Chapter 3
Nothing that happened after I brought Georgina home from Dr. Sturges’s prepared me for an early-morning visit from Baltimore’s Finest, least of all the wine. It would help me to relax, I reasoned; but after too many glasses to count, I decided I’d just sleep forever, even on the lumpy mattress that spat cookie crumbs all over me when I wrestled the ancient hide-a-bed open in Georgina’s TV room. Whatever was in Scott’s Box-o’-Chablis knocked me out cold from eleven-thirty until five, at which time my eyes flew open and my throbbing head told me it wished I’d had the brains to take some Alka-Seltzer before putting it to bed. As I lay flat on my back with the pale light of a gray dawn creeping around the corners of the window shade, I relived the previous evening.
Georgina had bee
