"I wasn't at dinner either," I said, wondering why they hadn't bothered to call me.

"You weren't at dinner?" Helen said, looking perplexed. "Isn't that odd? I guess I never noticed."

"I'm gonna have a peek at that group picture at the Lion Monument," Nana interrupted, taking a step toward me.

"OUCH!" wailed Helen.

Nana looked perplexed. "My goodness, was that your foot, Helen? I'm sorry. I guess I didn't notice you standin' there."

I rolled my eyes at Nana's need to even the score.

"You wanna come with me, Emily?" Nana asked.

If this was the group photo where I was bending over for one shot and had my mouth hanging open for the other, I'd rather have a root canal. "I don't think so. I need to head upstairs. I have some unfinished business to take care of."

Nana understood unfinished business. She'd just taken care of hers.

Back in room 5111 I contemplated the problem of the extraneous purchases lying in shopping sacks in one corner of the room. One way or the other, they had to go, and they weren't going with Andy. I hefted one of the bags into my hands, wondering what it was and who it belonged to. I should have made an announcement at the meeting instructing people who'd left shopping bags in my room to pick them up. Unh. Why was hindsight always twenty-twenty?

As I went to set it down, I noticed a name in Magic Marker in the corner of the sack. George Farkas Room 2115. Checking another sack, I found a notation in the same place. Solvay Bakke Room 3008. I shuffled through several more to find them all like that. This had to be Nana's doing. She must have had everyone write his or her name and room number on their sack before they left it. The woman was brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. I could only hope I'd turn out just like her. Only taller.

I separated all the sacks by room number, gathered up several, and took the elevator down to the second floor. I knocked on George Farkas's door and when he answered, I stuck his shopping sack in his face. "You'll need to find some other way of getting this back home."

"But Bernice said you were going to ship it home in Andy's casket."

"Andy isn't going home in a casket. He's going home in a jar. He was cremated."

"A jar?" He looked crestfallen. "Hell, I can't take it with me. My suitcase is packed to the gills. How big is the jar?"

"Not big enough. I suggest you call the front desk to inquire about shipping services."

I conducted similar conversations with the occupants of two other rooms, then headed back to the fifth floor for another batch. Nana was waiting outside the room for me when I arrived. "I'm sorry you had to wait," I apologized as I unlocked the door. "I'm delivering all the shopping sacks back to their original owners."