"Zeldin and Phelps were in a meeting with a dozen other staffers from the time we left the gardens. Guidi's secretary is the one who dispatched Kathleen Bailey to be our guide. He was downtown all morning. She's not even sure she told him about it when he called in."

"Well, is anybody going to tell me what happened to me?" I asked. "And would you please take these back to the other patients, Mike? It smells like a funeral parlor in here."

"I got a pizza on the way. Extra pepperoni, extra mushrooms, no anchovies. No worms, either. Special delivery. You'll be like new in no time," he said, scooping the flowers off my legs and walking to the hallway.

"Soup," I said to Mercer. "A hot bowl of soup is all I want. And a drink."

NYU Hospital was next door to the medical examiner's office. We had tested every deli and restaurant within sight of the morgue and I knew where the best chicken soup and the closest Dewar's could be found.

"The soup we can do. I think you're grounded on the alcohol."

"I suppose they have to put a cop on my door, too?"

Mercer laughed. "We're camping out with you."

"You can't do that. It's ridiculous. I understand they have to station someone outside the room, but you guys can go home and get a good night's sleep."

"Hush, Miss Cooper."

"Now you'll make me feel guilty on top of feeling stupid."

"Battaglia made a few calls. The room next door is empty. One of us will snooze in this chair and the other can stretch out in the bed. We'll take turns. Better us than some guy from the Thirteenth who doesn't know your favorite lullabies like we do."

"Yeah, we get demerits when bad things happen on our shift," Mike said, as he came back into the room. "I'm already down points 'cause of your antics today."

"I'm going to ask you again. What happened?"

Mike and Mercer looked at each other.

Mercer spoke first. "The cops in the precinct think it was a prank. They-"

"A prank? Are they nuts? Haven't they ever read Poe?"

"Hear me out." He stood up and walked to my bed, lowered the rail and sat beside me. "There was a mugging down at the end of the park, in the playground behind the bandshell. A fifteen-yearold girl was watching over her kid brother and she got roughed up by some homies. Threw her down, snatched her wallet, touched some body parts they shouldn't have."

"I heard the screams. I remember that much."

"It was three guys, part of a gang. Wannabe baby Bloods. Punks from the 'hood who were just running around roughing folks up."

"Were they caught?"

"Not yet. They scattered in different directions."

"I saw one run across the street."

"Yeah," Mike said. "He's the one I figured maybe you tried to follow."

"The girl who was mugged-she knows who they are?"

Mercer smoothed the bedcover. "She's not saying yet. She's got to live there on One Hundred Ninety-second Street without any protection-and she's smart enough to know that."

"And what does that have to do with me?"

"The cops figure the gang was just wilding. While a few of them were causing trouble at the south end of the park, a couple of them saw you standing alone and-"

"I was alone for maybe sixty seconds."

"It only took two to smack you over the head with a two-by-four."

"Is that what it was?"

"There was one at the bottom of the front steps. It's at the lab now, being tested for blood and hair," Mercer said. "Then they carried you into the root cellar, tied your hands with your own scarf, gagged you, and tucked you under the boards."

"How could they know? Why would they-"

"Trust me, Coop," Mike said. "It ain't nothin' they picked up spending time at the local library reading short stories. Ms. Bailey says that root cellar is just an empty little room that's been an attractive local nuisance for ages. It's too damp to keep any of their supplies in, it's got no security, except when the entire park is locked at night. All those floorboards are loose-it's not like they were nailed down or anything. Hoodlums break in all the time to sit there and smoke dope. These kids just picked up a few planks and dropped you in to scare you to death."

"And that part of it worked just fine. Tell them for me when you find them. What was I gagged with? And tied?"

"The gag was a sock," Mike said.

"Just like Aurora Tait," I said, thinking of our skeleton in the basement.

"Your scarf was around your hands. Really loose."

"Loose to you, maybe. I'm telling you I couldn't move a muscle. Somebody put me in there to kill me."

Mike looked at Mercer again.

"Don't treat me like a psycho, like I'm exaggerating this. Have they ever found anything under the floorboards there before?"

"Yeah. Dead animals. Half-eaten sandwiches. Weapons. It's a natural. It's like the local haunted house."

"And you're going to tell me no one saw anybody lurking around the cottage before this happened, or running away from it afterwards?"

Mercer hesitated. "We've got a 'scrip, actually. Two kids, probably part of the same gang that worked over the teenager."

"Well, what's the description?"

"What's the difference if you never got a look at them?" Mike asked. "You're not the one who's going to make an ID. The docs tell us even if you'd seen someone or heard them coming right before you got whacked on the head, the blow would have wiped out the short-term memory. You'd never call it up."

"Who's the witness?" I asked.

"You know the rules."

"Well, I can only hope it's not you," I said to Mike. "After today I would hate to have to rely on you for anything. And just for the record, I want the police reports to say that whoever stored me in that-that hole in the ground-was either leaving me there to die-"

"Yeah, right. With visiting hours just about to begin."

"Or planning to come back and get me after dark and then take me somewhere to finish me off."

"These kids wanted you to wiggle loose and pop out of your box right in the middle of some school tour and give the third-graders from the suburbs an urban legend to take home with them," Mike said.

The phone rang. I stared at it and inched farther down in the bed. "Who knows I'm here? I don't want to talk to anyone."

"That's gonna be Sarah," Mercer said. "She's been concerned about you all day. I told her to wait until they got you into a room this evening before she called."

I took the receiver after he answered for me. "Do I still have a job?"

My loyal deputy had held down the fort for me through protracted trials, complicated investigations, and personal turmoil-or mental health days, as we liked to call them.

"How's the head?" It was good to hear the normalcy of Sarah's voice. "You know I wouldn't get to throw my weight around at all if you were here at your desk every day. I'd written you off for the course of the Upshaw matter anyway. The boss wants you to stay out for another week, and I'm just adding my vote to his."

We chatted for a few minutes, while Sarah assured me she was on top of everything that was pending. I thanked her for her friendship and hung up the phone.

By the time my doctor arrived, he had studied the test results and confirmed that I had neither fractures nor a concussion. If I was stable throughout the night, he would sign the release forms on his morning rounds.

Mercer called out for my soup while he and Mike were eating their pizza. We were waiting for the delivery when Mike turned the television on to catch the end of Jeopardy!

Trebek told us the final category was Famous Names.

"Level playing field," Mike said. "Twenty each?"

Mercer agreed.

"I'm not interested," I said. Then I thought of my handbag. "Did they get my pocketbook?"

"You left it locked in the car when we went into the cottage. Don't you remember?"