“Of course,” her father said.
“Good.” Chambers headed for the door.
“Anything from the tip line yet?” Avery asked.
“It’s not even been a full day,” Chambers said. “We have to be patient.”
“I do have one question for you,” Chambers said to her father, and they stepped outside and closed the door but not all the way and she moved to try to listen.
“The school shooting,” Chambers said softly, sounding almost confused. “Was Max there that day?”
“With my wife, yes. At an open house.” Her father also sounded confused. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Chambers said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Dad poked his head in the door. “Sam’s here.”
She checked herself in the mirror, blinked away sad eyes, and grabbed her clutch.
“Just have fun tonight, okay?” Dad said, kissing her on the forehead at the threshold. And the way he looked at her made her think about this father-daughter dance they’d gone to when she’d been a Girl Scout, how she’d worn a dress from when she’d been a flower girl in her aunt’s wedding, how she’d had a wrist corsage of glitter-spattered carnations. He still smelled of the same aftershave—the scent of trees she’d never seen and that grew only in rugged mountain terrains.
She almost tripped on the steps on her way out to the car.
Damn heels.
Scarlett
It didn’t seem like the worst place to go to die.
Palms and blooming shrubs. Pathways winding down to a park on the waterfront with benches and still more palm trees and a few small fountains—a kneeling stone woman pouring water onto stone flowers from a jug, a small petrified birdbath replete with immobilized birds.
Scarlett imagined herself old, in an Adirondack chair, listening to the fountains’ trickles, then wondered about where this Adirondack chair obsession of hers had come from.
She had parked the car facing the Gulf.
The whole of it was shiny and gray, like dolphin skin.
“What’s our plan?” she asked as they approached the double glass doors of the main building.
“We’re friends of the family,” Lucas said.
“No, really.” She stopped walking.
He stopped, too. “Yes, really.” He tilted his head toward the door in encouragement, totally confident.
But then . . .
/
/
/
/
What if they’d been kept here?
The whole place seemed suddenly shadowed in gloom.
Like some light filter had fallen over it.
Every window might have been a room where they’d been locked.
Every person there might have been an accomplice.
They shouldn’t have come. “Scar,” he said, “it’s just a nursing home. We’re just going to try to talk to an old writer.”
“But what if . . .”
/
/
/
“. . . it’s really him?”
“Then we’ll deal with that.” He nodded.
“What if it’s him and we don’t know it?”
“Then we’ll deal with that.”
She couldn’t move her feet for a moment.
But knew she . . .
. . . had to.
Inside, the air smelled like lavender bleach, and the floor was so bouncy that she actually looked down to see what she was standing on. It was just carpet but it was padded beyond reason.
No one would ever break a hip here.
A large floral arrangement on the front desk partially explained the scent but also obscured the view of the woman sitting there, so Scarlett and Lucas stepped to the side of it, and Scarlett met the eyes of a middle-aged nurse with short bleached-blond hair. She wore navy-blue scrubs and looked up at them like they were nothing out of the ordinary.
Relief.
Disappointment.
Had Scarlett wanted someone to recognize them?
Wanted alarms to sound?
Gates to drop?
Maybe.
Maybe if it would end the
/
/
/
clicking in her head.
“We’re here to visit Daniel Orlean,” Lucas said.
The nurse looked at him, then at Scarlett, then back at him.
“We’re friends of the family,” he said. “Old friends of his son’s.”
“Oh, just awful,” the nurse said, hand to heart. “What happened to him. Just awful.”
“Yes,” Lucas said. “Truly.”
“So you’re familiar with Danny’s condition, then?” The nurse pushed a sign-in sheet on a clipboard forward, and Scarlett decided to make herself useful. She searched her brain for made-up names and signed them in as Matt Jones and Anne Shepherd.
“Of course,” Lucas said.
“You been here before, right?” she said.
“First time,” Lucas said.
“Oh.” She seemed unconvinced.
Scarlett set the clipboard down and nodded solemnly.
“Well, he’ll be happy to see you. Most of his visitors are from the lab.” She came around from behind the desk. “He’s usually in the courtyard around this time of day. I’ll show you.”
Scarlett followed the nurse down a long hallway—Lucas at her side.
Past a dining room with high ceilings and heavy curtains on huge windows.
Split-pea soup weighted the air.