I certainly did! I told him to put it right back and he said that he hadn’t been going to keep it. Of course, he was lying, but I knew a lecture about the virtues of honesty wouldn’t change him. I’m over ninety years old and I’ve never known anyone to change their life because someone lectured them about it.”

“And did he give it back?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t take other things and get away with it.”

“No, of course not. But you were telling me about the day before he left,” Susan said.

“He was upset-well, I told you that didn’t I?-and he came into my room late in the afternoon and said that he was being accused of things that weren’t true and he wasn’t going to put up with it. He was angry and I thought for a moment that he was talking about me. I explained that I hadn’t told anyone about what I’d seen and he laughed. He said that if I’d seen what he’d seen, I’d be dead from the shock.”

“Did you ask him what he was talking about?”

“Yes, of course. And he answered with one word. Murder.”

“And?”

“That’s all-murder. And then he turned and left my room and I never saw him again. The next morning the police were around asking about him. They never found him, though. Two or three days later his cousin quit her job and left P.I.C.C. as well.”

“His cousin?”

“Oh, yes, she worked here too. She’s a nurse. Her name isn’t Armstrong though. It’s Tapley. Shannon Tapley.”