“What is this stuff? You said you know she got it last week; does she get it often?”

“About twice a month she gets a package, addressed just like these letters. When I asked her about it, she said it was an herbal remedy for her rheumatism that she orders from a doctor down there.”

“This is no doctor’s script.” The letters were heavy and precise, though not refined. Whoever had printed them was working slowly, and laboriously. Perhaps he or she couldn’t read very well. I was willing to bet it was a man, for the letters had a masculine quality to their square-edged straightness.

“No, it isn’t. But it’s never done any good to argue with the woman, as you can well imagine.” Harry sat on the edge of the bed and shuffled through the letters again, furrowing his brow into deep creases. “Do you really think this is important?”

“It might be. We could ask her.”

“She won’t tell us anything, not now that she’s been tied up in a chair all night. You thought she was uncooperative before . . . I’ll bet we ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I stared down at the bottle, swishing its contents around into a whirlpool. “You’re probably right. But she’s all we’ve got. This time, how about you let me do the asking?”

He shrugged and rose, reaching his hands behind his shoulders and cracking his back. “Be my guest. You can’t possibly get any less out of her than I did.”

Downstairs in the dining room, Eliza had fallen asleep. Her curly white head was tipped forward, her chin resting on her breastbone. Her chest expanded and contracted just enough to lift and lower her face, still blocked by the gag. I was merely inches away from feeling sorry for her until Harry removed her gag and she shot awake and started yelling.

“You scalawags—both of you dirty goddamned carpetbaggers—I’ll see you both dead! I’ll see you both gutted and stretched and dead on a rack before I’m gone, do you hear me? I’ll kill you myself, with my own two hands! I’ll—”

Harry popped the saliva-soaked rag back into her mouth and let her gnaw on it in muffled rage. “I told you,” he said to me. “She’s not going to be of any use. We may as well turn her loose and make a run for it.”

“I’m not going to run away from a little old lady,” I said, jaw set firm. “I’ll smack some manners into one if I have to, but I’m not going to flee from one. It’s undignified.”

“What do you plan to do, then?” He said it with a hint of warning that implied, all threats aside, he would prefer that no actual manners-smacking took place.

I positioned myself so that Eliza could stare me down all she liked. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to remember how much she hated me, and my mother before me. There was a chance I could use that fury to my advantage.