“So what are you doing with our sheds this week,” I asked. “Turning one of them into a replica of an alligator shoe factory? Or perhaps the lair of an ivory smuggler? Maybe reenacting one of the cockfights you raided?”

“We’ve already wrapped up those shows,” Dr. Blake said. “And we’ll only be using your shed to keep a few birds in. I doubt we’ll need to do any filming there this time. Anyway—time I went home.”

Since Dr. Blake had lost his driver’s license about the time he turned ninety, these words were, as usual, a signal for someone to offer to drive him back to his hotel. Mother and Dad had offered to let him stay with them—for that matter, they’d also offered to let him stay with me and Michael. But he seemed to prefer the independence of staying at the Caerphilly Inn. Or perhaps he suspected, rightly, that staying with family wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable as staying in a five-star hotel.

“Come on, Timmy,” I said. “Bedtime.”

Timmy, his eyes still glued to the television, moved about three inches toward the stairs.

“Timmy . . . ”

“I’m coming,” he said.

“Sometime tonight.”

“I’m a turrel,” he said, grinning up at me. “This is as fast as I go.”

“What an enormous sea turtle!” Michael exclaimed. “I wonder if I can pick it up.”

He swooped down and snatched up Timmy.

“I’ll put him to bed this time,” he said over his shoulder as he carried away the giggling toddler. “By way of apology for the fact that I’ll be in more damned faculty meetings all day tomorrow.”

Rob, as usual, ended up chauffeuring Dr. Blake. Mother, Dad, and Rose Noire kissed me good night and took off for the farmhouse.

I sat down and changed to the local news. The headline stories were the heat wave and a house fire in neighboring Clay County. No reports of fatal traffic accidents or unidentified female bodies turning up. I tried Karen’s home and cell phone again before going upstairs.

From down the hall, I heard Michael doing an animated reading of Yertle the Turtle. I did my usual nighttime washing and toothbrushing routines. When I stuck my head out in the hall again, Michael had moved on to Horton Hears a Who. Timmy had already heard all dozen Dr. Seuss books on hand either during the day, at nap time, or during our first attempt to settle him down for the evening. I wondered how many he was good for this time.

I curled up in bed with Timmy’s instruction manual. While I’d been punching holes in it and sorting it into tabs, I’d decided from its relative cleanliness—at least when I’d first received it—that Karen had probably prepared it especially for Timmy’s visit with me. Was it possible that hidden in the midst of all the childcare instructions Karen might have let slip some clue to where she was and why she had disappeared?

Somewhere in the middle of a description of how to cook the fruit concoction I was supposed to administer to Timmy at the first signs of constipation, I must have dozed off.