"Warning you. Leave it be."

She was sure her caller was set to hang up. Until she laughed, that is. "Listen, asshole. You want to intimidate me, you're going to have to do a better job. I've had better threats from fourteen-year-old girls."

"It's a warning," the voice repeated. "Pay attention."

"Get fucked."

By the time Timmie got upstairs, Renfield was asleep and Meghan was on chapter two. Even so, Timmie settled beside her on the window seat and read along, trying very hard to disappear into a world where the most important thing that happened was the perfect spinning of a web.

She was not going to be threatened. On the other hand, would she accept a warning? Nuzzling her daughter's peach-soft cheek and listening to her play the part of the pig with a decided Irish accent, Timmie wasn't so sure.

Chapter 7

"Now, you say you just took over responsibility for your father's care," the Restcrest caseworker said to Timmie the next morning.

Timmie squirmed in the faux-leather office chair she'd been shown to and looked around at the soft Impressionist prints and lush potted palms that decorated the office. Typical of a hospital in the nineties, the good stuff was reserved for paying customers. The better the hoped-for reimbursement, the classier the decor. This was about the best Timmie had seen in the entire Memorial campus, and it made her nervous.

"Yes," she said, doodling on the notepad the caseworker had provided her with for pertinent info. "I moved home about a month ago."

"And so far he's been in three different nursing homes."

"Yes."

The caseworker nodded, scribbled a little on her own notepad. Mrs. Everly, said the nameplate that matched the prim, conservatively gray woman behind the comfortable oak desk. No first name. No jewelry, no personal mementos strewn about the office. Polite, professional, all business in a caregiving setting.

Timmie wanted to go home. She wanted to go to work. She wanted to watch Meg ride that little horse down the road. Instead, she was forced by Medicare restrictions to lay her life bare to this woman who only wanted to give her a chance to fork over whatever was left of her money so her father would have a safe place to live.

"And you've been relying on Medicare," Mrs. Everly said.

"Yes."

Timmie jotted a few words on her own pad. Her note wasn't about level-two nursing care or Medicare co-pays, though. She was doing what she always did whenever things got too uncomfortable. She was splitting her attention in as many different directions as she could. If not flu, she wrote, what cause of death?

"Do you know what kind of testing your father has had?"

Jason Parker, she wrote next, then scratched it out with furious strokes. No, that was definitely another road she didn't want to go down today. Stick to the fun stuff, even if she wasn't going to do anything with it. Which she wasn't. She just preferred to work on the puzzle of Billy Mayfield rather than the tragedy of Joe Leary.

"Mrs. Leary-Parker?" Mrs. Everly gently persisted. "Has your father been tested?"

Timmie looked up. "No," she admitted. "He really hasn't. He was already in the second home by the time I got back. So far I haven't had much of a chance to do more than catch up."

"Facility."

"Pardon?"

"We prefer to use the term 'facility.'"

Timmie smiled. "Of course. God forbid we should admit that our parents are as mad as March hares or more dependent than six-foot-four three-year-olds."

It was Mrs. Everly's turn to squirm a little. "We don't like to think of our clients that way," she protested.

That actually made Timmie laugh. "That's okay. I don't like to think of my dad as a client."

And far be it for Timmie to admit to this tightly wrapped little woman with her comfortable catchwords and plastic sympathy that Joseph Aloysius Michael Leary had been as mad as a March hare and as dependent as a three-year-old his entire adult life.

"Your father has been... asked to leave these other facilities."

"Thrown out," Timmie amended, her attention back on her list.

Liver failure?

No

Electrolyte imbalance?

Possible

Slow poison?

"Aw, shit."

"Pardon?" Mrs. Every asked.

Timmie glanced up. Smiled to cover the sudden lurch her stomach had just taken. She'd done it now. Admitted what she'd suspected all along. "Nothing. I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"I was asking why your father was asked to leave."

Timmie sighed. "It's in his records, Mrs. Everly. Besides, I thought you were only concentrating on the financial obligations today. We know he has need."

Sepsis?

No

Kidney disease?

No

It couldn't have been poison. Billy was a jerk, but there wasn't any reason to kill him.

Billy had been sick a month. Long enough to build up enough poison to knock over a rhino, given in small enough doses so his symptoms wouldn't be suspicious.

Cardiac failure?

No

Ebola virus?

Nice try

It couldn't be poison.

What Timmie couldn't understand was why, after all that damn forensic training she'd taken, poison hadn't been the first thing she'd thought of.

But if she'd thought of poison first, she would have had to consider the logical correlations. If Billy had been poisoned, then who was the most likely suspect?

"We think your father would certainly benefit from Restcrest," Mrs. Everly was saying. "We would begin by thoroughly testing him so that we could maximize his potential. Then, at Restcrest, he would have available to him the most progressive program for Alzheimer's patients in the state, which would include the latest in physical, occupational, and recreational therapy. We're even experimenting with aroma and music therapy at the moment."

Nausea

Numbness

Itching

Cardiovascular collapse

Generic symptoms to fit any disease... and, of course, most poisons.

"Dr. Raymond has also worked to include Restcrest in several pharmaceutical studies to avail our clients of the latest possible drug interventions. Our staff is highly trained and committed, and our unit has been newly redesigned with the latest innovations for patient safety and stimulation. But all that, of course, is expensive. We do our best to acquire grant and research money to cover some of the costs, but intensive care of any kind is... well, uh, costly. You understand that, don't you?"

"Quite well."

Thallium

Arsenic

Sodium fluoride

Don't do this. You have enough problems as it is. You weren't responsible for Billy Mayfield's death, and that's all that matters. Heck, you've even been warned off the playing field.

But poison...

"Was it a financial problem?"

Still preoccupied with the thought of Billy and murder, Timmie belatedly looked up. "Pardon?"

"Your father. Was he asked to leave the homes for financial reasons?"

"No. It was a behavioral problem. My father has decided not to go gentle into that good night, and at six foot five, he can make a lot of noise about it."