“Turn on family, and rat him out to a strange woman who didn’t even buy a car?” Carter asks.

“That would be a big help,” Rose says.

Another puff of air gusts through the ether. “Shoot,” Carter says. “What the hell. My sister can’t be any worse off with him in jail than she is with him in the house.”

“Text,” Rose says. “I don’t have voicemail.” She taps the red END CALL button.

T. Brevard, an orderly at the MCU, had arranged the payoff to have Rose killed. He was probably either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. Neither one struck her as deep or cunning; not criminal mastermind types. Of course, she was drugged to the gills the few times she’d had any interaction with them.

She returns to the attachments Marion sent. The manager of the unit is a woman named Wanda Lopez. Rose remembers her. Mostly she remembers the new Corvette she’d driven so sedately, and the bright-colored suits.

Reading on, she finds the orderlies earn thirty-eight grand a year, the nurses seventy-two grand, and the manager one hundred twenty-nine grand per annum. Not enough for a Corvette, but Wanda might have other sources of income. Illegal income?

Then Rose sees the smoking gun. Not smoking exactly, but definitely warm. Before Wanda Lopez was promoted to manager she worked as a pharmacist, then manager of all the hospital’s pharmacies. Wanda’s was the bejeweled hand that gave her the spiked orange juice.

Rose sets the iPad down, lies back, and stares at the scrap of discolored sky. A pharmacist in a unit for hopelessly demented people, people with money, who might live a long time, long enough, all that lovely money will vanish into the black hole of elder care.

How easy would it be to help them along?

Easy as pie.

How easy to substitute meds?

Pie.

Getting drugs to not-yet-demented oldsters outside the facility? Rose can picture a close friend or family member working with Wanda. Easy to order capsules identical to the kind the victim takes—and all old people take something. Then Wanda substitutes the bad drug for the good. All unsuspecting, the victim goes on taking the medicine. The dementia-producing drug is upped slowly, maybe at a crucial time—like the death of a spouse—when people are expected to suffer mentally. The victim becomes less and less lucid. Then a flyer from a respected care facility is put front and center. An answer to the beleaguered family’s prayers.

Rose is willing to bet that would work often enough that a few people could make a good living, everybody along the line getting a cut: the heir, the inheritance; Wanda, a druggist’s fee.