Over dessert (which Hodges skips, Uncle Henry’s unapologetic gluttony serving as a minatory power of example), Janey invites the new arrivals to stay at the house in Sugar Heights starting tomorrow, and the three of them toddle off to their prepaid rooms. Charlotte and Henry seem cheered by the prospect of inspecting at first hand just how the other half lives. As for Holly … who knows?

The newcomers’ rooms are on the first floor. Janey and Hodges are on the third. As they reach the side-by-side doors, she asks if he will sleep with her.

‘No sex,’ she says. ‘I never felt less sexy in my life. Basically, I just don’t want to be alone.’

That’s okay with Hodges. He doubts if he would be capable of getting up to dickens, anyway. His stomach and leg muscles are still sore from last night … and, he reminds himself, last night she did almost all the work. Once they’re beneath the coverlet, she snuggles up to him. He can hardly believe the warmth and firmness of her. The thereness of her. It’s true he feels no desire at the moment, but he’s glad the old lady had the courtesy to stroke out after he got his ashes hauled rather than before. Not very nice, but there it is. Corinne, his ex, used to say that men were born with a shitty-bone.

She pillows her head on his shoulder. ‘I’m so glad you came.’

‘Me too.’ It’s the absolute truth.

‘Do you think they know we’re in bed together?’

Hodges considers. ‘Aunt Charlotte knows, but she’d know even if we weren’t.’

‘And you can be sure of that because you’re a trained—’

‘Right. Go to sleep, Janey.’

She does, but when he wakes up in the early hours of the morning, needing to use the toilet, she’s sitting by the window, looking out at the parking lot and crying. He puts a hand on her shoulder.

She looks up. ‘I woke you. I’m sorry.’

‘Nah, this is my usual three A.M. pee-muster. Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yeah.’ She smiles, then wipes at her eyes with her fisted hands, like a child. ‘Just hating on myself for shipping Mom off to Sunny Acres.’

‘But she wanted to go, you said.’

‘Yes. She did. It doesn’t seem to change how I feel.’ Janey looks at him, eyes bleak and shining with tears. ‘Also hating on myself for letting Olivia do all the heavy lifting while I stayed in California.’

‘As a trained detective, I deduce you were trying to save your marriage.’

She gives him a wan smile. ‘You’re a good guy, Bill. Go on and use the bathroom.’

When he comes back, she’s curled up in bed again. He puts his arms around her and they sleep spoons the rest of the night.

25

Early on Sunday morning, before taking her shower, Janey shows him how to use her iPad. Hodges ducks beneath Debbie’s Blue Umbrella and finds a new message from Mr Mercedes. It’s short and to the point: I’m going to fuck you up, Grampa.

‘Yeah, but tell me how you really feel,’ he says, and surprises himself by laughing.

Janey comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, steam billowing around her like a Hollywood special effect. She asks him what he’s laughing about. Hodges shows her the message. She doesn’t find it so funny.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

Hodges hopes so, too. Of one thing he’s sure: when he gets back home, he’ll take the Glock .40 he carried on the job out of his bedroom safe and start carrying it again. The Happy Slapper is no longer enough.

The phone next to the double bed warbles. Janey answers, converses briefly, hangs up. ‘That was Aunt Charlotte. She suggests the Fun Crew meet for breakfast in twenty minutes. I think she’s anxious to get to Sugar Heights and start checking the silverware.’

‘Okay.’

‘She also shared that the bed was much too hard and she had to take an allergy pill because of the foam pillows.’

‘Uh-huh. Janey, is Olivia’s computer still at the Sugar Heights house?’

‘Sure. In the room she used for her study.’

‘Can you lock that room so they can’t get in there?’

She pauses in the act of hooking her bra, for a moment frozen in that pose, elbows back, a female archetype. ‘Hell with that, I’ll just tell them to keep out. I am not going to be intimidated by that woman. And what about Holly? Can you understand anything she says?’

‘I thought she ordered a sneezebagel for dinner,’ Hodges admits.

Janey collapses into the chair he awoke to find her crying in last night, only now she’s laughing. ‘Sweetie, you’re one bad detective. Which in this sense means good.’

‘Once the funeral stuff is over and they’re gone—’

‘Thursday at the latest,’ she says. ‘If they stay longer, I’ll have to kill them.’

‘And no jury on earth would convict you. Once they’re gone, I want to bring my friend Jerome in to look at that computer. I’d bring him in sooner, but—’

‘They’d be all over him. And me.’

Hodges, thinking of Aunt Charlotte’s bright and inquisitive eyes, agrees.

‘Won’t the Blue Umbrella stuff be gone? I thought it disappeared every time you left the site.’

‘It’s not Debbie’s Blue Umbrella I’m interested in. It’s the ghosts your sister heard in the night.’

26

As they walk down to the elevator, he asks Janey something that’s been troubling him ever since she called yesterday afternoon. ‘Do you think the questions about Olivia brought on your mother’s stroke?’

She shrugs, looking unhappy. ‘There’s no way to tell. She was very old – at least seven years older than Aunt Charlotte, I think – and the constant pain beat her up pretty badly.’ Then, reluctantly: ‘It could have played a part.’

Hodges runs a hand through his hastily combed hair, mussing it again. ‘Ah, Jesus.’

The elevator dings. They step in. She turns to him and grabs both of his hands. Her voice is swift and urgent. ‘I’ll tell you something, though. If I had to do it over again, I still would. Mom had a long life. Ollie, on the other hand, deserved a few more years. She wasn’t terribly happy, but she was doing okay until that bastard got to her. That … that cuckoo bird. Stealing her car and using it to kill eight people and hurt I don’t know how many more wasn’t enough for him, was it? Oh, no. He had to steal her mind.’

‘So we push forward.’

‘Goddam right we do.’ Her hands tighten on his. ‘This is ours, Bill. Do you get that? This is ours.’

He wouldn’t have stopped anyway, the bit is in his teeth, but the vehemence of her reply is good to hear.

The elevator doors open. Holly, Aunt Charlotte, and Uncle Henry are waiting in the lobby. Aunt Charlotte regards them with her inquisitive crow’s eyes, probably prospecting for what Hodges’s old partner used to call the freshly fucked look. She asks what took them so long, then, without waiting for an answer, tells them that the breakfast buffet looks very thin. If they were hoping for an omelet to order, they’re out of luck.

Hodges thinks that Janey Patterson is in for several very long days.

27

Like the day before, Sunday is brilliant and summery. Like the day before, Brady sells out by four, at least two hours before dinnertime approaches and the parks begin emptying. He thinks about calling home and finding out what his mom wants for supper, then decides to grab takeout from Long John Silver’s and surprise her. She loves the Langostino Lobster Bites.

As it turns out, Brady is the one surprised.

He comes into the house from the garage, and his greeting – Hey, Mom, I’m home! – dies on his lips. This time she’s remembered to turn off the stove, but the smell of the meat she charred for her lunch hangs in the air. From the living room there comes a muffled drumming sound and a strange gurgling cry.

There’s a skillet on one of the front burners. He peers into it and sees crumbles of burnt hamburger rising like small volcanic islands from a film of congealed grease. On the counter is a half-empty bottle of Stoli and a jar of mayonnaise, which is all she ever uses to dress her hamburgers.