The Last Hands to Hold It

Junie Alsop was seventy-four, and she lived in the memory care wing, and when she walked away from the Harvest Festival everyone knew exactly what had happened.The file had a label on it within the hour.Marion Cleary washes the woman's hairbrush and finds something nobody wants to hear about: Junie Alsop was sharp. Focused. And she was going somewhere, on purpose, with a plan.Nobody argues with Marion. They just don't do anything - because a feeling isn't a fact, because Bellwether House is private, because the alert is already out, because there is one deputy for four hundred square miles.Then a second resident dies quietly in her sleep, and Marion gets to the water glass before anyone washes it.She spent thirty-one years reading medication logs. She knows what a real one looks like: three pens, crooked initials, a Tuesday somebody forgot and squeezed in later. The logs at Bellwether House are perfect.Nobody's are perfect.A standalone case in the Permanent Record Mysteries. Read in any order.