Well, so there had been cases Van Adder had investigated. Timmie could swear his numbers were awfully low, though. Especially when she considered the fact that the hospital mortality rate was an average of thirty a month, increasing to almost forty in the last few months. What were the odds that in over 360 people, not one was a suspected suicide or homicide?

Maria Salgado, 76,

10/1/22, 10/22/97, ER,

Cardiac Arrest,

Van Adder Mortuary

Timmie looked again, all the way through, just at the disposition line. She checked every time she found the word "coroner," and what it was for. Two gunshot wounds and a stabbing. An overdose. Little William who had died in the car accident, and another motorcycle accident. Two other overdoses that went to Breyer's and a head injury that was taken back up to St. Louis to bury.

Van Adder wasn't doing his job. Not a huge surprise, after meeting the man. But it would take that lunch with Conrad to get the whole skinny on that.

Timmie flipped the pages back to the last few months, running her finger down the lines just to see if anything stood out. Anything she should have noticed as unusual.

"Don't you have to go to work?" Meghan asked, skipping over from where she'd been finishing her homework.

"Yes," Timmie assured her daughter, her eyes still on the page. "I do. You probably could have figured that out when Heather came to baby-sit."

A name. Something about a name that niggled at her.

Wilhelm Reinholt Cleveland, 76,

7/1/21, 10/20/96,

ER, Cardiac Arrest.

Breyer's Mortuary

What should she be noticing here? What made her uneasy?

"Heather's boring," Meghan complained, leaning against Timmie's arm.

That was Meghanese for "I need some hugs here." Meghan was not the type of kid to demand emotional outbursts. She expected them as her right. Far be it from Meghan to admit that all the upheaval in the last few months—not to mention the last few days—would make her need them a little more.

Leaving a pen in the fold of the printout, Timmie turned to put her arms around her daughter and squeezed hard.

"At least she likes Renfield," she bargained.

"I can't go over to Mattie's again?"

"Sorry, hon. You're going to spend the night there tomorrow so Mommie can go out."

"Again." Meghan sighed like the orphan kid in a melodrama. "You're always gone now."

Timmie gave Meghan another squeeze. "Don't give me grief, kid," she teased. "This will be the first time I've put on panty hose for anything but a funeral since your dance recital last year. Mommies need to play, too, you know."

"But Daddy will be mad," Meghan insisted. "Especially if he comes here and finds me gone."

Daddy. Timmie did her best not to flinch. She'd forgotten. Well, probably not forgotten. Done another Scarlett. She had to find that lawyer and head off that "miscellaneous action" Jason had filed to harass her about not being able to get in touch with him. She had to start looking for him around every corner so she'd be ready when he walked up to her door to delight his daughter and harass his ex-wife. Damn, it was always something.

"We'll leave Daddy a note," Timmie promised.

Meghan leaned her little head against Timmie's chest just as she'd done since she'd been a baby, so that Timmie could smell Johnson's shampoo and fresh air. "I want to go to Mattie's tonight," she said.

"I know."

"I like them. Mr. Mattie lets me help him barbecue."

Timmie stroked silky brown hair and smiled. "Not mister. Reverend. And his name isn't Mattie. It's Wilson. Reverend Wilson."

"He thinks it's funny when I call him Mr. Mattie. He says it's okay. What's vengeance, Mom?"

Timmie pulled back. "What?"

Meghan screwed up her face. "I thought he said penguins. I thought he said penguins were the Lord's, and I thought that was silly, so I asked. He said it was vengeance, but that wasn't for little girls."

"When did this happen?"

"The night before you took Grandda away, I think. Cindy was there, and, oh, Barbara. I remember Barbara because she took us all out into the street to play cork-ball after dark. After dark, Mom, isn't that cool? Do you know we even went for a walk and saw a shooting star? You never showed me a shooting star before."

"We never lived anyplace we could see them, my little city mouse."

Another wrinkle of the nose so that she did, indeed, look the part. "I'm not a mouse, Mom. But if I was, I don't think I like being a city mouse anymore. I like shooting stars. What's vengeance, and why can't little girls have it?"

Timmie gave up the stats for good. Just keeping pace with this kid was dizzying. "Were, honey. If I were. And vengeance kind of means getting even. Like if Crystal Miller pulls your hair, you pull hers back. Which you can't do—"

"Because it's not for little girls. But why would the Lord pull Crystal's hair?"

Timmie laughed. "I think what the reverend meant was that if the Lord doesn't pull Crystal's hair, then neither should you."

That didn't seem to work either. "Well, if she's being mean, somebody has to. And why would the Lord pull Ellen's hair?"

"Ellen's hair?"

"They were talking about Ellen. And... uh, how she's alone. And how Cindy's glad. Is that nice, Mom?"

Timmie interrupted this little intelligence with a small swat on the butt and stood up. "You're much too nosy, little girl. Enough. I had a hard day at the sewing machine. I don't need an ethics class, too. Come up and help me dress for work."

Meghan's grin was a hundred percent imp. "Why, just so I can be bored?"

"By me?"

That got a giggle. "No, silly. By Heather. Couldn't Cindy come over? I'd rather have Cindy."

Now, that Timmie hadn't expected. She'd thought Meghan wouldn't have had time for a woman not much more mature than she was. "Really?" she asked, with a tickle for good measure. "How come?"

It took a few shrieks and wriggles for Meghan to answer. "Because it's fun scaring her with Renfield."

Ah. Some sense at last.

Timmie just picked Meghan up and carried her so she could keep her close as long as possible.

"Did you know she was locked in a herbi... herbi... snake house once?" Meghan asked, legs wrapped around Timmie's stomach. "All night, all by herself, and she had to hold very, very still so the snakes wouldn't smell her. Snakes can't smell very well, you know. Especially in the dark. When the lights went on, there were snakes curled up all around her."

"My, my."

"Yes, and her daddy had to leave when she was a little girl, too. She said it made her very sad, but he was an explorer, so she knew he was finding new places she could visit someday."

"Uh-huh."

"Do we have to go back, Mom?"

It took Timmie a while to catch that one. "Back where, baby?"

"California."

They'd reached the top of the stairs, where the books lived. Piles of them, masses, mountains. Literature, philosophy, history, tomes in English and French and Latin. A few in Gaelic, but her father had come to Irish late and had lost interest quickly.

Timmie still considered this place haunted and holy, the sum of words and ideas that had tumbled so easily from her father's brain all those years. The real Joe Leary when the other one went away, just like the explorer in Cindy's story.