“Yeah,” Suzie said, when Olivia introduced herself, “Tommy told us about you. I’ll go get him.” Suzie was able to walk on her own with relative ease.

Left alone with Mamie, Olivia asked her how she liked the hotel.

“It’s safer than the Five Aces,” Mamie said. Her eyes were a faded blue, and her eyelids looked very thin and delicate with their trace of blue eye shadow. “We were going to get murdered in our beds there. Or right out in the street.”

“So you were glad to move?”

“Glad? Well, I don’t think ‘glad’ really covers it . . . I never have liked Texas. I loved Vegas. But I wanted to live, more than I wanted to be in Nevada.” She looked at Olivia with close attention. “I expect you’ll be that way, too.”

“Probably,” Olivia said. But it was a creepy thing to think about, and she was relieved when Tommy and Suzie returned, Tommy moving slowly with his cane and Suzie in possession of a bit of news. “We have asked if we can use what Mrs. Whitefield calls the parlor,” she said. “Mrs. Whitefield said yes.”

Olivia was relieved. The lobby was wide open, and there were several doors behind which could lurk any number of listeners. At the moment, there was no one there besides them and a sleeping man in the chair in the corner of the room, a newspaper half off his lap. He was several decades younger than the people Olivia had come to see. In fact, he seemed to be Olivia’s age.

“That’s Shorty’s grandson,” Tommy said, pointing with his cane. “He came in late, couple of days ago. He jumped out of his car and ran into the hotel like he was on fire.”

“Shush,” said Mamie. “You’ll wake him up. I think Shorty’s having his visit with the nurse.”

“Then this guy ought to be in his own room!” Tommy said. He seemed to be in a grumpy mood. Olivia wondered if Suzie had woken him from his own nap.

The parlor turned out to be a small room leading off the south side of the lobby. Olivia glanced back, and she saw that the younger man’s eyes were wide open and fixed on her. He hadn’t been asleep at all. He hadn’t wanted to talk to the old ladies, so he’d been feigning. He looked faintly amused, and as his eyes met hers, he winked. She almost smiled. His eyes are gorgeous, she thought. Brown and large and emphasized with perfectly arched dark eyebrows, he looked like someone out of an old Spanish painting. And as she thought this, he batted those long eyelashes at her. She smiled and shook her head and followed her old people.

Then she thought, It’s just like he knew what I was thinking. And she frowned. Exactly like he knew.

Exactly.

She put this thought on her mental back burner as she explained Manfred’s problem to Mamie, Suzie, and Tommy. And then she sketched in the plan she’d devised to solve it.

“Seems pretty weak, but I want to get out of this place for a day, so I’ll say yes,” said Tommy. “Girls?”

“He won’t hurt us?” Mamie said cautiously.

“No. If our friend Joe can’t go with you, another one of us will. We won’t let you get hurt.”

“What about stairs?” Mamie was being sure all her obstacles could be overcome.

“There are three steps up to the front door, and a flight of stairs inside. But there’s an elevator.” Olivia remembered seeing what had certainly seemed like an elevator door when she’d gone up the stairs, right beside the library. “I’ll make sure,” she said, though how she was going to do that she couldn’t imagine at the moment.

“So,” said Suzie, after an expectant pause, “what’s in it for us?”

On her walk over, Olivia had anticipated the question. “Two hundred dollars apiece,” she said.

“Two fifty,” Tommy said.

“Two twenty-five.”

“Done,” Mamie said, in her faint voice.

“Do I have to square this with Mrs. Whitefield?” Olivia asked.

“She ain’t our keeper,” Tommy said. “We can go where we want.”

“Long as we tell her we’re missing a meal,” Suzie said. “By the way, it would be nice to have a lunch or dinner somewhere else, while we’re making this big trip of yours. And not at our own expense.”

“Done,” Olivia said. After all, everyone had to eat. “I’ll come back and let you know, when we’ve finalized our arrangements.”

“And we want to go to the library in Davy,” Mamie said unexpectedly. “We need something to read, and they got the audiobooks there, we called to ask.”

Olivia was not much of a reader herself, but she approved of it as a pastime, so she said, “I’ll see if they have some kind of bookmobile, and if they don’t, I’ll take you myself.”

There were nods all around, and it seemed they’d struck a bargain.

“A real pleasure dealing with you, Olivia,” Tommy said.

When she exited through the lobby, Mr. Big Eyes was nowhere in sight. As Olivia walked back to the pawnshop, she felt well pleased with the day. Forward progress was always a good thing. Even a weak plan was better than no plan. And anything would do to fill in the time until Lemuel returned, especially since she hadn’t had a chance to start working on the proposal she’d received days before.

Olivia took a shower before she walked down to dinner to meet with Joe. Since the Home Cookin restaurant was the only place to eat in Midnight, it was fortunate for the Midnighters that Madonna Reed was an excellent cook of the home-style variety. Tonight, Madonna was experimenting with a chicken potpie, which meant that she’d had a lot of leftover vegetables and chicken. Since the menu at Home Cookin stayed pretty steady, a change was interesting.

Olivia met up with Manfred on the way through the door. Joe was waiting for them, and Chuy with him, which was no surprise. Rasta was sitting in Chuy’s lap. The Peke often came to meals with his humans, though Madonna had forbidden any feeding from the table or plate. Joe and Chuy had pretended to be shocked she’d think such a thing was possible. Instead of sitting at the big table in the center of the little restaurant, the usual spot for all town residents (and until the hotel had reopened they could all fit around it), the four settled in one of the booths against the west wall, which signaled they had something to talk about.

A teen boy from one of the ranches to the south of Midnight was working as a combination busboy/waiter. He hurried to bring them water and to take their drink orders. Chuy put Rasta down on the floor and pretended he wasn’t curious when Joe said, “What do you all want to talk about?”

Manfred said, “It’s like this. You know about my situation. With the law and with Lewis Goldthorpe.”

Joe and Chuy nodded.

“And you heard what Rachel said at the séance.” They nodded again.

“So Olivia has come up with a plan.”

Joe listened patiently as Manfred explained. Then Olivia told them about her bargain with Suzie, Mamie, and Tommy. Chuy, after he’d grasped the outline of the proposal, sighed and looked down at his cutlery.

“I can’t do it,” Joe said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go with the old people.”

Whatever Olivia had expected, it wasn’t a flat refusal.

“What—why?” she said, shocked.

“Olivia, we can’t be involved in this. Unless there’s a direct threat to us or our town.”

Olivia opened her mouth to protest. Chuy held up his hand.

“We aren’t what we once were. But we still have rules,” Chuy said.

“This is a direct threat,” Olivia argued.

“Not to us,” Joe said.

“Not to Midnight,” Chuy said.

“How is this different from Connor Lovell?” she asked. She did not raise her voice, but her intensity was laserlike.

Manfred inhaled sharply. He had not wanted to ever hear that name again. He knew Olivia had made a misstep.

“Let it go,” he told her. “Olivia, that’s their right.”

“Okay, then,” she said, struggling to regain her composure.

Manfred noticed uneasily that Joe’s eyes, normally a calm, boring brown, were sort of glowy. Chuy’s, too. Rasta had leaped up beside Chuy. He was relieved to see that the dog’s eyes looked absolutely normal. “We’ll make another plan, guys. No problem,” he said, in a brave attempt at a cheerful voice.