“It’s twenty-five dollars for an answer based on one question. Fifty dollars for a consult if they give me their astrological sign and age. And if they want me to travel to them for a private reading, it’s . . . a lot more.”

“How are you doing?” I’d definitely been wrong about Manfred’s finances.

“Pretty well,” he said, with a slight smile. “Of course, I’m building on Xylda’s reputation. God bless her soul.”

“I know you must miss her.”

“I really, really do. My mother is a very nice woman.” He said that with the air of someone doing his duty. “But my grandmother gave me more love, and I took care of her as much as I could. My mother had to work all the time, and I don’t remember my father, so Xylda was my real . . . she was my home.”

That was a great way to put it.

“Manfred, I’m so sorry about Xylda. I think of her often.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice lightening in a conscious attempt to brighten the dark conversation. “She liked you, too. She liked you a lot.”

We were silent for the rest of the ride.

While I showered and changed, Manfred walked down to the place where Parker Powers had been shot the night before. He wanted to see if he could pick up anything there, and he knew I’d be more comfortable if he wasn’t in the room while I was cleaning up. I appreciated both ideas. When he knocked on the door, I was dressed, as made up as my healing face would permit, and braced for our next stop. Manfred set his GPS so we could get to the hospital where Parker Powers was a patient. It was called Christian Memorial. I didn’t understand why he’d been taken there instead of God’s Mercy, where Tolliver was. Tolliver and Parker had both had gunshot wounds, so it couldn’t be the level of trauma the emergency room could handle.

I was impressed with Manfred’s GPS, and I’d been thinking of getting Tolliver one for his birthday, so we talked about that on the way to Christian Memorial. I didn’t want to think about the visit I was about to pay. Fortunately, we had to watch out for everyone else on the road, and that distracted me.

Every city in the world thinks it has the worst traffic. Dallas has grown in such a hurry, and so many people who move to the city haven’t driven in an urban area before, that I think Dallas may be right when it claims its traffic is pretty awful. This congestion extends to the dozens of towns that cluster right around Dallas’s outskirts. We were maneuvering among those towns now.