“Tell them the people at Longwood are the ones who are trying to kill you,” Mel insists. “Tell them you want to come to our house.”

Rose shoots Mel a look.

“Right. They’d so listen to a dotty old lady who poisoned a nice nurse-lady. Never mind.”

Silence settles around them. Then Mel asks, “Can you run the fingerprint somehow?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a friend whose mom or dad is a crooked cop, would you?” Rose asks hopefully.

“No cops,” Mel says. “A couple of lawyers, I think.”

“Unsavory?”

“Real estate and contract law. Or investment. Excruciatingly boring.”

“Marion might be able to,” Rose muses. “She can access the dark web—don’t ask me what that is, but it has illegal items for sale, or so she tells me. Maybe a shady cop or disgruntled dispatcher runs license plates or prints on the sly and sells the information.”

Mel fetches the sketch pad. Rose takes several pictures of the prints with her cell phone, taps in Marion’s email address, then adds: Can you find out whose these are? Story next time.

“At least that’s something,” she says.

“Unless it’s nothing.” Mel sits down, her knees pulled up under her chin.

Rose says, “I think there are two separate areas of nothing/something. The first is what happened between the day your granddad died and the day your dad put me into Longwood. The second is what happened in Longwood from my incarceration up through the attempted murder last night.”

“You don’t think they are related? Like first you acted all crazy, and second you acted all crazy?” Mel asks.

“Then I got out and stopped acting crazy. That is key,” Rose insists. “First and Second Crazy must be related. But coincidences do happen. Lightning strikes in the same place more often than people think. Let’s say that First Crazy was caused by the shock and grief at losing Harley. Maybe throw in a few transient ischemic attacks, whatever. Then your dad gets me into this great facility. I start to get well. Then Second Crazy is induced for completely unrelated reasons.”

“Sort of like walking down an alley and getting mugged,” Mel says.

“Exactly. The alley didn’t cause the mugging. Walking down it merely put the victim in the vicinity of an opportunistic mugger. Rather than wasting time on why I was in that particular alley, I think we should start with the mugger,” Rose says.

“The opportunistic Longwood mugger.”

“Yup.”

“First you should get out of this house,” Mel says. “Can you get a hotel with Great-Aunt Marion’s credit card?”

“I could,” Rose considers. “But credit cards are easily traced. Longwood undoubtedly has all Marion’s contact information on a next-of-kin form. Marion would kill me if I exposed her in that way.”

“Use the ATM and pay cash,” Mel suggests.

“I’d have to be slumming to find a place that doesn’t require ID.”