Page 49

“No.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said, but I didn’t think she believed me.

The hallway on the fifth floor was wide, with seven doors that were pretty far apart. This gave me an inkling of the generous size of the living spaces at Turnings.

Mrs. Person knocked on door 504 and waited. Maybe she heard something, because she pushed the door open and ushered me in.

It was a beautiful room. Quite wide and at least fourteen feet deep; the back wall was lined with windows that looked out on the upper boughs of a few cherry trees burgeoning with pink-and-white blossoms.

At the center of this riot of flowers there was a broad oaken desk. The woman seated there, with her back to us, had been writing, but now she put down whatever stylus she used, rose to her feet slowly, and turned to greet us.

Wearing a navy-blue form-fitting dress that covered her from throat to foot, she was an inch shorter than I, and I was an inch and a quarter under six foot. Mara Macintosh was slender, a little wavery on her feet, and certainly, by American standards, a white woman.

“Estelle,” she said, wincing just a little. “Who have you brought me today?”

“This is Joe Oliver.”

“Dr. Oliver?” the resident asked.

“No, ma’am,” I confessed. “Not a doctor.”

“I didn’t think you looked like a medical man, Mr. Oliver,” the lady corroborated. She reached out with her left hand to steady herself on the back of the chair.

“Why do you say that?”

“Light brown suit and a dark blue shirt is beyond the style of most northern doctors.”

“Mr. Oliver is here to ask you a few questions from Mr. Babylon,” Mrs. Person said.

“Why didn’t Arman call me himself?” the rest home patient asked me.

“He has hired me to locate his granddaughter.”

Mara nodded and sneered a bit.

“Oh? So, he’s finally decided to make things right by her?”

“I don’t really know about that,” I said. “He’s sick and I think he’s worried that he might die before he’s had a chance at some last words.”

“You don’t know why he wants to talk to her, and you didn’t ask?” The lady seemed maybe just a little angry. She swayed slightly.

“I assumed that he just wanted to see her, you know, one more time.”

“Sit down, Miss Mara,” Mrs. Person advised. “You don’t need to be up on your feet talking.”

The shorter woman took the taller by her elbow and helped her into the chair.

“Mr. Oliver wants to talk to you,” Mrs. Person said. “But do you want to talk to him?”

“You know how much I like to have visitors, darlin’,” the lady replied. “I’ll tell you when I get tired.”

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

Macintosh was around sixty-five, I figured, but she seemed older, frail. She looked at me and then at the steam engine named Estella, or maybe Estelle.

“I think I’m a little old to need a chaperone, don’t you?”

“As you wish,” my brown sister conceded.