"Alex isn't giving anything up. He's trying again."

"With somebody else's money."

That stopped Leary dead in her tracks and spun her around. "I imagine you've already figured out why a guy trying his best not to go bankrupt would be killing off his paying customers?"

"That's what this visit is all about."

The two of them stood face-to-face about halfway along the connecting tunnel between the hospital and Restcrest, where Murphy was due for an appointment with not only the good doctor himself, but Mary Jane Arlington and Joseph Leary, their newest resident. Or client, as Mary Jane had put it.

Murphy hated the word "client." The minute the public relations queen had used it, Murphy knew he wanted to find dirt under Restcrest's rugs. He just hadn't realized he'd have so much trouble getting Leary to help him.

"I won't be party to a witch-hunt," she insisted.

Murphy started walking again. "I'm not hunting anything. I'm doing an in-depth piece on the wonders of Restcrest and the Neurological Research Group. I'm tying that in to the character piece I'm doing on your father."

Leary followed along, her heavy shoes thunking on the tile. "Which is the only reason I'm coming along."

Ten feet from the open fire doors into Restcrest, she stopped again. Stood there, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. She was wearing jeans today, old, worn ones, with an oversized pea green sweater and what looked like heavy brown work boots. She also sported a black-banded Mickey Mouse watch with the dial against the inside of her wrist and those tiny four earrings in each ear. Other than that, she was unadorned. A straightforward force of nature.

"I just think we need to look into the main hospital more," she protested, sneaking a look past the doors as if somebody might hear her. They probably could. Her urgent voice echoed down the hall like a soft wind. "I still haven't had a chance to look at the death stats, but I didn't see anything at all that indicted Restcrest."

"You've had two days," he reminded her, just to see her get mad.

She did. "You're right, I have. I also had a six-year-old with the flu and a backed-up toilet. I'm afraid in situations like that, murder just has to take its turn. Its turn will be right after work tonight, after I finish making my daughter's Halloween costume, and probably after dinner tomorrow night."

"Dinner?"

Suddenly Leary was the one looking like a six-year-old. "Yes. Dinner. You know that word."

"You can't read a printout while you're eating?"

She ducked her head, shoved her hands in her pockets, and headed off again toward Restcrest so fast that Murphy almost missed her answer. "Not when you have a date."

"A date?" he demanded, knowing damn well he was reading her reaction right and following hot on her heels to prove it. "Tell me you're not going out with the golden boy. Tell me, if you are, that you're just doing it to grill him for me."

Leary stopped. She glared. She spun back along her original course like a comet snagged by a vagrant sun. "I'm going out with him to talk about family and memories and the outside world."

"And murder," Murphy insisted, watching her neck mottle.

"Don't be ridiculous."

Murphy found himself grabbing her arm. As if it would make a difference. As if she weren't a big girl and knew just what she was getting into, or he wasn't the last person to offer advice to anybody on the planet.

She turned on him like a mad cat. And, suddenly, smiled.

Not at him. And not with any warmth.

"Ms. Arlington," she said with almost-clenched teeth to a spot over his left shoulder. "Nice to see you."

Murphy spun to see the perfect Junior League poster child clacking their way in her Bruno Magli shoes, her pageboy bouncing with her step, her trim figure wrapped in something gray and Ann Taylor. The public relations queen looked confused.

"Are you helping Mr. Murphy?" she asked Timmie, clutching her soft leather daybook to her chest like a baby.

Murphy quickly let go of Timmie and watched her smile grow the way a prizefighter's did before the first bell. "Only with my dad. I don't have to be at work for another couple of hours, and Mr. Murphy asked if I might sit in. I'm going up to visit Dad while you all do... whatever it is Mr. Murphy plans on doing."

Ms. Arlington nodded, her hair bobbing just once. "I see. Well, thank you. That's... um, generous of you."

"No it isn't," Timmie assured her as she turned on down the hall toward the patient wings. "I'm here to make sure nobody bothers my father."

Ms. Arlington didn't know quite how to react. Murphy did it for her. "Helluva nurse, I hear," he said, taking hold of Ms. Arlington's arm and walking her the other way. "But don't ever pull a gun on her. She'll drop you like a rock."

* * *

Murphy was going numb. There was just so much PR babble he could ingest in one sitting without wanting to make Stooge noises. And Mary Jane Arlington was fonder of PR babble than Ross Perot was of pie charts. For the last hour she'd guided him on a micromanaged tour of the wonders of Restcrest as if he were a first-time visitor to a space station, all the while dispensing Alzheimer's statistics like Pez.

"We've begun to find early Alzheimer's indicators in people as young as twenty," she was saying as she walked. "Which makes you wonder how many more people out there are gestating the disease like time bombs ticking away in their brains."

She also made Murphy want to count backward from a hundred and recite the state capitals, just to make sure he still could.

The unit, Murphy had to admit, was impressive. Set up in a daisy pattern, it contained a complete twenty-patient unit in each petal with support services tucked into the core area. The sections were open and airy, with walking paths laid out around the perimeter of the central activity area for the people who needed to roam, and other paths snaking through a well-tended garden outside within very secure high walls. Semiprivate bedrooms circled the outside along with frequent and well-identified bathrooms.

Mary Jane led Murphy to the center of the high-ceilinged recreation area, where couches and beanbag chairs were gathered into islands of intimacy and tables displayed the clutter of constant activities. The atmosphere was quiet and soft, the staff well-evident and patient. Even the old people seemed happy. They certainly looked clean and well cared for.

"Right now we're only equipped to handle a hundred inpatients and selected outpatients," she said. "But Dr. Raymond is expanding outpatient services and research. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to one day make any Alzheimer's unit obsolete."

Toward the center, two or three people sat around picnic-type tables, beyond which gleamed a tidy, state-of-the-art kitchen. At its edge, a pencil-thin old guy in brown cardigan and lime green golf pants carefully plucked an apple from an open shelf.

"Mr. Veniman there is using our cafeteria-style dining area," Mary Jane announced like a narrator in a theme park. "As you can see, all our refrigerators and cabinets are either open or glass-fronted. Often, if a client sees food, he'll remember that he's hungry. Isn't that right, Mr. Veniman?"

Startled by the sound of his name, the old guy looked up and smiled. Nodded vaguely and then went back to studying the food he held. Ms. Arlington barely took a breath before plunging on.

"You see, as Alzheimer's progresses, the connection of certain needs to certain tasks becomes lost. A patient may recognize hunger and not remember what to do about it. If he can't see the food, often he forgets the need. We try to keep everything necessary as open and immediate as possible. We break tasks down into easily manageable functions, with reminders to help."