I was still groggy from anesthesia and my long day with Conrad, but Morrell said he’d slept enough for the time being. He settled himself on the couch with Peppy and his new laptop. He was working on the book he’d been researching when he got shot. His original laptop had been stolen while he lay bleeding on a mud track in Afghanistan; he’d backed up most of his files onto a portable key, but there was material he was trying to reconstruct, notes he’d been taking shortly before he was hit that he hadn’t had time to organize or copy.

I went back to bed but slept fitfully, the pain in my shoulder jerking me awake whenever I turned in my sleep. At one-thirty, I woke to an empty bed; Morrell was still working. I got out two of my mother’s red Venetian glasses and poured Armagnac for us. Morrell thanked me, but didn’t look up long from his screen—his reconstruction had him totally absorbed. While he wrote, I watched William Powell and Myrna Loy dash around San Francisco, solving crimes with their faithful terrier, Asta.

“Myrna Loy solved crimes in evening gowns and high heels; maybe that’s my problem—I spend too much time in blue jeans and sneakers.”

Morrell smiled at me absently. “You’d look wonderful in one of those old forties dresses, Vic, but you’d probably trip a lot chasing people down alleys.”

“And Asta,” I went on. “How come Mitch and Peppy don’t cleverly retrieve clues as people hurl them in through the windows?”

“You shouldn’t encourage them,” he murmured, frowning over his computer.

I finished my Armagnac and went back to bed. When I woke again, it was nine and Morrell was sleeping soundly next to me. He’d flung his left arm clear of the bedclothes, and I sat for a while, looking at the jagged raw scar along his shoulder where one of the bullets had gone in. Conrad had scars like that, older, less angry, one underneath his rib cage, one in his abdomen. I used to look at those while he slept, too.

I got up abruptly, staggering slightly as the pain hit me, but made it to the bathroom without falling. Disregarding the young surgeon’s instructions, I stood under a hot shower, protecting the wound by wrapping a dry-cleaning bag over my shoulder. Come to think of it, I’d have my own jagged little scar, discreetly concealed on my back. A dainty, ladylike scar, the kind that Myrna Loy could have sported and still looked sexy in her backless gowns.