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vehicle had been in an accident.
    “See the driver?” Carver asked.
    “Yeah, but it was all so fast I couldn’t give you an ID. A man, I’m pretty sure, but there was glare on the windshield and I can’t even be positive of that. I do know the bastard had both hands on the steering wheel and was staring straight ahead, at me. I got a mental image of that, all right.”
    “You figure Walter Rainer’s behind what happened?”
    Tiller snorted. “Whadda you figure?”
    “How badly you hurt?” Carver asked. “I mean, how long they say you’re gonna be in here?”
    “Weeks, the way it looks. Busted leg, cracked pelvis, and some internal injuries they ain’t quite sure about yet. They did some minor exploratory operating yesterday, and they’re gonna get into me good tomorrow morning. Know where that leaves us, Carver?”
    “I know where it leaves you: right there in that bed, probably for the next month.”
    “Where I’d like it to leave you,” Tiller said, “is in my cottage down on Key Montaigne.”
    A young nurse came in, smiled at Carver, and walked directly to Tiller. She had blond hair pinned up off her neck, and wore one of those old-fashioned starched white caps that look like the newspaper hats kids make in grade school. After a concerned and appraising glance at Tiller, she adjusted the angle of his suspended leg slightly, then she peered at the glucose bottle as if it might be changing form before her eyes.
    Gazing up at her, Tiller said, “You don’t come back in about ten minutes, I’m gonna yank all these tubes out and get outa bed so I can hop to the bathroom on my good leg.”
    She grinned. “I’ll be back in nine minutes, Mr. Tiller.”
    “Call me Henry,” he said as she sashayed out. He looked at Carver. “Whaddya say, Carver?”
    “I think she’ll be back.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Carver didn’t have to think about it for long. “Well, I was gonna call and tell you I was on my way there.”
    Tiller’s right hand, the one with the IV needle in it, rose and fell feebly. A gnarled forefinger pointed. “My clothes are in that closet, key ring in a pocket. Take the brass key with the square top; that’s the one to the cottage. Address is number ten Shoreline Road. You remember that?”
    “Sure.” Carver went to the locker-size closet and fished the key ring from Tiller’s pants pocket, then worked the brass key off the ring. He returned the cluster of keys to the pocket and left things the way they’d been in the closet, so Tiller’s clothes would be as little wrinkled as possible in two weeks or a month or whenever he’d put them back on.
    “Tell me more about Effie the cleaning girl,” he said.
    Tiller tried to shrug but only managed slight movement that obviously hurt. “She’s a fourteen-year-old kid lives nearby. Her daddy runs a gas station in Fishback, mentioned to me she was looking for work, asked if, being alone, I needed somebody to come in once or twice a week to clean. I told him sure, I’d help the kid out—not that I need anybody. I can damn sure look after myself.”
    Carver considered pointing out Henry’s present position, then thought he’d better be quiet. After all, he’d made a mistake himself and was limping around with a cane.
    “It was a white Chrysler that hit me,” Henry said. “I mention that?”
    “You did.”
    “I never got so much as a peek at the license plate.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Tiller let out a long breath and looked up at the pipework and pulley system elevating his broken leg. An expression of infinite sadness passed over his features, for a moment making him look a hundred years old. “I forget some things these days, Carver, I know that. But I also know I’m a long ways from senility. I guess that’s another reason I want you to go on down to Key Montaigne and prove I’m right about something not being as it should there, prove I’m not some paranoid old man just a shell of what he was. Maybe in the same way,