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"Our Mary White? Former lover of John Hobbes?"

"Yup The sao was the offer made?"

"Three months"

"Mary White is alive?" Evie said, wide-eyed

"Yes she is Living in one of those shacks out at Coney and still holding on to that house up on the hill"

"Noould she do that, I wonder?"

"Maybe we should find out"

Mary White Blodgett lived on Surf Avenue in a wind-and-salt-battered bungaloith a view of the Thunderbolt roller coaster Mrs White’s daughter, Eleanor,a housedress, her hair set with bobby pins

"Mrs Ambrosio?" Will asked

"Who wants to know?"

"How do you do? I’erald From the museunition showed in the woman’s eyes "Oh, yeah So we did My itatin’ her"

"Of course," Will said, reh a sitting room littered with empty Whitman’s Sampler boxes and a collection of Radithor bottles that hadn’t yet made it to the rubbish bin The place sirl’s day off," she said, and it was hard to know if it was a gallows joke or an excuse--or perhaps both "Wait here in the kitchen a minute"

Evie kept her hands to herself She didn’t want to stand in the place, much less sit On the erously close to one labeled RAT POISON A dirty syringe lay on a wad of bloodstained cotton

Mrs Ambrosio disappeared behind a curtain, but her voice could still be heard, loud and shrill "Ma! Those people are here to see you about Mr Hobbes"