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
“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
