“Right.”

“I don’t think so. Mamie, she told the woman—Lenore—she told her, ‘You got us for the duration, sweetie,’ and Mrs. Whitefield, she says, ‘Just until you get a bed in Whispering Creek, Miss Mamie.’ But we ain’t got no one going to pay for us to live at Whispering Creek, which from the brochures in the lobby is one of those really high-end nursing homes. Like a spa.”

“So how do you feel about that?” Fiji said.

“I liked you until you said that, sister,” the old man said. “I want you to know how I feel about something, I’ll tell you. This place is dead, but it’s safe. And it gets more and more interesting. That old man in the hat? His suit looks older’n me. The boy keeps growing overnight. The two men who run the antiques store—hey, are they a couple? Ain’t we modern here? Suzie made it over to the pawnshop; she says the guy who runs it is a hunk and there’s all kinds of weird shit inside. Oh, and your cat came down yesterday, Fiji. He walked all around having a good look like he was thinking about buying the place. Then that Eva Culhane came in, and Harvey and Lenore ran up to stick their noses up her ass, and she said, ‘No pets! This is a pet-free zone!’”

“Oh, no,” Fiji said. She looked around the room. Mr. Snuggly was not in sight. He was a wise cat. “So what else did Eva Culhane do?”

“I think she was just checking to make sure we was all still alive.” Tommy laughed his wheezy laugh. “She was the one scooped us up in Vegas.”

“Really?” Olivia looked as though that was very interesting. But she clearly didn’t know what to make of it.

“This was fun,” said Tommy Quick, né Bustamente. “If you want to come down and visit, bring some of them muffins. Scones. Whatever.” He heaved himself to his feet and carefully made his way out. They heard him going down the steps slowly, and Fiji got up to make sure he reached the sidewalk without falling.

“Okay, he’s on his way back to the hotel,” she said, resuming her seat. “That was interesting.”

“You haven’t read any stories on the history of Las Vegas, I take it,” Manfred said.

Olivia and Fiji shook their heads in unison.

“Not in the earliest mob days, but not far after, Tommy Quick was a knee-breaker for organized crime,” Manfred said.

“You know this how?”

“My grandmother had a storefront in Las Vegas once upon a time,” he said. “She was full of stories. And that got me interested, so I read some books.”

“I wasn’t even worried about the hotel,” Fiji said. “Now I have to worry about the hotel.” She threw up her hands. “Every damn thing is a problem here. And my cat! He’s lucky they didn’t kick him or run him over. He crossed the Davy highway by himself! Idiot!”

“I’ve done it before,” said a sour little voice. Mr. Snuggly emerged from behind Fiji’s counter. He strolled over to the group of humans and paused to sit by the little table, his fluffy tail wrapped neatly around his legs. “I look and look and look, and then I run very fast.” Olivia, not a fan of the cat, glared at him, and he returned the look. She glanced away first.

“Why?” Fiji said. “Why did you go down there?”

“I knew they were real old people, but not helpless old people. I wanted to find out why they were here. I wanted to know if they were magic.” Mr. Snuggly began licking a paw.

“Are they?” Manfred asked, tired of being left out of the conversation, even if it was with a cat.

“No. Not at all. They are old. They’ve done bad things. They’re not mean. One of them is dotty. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what Aunt Mildred used to say. Dotty.”

Fiji looked taken aback. Apparently, she hadn’t ever heard the cat refer to her own great-aunt as “Aunt Mildred.”

“Sure, that’s right,” Manfred said quickly. “No magic there, huh?”

“None,” said Mr. Snuggly emphatically. “Plenty of ghosts at the hotel, of course. And lots of misdirection.”

“What does that mean?” Olivia glared down at Mr. Snuggly, who met her eyes without any problem at all.

“I’m going to take a nap now,” the cat said, and went back behind the counter, presumably to jump in the padded cat bed Fiji had put under the counter.

Manfred was having a hard time picking up the thread of the plan they’d been considering before Diederik, Tommy, and Mr. Snuggly had intervened. He put his head in his hands.

“The boy is growing at twenty times the normal speed,” he said. “An old hoodlum just popped in to promise us he’d keep silent in return for scones. Mr. Snuggly has uncovered bad doings at the hotel. And I still need to clear my name of these bogus theft charges, which draw attention to Midnight, and therefore to all this other shit that should remain secret.”

“That’s a good summary,” Fiji said brightly.

Olivia said, “Let’s get back to the part where you were freezing someone.”

“Bertha, the maid,” Manfred said helpfully. “And then you and I run up the stairs, Olivia, and we search the study lickety-split. We find the jewelry, we call the police, and it’s all over.”

“Except we have to explain to the police how we knew where to search.” Olivia had gotten up to pace back and forth in the limited space. At every turn, she fixed her eyes scornfully on a glass dolphin or a stained-glass rainbow. “And the maid can tell the police that Fiji did something to paralyze her.”