"It's not a toilet," Timmie protested. "It's the only place he's safe. It's not nearly as much as I thought, and I'm not asking for him. I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for Meg so she isn't afraid to live at home."

Wrapped around her hot tea and misery, Rose laughed. "Like she should have it so much better than we did?"

"You were never afraid," Timmie retorted, falling much too easily into old arguments.

"I was terrified," Rose insisted. "He was a drunk, Timmie. He never had a job, and we never knew what he was going to do from one minute to the next. Don't you remember?"

Timmie's smile was as cold as her sister's eyes. "At least he was interesting, Rose."

"Girls!" her mother snapped. Ever the guardian of propriety, she never allowed a harsh word in her house she herself didn't speak. "Enough. We'll talk about this later, Timmie. After I get Rose settled."

Kathleen, ever capable, ever doing, did. She refilled the teapot and set out cookies and patted Rose with a longtime nurse's absentminded efficiency. And Timmie, standing aside, had to wait to do her pleading.

"Besides," Kathleen said as she poured a cup of tea Timmie didn't want, "from what I've heard at work, Price is overplaying Restcrest. I don't think it's going to be what you think it is." She smiled with the relish of being able to dispense bad news. "I have it on good authority that they're courting GerySys." Then she laughed, and Timmie wondered just how her mother would have defined herself without her father's wild excesses. "It'd just serve that son of a bitch right."

* * *

It took Timmie forty minutes to drive from her mother's uninspiring town house in Brentwood to the restaurant in St. Charles where she was to meet Conrad. The day was another beauty, a perfect, crisp, St. Louis autumn, with sharp blue skies and trembling trees spread out beyond the highways like tumbled, variegated comforters that had been laced by frost. Timmie cranked up the car stereo until the windows rattled, and still she couldn't get the sound of her mother's voice out of her head.

"I'm sure it makes you feel better to be the martyr, Timothy Ann," she'd said with that tight cant to her mouth that conveyed both displeasure and distance. "But don't forget that we've been the ones dealing with him."

"I couldn't—"

"You could. You decided to run. While your father got more and more difficult you married the first man who asked you and ran as far and fast as you could. The only reason you came home was that you'd run out of money. If it weren't for your grandmother's house, you wouldn't have anyplace to go."

Yes, Mother. Thank you, Mother. Timmie bit the acid back in her throat and downshifted into third to swing into the passing lane on Highway 70. She could see the sweep of the Missouri River Bridge ahead, and accelerated. Conrad would wash the bad taste away. He'd make her laugh. He'd make her forget that she wanted to belt her own mother for laughing because Joe could end up in a place like Golden Grove without any means of escape.

Her mother had finally lent her the money. But the price had almost been too high.

She'd also dispensed information Timmie didn't want. The other hospitals in town were nervous about Restcrest. Always a cutthroat business in St. Louis, the medical community had decided to focus on Alzheimer's care about half a beat after Alex Raymond had set up shop, and now they all wanted in. More important, they wanted Alex Raymond out.

The competition couldn't have something to do with the deaths at Restcrest, could it? Timmie deliberately shook her head. Nope. That would make it too complicated, and she had complicated enough for the rest of her life.

Timmie swept up over the bridge, the river stretching somnolent and silver out beneath her and St. Charles tucked behind the bluffs beyond. St. Charles had been the first Missouri state capital. Its downtown area by the river still boasted cobbled streets and rows of period brick buildings that now housed antique shops and restaurants. Quiet and shady and as slow-moving as the river, it was a lovely place to visit on an autumn morning. Especially if Conrad was waiting for you in the street.

Timmie parked the car, grabbed purse and bag, and ran to greet him, already smiling at the new white Panama hat he had affected with his white Armani suit.

"Timothy Ann, mi amore!" he sang like an opera singer. "You look like... madre mia, you look like a terrorist!" He laughed, crowed, swung her around in a hug that could have crushed ribs, and deposited her back on the street again. "And you've brought me something to nibble on, haven't you?"

They sat together on the glassed-in balcony of an open-brick-and-hanging-plant kind of restaurant that overlooked Main Street and enjoyed lunch and final diagnoses and gossip. Within ten minutes Timmie had forgotten the acrimony she'd carried across the river. After ten more, she'd lost herself in Conrad's bubbling laugh and rapier-sharp intelligence.

"Conspiracy?" He hooted, turning heads all across the high-walled tea room. "Tucker Van Adder? Bella donna, you watch too much television. Tucker Van Adder doesn't have the brain power to conspire against his breakfast, much less the community. He's vain and stupid and locked into the politics of that town like a tick on a whippet's ass. If there is an evil plot afoot, the best they could do is keep it from him, so he doesn't screw it up."

"You don't think he'd need to be in on this?"

"I think they know they can count on his laziness. Now, exactly what do you think is going on?"

Timmie leaned forward so the people at every other table didn't hear, and she told him. While he listened, eyes focused entirely on Timmie, Conrad sipped tea and juggled cutlery and hummed faintly familiar arias. And then he laughed.

"But this is wonderful!" he insisted, slamming the spoons down with a clash.

Timmie blinked. "Wonderful."

"Of course! If we can prove it, we can ride Van Adder out on a rail."

"If we prove it, I'll be tied to the tracks right in front of him, Conrad. Nobody wants to know."

"Bah! They'll live. You're sure about this problem, now?"

So she pulled out the printout and showed it to him.

And he tapped and hummed and read, and finally nodded.

"Your friend the doctor is right, carissima. There's something here that bears looking into. What can I do?"

"Make sure Van Adder doesn't close the file on any Restcrest patient who gets turfed to God. Demand postmortems."

He nodded. "Absolutely. Well, I do have friends, you know. We'll try. Even better, I'll talk you into taking his place."

Timmie grimaced. "Better yet, talk yourself into it."

"Absolutely not!" he was shouting again, his method of gentle emphasis. "I want you as coroner! That way," he said with a grin, "I can consult, and we could work together frequently."

Timmie leaned close, laughing. "Caro, the last man who propositioned me like that ended up needing stitches." She didn't bother to say that he'd needed the stitches before propositioning her.

It didn't make any difference. Conrad laughed. "It's why I love you so much. You don't take any crap off anybody. But most of all, you don't take it off me!"

"What should I look for, Conrad?" she asked, deadly serious.

His expression didn't change a bit. His words, however, were quiet and professional. "The agent that's being used?" he asked. "If I were to do this to harmless old people, I would do it with digitoxin. One of the paralytics, maybe, succinylcholine. Or just zap them with too much of any of their prescribed medication. It probably wouldn't take much, and nobody would notice."