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would be nuts.” Then I hated myself for responding. They just wanted to keep me talking, in the hope that I’d finally reveal how I’d found the bodies. They would never accept that I was telling them the truth.
    â€œThat would be nuts?” Stuart said. “You think that sounds nuts?”
    â€œAnd you gentlemen are…who?” asked a young man from the doorway.
    I could scarcely believe my eyes. “Manfred?” I said, completely confused. The fluorescent light glinted off Manfred Bernardo’s pierced eyebrow (the right), nostril (the left), and ears (both). Manfred had shaved his goatee, I noticed distantly, but his hair was still short, spiky, and platinum.
    â€œYes, darling, I came as soon as I could,” he said, and if my head hadn’t felt so fragile, I would have gaped at him.
    He moved to my bedside with the lithe grace of a gymnast and took my free hand, the one without the IV line. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, and I felt the stud in his tongue graze my fingers. Then he held my hand in both his own. “How are you feeling?” he asked, as if there were no one else in the room. He was looking right into my eyes, and I got the message.
    â€œNot too well,” I said weakly. Unfortunately, I was almost as weak as I sounded. “I guess Tolliver told you about the concussion? And the broken arm?”
    â€œAnd these gentlemen are here to talk to you when you’re so ill?”
    â€œThey don’t believe anything I say,” I told him pitifully.
    Manfred turned to them and raised his pierced eyebrow.
    Stuart and Klavin were regarding my new visitor with a dash of astonishment and a large dollop of distaste. Klavin pushed his glasses up on his nose as if that would make Manfred look better, and Stuart’s lips pursed like he’d just bitten a lemon.
    â€œAnd you would be…?” Stuart said.
    â€œI would be Manfred Bernardo, Harper’s dear friend,” he said, and I held my expression with an effort. Resisting the impulse to yank my hand from Manfred’s, I squeezed his bottom hand as hard as I could.
    â€œWhere are you from, Mr. Bernardo?” Klavin asked.
    â€œI’m from Tennessee,” he said. “I came as soon as I could.” Manfred bent to drop a kiss on my cheek. When he straightened, he said, “I’m sure Harper is feeling too poorly to be questioned by you gentlemen.” He looked from one of them to the other with an absolutely straight face.
    â€œShe seems all right to me,” Stuart said. But he and Klavin glanced at each other.
    â€œI think not,” Manfred said. He was over twenty years younger than Klavin, and smaller than Stuart—Manfred was maybe five foot nine, and slender—but somewhere under all that tattooed and pierced skin was an air of authority and a rigid backbone.
    I closed my eyes. I really was exhausted, and I was also not too awfully far from laughing out loud.
    â€œWe’ll leave you two to catch up,” Klavin said, not sounding happy at all. “But we’re coming back to talk to Ms. Connelly again.”
    â€œWe’ll see you then,” Manfred said courteously.
    Feet shuffling…the door opening to admit hospital hall noises…then the muffling of those noises as the SBI agents carefully pulled the door shut behind them.
    I opened my eyes. Manfred was regarding me from maybe five inches away. He was thinking about kissing me. His eyes were bright and blue and hot.
    â€œNuh-uh, buddy, not so fast,” I said. He withdrew to a safer distance. “How’d you come to be here? Is your grandmother okay?”
    Xylda Bernardo was an old fraud of a psychic who nonetheless had a streak of actual talent. The last time I’d seen her had been in Memphis; she’d been frail enough then, mentally and physically, to necessitate Manfred driving her to Memphis and keeping tabs on her while she talked to us.
    â€œShe’s at