Private investigation is not as glamorous as it looks on TV. Suffice it to say, some of the things nursing homes throw away spike right into the red zone on the gross-o-meter.

I made up my mind to die before I got old enough to be admitted as a permanent resident.

And I didn’t find the sign-in sheet.

I drove back home in a daze of thought and headed for the shower without even checking the place for maniacs first.

I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and found Nick sitting cross-legged in the middle of my bed, like a yogi perched on a panel of spikes.

“Your shoes better not have grave dirt on them,” I said. I looked around hopefully, but there was no sign of Chester.

“Sorry about your mom,” Nick told me.

I sort of slithered to the dresser, careful not to turn my back on him, and plucked a nightshirt out of the top drawer, one-handed and without looking. I used the other hand to keep the towel in place.

“Maybe you saw her—Lillian, I mean—in the train station?”

He shrugged. “Lots of people come and go,” he said. “If she passed through, I didn’t see her.”

I felt the walls of my heart teeter a little. “Oh.”

“Good news about the cat, though,” Nick told me. “He’s living in a mansion with a sweet old lady who calls him ‘Baby’ and hand-feeds him sardines.”

“How do you know all that?”

Nick grinned. “Word gets around.”

“What are you doing on my bed?”

“I was meditating. You should try it. Very centering.”

“Thank you, Sahib-Rosneesh-Whatever,” I said, scooting back toward the bathroom door.

When I came out a minute later, wearing the nightshirt and a bathrobe, Nick was off the bed, gazing pensively out the window over the dresser.

“You really need to move,” he said, without turning around. “The energy here is lousy.”

“I own the place now,” I told him. “That puts a whole new light on the situation.”

He turned, wearing an expression of amused disbelief. “You have got to be kidding.”

“I inherited it from Bert.”

“Bert’s not dead,” he said, sobering.

“Maybe he got his ticket and boarded a train while you weren’t looking.”

“He’s not dead,” Nick reiterated. He looked intense, and more than a little rattled. “I saved his life by telling you he was in trouble. It was part of my—”

I’d been moving toward the hallway door, but at Nick’s words, I stopped. “Part of your what?”

“I guess you could call it penance,” Nick said.

“I thought getting me to forgive you was all you had to do.”

“I asked for an extra assignment, since the main one wasn’t going all that well. They gave me Bert.”

I started for the kitchen. I needed coffee with a splash of Jack Daniel’s.

Or maybe just the Jack Daniel’s.