One Grave Too Many

clean the plastic mattress cover and remake the bed. He worked quickly and said nothing, merely nodding at Diane on the way out. By the time he finished, Star was ready for her clothes and reached out the door for them.
    When Frank arrived, Diane had Star tucked into a clean bed and the policeman reentered to lock her restraints.
    “Why don’t you leave those off, as long as we’re here?” asked Frank.
    “They told me not to,” he said and went back to his post.
    Frank shook his head. “When this is over . . .” He was interrupted by a nurse entering the room.
    Diane expected another angry nurse, but this woman was friendly. Slim, in her early thirties, with light brown skin and short hair, she looked efficient and spoke to Star like she cared. Her name tag said LORAINE WASHINGTON, and she was a registered nurse, not an aide.
    “How are you feeling?” she asked as she took Star’s blood pressure and pulse.
    “I’m okay,” said Star.
    “Your blood pressure’s a little low.” The RN took her temperature. “And you’re a little hot. The next time you have to go, I want you to collect some urine for me.” She set a specimen cup on the nightstand.
    “I’m OK, really,” said Star. “It’s just that when I have to go, I have to go.”
    “How many times have you been kept waiting?”
    Star shrugged. “Just in the evenings. That nurse doesn’t like me. In the daytime, or when Uncle Frank is here, things are all right.”
    “They’ll be all right from now on. I want you to drink lots of water.”
    “That’ll just make things worse.”
    “No, it’ll make things better.”
    “Then you think you can talk that policeman into coming in every thirty minutes and giving me a sip?” Star tried to lift her arms against the restraints.
    Nurse Washington smiled. “I see what you mean. Someone will come and check on you more often and give you a drink. Do you like juice?”
    “Orange juice.”
    “How about cranberry?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I’ll see you get some of that too. It’ll be good for your bladder.” She patted her arm and left.
    “Well, Uncle Frank, you must have ripped somebody a new one.”
    “I had some words with a few people. I don’t think this was the first complaint about that particular aide.” He reached over and grasped her foot through the covers and shook it. “You doing OK?”
    “Sure. I did a number on my arms and they hurt and itch like hell, I’ve just peed all over myself, my family is dead and the whole world thinks I killed them.”
    “Not the whole world,” said Frank.
    “They said they was going to try me as an adult. All my life people’s been telling me I’m just a kid, and now they decide I’m an adult because that makes me in worse trouble.”
    “I doubt it will even get to trial. We’ll find out who really did it before then,” said Frank with such conviction that Diane believed him.
    “Will it matter?” said Star. “They’ll still be dead, and people like that bitch nurse will still believe I did it.”
    “It turns out that the nurse’s aide is a friend of Crystal’s,” said Frank. “I thought I’d seen her before.”
    Star rolled her eyes. “That explains a lot—for starters, why she’s as dumb as dirt.”
    “How have you been treating the people around here?” asked Frank.
    “Better’n they treat me.”
    “Why don’t you try just being polite to the people here and not cursing. You don’t have to make friends with them, a little politeness will do—after all, they’re armed with needles.”
    Star gave Frank a half smile and turned to Diane. “Frank tells me you met Crystal and her husband. Aren’t they a kick? Crystal’s so proud of Gilroy the boy toy. He’s about fifty years younger than she is, you know.”
    “More like fifteen,” Frank said.
    “She parades him around like he’s some prize she won. If he was the big prize, I’d hate to have come in second in that contest.”
    Diane had to laugh at Star. So did Frank. She could be a charmer. Diane tried to visualize her in a killing frenzy, but couldn’t imagine her doing what it took to kill her parents.
    “I heard on the TV that Dean gave himself up. Did he really?”
    “He had help,” said Frank.
    “That figures. How was he?”
    “In need of a good meal and a place to sleep,” said Frank.
    “Serves him right. He ran out on me, you know. As soon as he heard about my parents, he got scared, even tried to steal my coin collection. We was supposed