I got off the Stevenson at Damen and drove up to County Hospital. My bones were aching with exhaustion. I negotiated the distance from my car to the building, and then down its endless corridors, by sheer willpower. Although it was past seven, Nelle McDowell was still at the nursing station.

“When do you go off duty, anyway?” I demanded.

She made a wry face. “We’re so shorthanded here I could work a hundred-and-sixty-hour week and it wouldn’t make a dent. You here to see the old lady? It’s good some of you neighborhood folks care enough to keep in touch. I see she’s got a son out in California and he hasn’t even bothered to send her a card.”

“Is she talking yet?”

McDowell shook her head regretfully. “She keeps calling for that dog, Bruce, I guess. I don’t know how much she understands of what anyone says to her, but we’ve given strict orders to all the shifts not to say anything about it.”

“Has either Todd or Chrissie Pichea been by? They’re the couple who got themselves named her guardians.” I was afraid their native cruelty might lead them to tell Mrs. Frizell the bad news in the hopes it would hasten her death.

“Hotshot young couple? They came by last night, kind of late, maybe ten. I was gone by then, but the night charge nurse, Sandra Milo, told me about it. Seems they were desperate for her financial papers. Title to her house or something. I guess they figured they needed it to put up as security for her medical bills or something, but they were much too rough for her in the state she’s in—shaking her shoulder, trying to make her sit up and talk to them. Sandra threw them out in pretty short order. Other than that no one’s been by but one of the neighbor ladies. I couldn’t tell you her name.”

“Hellstrom,” I supplied mechanically. “Marjorie Hellstrom.”

So Todd and Chrissie didn’t have her critical papers. I’d just assumed they were down in the Jurassic layer of the old secretary, but the Picheas could have searched the house at their leisure. If they hadn’t found the title, where was it?

“How long are you going to keep Mrs. Frizell here?” I finally asked.

“She’s not fit to be moved right now. The hip isn’t healing very fast. Ultimately she has to go to a nursing home, you know, if the guardians can find one she can afford, but that’s a ways in the future.”