“It’s me. Eddie. Who do you think? Other than me and my mother rotting in detention, how many people’s lives have you screwed up?”

“Everybody’s who tried to murder me,” Rose replies acidly.

“Yeah, well … I thought we were past all that. Since you cut my finger off, I’d call us even.”

Rose does not think half a digit balances the scales when pitted against a life, but she forgoes comment.

“You know where SouthPark Mall is?” Eddie asks.

“I can find it.”

“We gotta talk. There’s a Chick-fil-A. Meet me there in half an hour.”

A fast food outlet in a mall; that seems safe enough. Besides, Rose is hungry. Concern over Chuck’s impending doom, if, in fact, his doom is impending, has kept her too distracted to bother with lunch.

“I can do that,” she says.

“Do it, then. Thirty minutes.” Eddie cuts contact.

Stirred up a hornet’s nest.

It had to be her and Mel’s visit to the Boster mansion. Derek must have called and reported it. Barbara could have done it as well, but Rose’s money is on Derek. A woman didn’t live for sixty-odd years without learning how to read the signs of dominance and abuse.

Not everybody can sit around all day polishing their nails. Derek had said that. The subtext is you do nothing of value; your life is empty of worth. Rose suspects Barbara is either innocent of betraying her husband—other than in the biblical sense—or has been coerced into it. Derek, the not-brother, must have wormed his way into the Bosters’ life, then begun seducing Chuck’s much, much younger wife, possibly in the guise of taking care of her when Chuck started going round the bend.

As she puts on her shoes, she tries to connect the dots: Drugged in her own home until demented. Put in a respected local facility for which Flynn conveniently got a flyer at the appropriate time. Dementia-inducing drugs continued inside the MCU.

Unwittingly? The prescription sent along with Rose?

Unlikely. The first thing responsible doctors do in elder care is review medications. But possible, the switched drugs smuggled in in the original prescription bottle. Still, that would only be good until the prescription needed to be refilled.

Three connected dots: drugged at home by criminal #1; incarcerated, drugged at the MCU by criminal #2. Chuck’s dots might be the same. Both Rose and Chuck have money; an heir—or heirs—might be tempted to kill them before they squandered their fortunes or changed their wills.

How did criminal #1 and criminal #2 get together? Not once, but judging by Marion’s findings, three or four times in so many years. Rose suspects a criminal #3 who serves as matchmaker for #s 1 and 2.

She isn’t going to solve that equation tonight. She doubts she will solve it until Chuck is rescued, and his mind sufficiently restored that they can compare notes.