Again the cookies and milk, again her wistful smiles, again Mr McGivney sitting perfectly still in the evening sunlight. But this time I was determined to uncover the facts about his heroism. I decided on a deceptively direct approach. "Mrs McGivney, how did Mr McGivney become a hero?"

She seemed pleased that I was interested enough to ask. "Mr McGivney was a soldier. He fought the Spanish in Cuba."

Now we were getting somewhere! A war hero! I had read something about the Spanish-American War, but I couldn't place it in history. It wasn't a war that inspired novels and movies, like the Civil War and the Great War, which we didn't think of as World War I because the trouble brewing in Europe wasn't yet called World War II. "When was that, Mrs McGivney?"

"He left to join his regiment the day after we were married. He looked so grand and handsome in his uniform!"

"Yes, but whenwas that?"

"I'll bet half the people on the block came to our wedding. It was up at Saint Joseph's. Do you know Saint Joseph's?"

Of course I knew Saint Joseph's. It was our parish church. Within two years, I would become an altar boy there, but at that time my only religious distinction was my ability to get through the Stations of the Cross faster than any other kid on the block. None of us would have dared to skip a single word of the five Hail Mary's we said at each stage of the Passion, nor would we have failed to bow our heads at the word 'Jesus', but we saw nothing wrong in saying the prayers as fast as we could, rising from one Station while still muttering nowandatthehourofourdeathamen, then sliding to the next on our knees and beginning its string of Aves before we'd come to a complete stop. And we would never have dreamed of failing to genuflect as we crossed the central aisle to get to the second half of the Stations, but we did it so quickly that sometimes a kid would get a bruised knee.

"Sure, I know Saint Joseph's." I made a mental note of where they got married. It didn't seem important just then, but in an investigation of this kind the smallest bit of information might turn out to be the key that unlocks...

"We stood there at the altar, him in his uniform and me in my mother's wedding dress. It was all so... beautiful. I was just seventeen, and Mr McGivney was twenty-one."

"And this was... when?"

"September. September weddings are good luck, you know."

"Yes, but what year! I mean... what year were you married, Mrs McGivney?"

"1898. That's when our boys went to Cuba."

1898. Another century! But then... let's see... if she was seventeen in 1898, and this was 1939, that would make her about sixty. That was pretty old, sure, but not impossible. Still, it seemed strange to me that this old man had been in the war beforethe Great War. The Great War had started when my mother was about myage, for crying out loud.

"So he was wounded while doing something brave in Cuba?" I asked.

"No, he wasn't wounded. I don't know exactly what happened. And, of course, he wasn't able to tell me after he came..." She shrugged. Then she continued in a distant voice, tenderly fingering the old memories. "I moved into this apartment right after I came back from seeing him off at Union Station. All the boys in uniform... bands playing... people waving and cheering. I made this little nest for Lawrence to come home to." She rose and started to walk around the room. "I ran up the curtains myself, and found furniture in second-hand stores, and my father helped me paint-he was a house painter, you know-and I chose this paper for the parlor-like the color?... Ashes of Roses, they called it." She took her husband's hairbrush from the sideboard and stood behind him, lightly brushing his white hair, while he sat, bathed in the westering sun that filtered through the lace curtain, looking gently out at nothing. "I wrote to Lawrence every day, telling him how our apartment was coming along. He wrote every day too, but his letters used to come in clumps-nine or ten at a time. That's how they do mail in the army. By clumps. Then... then his letters stopped coming, and there was no word for a long time-more than a month." She stopped brushing and looked down upon his fine hair. "I was so worried, so frightened. I asked Mr O'Brien if he could find out why the letters weren't coming through. Mr O'Brien the mailman? Then this letter came from the government, and I was afraid to open it. Everybody on the block knew I had this government letter because Mr O'Brien told them. My mother and father and sister came and asked what the news was. I told them I hadn't dared to open the letter. My father said I was acting silly; there was no point in putting it off. I might as well know one way or the other. But I didn't want to, so my father said he'd open it for me, but I said no! No, Lawrence was my husband, and it was my duty to open the letter.... when I was ready."

Tears stood in her pale blue eyes, and her voice had gone tense and thin as she relived standing up to her old-country father, probably for the first time ever, telling him that Lawrence was her husband and she would open the letter when she was ready.

Then she blinked and looked across at me. "You know what? I believe that was the first time I said the word 'husband' aloud. I always called him Lawrence, of course. And we'd only been married four months, and I'd been busy fixing up our home, so I didn't see many people or get much chance to talk about him. My husband... husband." As she savored the word, she began brushing his hair again.

As I sat watching her brush his hair while he gazed, empty-eyed, at the roofscape beyond his window, his pale cheeks suddenly trembled! Then his lips drew back in an unconscious rictus that revealed long, yellow teeth, but the eyes remained dead.

A sharp breath caught in my throat. "Mrs McGivney... he just... he...!"

She nodded. "I know. He sometimes smiles when I brush his hair. Lawrence just loves having his hair brushed."

Well, it didn't look like a smile to me. It looked like a man in terrible pain hissing out a silent scream through his teeth. Then, with a slight quiver, his cheeks relaxed, the grin collapsed, and the teeth disappeared.

It was a moment before my heart stopped thudding in my chest. I wanted to get out of there, but a private investigator working for Mr Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons doesn't turn tail. I drew a deep breath and asked, "What about the letter? It said he was a hero?"

"Yes, a hero."

"What had he done?"

"It was from his commanding officer. Captain Frances Murphy? He regretted having to tell me that Private Lawrence McGivney had contracted an illness in the performance of duty. He was in a military hospital and would soon be shipped home so he could get every care and comfort-I remember the exact words. Every care and comfort. That's what I've tried to give him. Captain Murphy went on to say that Private McGivney was a cheerful and willing soldier and that he was well liked by everybody in the regiment. Think of that! Everybody in the whole regiment."

Wait a minute. Being liked by everybody then getting sick didn't seem to me to be the stuff of heroism. But I didn't say anything.

And for a while Mrs McGivney didn't say anything either. She stood there brushing her husband's hair, a fond smile in her eyes as she seemed to reread the letter from his captain in her mind. Then she blinked and focused on me. "You know what I'd bet? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you'd like another cookie. Am I right?" She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes in that coy Shirley Temple way.

"No, thanks, I-"

But she shook her finger at me. "Now don't you tell me you can't eat another cookie. A boy can always make space for another cookie."

As she went for the cookie jar on the counter I asked, "What was Mr McGivney sick with?"