stood in the driveway. On the small porch, a young man in
a UNC hoodie with a black-and-silver backpack dangling
from his shoulder shifted his weight from one foot to the
other as an older woman carrying a big red-and-green
striped umbrella came out and locked the door behind her.
He held out his hand and she gave him the keys. Both of
them looked at the detectives suspiciously as McLamb got
out of the prowl car and approached in the pouring rain.
“Mrs. Stone?”
“Yes?” A heavyset, middle-aged black woman, she
wore a clear plastic rain bonnet over her graying hair.
189
MARGARET MARON
“Colleton County Sheriff ’s Department, ma’am.
Could we step inside and talk a minute?”
Mrs. Stone shook her head. “Is this about my daddy
again?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What is it?”
“Ma’am—”
“I’m really sorry, Officer, but if I don’t go on now,
I’m gonna be late for work and they told me if I’m late
again, they’re gonna lay me off. Whatever you got to
say’s just gonna have to wait till this evening. I’ll be
back at five.”
“Where do you work? Maybe we could drive you?”
She paused indecisively and the teenager jingled the
keys impatiently. “Let ’em drive you, Mom. I’m gonna
be late for school myself if you don’t.”
“All right,” she said, but as the boy dashed through
the rain to the Honda, she called after him. “You bet-
ter be on time picking me up today, you hear? You not
there when I come out, you’re not getting the car for a
week. You hear me, Ennis?”
But he was already backing out of the drive and into
the street.
“Boys!” she said, shaking her head. “Soon as they
turn sixteen, they start climbing Fool’s Hill. Let ’em
get to talking to their friends, flirting around with the
girls, and they forget all about what they’re supposed to
be doing and where they’re supposed to be. I believe to
goodness he had more sense when he was six than he’s
got now that he’s sixteen.”
McLamb smiled, having heard the same words from
his own mother when he first started driving. He mo-
190
HARD ROW
tioned to Dalton, who drove up to the porch so that
they wouldn’t get too wet. McLamb helped Mrs. Stone
into the front seat and he climbed in back.
“So what’s this about?” Mrs. Stone asked after she
had told them where she worked and they were under
way.
As gently as possible, McLamb told her that the med-
ical examiner over in Chapel Hill was pretty sure that
her father’s hand had been detached from his wrist not
by an animal, but by human intervention.
Mrs. Stone turned in the seat and faced him, her face
outraged. “Somebody cut off my daddy’s hand?”
“Well, not the way you’re probably thinking. Mostly
they say the flesh was so—” He searched for an inof-
fensive word that would not sicken the woman. “—so
degraded, that the hand probably pretty much pulled
loose by itself when it was lifted, but there was a liga-
ment that was holding it on and when the pathologist
looked at the edges under a microscope, he could tell
that it was definitely a recent cut. You’re his only rela-
tive, right?”
“Me and Ennis, yes.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted
your dad dead?”
Mrs. Stone shook her head. “The only person who
couldn’t get along with him was my mother and she passed
six years ago, come June. You can let me out right here,”
she said and opened the door as soon as Dalton slowed the
car to a stop in front of the motel where she worked.
McLamb hopped out to hold the door for her. She
handed him her umbrella and waited for him to open it.
“Mrs. Stone—”
191
MARGARET MARON
“I told you. I can’t be late today!” she snapped and
hurried inside.
“You didn’t ask for her alibi,” Dalton said, handing
him some paper towels to mop the worst of the rain
from his jacket.
“Yeah, I know. Looks like we have to catch her this
evening after all.”
From Mrs. Stone’s place of work to Sunset Meadows
Rest Home at the southern edge of Black Creek was
just over ten minutes and Dalton parked the car as close
as he could get it to the wide porch that ran the full
width of the building.
“Here’s good,” said McLamb. A slender man of
medium height, he prided himself on staying in shape
and usually looked for opportunities to take a few extra
steps, but not when it was raining this hard. His navy
blue nylon jacket had COLLETON CO. SHERIFF’S DEPT.
stenciled in white on the back and he pulled the hood
low over his face before making a dash for it.
Dalton followed close behind in an identical jacket.
Younger and chunkier than McLamb, at twenty-four, he
was still kid enough to be excited by his recent promo-
tion to the detective squad. “Provisional promotion,”
he reminded himself as he took a good look at the facil-
ity accused of letting one of its patients wander off to
drown back before Christmas.
“Don’t just look at what’s there,” McLamb had told
him on the drive out. “Look at what’s not there, too.”
Although certified and licensed by the state, the nursing
home had begun as a mom-and-pop operation and was
192
HARD ROW
a drab place at best. Built of cinder blocks, the utilitarian
beige exterior was at least three years overdue for a new
coat of paint. The shades and curtains looked sun-faded,
and the uninspired shrubs that lined the porch needed
work, too. Cutting them back to waist height would make
them bush up at the base and would also allow anyone
standing at the doorway an unobstructed view of the park-
ing lot. As it was, the privet hedge was so tall and strag-
gly that a casual observer might overlook someone leaving
without authorization, especially if it was getting on for
dark on one of the shortest days of the year.
The porch was a ten-foot-wide concrete slab set flush
with both the paved entrance walk and the sills of the
double front doors beyond. Easy wheelchair access,
thought Dalton, but also easy for unsteady old feet to
walk off without stumbling.
The fifteen or so rocking chairs that were grouped
along the porch were worn and weather stained, but
they were a thoughtful amenity for men and women
who had grown up when porches were a place for social-
izing, for shelling beans, for watching children play, for
resting after lunch in the middle of a busy day. Indeed,
despite the cool spring morning and the pouring rain,
three of the rockers were occupied by residents swa
d-
dled in blankets from head to toe who watched their
approach with bright-eyed interest.
Not a lot of money to spread around on paint and
gardeners, thought Dalton, but enough money to pay
for staff who would help their patients out to the porch
and make sure they were warm enough to enjoy the
fresh air, even to tucking the blankets around their feet.
The nursing home where his grandmother had recovered
193
MARGARET MARON
from her hip replacement was beautifully landscaped
and maintained, but there had been a persistent stench
of urine on her hall and she complained that her feet
were always cold. Somehow he was not surprised to fol-
low McLamb into the building and smell nothing more
than a slight medicinal odor overlaid with the pungency
of a pine-scented floor cleaner.
Immediately in front of them was a reception area
that doubled as a nursing station. Long halls on either
side led away from the entrance lobby with a shorter hall
behind. Sam Dalton soon learned that Sunset Meadows
Rest Home was basically one long rectangle topped by a
square in back of the middle section to accommodate a
dining room, lounge, kitchen, and laundry. Each of the
forty “guest” rooms held two or three beds and there
was a waiting list.
“Does that sound like we’re careless and neglectful?”
demanded Mrs. Belinda Franks, the owner-manager. A
large black woman of late middle age, her hair had been
left natural and was clipped short. She wore red ear-
rings, black slacks, and a bright red zippered sweater
over a white turtleneck. The sweater made a cheerful
splash of color in this otherwise drab setting. She pos-
sessed a warm smile but that had been replaced by a
look of indignation as she glared up at the two deputies
from her chair behind the tall counter.
“Would people be lining up to put their loved ones
here if they thought we were going to let them come
to harm?”
“No, ma’am,” Raeford McLamb assured her. “And
we’re not here to find fault or put the blame on you or
your people, Mrs. Franks. We came to ask for your help.”
194
HARD ROW
“Like how?”
“We’re now treating Mr. Mitchiner’s demise as a sus-
picious death.”
“Suspicious?” Her brow furrowed. “Somebody took
that sweet old man off and killed him?”
“Too soon to say for sure, but someone did disturb
his body after he was dead, and we need to find out who
and why. I know you and your staff gave statements at
the time, but if we could just go over them again?”
Mrs. Franks sighed and rolled her chair back to a
bank of filing cabinets, from which she extracted a ma-
nila folder.
Standing with his elbows on the counter between
them, McLamb looked in both directions. The front
edge of the counter was on a line with the inner walls
of the hall. Although he could clearly see the exit doors
at the end of each hallway, there was no way someone
behind the desk could.
“I know, I know,” Mrs. Franks said wearily when
McLamb voiced that observation. “We’re going to
curve this desk further out into the lobby this spring
when we get a little ahead so that anybody on duty can
see these three doors. Right now, though, we had to
borrow money to set up the monitor cameras.”
She motioned to the men to come around back of
the counter where a split screen showed the three doors
now under electronic watch.
“What about a back door?”
“That’s kept locked all the time now except when
somebody’s actually using it.”
“But it used to be unlocked before Mr. Mitchiner
walked off?”
195
MARGARET MARON
She nodded. “You have to understand that we’re not
a skilled nursing facility. Most of our people are just
old and a little forgetful and not able to keep living by
themselves, and we have a few with special problems.
My first daughter was a Downs baby and we couldn’t
find a place that would treat her right. That’s how my
husband and I started this home. We wanted to take
care of Benitha right here and have a little help once
she got too big for us to handle. We still have a cou-
ple of Downs folks, the ones who can’t live on their
own, but mostly it’s old people who come to us. We
see that everybody takes the medications their doctors
have prescribed and we keep them clean and dry, but
we’re not equipped for serious problems and we only
have one LPN on staff. The rest are aides who have had
first aid training, CPR, that sort of thing. We wouldn’t
have kept Mr. Mitchiner here except that his family was
always in and out to help with him and he had a sweet
nature. Eventually, he would have had to transfer into
a place with a higher level of care. They knew that. But
this was convenient for now. His grandson could ride
his bicycle over after school and his daughter could stop
in before or after work.”
“Who last saw him that day?” asked McLamb.
“We just don’t know,” the woman said, with exas-
peration both for the question and her lack of a defini-
tive answer. “We don’t make visitors sign in and out.
We want people to feel free to come in and sit with
their loved ones, bring them a piece of watermelon in
the summertime or some hot homemade soup in the
winter. Put pretty sheets on their bed. Bring them a
new pair of bedroom slippers. I think it makes them feel
196
HARD ROW
good to know that they can pop in any time to check
up on us because we have nothing to hide. It’s just like
they were running in and out of their grandmother’s
house, you know?”
The men nodded encouragingly and Dalton said,
“Sounds like a friendly place.”
“It is a friendly place. You ask anybody. The only per-
son with any complaints is Miss Letty Harper. She says
our cook scrambles the eggs too dry, but that’s because
she always wants a fried egg with a runny yolk. All the
same, Ramsey’ll cook one like that for her if he’s not
too jammed up.”
She opened the folder and took out copies of the state-
ments she and her staff had given back in December.
“Mary Rowe. She’s due back any minute. She gave him
his heart pills that morning. Then Ennis Stone. That’s
his grandson. He just got his driver’s license around
Thanksgiving and he took Mr. Mitchiner out for a ride
and got him a cheeseburger for lunch. That man did
love cheeseburgers. Then Ennis brought him back here
and put him in his room for a nap. His room was down
there on the end and Ennis usually came in that end
’cause it’s closer. He could park right next to the
door.
His roommate, Mr. Thomas Bell, says Mr. Mitchiner
was asleep on the bed when he came back to take a nap
himself; but he wasn’t there when he woke up.”
“No one else saw Mitchiner that afternoon?” Dalton
asked, thumbing through the statements McLamb had
read back in December.
“Not to remember. But it’s not like anyone would
unless it was his family. He was in his own world most
of the time, so he didn’t have any special friends here.
197
MARGARET MARON
A real nice, easygoing man, but you couldn’t carry on
much of a conversation with him. He kept thinking Mr.
Bell was his cousin and he’s white as you are.”
“Could we speak to Mr. Bell?” McLamb asked.
“Well, you can,” she said doubtfully, “but he’s had
another little stroke since then and his mind’s even
fuzzier than it was at Christmas.”
She led them into the lounge where several men and
women—mostly black, but some white—sat in rockers
or wheelchairs to watch television, something on the
Discovery Channel, judging by the brightly colored fish
that swam across the screen. In earlier years, Mr. Bell had
probably been strongly built with a full head of hair and
shrewd blue eyes. Now he was like a half-collapsed bal-
loon with most of the air gone. His muscles sagged, his
shoulders slumped, his head was round and shiny with
a few scattered wisps of white hair, his blue eyes were
pale and rheumy. Large brown liver spots splotched his
face and scalp.
This is what ninety-four looks like, Sam Dalton told
himself. Pity and dread mingled in his assessment as Mr.
Bell struggled to his feet at Mrs. Franks’s urging. We all
want to live to be old, but, please, God! Not like this! Not
me!
The old man steadied himself on his walker and obe-
diently went with them to the dining room where the
deputies could question him without the distraction of
the television.
While Dalton steadied one of the straight chairs,
McLamb and Mrs. Franks helped him lower himself
down. He kept one hand on the walker though and
198
HARD ROW
looked at them with incurious eyes as Mrs. Franks tried
to explain that these two men were sheriff ’s deputies.
“They need you to tell them about Fred Mitchiner,”
she said, enunciating each word clearly.
“Who?”
“Fred Mitchiner. Your roommate.”
“Fred? He’s gone.”
Hard Row dk-13 Page 19
