Murder Never Forgets by Diana O'Hehir

hall.”
    Belle shrugs. “So. A little vocal ization don’t hurt anybody.”
    I smile, acknowledging the big word, but keep right on. “And that he wanders up into the forest. What’s that about?”
    “Dunno. Don’t hassle it.” She looks at my face and says, “Some kinda favorite place he’s got up there. I think it’s a well or something. He calls it ‘Dark Lake.’ ”
    “Dark Lake,” I repeat. I don’t much like the sound.
    I start to ask her about my father’s visits to the beach and then decide not to. I don’t want to investigate that beach too much with Belle. Instead, I try some ordinary character-assassination gossip. “What do you think of the doctor?”
    “Kittredge? Old mega-testosterone?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “Big blowhard,” she adds.
    I think, Yeah, that, too . “He took me for a walk,” I volunteer.
    “Excitement.” Belle looks cynical.
    I stress, “Not especially .”
    “How about him and Mrs. Sisal?” I ask. “Do they get along?”
    “Maybe just great when they’re in bed together.” She stalls and examines me. “Hey, you are an Observer.”
    “No, I’m not. Just ordinary curiosity.”
    She makes a face and reminds me what happened to the cat. “Pussycat hamburger. Don’t get too damn curious.”
    “Okay,” she tells me at the end of the corridor. “You gottit, I guess, the routine. You pick up quick. The rest is just common sense, and don’t scream if you find somebody passed out on the floor. They’re old, and they do that. There’s a string with a red button . . .”
    “Yes, I know about the red button.”
    “Okay, then. That’s what you do in extremis . You push that red button.” She looks pretty pleased with herself for that Latin phrase, in extremis . “Now when you get finished, you check everything off on this clip sheet an’ take it down to the desk. Gottit?”
    I tell her, yes, I’ve got it. I say, “Thank you, Belle,” and she says, “No charge, babe.”
    I’ve taken the cart handle and am trundling down the hall when she calls after me, “Hey, come see me when you feel like talking.”
    Which I take it is her way of saying she’s keeping her lines open. She thinks I’m an Observer. She just hopes that I’m a friendly Observer, or maybe a stupid one.
    The whole thing adds to the general tenseness here. Any situation that needs an observer is not a great situation.

Chapter 5
    Finally, I telephone Susie at the grocery store to tell her I’ve taken a job here. “They call it joining the Manor family,” I say. She’s at first amazed and then supportive. “Working in that place,” she says, “what a blast, where do you get these ideas? Listen, it might be okay .”
    She agrees to close up my apartment and adopt my two geranium plants. That apartment is just a one-room deal with a couch and microwave.
    “So how is it? Working there?” she asks, and I tell her, “Okay. Not bad, actually.”
    “It’s okay ,” I repeat, “the old ladies are nice to me.”
    “Tell me, tell me,” she infuses enthusiasm into the telephone.
    I try to remember if I’ve ever had one of those “Carla, now seriously, you can do better; you’re not living up to your full potential” lectures from her in all our life together, and I decide I haven’t. She’s always total support and interest and enthusiasm. She sends these over the airwaves now. “What do you do ? What happens, like, first off in the morning?”
    I describe wheeling the cart down the hall, half-admiring and half-hating the misty, moist pictures—“Listen, Sue, they put their gold frames inside of gold frames”—and knocking on each old lady’s door and saying, “Here’s your morning stuff, one calcium, one Tylenol, and we got a prescription for Cipro today, and how are you feeling?”
    I don’t say anything about Belle thinking I’m an “observer,” whatever that is.
    “And the ladies—or, there are two old guys, too—always announce how they’re feeling, in a