"There are no targets," Mary Jane insisted with less enthusiasm. "This is just an unfortunate... uh..."

"Murder," Timmie filled in for her. "And if it wasn't to save the unit money, what could it have been for?"

"That's why it shouldn't have been Alice," Gladys insisted. "She was going to leave the wing a grant. A fortune!"

Mary Jane snapped to attention. "Gladys!"

"I can't anymore, Miss Arlington. I just can't! Somebody needs to know. Alice isn't from here. Her family transferred her from Kentucky, and they were going to meet her here next weekend, after she got settled. They were so excited she was going to be safe and cared for. What we heard was that if they liked what they saw when they came to see her, they were going to donate a huge amount to the unit. Well, they won't once they find out she's been murdered!"

"She has not been murdered!" Mary Jane insisted.

"But somebody murdered those other people," Timmie retorted, her voice still very quiet. "And you all know it. Why didn't you say anything?"

It was Mary Jane's turn to glare, and she did it quite well. "Do you know what you're doing to Restcrest's reputation?"

Timmie wanted to scream. "I'm not the one doing it, Ms. Arlington. The murderer is. And the people covering it up."

Mary Jane damn near had a stroke. "Don't you threaten me, young lady."

"She told us not to say anything," Gladys insisted.

Mary Jane spun on her, but Gladys had had one too many deaths on her hands.

"But you knew what was going on, didn't you, Gladys?" Timmie asked. "How did you know?"

"They were dying for no reason at all," Gladys all but wailed. "I took such good care of them. Such good care! Do you know what this looks like on my record?"

"Did you see anything suspicious? Anyone suspicious?"

"This is absurd!" Mary Jane protested, ramrod straight and trying hard to keep her hands at her sides. Must have been tough not to have a clipboard or patient file to hide behind when she needed to show authority. She didn't even have glasses to wave around. "You'd better think a little harder about what you have to lose before you continue making accusations like this."

Timmie didn't even listen to her. She was focused instead on Gladys, who was still shaking her head as if it would help settle her suspicions and frustrations into a more identifiable pattern.

"I've gone over it a hundred times," the nurse said. "I can't figure it out. None of us can. It mostly happens on late shifts, but that's when most of our patients pass anyway."

"Clients," Mary Jane ground out.

Die, Timmie wanted to say. But it wasn't exactly the time to dip Gladys's toes in the reality bath.

Gladys was way beyond caring. "Patients. There isn't a pattern we can figure out. No one nurse who was on every time. There wasn't anything obvious we could point a finger to."

"And nobody asked you about it?"

"We've been told it's being looked into. It's not, is it?"

"Of course it is," Mary Jane insisted instinctively.

Timmie had had enough experience with middle management to know that Mary Jane wasn't going to admit anything in front of her staff. Besides, a good threat was always best made in private. If Ms. Arlington wasn't the murderer, then Timmie needed her acquiescence. If she was, Timmie needed her to feel pressured.

"Ms. Arlington," she said in the most supplicating tone she could manage, "could I talk to you alone for a minute? Please. I think it will help Alex."

Mary Jane took a couple of looks around and then nodded. Timmie followed her into Alice's room, where the bright yellow-and-blue coverlet was still spilled off the side of the bed from the frantic fight for Alice's flickering life.

Timmie had been in plenty of rooms in which patients had died. In some, she'd been able to feel a sense that somebody was still around, maybe dragging their heels before departure or just keeping an eye on things. Probably checking her procedures. Alice, evidently, hadn't been interested. The room was as empty as Timmie's bank account.

Mary Jane didn't bother to make either of them comfortable before Timmie shut the door. "I know this must make you nervous," she began, a hand up to corral a wisp of wayward hair. "With your father up here and all. I just want to assure you—"

"Something has to be done," Timmie said. Her heart was pounding and her hands were sweaty, and all she could think about was that she hoped Mary Jane didn't notice. "Ms. Arlington, I know what's going on here. The whole hospital knows. If the public finds out before it's stopped, Alex will be ruined."

Mary Jane did everything but shudder. She stood as straight as a deb, her hands at her sides, her breathing controlled. "You would only hurt Alex if you let this out," she accused. "You wouldn't do that."

Timmie raised an eyebrow. "And if I don't do something, I could be hurting my father."

"That's absurd! He's perfectly safe."

"How do you know that? I thought Alice was perfectly safe."

Mary Jane looked away, as if Timmie's argument were simply beneath her. "What did you want to ask?"

Timmie sucked in a slow breath. Organized her thoughts. She wasn't stupid enough to ask for what she already had, so she made a stab at what she suspected.

"We need to act, Ms. Arlington," Timmie insisted quietly. "Or it's going to happen again. You need to ask Alex to request a postmortem on Alice."

Mary Jane was already shaking her head. "I can't. He's busy. He isn't even in town."

"You mean you don't call him when he's out of town to tell him a patient died?"

Mary Jane couldn't quite look at her. "All you're doing is making trouble for yourself. You're making wild accusations that threaten the viability of this unit, and I won't have it."

Timmie didn't move. "I won't stop, Ms. Arlington."

Mary Jane closed her eyes. Timmie held her breath, because she couldn't manage anything more. Was Mary Jane simply protecting Alex, or was she protecting herself?

"I can't." The woman moaned. "I just can't."

"Then I'll do it."

That got Mary Jane's eyes open, and Timmie once again saw that instinctive fear. That protective reflex that made her wonder if Mary Jane wasn't just protecting Alex, but pretending she didn't suspect him.

Alex.

It couldn't be Alex. Timmie wouldn't let it.

So she asked the most difficult question she had ever asked in her life. "Do you think Alex is involved?"

"No!"

Too sudden, too certain. Way too frightened. Timmie wanted to vomit.

"Can you think of anyone else it might be?" she asked instead, and realized that her fingers hurt. She looked down to see white knuckles from where she'd clamped her hands together around the hidden box.

"There isn't any problem," Mary Jane said, again too quickly. "But if there were, Alice's main nurse was Gladys. Or Trudy, or, uh, Penelope."

Ah, ever the administrator, Timmie thought with new disgust. When in doubt, jettison the faithful staff.

"May I talk to them?"

Mary Jane damn near sneered. "You don't need my permission for that. You'll just find out where they live and harass them there."

"And the postmortem."

Mary Jane blinked, looked away. "Maybe. I'll see."