Parrots Prove Deadly by Clea Simon

them. ”
    “What, Growler?” I stopped, and since I held the other end of the leash, he had to, as well. He turned and eyed me, his button eyes cold.
    “The guide dog—the one you call ‘Buster’? ” h e broke his silence. “She’s more concerned with her person than with anyone else—and with good reason. People die there. She smells it, and I can smell it on her. ”
    I nodded, grateful for that damp black nose. He was gleaning things from my memories that went beneath my radar. We continued walking, and I mulled over that last statement. Yes, people died at LiveWell. It was an old folks’ home, no matter what anyone called it. Death’s waiting room. Did he—or did Buster—mean there were suspicious deaths? Deaths that shouldn’t have happened—what the coroner would call misadventure? Or even murder?
    “Watch what happens to that bird, ”Growler said, barking once as we came up to his door. “ Nobody likes a blabbermouth. ”
     

Chapter Twelve
    If I hadn’t been concerned about Randolph, I was now. Yes, he was a nuisance, and, yes, he was going to be hard to place, given his vocabulary. But would someone besides me take his rantings seriously? Had the big bird repeated—the word “confided” didn’t seem right—his demonstration to anyone else?
    I rushed through my next few jobs—a regular claw clipping for a Persian who was a lot more accepting than Wallis would have been and a dachshund whose back necessitated physical therapy—and then raced over to LiveWell. I was early, but, hey, Jane had said she was always there these days, hadn’t she?
    The woman who answered my knock was even more of a mess than the day before. Eyes swollen, nose red, Jane had been crying. Bawling was more like it, if the little hiccups that had her head bobbing as she let me in were any indication.
    “Are you okay?” I didn’t want to get involved. Humans can care for themselves. However, this human had already given me a hefty deposit. “You know, I lost my mother about two years ago.”
    She turned and I followed her into the apartment. The box level looked pretty much the same as it had the day before, though the fast food wrappers were new. The parrot, however, looked worse. That bald spot on his chest was worried and angry. I nodded at him, trying to catch his eye. Before I could say anything, the woman who’d let me in coughed out a sob that had me looking for a box of tissues. She was ahead of me, though, and grabbed a bunch before turning to face me again.
    “It’s not that.” Her nose still looked sore, but the hiccups had subsided. “It’s—the hospital.”
    I waited while she grabbed another bunch of tissues. Those final bills can pack a wallop, but not enough to provoke tears, I figured. A lost wedding ring, maybe. It seemed unlikely they’d lose a body. “Didn’t she—” I caught myself in time. “I thought she passed here, in her home.”
    Jane shook her head and dabbed at her nose. “No, well, she did, it turned out. But they took her to the hospital anyway. She’d been there—Berkshire General—just a few weeks before, so officially she was under their care—as well as Doctor Wachtell’s. I don’t understand the arrangement.”
    “Wachtell is the gerontologist on duty here?” She nodded. Sweet arrangement: all your clients in one place. “He probably has an affiliation with Berkshire, so he can admit patients.” My mother had died at home, with hospice care. Still, I’d ended up learning about so-called institutional end-of-life treatment. “Care” had little place in the routine of tests and procedures. “He was probably her doctor of record.”
    Jane just shook her head. “I wish he’d been the one. He’s the best, really. At least, she was beyond hurting by that point.”
    But not beyond a couple of grand’s worth of procedures, I’d bet. Still, I didn’t see how all this had led to tears—and I wanted to get to work. “Is it—the thought of her being