“There was a murder—well, several actually—but that’s all over and done with. If you want to know more about it, I’ll fill you in later.”

Murders at Stanislaus last year? Did Delsey’s being struck down have anything to do with that old trouble? Had she somehow managed to start up with the wrong person? He wouldn’t doubt it. The Trouble Magnet could sniff out a bad apple in a sealed barrel.

“Tell me, Ruth, that the murders last year were neatly solved and the killer sent to prison.”

“Well, all of them were resolved except the last one; well, there are still some questions in my husband Dix’s mind and the primary suspect is in the wind, but far away from here, we think. Trust me, it has nothing to do with this.”

Griffin realized he was probably being paranoid and tried to turn it off. But a cop is a cop, and he wanted to hear all about last year’s murders. But now wasn’t the time. He pulled up a chair and sat beside his sister. She was sleeping, her breathing slow and regular. He pulled her hand from beneath the hospital blanket, looked at her long white fingers, magic fingers that made such beautiful music the angels wept, and when she sang you wept along with them. He slowly began to rub the back of her hand. “My mother told me when a person is down and out Miss Aladonna had told her it helps if you can hold their hands, that they somehow know, and she did that for my grandmother when she was very sick. I haven’t any idea if it’s true.”

Ruth pulled up the only other chair and sat on the other side of the bed, picked up Delsey’s left hand and began rubbing it. She looked over at Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith. She imagined that when he walked down the street women nearly got run over staring at him. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his blue shirt to his elbows, and his jeans were old and fitted him very nicely. He looked, she thought, very fine. He was as pretty as his sister, with all his thick blond hair, his eyes as green as wet grass, a small hollow in the middle of his chin, and cheekbones sharp enough to slice a lemon. He was saved from being too pretty by a nose obviously broken a couple of times when he’d been younger, and which now sat a bit off-kilter. He and Delsey looked nearly the same age even though Delsey was six years his junior. According to her driver’s license, Delsey had turned twenty-five the previous week.

She said quietly, “You know, Griffin, Dillon described you as the real deal. I’m glad you’re here, for Delsey’s sake.”

Griffin arched a perfect eyebrow at Ruth and continued rubbing his sister’s hand. He said, “Delsey told me she wanted to learn everything in the known universe about how to put together a multi-instrument score, and this was the place. She never wanted to go to Juilliard, said New York was too big, too noisy, too claustrophobic.

“I haven’t seen Delsey since she moved here last September to attend graduate school. I didn’t make it home for the holidays because there were three bank robberies right before Christmas that had the police chief and the mayor screaming at us, and so I volunteered to head it all up, since, unlike most of the other agents, I’m not married with kids whose stockings needed stuffing.”

“Did you catch the bank robbers?”

Griffin nodded. “Two brothers, both two-time felons, neither very bright. We cuffed them while they were sleeping off a drunk in a Napa Valley motel.”

“I’ll bet they bragged about their big score in a bar.”

He gave her a grin that would smite female hearts from twenty paces. “Yeah, something like that. The bartender called us.”

A tech appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Chesney said to bring this to you right away, Agent Noble.”

Griffin said, “The results from the blood in Delsey’s bathtub?”

“Looks like.” Ruth took a piece of paper from him.

Ruth sighed, handed Griffin the lab report. “All the results tell us so far is that we were right about the blood in the bathtub not being Delsey’s. The blood on the floor, Delsey’s blood, was AB positive, and the blood in the bathtub is the ever-popular Type O. They’ve started the DNA typing, so we can still hope for some magic from the lab if they get a match in the DNA Index System.” She eyed him. “A cold hit is not very likely, though, as you know.”

Griffin said, “If she walked in on a burglary that morphed into a murder, or on someone putting a body in her bathtub, he would have killed her, not just hit her on the head.”

“Maybe he thought the blow did kill her. Maybe that’s what he intended. Or maybe he panicked.” How close had she been to dying? He tasted ashes in his mouth. What they needed was for Delsey to tell them what happened last night.