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The truth is, she’s still hoping that. She has less than a day before she needs to bring her client up to date, and she’d like to have something concrete to tell Penny. That isn’t the most important thing, though. She wants something concrete to tell herself.

5

While Holly is talking to Jerome, Barbara Robinson is sitting with Marie Duchamp in a waiting room at Kiner Memorial. What they’re waiting to find out is whether or not the docs have been able to regulate Olivia’s heartbeat. They are also waiting—although neither of them say it—to find out if the old poet is still alive.

Barbara calls home and gets her father. She tells Jim that she’s in the hospital, waiting to get news about an old friend. A very old friend named Olivia Kingsbury. That’s bad, but there’s also good news. She tells him to call Jerome and he’ll explain everything, but now she and Olivia’s caregiver are expecting to hear from the doctor about Olivia’s condition at any time.

“Are you all right, honey?” Jim asks.

The answer is no, but she says yes. He asks when she’ll be home. Barbara says she doesn’t know, repeats that she’s fine, and ends the call. To pass the time, she checks her voicemails. She has one from Holly but doesn’t want to talk to her friend yet. She didn’t even want to talk to her dad. She’s trying to concentrate all her psychic force on keeping Olivia alive. Undoubtedly stupid, but who knows? There really are more things in heaven and earth than most people believe, Hamlet was right about that. Barbara has seen some of them for herself.

She also has a text from Holly, and to this she replies, sending off a brief two-word response just as Olivia’s doctor comes in and approaches them. One look at his face tells Barbara and Marie that the news is bad.

6

While Barbara is reading Holly’s text and sending off her brief reply, Emily Harris is standing at the bedroom window and looking down at Ridge Road. When Roddy comes in she turns to him, crosses the room (slowly but steadily, only limping a little), and gives him a hug.

“Someone’s feeling better,” Roddy says.

She smiles. “Little by slowly, my dear. Little by slowly. The detective woman didn’t seem exactly prepossessing, did she? With her mask and her prissy little questions?”

“She did not.”

“But we must keep an eye out for her. I tend to think you’re right, that she may be investigating Dressler and Dahl as separate cases for separate clients, but I still find it hard to believe. And if she was here partly because of the Dahl girl and didn’t say so, it’s because she suspects something.”

They walk to the window together and look out at the nighttime street. Rodney Harris is thinking that if what they have done—what they are doing—comes out, they would be branded as crazy. His academic reputation, built up over decades, would come crashing down.

Emily, the far more practical member of their partnership, is still thinking about Bonnie Dahl. Something else is nagging at her, but she ignores it.

“What could the Gibney woman find out? Not much. Maybe nothing. Dahl did some secretarial work for me after Christmas, but only for a short time, and I paid cash. I asked her to keep quiet about it for that reason. Reminded her that it was undeclared income.”

“Before Christmas, too,” Roddy says. “As a… you know…”

“As an elf, yes. For the party. But there were at least a dozen elves, all paid in cash, and they were forbidden to post about it on social media.”

Roddy snorts. “You might as well tell the wind not to blow.”

Em admits that this is true, young people post everything, including photographs of their private parts, but she knows Bonnie Dahl never posted about her job as a Christmas elf. Not on Facebook, Instagram, or her Twitter feed. Emily has checked, but that’s not all. “She knew the secretarial job was in the offing, and she didn’t want to lose it.”

“She may have told her mother.”

It’s Em’s turn to snort. “Not that one, she thought her mother was a meddling bitch, and the boyfriend is out of the picture. The Gibney woman doesn’t know about our relationship—our brief relationship—with the Dahl girl. At least she didn’t this afternoon. Did you see how afraid she was to touch you? What a mouse!” Emily laughs, then winces and clutches the small of her back.

“My poor honey,” Rodney says. “What about a little fresh cream for your ouchies?”

She gives him a grateful smile. “That would be good. And Roddy? Do you still have Thing One?”

“Yes.”

“Carry it. Just in case. Don’t forget!” He forgets so much these days.

“I’ll carry it and I won’t forget. Do you still have Thing Two?”

“Yes.” She kisses him. “Now help me off with my nightgown.”

7

Bill Hodges told Holly once that a case was like an egg.