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could handle by herself.
    “Who are you? Are you a patient? I don’t think I recognize you…” He was older than she’d originally thought.
    “The files,” he repeated, moving toward her. Though short, he was sturdy in build and no less menacing than a taller person. “The patient records, where are they?”
    Dr. Frye suddenly realized anew the possible danger. She moved back a step and stiffened her spine, unwilling to show her fear. She lifted the handset, certain now that she needed help.
    The powerful man moved with eel-like grace through the room and was on her before she had a chance to complete dialing the front desk. As she fell, she thought about her gentle, helpless husband Lawrence. He’d be lost without her. As would her patients. Unable to catch her breath as the man’s hands closed about her throat, she stared into his eyes with sudden recognition as the light dimmed around her. Sorrow filled her; sorrow for herself and for those she was leaving behind.
    The assailant stood above her, chest heaving with exertion. His gaze was hard and dispassionate. He looked at his hands as if amazed that they could so easily crush a neck. After a moment, he resumed his methodical search of the office, finally grabbing up the woman’s briefcase which had fallen, from her lifeless hands, to the floor.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    Placide’s Place was like a second home to Liza. She’d visited often with her mother, coming several times a week to the large house overlooking Dooley’s Folly to visit her grandmother, la Mémé, Rosaries Hinto, and to eat cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches washed down with sugary hot tea. As Liza approached the wide side door today, striding along the narrow, pocked sidewalk, she inhaled the familiar perfume of wild roses and touched their laden, swaying branches.
    The tall, two-story home was fashioned of ruddy, locally created brick supported by eight-foot-long, twelve-inch-square beams of paisley-patterned black locust. It had been built when the area had been covered by ancient trees that had to fall before a home could be built. Sturdy panels of this wood made up the thick, iron-hinged doors as well. Liza, as a child, had spent much precious playtime battling to swing open their heaviness.
    Inside the house, more of this wood, shiny from years of polishing, adorned the walls and most interior surfaces. When younger, Liza had fantasized that she was on a great ship, a cramped sailing vessel, trapped on a windless sea. Her grandmother’s minimalist attitude and sparse decorating style had inadvertently fueled this fantasy.
    This hilly, rugged section of Maypearl was one of the oldest in the area. While most of rural Maypearl featured pine thicket and scrub growth in the sandy, poor soil, this area was more like cooler northern climes, with towering deciduous trees such as elms, oaks, dogwoods and beautiful crape myrtles and even some evergreen trees such as ficus and holly. Coming here was much like entering another world, one that an older Liza cherished now more than ever before.
    She found her Mémé in the solarium, planting lemon basil plants into long wooden window boxes.
    Spying Liza, her grandmother rose and brushed her hands on the long apron she habitually donned each day.
    “ Eliza, bon bebe, comment allez-vous ?” She pulled Liza into a gentle embrace.
    “ Bon, et tu ?”
    “ Bien, veritable .”
    Liza laughed. Clearly, her grandmother knew why she was there. “You’d better say you’re okay. Chloe called yesterday and said you’ve been feeling poorly. What’s going on?”
    Rosaries shrugged, “ Le c’est les goutte .”
    Liza frowned. “ Les goutte?Je ne comprends pas. Speak English, Grandmother.”
    Mémé frowned at Liza but complied. “The gout. Pain in the foot,” she said in a heavily accented patois. “You know I have no patience with the English.”
    Liza laughed. “And you know Pop sure doesn’t speak French at home. I’m so out of practice.” She