Double Booked For Death

TWENTY-EIGHT

JAKE’S PHONE CALL BROUGHT TWO POLICE CRUISERS WITH lights flashing, though since the immediate emergency was long over with, they had refrained from turning on their sirens. One of the four cops who rushed in through the theater’s front doors turned out to be Officer Hallonquist, the same patrolman who had cited Darla at the coffee shop a few days earlier. He shook his head a little at recognizing her, but made no comment as he and his partner hustled the handcuffed agent outside and loaded her in their car for the trip to jail.

Reese had shown up right after the uniformed officers. “Yo, Fiorello,” one of the younger cops had called with a grin and a wave at the detective.

Reese gave the rookie the old finger-across-the-throat gesture, but it was too late. Darla had overheard. With a delighted grin of her own, she stared at him and said, “Wow. Fiorello is your first name?”

“Yeah,” the rookie interjected, poking his forefinger to his cheek to form a dimple. In a simpering voice, he added, “It means ‘little flower.’”

“Correction,” Reese snarled back. “It means ‘he who kicks ass.’ So shaddup already, if you don’t want your butt handed to you.”

The rookie snickered but obligingly shut up. Then Reese turned to Darla. “Yeah, so sue me. My dad was German and my mother was Italian. I got his looks, and she won the baby-naming contest. But we don’t use that name, got it?”

“How about this?” Darla replied, trying to keep a straight face but failing miserably. “If you don’t call me ‘Red,’ I won’t call you ‘Flower.’ Deal?”

“Deal. Now, forget about me. What the hell is going on here?” he demanded with a stern look at both her and Jake.

Quickly stepping back into serious mode, Darla waited quietly by and let Jake explain what they’d been doing at the theater in the first place. Then Darla gave Reese a quick rundown of the private conversation she’d had with Morris in the basement after Jake left, and before the police arrived.

Morris told her he had followed Hillary and his sister down the sidewalk that fateful night, and so had witnessed Valerie’s death. He had been the caped figure who had rushed into the street to help her, and who Reese had pushed aside. Realizing there was nothing to be done for his sister, Morris’s next thought had been to pursue Hillary, who had already melted back into the crowd.

He’d had little doubt that Hillary’s actions were deliberate. Despite his grief, however, he’d also realized that, under the circumstances, it would be his word against hers should he accuse her of a crime. And so, he had made the difficult choice to pretend that he’d seen nothing. Instead, he had returned to the store, determined to find some way to later pry a confession from the agent. Hillary had not been content with murdering Valerie, however. A day later, she had contacted Morris with another blackmail threat, and that was when he’d had the inspiration for staging the ghostly intervention.

In the time it took for Darla to make her explanations, Morris had changed back into his street clothes and commandeered the theater’s offices for further interviews. Darla wondered how a lowly makeup artist had managed such a feat, until Morris explained with a wry smile, “I don’t think they’ll mind, considering that I own the place.”

Once the statements had all been given—according to Reese, Morris’s official account had squared with what he had told Darla—Reese rejoined Darla and Jake in the lobby. The play had ended, and most of the theatergoers had already departed, leaving behind a handful of curious employees to finish closing up the place. Morris reappeared as well. He gave a few whispered instructions to the same tuxedoed female usher who’d politely demanded Darla’s ticket. The girl nodded and made hasty work of rushing the other employees out the door.

By then, the remaining patrol officers had driven off, leaving the three of them alone with Morris. He gave Darla and Jake a tired smile.

“Detective Reese was asking about the ghost illusion,” he said. “Perhaps all of you would care to see how it was created?”

At their eager nods, he led them back down to the basement. There, he demonstrated how he had conjured Valerie’s ghostly appearance.

“It’s an old theater trick called Pepper’s Ghost Illusion,” he explained as they stood in the lounge area where the phantom Valerie had confronted Hillary. “If you’ve ever been to Disney’s Haunted Mansion, or even one of the professional haunted houses that spring up each year for Halloween, you might have seen this effect before. We use it here at the theater on occasion. I had some of the stage crew set this up for me a few days ago.”

He showed them how the space beyond the lounge area actually formed an equilateral L, with the lower portion of the L blocked from their view by a wall of shelving. A sheet of glass sat across the elbow of the L at a forty-five degree angle, with the red velvet chairs positioned behind it. The unseen portion of the L had been where Morris in his ghostly disguise had been hidden. That area was curtained in black fabric that formed a backdrop on all three sides and was empty, save for what appeared to be a set of freestanding steps that were also draped in black. Like a good host, he gestured them to sit on those stairs.

“When the lights are dim here and bright there,” he said, pointing toward the chairs, “all the audience sees from the outside is exactly what’s in that space.”

With his remote control, he adjusted the lights so that a cheery beam illuminated the red velvet chairs, while the light in their half of the L dimmed.

“But if you lower the lights there”—he again indicated the chairs and turned down the illumination—“and raise the lights on this side, whatever’s here reflects on the glass and looks like a ghost on the side to the audience that’s watching.”

As he spoke, a light came on overhead. Now, the four of them were reflected with almost mirrorlike precision in the glass, their transparent images seeming to hover over the chairs, just as Valerie’s ghost had done.

“Pretty cool,” Jake muttered, while Darla nodded her agreement.

Reese grinned a little, like a kid figuring out a new trick. “It’s like when you have a lamp on in your house, and you look out the window at night. You can see everything behind you—and even yourself—reflected in the glass, so it kind of looks like you and your room are outside on the street.”

“Exactly,” Morris said with an approving smile. “The lighting is crucial, as is the black backdrop on this side. It’s a simple enough effect, but very powerful if the audience is in the mood to believe.”

And it seemed that all of them had been in that mood, Darla told herself, remembering the chill she’d felt at her first sight of the ghost. Probably, Morris had tinkered with the air-conditioning down there, too, and had lit the cigarette to further trigger the connection to Valerie.

Reese remained behind at the theater awhile longer, while Darla and Jake made their good-byes and returned to the brownstone. It was after midnight by the time the taxi they’d commandeered at Darla’s insistence left them off on the curb. As she stepped out onto the sidewalk, Darla noticed in surprise that the Valerie shrine with its guttered candles and dead flowers had been cleared away sometime during their absence, leaving the sidewalk bare once more.

Jake followed her gaze and nodded.

“Our sanitation department at work,” she observed. Then, noting Darla’s troubled expression, she added, “Don’t feel bad, kid. That mound of flowers couldn’t have stayed here forever, you know.”

“I know. It just seems a shame that all those poems and letters and tributes that Valerie’s fans left for her ended up in the back of a trash truck.”

“Actually, I think Mary Ann gathered all those things up this morning. She thought the family might want them, so she was going to package up everything and give it to you to forward.”

“I’m sure Morris and his parents will appreciate that,” Darla agreed, relieved and yet feeling a bit guilty that she hadn’t thought of doing the same thing.

They parted after agreeing to meet back at Darla’s apartment when Reese finished at the theater and stopped by to update them on the situation. Yawning, Darla went upstairs to change out of her theater clothing. Hamlet was waiting for her, his expression disapproving.

“Sorry, boy, we were chasing down ghosts and murderers,” she explained, earning a spit and a hiss from Mr. Anxious Parent Cat for her trouble.

Once snuggly attired in sweats, she flipped on her computer and did her official scan of the store. Everything appeared in order, so she left the screen up and turned on her favorite all-news television station. Within a few minutes of watching, she discovered that word of Hillary’s arrest had already hit the media.

“And in breaking news,” the jowly broadcaster proclaimed, “a twenty-nine-year-old New York City woman has been arrested in what is now considered to be the murder of bestselling author Valerie Baylor last week.”

Snippets of video from the autographing rolled as he described what little the police had released to this point. Darla was glad for Morris’s sake that, at least for the moment, no reference was made to Mavis or ghosts. And a fleeting shot of Hillary doing the perp walk made Darla smile in grim satisfaction.

A knock sounded at her door a few minutes later. It was Jake and Reese, the former having exchanged her chic leopard-print dress for a pair of sweats and a T-shirt like Darla’s, and the latter wearing his usual leather motorcycle jacket and bearing a chilled bottle of sparkling wine.

“Hey, I had it in the fridge and thought we should celebrate,” he said, popping the cork before Darla even had a chance to chase down the proper glasses. Then, with a mock disappointed look, he added, “Of course, I’d been planning on drinking with a couple of hot broads, and not two kids ready for a pajama party.”

Jake gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder, though a smiling Darla wasn’t sure if it was for the “hot broad” comment or the pajama party reference. Once she returned with glassware and the surprisingly good champagne had been poured, Darla offered up a little toast toward the ceiling.

“To Valerie.”

“To Valerie,” her friends echoed and raised their glasses, as well.

“I guess she wasn’t quite the witch she pretended to be,” Darla observed after they’d settled on the horsehair sofa, displacing a miffed Hamlet in the process. “But the way she treated Mavis at the autographing . . .”

“Pretty much an act,” Reese said. “Morris and I had another informal chat after you two left. Apparently, the whole Valerie-as-diva thing was a put-on. They figured it was best to have the public Valerie Baylor be something of a bitch. That way, if a fan or an interviewer asked her a question about the books that she couldn’t answer, she could blow them off, and people would figure that’s just how she was. It also helped protect Mavis. They were afraid if the two of them got too chatty together, it would call attention to her, er, him. And that was what Morris was trying to avoid from the start. Social anxiety disorder is what he said it’s called.”

“Jeez, you’d think the guy was rich enough to afford counseling, or at least a bottle of antidepressants,” Jake broke in.

Darla gave her friend a disapproving glance. “It’s not always that easy. I once worked with a woman who refused to go out to lunch with the rest of the department. We all thought she was a snob. Then one day she told me she just was afraid to eat in front of anyone, couldn’t swallow a bite if anyone was looking at her. I’m sure Morris does the best he can.”

Jake appeared unconvinced, but she dropped the subject of the author’s brother for the equally confusing motivation surrounding Hillary.

“Her, I don’t get, either,” she said of the agent. “Wasn’t killing off Valerie basically killing off her golden goose?”

“Not necessarily,” Darla answered. “If Valerie’s death really had been an accident—or if Morris had thought it was—Hillary could have cut a deal with Morris directly. They could have said that Valerie had a couple of finished manuscripts sitting around and then put them out posthumously under her name. And once everyone got used to her being dead, Morris could have officially been authorized by the estate to keep writing under her name. It’s been done with a lot of authors before.”

Then another thought occurred to her, and she sat up straight in her seat.

“Lizzie’s manuscript!” she exclaimed, drawing looks of surprise from the other two. “Jake, remember in the basement how Hillary claimed that Valerie had stolen other authors’ books, and that she couldn’t even write a shopping list? It sounded like maybe other people had the same thing happen to them that Lizzie said had happened to her. So Lizzie probably was in the right, even though she tried proving it the wrong way.”

“You think?” Jake said with a snort. Then, turning serious again, she said, “But I still don’t understand why Hillary hated Valerie so much. The way she was carrying on, it sounded like something personal between them.”

She turned to Reese, who shrugged and said, “That’ll probably come out in the trial. I can make a couple of guesses, but that’s all they’d be. It’s not like a cop show on television, where the perp spills her guts as soon as she’s arrested. You should know that better than anyone, Martelli.”

“Yeah, so I like my murders tied up in nice red ribbons. So sue me.”

Darla gave her friend a commiserating look. She liked things tied up in nice red ribbons, too. She’d also read somewhere that greed was the number one motive for murder, closely followed by fear and jealousy and rage. All of them seemed likely reasons for the agent to have snapped. But perhaps it was something even more basic. Maybe Hillary, suffering from paranoia because of her drug use, had felt betrayed on a personal level when she learned Valerie was not who she had claimed to be and had felt compelled somehow to punish the woman.

Before Darla could ask what would happen to Hillary next, an ear-searing yowl from Hamlet made her jostle her champagne. She turned to see the cat sitting on the chair in front of her laptop, pawing at the screen. Alarmed, Darla rushed over to see what had caught his attention. The screen was displaying the interior of her store, along with a dark figure as it slid through the shadows past the cash register and then disappeared somewhere near the locked case of collectible fiction.

“Jake, Reese, come quick,” Darla called, barely able to keep the panic from her voice. “Someone’s in the bookstore again!”

Her cry was unnecessary, for the pair had already rushed up behind her. With no more movement to trigger it, however, the single channel view already had subsided back into the usual six-segment display.

“What did you see, and where?” Reese demanded, leaning in closer.

Darla pointed, leaving a champagne fingerprint on the screen. “There. Whoever it was went behind that shelf.”

“Can you switch views and show that part of the store?”

Darla shook her head in frustration. “That’s one of the blind spots Ted told me about. None of the cameras catch it.”

“What about sound?” Jake prompted. “Didn’t he set up some audio, too?”

“You’re right, I forgot.”

Fingers shaking, Darla pulled up the on-screen menu and found the audio option. Turning up her computer’s speakers, she could hear the hiss of an open microphone . . . and then, the soft sound of stealthy footsteps. Then came a sharp thud, which Darla recognized as a book hitting the floor. That noise was followed by what sounded like a gasp and a small voice saying, “Oh my gracious!”

Darla felt her mouth drop open. She turned to gaze at Jake, who appeared equally astounded. As one, they chorused, “Mary Ann?”

“Mary Ann?” Reese echoed with a frown. “You mean Ms. Plinski, the nice little old lady I met at the autographing, looks like everyone’s granny?”

“That’s her,” Darla choked out, dragging her gaze back to the monitor.

She saw another flicker of movement, and the channel that caught it abruptly blew up to a full-size screen. Now, Darla spied a small figure dressed in what appeared to be one of those baggy tracksuits popular among the over-seventy set. The figure turned in profile, and she made out the distinctive silhouette of hair styled into a neat bun. Definitely Mary Ann.

“Guess she didn’t get the memo about Darla’s new security system,” Jake said with a wry shake of her head, leaning in for a closer look. “But what the hell is she doing?”

“She’s looking for something,” Darla replied. Indeed, she could see now a tiny beam of light emanating from the miniature flashlight that the old woman held in one hand. “But why is she sneaking around in the middle of the night when she could just ask me for whatever it is she needs?”

“What I want to know is how she got into your store without tripping the alarm,” Reese answered. Then, sighing, he added, “Hell, guess I’d better go down and arrest her.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to press charges,” Darla exclaimed in horror. “She’s old, and she was Great-Aunt Dee’s friend.”

“Okay, I won’t arrest her, but I’m going to bring her up here so she can explain why she’s been breaking into your place.” Turning to Jake, he added, “You’ve got the key and the alarm code, right?”

“Got it,” Jake said. “I guess I’m backup?” At his nod, she gave Darla a commiserating look. “Ma is going to kill me if she ever hears about me arresting a nice little old lady like Mary Ann,” she said in a resigned voice.

Darla trailed them to the door, but Reese shook his head firmly when she made as if to follow after them. “Old lady or not, a crime is being committed. We’ll be back in a few minutes. You wait here and keep an eye on the monitor.”

“I will, but only if you swear to me you won’t frighten her,” Darla insisted, clutching his arm. “She’s totally harmless.”

“Yeah? Well, remind me sometime to tell you about the nice, harmless old lady who once about carved out my liver with a spatula when I tried to arrest her grandson.”

Jake gave Darla a reassuring pat on her shoulder before she followed Reese out the door. Darla closed it after them and then rushed back to the computer. The security video had split back into six smaller eyes again, meaning that Mary Ann had moved out of camera range once more . . . that, or else she had vanished as mysteriously as she had arrived.

A few seconds later, the screen again switched over to a single-channel view, this time of the store’s side door as it slowly opened. Reese and Jake slipped past it and then carefully closed the door after them.

Darla stared more closely at the laptop, straining her ears to hear any sound from the store. She saw Reese gesture Jake to move in one direction while he took another. The screen flashed from image to image as they passed each of the downstairs cameras. Then she heard Reese’s voice break through the silence to say, “Ms. Plinski, this is Detective Reese. We know you’re in the store. Stay right where you are. We’re going to turn on the lights.”

“Oh my gracious!” she heard Mary Ann exclaim again as someone—presumably Jake—flipped on the lights closest to the inside stairway.

The camera angle changed again as Jake came striding past and headed for the spot behind the shelves where they’d last seen the woman vanish. Darla heard murmured voices, though she couldn’t make out the words. A few moments later, Reese was walking toward the camera. One leather-clad arm supported Mary Ann, whose wrinkled visage reflected both fear and embarrassment. Jake followed after them, stopping to gaze up at the camera and wave in Darla’s direction.

“We’ve got her,” she called. “Reese is bringing her up. Once they’re out, I’ll hit the lights and lock the store, and then head up myself.”

Darla kept an eye on the screen, watching as the shop’s bulbs dimmed again. She saw Jake make her way back to the door, which opened and closed again. Then the screen subsided into the usual six-segment view and remained that way.

She shut down the sound option just as a knock came at the door. She rushed to open it, finding a teary Mary Ann clad in a purple tracksuit, and a rueful-looking Reese. Jake was right behind them, looking equally dismayed.

“Oh, my dear,” the old woman cried, wringing her hands as Darla ushered her inside, “I am so sorry. Truly, I didn’t mean any harm.”

“I know that,” Darla assured her as she settled the trembling woman on the horsehair couch. “Here, let me make you a cup of tea, and then you can explain everything.”

By the time she returned from the kitchen with a pot of boiling water and a teabag in a cup, Mary Ann was looking calmer. She stroked a docile Hamlet, who lay sprawled across her bony knees. The cat shot Darla a reproving glare, as if blaming her for the situation, and then sprang off Mary Ann’s lap to stalk his way over to the window overlooking the street.

“Thank you, my dear,” the old woman said, her voice stronger now as she accepted the cup and began dunking the teabag. Her glance encompassing all of them, she sighed and said, “I suppose I had better come clean.”

They waited while she took a sip and then set the cup on the table before her.

“I’m afraid this is most embarrassing,” she began, once more clutching her hands together. “You see, a few months before Dee passed away, I found myself in something of a financial pickle. Normally, I would have gone to Brother for help, but business had been poor over the past year, and he was in monetary straits of his own. But Dee was—pardon the expression—rolling in dough from all her ex-husbands, so I asked her for a small loan.”

She reached again for her teacup and took another steadying sip.

“Of course, I insisted on giving her some collateral. I had a very old book—well, technically, it was Brother’s, too, since it had come from our parents’ estate—which was of some value. And then, silly me, I discovered an old insurance policy that I’d forgotten about. I cashed it in, intending to repay Dee, but she refused to accept the money. She said that I should consider the loan a gift, from one friend to another.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” Darla asked, confused.

Mary Ann gave a helpless wave. “Oh, yes, it was kind of her, but what I really wanted was my book back. It was something of a family heirloom, and I knew that Brother would eventually ask what had happened to it. I tried to explain that to her, but you know how stubborn some old folks can be.”

“Stubborn as some young folks,” Jake said with a smile, earning a grateful nod from the old woman.

Mary Ann went on to tell how they finally had compromised. Dee would accept half the money she had loaned Mary Ann as payment in full, but she wanted to finish reading the volume before returning it to her friend. Seeing no other recourse—“Really, your great-aunt was quite strong headed about the whole situation”—Mary Ann finally had agreed to her terms. The only problem was that Dee had suffered a stroke and passed away before she’d gotten around to giving it back.

“And ever since then,” Mary Ann finished with a sigh, “I’ve been trying to find my book.”

“But how in the world did you get in without setting off the alarm?” Darla wanted to know. “You don’t have a key or the alarm code.”

Now, the old woman’s expression grew sheepish.

“I suppose, not being from here, you don’t know much about row houses, do you, Darla?” she asked. “Well, most of the homes on this block were erected around the turn of the last century. Your brownstone, mine, and the apartments on your other side were actually all built at the same time.”

Darla nodded. She’d known this much from some of the legal papers she had signed when she inherited the place. Her building (and presumably the others around it) dated to about the 1880s.

“Since the same workers were doing all the construction,” Mary Ann went on, “it didn’t make sense for them to be constantly running out of one house and into the next. So, they very cleverly put in several doors connecting all three houses from the inside. Of course, when they were finished building, the workers bricked up all the connecting doors again, and that was that.”

“Unless someone opened them back up again,” Reese countered with a slow nod. “Are you trying to say that there is still a door between your place and Darla’s?”

“I’m afraid so,” the old woman admitted, her cheeks turning pink. “I don’t know if Dee ever mentioned it, but my father used to own both of these buildings. My family lived in the side where Brother and I now live, and my grandparents lived here in Darla’s brownstone. So you can see that it made sense to keep them connected. After my grandparents died, Papa sold your place to someone else, but no one ever got around to bricking up the doorway again.”

“But I’ve never noticed any extra doors before,” Darla protested. “This hidden one, where is it?”

“It’s in that little alcove under the stairs on the second floor in your storeroom. The door looks like part of the paneling, and the knob is just a wooden latch, so you wouldn’t even see it unless you knew to look for it.” The old woman paused and gave a small chuckle. “You had stacked several boxes in front of it, so I had a doozie of a time getting through there the first time I tried.”

“Sorry,” Darla replied with a contrite smile. Then she narrowed her eyes as she recalled yet another incident, and Mary Ann’s reaction to it. “Wait. What about the night I found those books in neat piles in my living room? Was that you in my apartment, too? You’re the one who stacked the books?”

When Mary Ann gave an abashed nod, she went on, “But I thought you said there was just one door between us. How did you get in?”

“Why, through the dumbwaiter, of course.”

When Darla stared at her in astonishment, Mary Ann continued, “Dee and I were both old ladies who liked a visit, but we couldn’t be running up and down two flights of stairs all the time. It’s far too hard on old knees. So I showed her what Brother and I used to do when we were children—we’d ride up and down the dumbwaiter. How else do you think your aunt made her way down to the store and back every day at her age?

“Oh, perhaps it’s not perfectly safe,” the old woman admitted as Darla continued to gape. “Nothing fun these days is! But it is rather thrilling. And I did insist that she always carry a cell phone with her in case something went wrong and she got stuck. But I promise you, I will never do it again . . . at least, not on your side of the house.”

Jake was grinning outright by now. Reese was attempting a stern look but failing miserably at it. As for Darla, she took another swig of champagne. Really, this was all a bit much for one night!

“All right, Mary Ann,” she replied, raising her hands in surrender, “you’ve explained everything, except why in the heck you just didn’t tell me about the book! I would have been happy to let you search as much as you wanted until you found it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t have done that,” she protested, her pink cheeks now turning bright red.

Darla frowned. “Why not?”

“Well, my dear, I am mortified to admit it, but this is not just any book. It’s filled with etchings of, er, people in the altogether, doing terribly naughty things.”

“You mean, Victorian porn?” Jake broke in with a terribly naughty whoop of her own.

Darla burst into laughter and leaped off the sofa. “Wait right here, Mary Ann. I think I can solve this problem for you.”

So saying, she headed to her bedroom, returning a few moments later carrying a small cardboard box, which she handed to the old woman. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

Veined hands trembling, Mary Ann pulled off the lid and then gasped. “Oh, my dear, this is it,” she cried, pulling book from box and clutching it to her like a favored child. “Wherever did you find it?”

“In the most obvious place of all—Great-Aunt Dee’s bedside table. I must admit, I was a bit shocked when I found it. I knew she was eccentric, but this was bit too—”

“Kinky?” Jake cheerfully supplied, earning a disapproving look from Mary Ann.

“Really, Jake,” the old woman chastised her, “there is nothing wrong with enjoying something naughty so long as it is in the privacy of one’s own home.”

“I’m with you on that, Mary Ann,” Reese spoke up with a broad wink for Darla.

Feeling herself blush almost as bright as Mary Ann, Darla forged on, “—a bit too . . . spicy to sell in a store like Pettistone’s Fine Books. I thought about having James put out the word to his collectors, but I didn’t want us to get the reputation for selling, well, you know—”

“Victorian porn?” Jake once again filled in the uncomfortable blank, this time earning a disapproving look from Darla.

“Erotica,” she firmly finished. Then, turning to Mary Ann, she said, “Believe me, I’m thrilled to give the book back to its rightful owner. And if there’s anything else of yours that Dee had here . . .”

“Oh, no, that was it,” Mary Ann assured her with a prim nod.

Darla smiled and settled back onto the sofa. “You know, for a while I was afraid that Great-Aunt Dee actually was haunting the place,” she confessed with a rueful laugh. “Not that I wouldn’t be happy see her again, but I think I prefer my ghosts on stage and in books.”

Then, grabbing up the champagne bottle, she added, “Now, how about one last toast?”

She poured the last of the sparkling wine among the three of them. They raised their glasses again, while Mary Ann lifted her teacup, as Darla proclaimed, “To Great-Aunt Dee . . . one heck of a broad.”

“To Dee,” the rest of them chorused before everyone took a celebratory sip in the old woman’s memory.