"No, I'm sorry. This is Doctor's day at the clinic in Los Angeles. Can I be of help?"

"I hope so," I said. "I was a patient of his some years ago and I need records of the illness I was seeing him for. Can you tell me how I'd go about getting those?"

Ann came into the kitchen and moved to the refrigerator, where she removed the glass vial of insulin and stood rolling it in her palms to warm it.

"When would this have been?"

"Uhm, oh gee, 1966 actually."

"I'm sorry, but we don't keep records that far back. We consider a file inactive if you haven't seen Doctor in five years. After seven years, records are destroyed."

Ann left the room. I'd miss the injection altogether if I strung this out long enough.

"And that's true even if a patient is deceased?" I asked.

"Deceased? I thought it was your medical records we were talking about," she said. "Could I have your name please?"

I hung up. So much for Jean Timberlake's old medical chart. Frustrating. I hate dead ends. I returned to the living room.

I hadn't stalled long enough.

Ann was peering at the syringe, holding it needle up, while she tapped to make sure there were no bubbles in the pale, milky insulin. I eased toward the door, trying to be casual about it. She looked up as I passed. "I forgot to ask, did you see Pop yesterday?"

"I stopped by late afternoon, but he was asleep. Did he ask for me again?" I tried to look every place, but at her.

"They called this morning," she said irritably. "He's raising all kinds of hell. Knowing him, he wants out." She swiped alcohol on the bald flesh on her mother's thigh.

I fumbled in my handbag for a Kleenex as she plunged the needle home. Ori visibly jumped. My hands were clammy and my head was already feeling light.

"He's probably making everybody's life miserable." She was blabbing on, but the sound was beginning to fade. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her break the needle off the disposable syringe, dropping it in the wastebasket. She began to clean up cotton wads, the paper from the lancet. I sat down on the couch.

She paused, a look of concern crossing her face. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I just feel like sitting down," I murmured. I'm sure death creeps up on you just this way, but what was I going to say? I'm a bad-ass private eye who swoons in the same room with a needle? I smiled at her pleasantly to show I was okay. Darkness was crowding my peripheral vision.