“Let’s just say I don’t know how helpful he’s going to feel.”

“You’re here to see Wallace?” the nurse at the front desk asked in disbelief. “Wallace Pfeffercorn?” she clarified.

“That’s our man,” Silas said, leaning on the counter. “We’ve got some business with him.”

“Sign in here on the sheet,” she said, pushing a clipboard at them. He just lost at blackjack and accused our dealer of cheating, so I hope you don’t have your hearts set on him being—”

“Polite?” Maggie guessed.

“Not a grumpy pain in the ass?” Silas tried.

“Pleasant,” the nurse decided.

“We’re both familiar with Wallace’s…personality,” Maggie assured her.

“Well, then follow me, and may God have mercy,” she said with a brisk smile. She led the way through one set of double doors into a spacious dining room. There were tables of varying sizes, all covered with crisp white cloths.

Silas had to jump back when a woman on a three-wheeled scooter zoomed past.

“Hey! I’m scootin’ here!” she yelled.

“I told you to slow down in here, Kathryn,” the nurse called after her. “Sorry, folks. Mrs. Nolan owned a chain of garages. Now she uses her power for evil and keeps rigging the scooter motors to go faster.”

“Later, losers,” Mrs. Nolan cackled as she took a turn through another set of doors on two wheels.

“You two are the first visitors Wallace has had in…a while,” the nurse told them as she turned down a hallway with doors on one side and a wall of windows on the other.

“I’ll let Mama B know,” Silas told her. “She’ll have volunteers organized in fewer than twenty-four hours.”

“The staff would appreciate it,” she admitted, opening a door marked LIBRARY and pointing across the room.

Wallace Pfeffercorn was half-hidden behind a stack of old hardbound volumes at one of the tables in the middle of the library.

“Wallace, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal,” Silas said, dragging out the chair across from the man and motioning for Maggie to take it. “How’s it going?”

“How does it look like it’s going? I’m old. I live with a bunch of other old people. It’s the inner circle of hell around here.”

“Shhh!” A lady with tight white curls and a Boise State Broncos sweatshirt shushed them with one gnarled finger. She was reading a magazine with a good-looking, middle-aged man on the cover under the headline BILLIONAIRE SEBASTIAN SPENCER TAKES GENEROSITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL. Sebastian wasn’t exactly smiling. To Maggie, it looked more like a self-satisfied smirk. But she was biased.

She very deliberately turned away from the woman and her magazine.

“Shove it, Gladys,” Wallace grumbled back. “If it bothers you, turn down your dang hearing aids.”

“Hi, Wallace,” Maggie said as Silas sat down next to her.