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godfather died was bullshit? Didn’t his cellar flood when it rained?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Didn’t he drink?”
    “Nightly.”
    “So why don’t you believe it happened that way?”
    “He was too careful.”
    Donnie laughed. It sounded more like a condescending and derisive sneer. “What?”
    “He was too careful to ever go down to his cellar once he started drinking.”
    “That’s all? That’s the reason you were suspicious?”
    “That’s all.”
    Donnie screwed his face tight. “That can’t be all. What are you not telling me?”
    “He suffered from bathmophobia.”
    “Bathmo what? He was scared of bathrooms? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
    “Bathmophobia isn’t a fear of bathrooms. It’s fear of steep slopes. For people who suffer from it, it’s very, very serious. It’s fear of stairs.”
    “You’re saying your godfather was afraid to climb stairs? That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard.”
    “Not to him it wasn’t. No one outside the family knew about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing you want to get out in a community. You know how people are, Donnie. People are always looking to feel better about themselves by seeing weakness in others.”
    “So he didn’t climb stairs?”
    “No, of course he climbed stairs. But it made him nervous. Even during the day. When there was plenty of light.”
    “And at night?”
    “He lived in a ranch-style house for a reason. All his rooms were on one floor for a reason. Walk down the stairs to the cellar? At night? No way, especially if he’d been drinking, and it was raining and he had to worry about water at the base of the stairs. But hey, what do I know? People do stupid things all the time. Maybe he got so drunk it loosened him up and he forgot about his phobia. Like I said, I wanted to know before. But that was then, and this is now.”
    Donnie stared at me with a blank expression. There were two possibilities. First, he’d killed my godfather, and he was disappointed to hear there was a case to be made that his death was not accidental. Second, he wasn’t involved in my godfather’s killing, but he’d been in business with him. Perhaps there was an unresolved element to their arrangement. Maybe Donnie was owed money. If he’d heard me asking questions about my godfather’s death, he might have assumed my godfather and I had been close, wondered what else I knew. But now that he realized I didn’t know anything, he might consider me dispensable. Had I been a fool by speaking honestly? Had I written my own death certificate?
    “You were honest,” he said. “I can tell. I appreciate that.” He patted my shoulder. “You were a woman of your word, and I’m going to be a man of my word.”
    Donnie wasn’t reacting like a man who’d committed a murder and was worried about someone outing him. A man like that wouldn’t take any chances, I thought. He’d have killed me by now.
    “I’m free to go?”
    “Almost.” He moved next to the adjustable brackets. “Give me your left leg.”
    “Why?” I choked on the word.
    Donnie looked incredulous. “Because you’re right-handed, which means you favor your right leg, too. It’s not like I don’t care about you, you know.”
    “No. I mean, why do you need either of my legs?”
    “Because you’ve got to give me something.”
    “What do you mean, give you something?”
    “You’ve got to give me something to prove to me that you’re going to keep your mouth shut and not interfere with my business.”
    I knew what he meant even before he pulled a rubber mallet from beneath the contraption. He was going to break my leg. My left one, that was, because he was a nice guy and he cared about me. And there was nothing I could do about it.
    I had no hope of overpowering him physically. If I made a run for the rear exit he’d wring my neck before I got one foot out the door. Even worse, if I tried to escape, I knew he might hurt me in a way that time and a cast