20

"How do you feel?" Don asked.

"He asks how I feel," Ricky said, supported by pillows on his bed in the Binghamton hospital. "Pneumonia is no fun. It affects the system adversely. I advise you to refrain from getting it."

"I'll try," Don said. "You almost died. They just got the highway open in time for the ambulance to bring you up here. If you hadn't pulled through, I'd have had to take your wife to France this spring."

"Don't tell that to Stella. She'll run in here and pull my tubes out." He smiled wryly. "She's so eager to get to France she'd even go with a pup like you."

"How long will you have to stay in here?"

"Two more weeks. Apart from the way I feel, it's not too bad. Stella has managed to terrify all the nurses, so they take excellent care of me. Thank you for the flowers, by the way."

"I missed you," Don said. "Peter misses you too."

"Yes," Ricky said simply.

"It's a funny thing about this whole affair. I feel closer to you and Peter-and Sears, I guess I have to say-than anyone since Alma Mobley."

"Well, you know my thoughts about that. I blurted them all out when that young doctor doped me to the gills. The Chowder Society is dead, long live the Chowder Society. Sears once said to me that he wished he wasn't so old. I was a bit taken aback at the time, but I agree with him now. I wish I could see Peter Barnes grow up-I wish I could help him. You'll have to do that for me. We owe him our lives, you know."

"I know. Whatever we don't owe to your cold."

"I was completely befuddled, back in that room."

"So was I."

"Well, thank God for Peter. I'm glad you didn't tell him."

"Agreed. He's been through enough. But there is still a lynx to be shot."

Don nodded.

"Because," Ricky continued, "otherwise she'll just come back again. And keep on coming back until all of us and most of our relatives are dead. I've supported my children for too long to want to see them go that way. And as much as I hate to say it, it looks like it's your job."

"In every way," Don said. "It was really you who destroyed both Gregory and Fenny. And Peter killed their boss. I have to take care of the remaining business."

"I don't envy you the job. But I do have confidence in you. You have the knife?"

"I picked it up off the floor."

"Good. I'd hate to think of it being lost. You know, back in that terrible room I think I saw the answer to one of the puzzles Sears and I and the others used to talk about. I think we saw the reason for your uncle's heart attack."

"I think so too," Don said. "Just for a second. I didn't know that you saw it too."

"Poor Edward. He must have walked into John's spare bedroom, expecting at the worst to find his actress in bed with Freddy Robinson. And instead she- what? Threw off the mask."

Ricky was now very tired, and Don stood up to go. He put a stack of paperback books and a bag of oranges on the table beside Ricky's bed.

"Don?" Even the old man's voice was grainy with exhaustion.

"Yes?"

"Forget about pampering me. Just shoot me a lynx."