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scrawled on the chart at the end of the bed.
    “What’s that?” Margaret was awake after all.
    “It’s for the pain.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “You’ll feel a little pinch, Miss Devens, that’s all.”
    “I don’t—” She tried to turn away, but didn’t have the strength to resist.
    “There,” the nurse said calmly, removing the syringe from the vicinity of Margaret’s hip. “The medication will take effect soon, so don’t worry if you start feeling drowsy.
    Maybe your granddaughter will stay with you till you fall asleep.”
    I beamed her a sincere, appreciative, family-member smile. The cops got a grudging three minutes. I’d just been granted unlimited bedside time, albeit with a drugged client.
    Sometimes there’s a benefit to not looking like your typical cop.
     
    “She’ll feel much better tomorrow, dear,” the nurse promised me as she left.
     
    I maneuvered a chair close to the head of the bed, sat down, and waited.
     
    “Go away,” Margaret whispered. I hadn’t seen her open her eyes since the nurse left, but she’d turned her head in my direction, so I guess she must have peeked.
    “What did he want?” I asked.
    She said nothing and kept her eyes shut.
    “Did you know him? Them?”
    Again nothing.
     
    “Was it Gene? Did your brother do this to you?”
    That forced her good eye open. “No.”
    “Then why are you trying to cover it up?”
    Silence. The eye closed.
     
    “Margaret, listen to me, I’m not a cop. I’m on your side.
    You paid me. Maybe I can help. You didn’t fall downstairs. A tornado did not strike your house.”
    INo response.
     
    “Did they get what they wanted?”
     
    “No.” The single syllable came out with grim satisfaction.
    She repeated it and her voice cracked.
     
    “Water?”
     
    I held the glass while she made an attempt to suck at the straw through swollen lips. She winced at the feel of it, and waved the glass away.
     
    “Listen.” Her voice was so faint I had to lean over the bed. She grasped my hand, which was chilled from the icy glass. Hers was colder. “Find Gene. Please.”
     
    “I’m looking. I’ll keep looking.”
     
    “If I die—”
     
    “You’re not dying, Margaret. The doctor—”
     
    “Doctors.” She practically spat the word. “Eugene … If I die, there’s nobody else.”
     
    I thought she’d dozed off, but when I tried to release my hand, she drew me closer with surprising strength. “Hide it,”
    she whispered. “Hide it for me. Don’t tell.”
     
    Whatever they’d given her, Demerol, morphine, was starting to take hold. Her one open eye was wide and vacant, staring at the ceiling. I’m not sure she knew I was there.
     
    “Hide what?” I said.
     
    She gazed at me blankly, as if she’d never seen me before in her life.
     
    “Hide what?” I repeated.
     
    “Go … home,” she murmured. Each word was separate, disjointed, like the beginning of a new thought. “Home …
    attic… toy trunk.”
     
    “A toy trunk in the attic?”
     
    She stared at me intently, pleading out of that one wandering eye. “Home … behind … trunk … attic …” She talked the way a drunk walked, trying to toe a straight line, wavering uncontrollably. She couldn’t manage to get the right words out, only the urgency. “Home … hide the …
    hide it. Gene …”
     
    “Margaret, what does Gene have to do with it? Did you see Gene?”
     
    She gave up, sighed deeply, closed her eye, and slept.
     
    I sat with her a little while. The IV dripped. The second hand of the big clock described steady circles. Her breathing grew soft and even, her hand warmer.
     
    Before I left, I tucked her hand underneath the thin blanket, and smoothed a strand of white hair off her forehead.
    Like I said, I never met my grandmother.

CHAPTER
9
    I stopped at a deli on the VFW Parkway and ordered a pastrami on light rye, two half-sour pickles, and a can of Dr.
    Brown’s cream soda. That’s the kind of food I was raised on, and