Want to Know a Secret? (66)

When we finally come to the end of the hallway, Peggy nods at the last room on the right.

“You might not be able to wake her up,” she says. “She’s heavily medicated.”

I nod and clutch my purse a little tighter.

Janet Portland’s room is small. There’s barely enough room for me to slide between her bed and a small dresser. She has one tiny window, and it’s littered with tiny cracks. Janet herself is lying on a twin bed, her wiry gray hair disheveled. As she sleeps, her lips make rhythmic smacking movements.

“Janet?” I whisper.

Her eyelids flutter.

“Janet,” I try again. “Could you wake up for a moment? I’m April’s friend, Julie. I want to talk to you about something important.”

She doesn’t acknowledge me in any way. It’s like she’s in a coma.

“Janet!” I use my tone for when the boys disobey me. “Wake up!”

This time, her eyelids flutter and her eyes crack open a few millimeters.

“Janet.” My face relaxes into a smile. “Hi. It’s Julie.”

She mumbles something unintelligible.

“Can I talk to you?” I ask. “It’s about… well, I heard you’ve been talking about somebody named Courtney. Courtney Burns?”

I can just barely make out her mumbling the word “Courtney.”

“Right.” I nod vigorously. “I just have a few questions about her. About… April.”

And then Janet shuts her eyes again.

I’ve questioned hostile witnesses, but none of them were nearly as challenging as Janet Portland. She did fine for the video, but today she can’t seem to keep her eyes open. I try for a good fifteen minutes. At one point, I reach out and shake her shoulder. But it’s no use. Janet is out for the count.

“Maybe I’ll come back again later,” I tell her. As if she cares.

As I turn to leave the room, I nearly run right back into Peggy. As it turns out, she’d been standing at the door to the room. Watching me. For God knows how long. My heart skips in my chest.

“Why the interest in Courtney Burns?” Peggy asks.

I take a breath, trying to come up with a reasonable answer to why I would be asking these questions. I decide to go with the truth. “I want to know what happened.”

“You want to know what happened,” she muses.

“Right.”

“Well,” she says. “How about if I just tell you what happened?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Tell me…?”

“Janet Portland was her daughter’s alibi for murder,” Peggy says. “Then a year later, Janet decided to stop being her alibi anymore. And now she’s here. On enough medications to kill a horse. You can connect the dots from there.”

I lift my chin. “If that’s true, why don’t you go to the police?”

“For what?” She snorts. “Do you think that woman in there is any kind of reliable witness? And I’m not in charge of her medications. If I questioned it, I’d be gone. Just like that.” She snaps her fingers.

I look back at the room, where Janet Portland is sleeping quietly. I understand what Peggy is trying to say. As awful as it is, April is going to get away with what she has done. She has already gotten away with it—it was years ago. There’s nothing we can do at this point. Better to accept it.

But I can’t accept it.

Most states have a statute of limitations on crimes—for fraud, armed robbery, assault. But there’s never a statute of limitations on murder. If you kill somebody, it’s never too late to prosecute you for that crime. Because the person you killed will never stop being dead.

“Listen,” I say to Peggy, “don’t tell April I was here.”

“You got it,” she says. She looks into Janet’s room and a shadow comes over her face. “And if you want to talk to her again, let me know. Maybe a couple of her pills could fall down the toilet that day.”

I thank her again and head out. I’m going to come back here and I’m going to take Peggy up on her offer. I’m going to get to the truth. I’m going to get justice for Courtney Burns and Janet Portland.

As I’m signing myself out in the lobby, I hear a voice behind me: “April’s friend, right?”

I whirl around, my heart pounding like it did when Keith walked in on me responding to Riley’s text messages. I come face-to-face with a familiar-looking middle-aged man with sexy silver hair.

“Hello,” I say. “Have we… met before?”

His eyes crinkle when he smiles. “I’m Joe Williams—April’s mother’s physician here at the nursing home. We met at her Christmas party.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yes. I remember.”

I feel distinctly uneasy, because I remember this guy very clearly now. I remember how I saw him and April talking together in the corner at the party. Her hand was on his shoulder. And at one point, she leaned in and whispered something in his ear, and he laughed.

Peggy might be willing to keep my visit here a secret, but this man is sure to tell her.

But then again, is it so wrong that I’m here visiting Janet? The poor woman is demented (or so April proclaimed). It stands to reason I might visit her to brighten her day.