at her watch. “It’s almost time for the next set. Please excuse me.”
She rose and left, walking gracefully toward the piano. Garreth fought an urge to follow her. If she affected Mossman the same way, no wonder he came back.
Harry grinned at him. “Do you still want to involve her in two murders?”
She began a song in sultry tones that made Garreth’s hormones cheer and brought quick speculation about the feel of those long legs wrapped around him. “I’d rather date than arrest her,” he admitted. “She seems cooperative enough and she didn’t hesitate to admit she’d seen Mossman Tuesday. Still…”
“Still,” Harry agreed. “You never know, so we’d better check her out.”
5
Lying awake in the darkness of his bedroom, Garreth heard the foghorns start. The years living here had taught him to recognize the patterns of a few, like the double hoot of the one on Mile Rocks and the single every- twenty-seconds blast of the one on Point Diablo. Fog moving in, he thought.
He stopped consciously listening when the horns and diaphone on the Golden Gate Bridge joined the chorus. The dial of his watch glowed on the bedside table, but he resisted the urge to look at it. Why see how long he had lain awake?
He folded his hands behind his head. What was wrong? Why should he be bothered that their interviews with the manager of the Barbary Now and the singer’s neighbors last night and today turned up nothing to connect her with the murders?
“I wish everyone I hired were as dependable,” the manager said. “She’s always on time, always polite to even the biggest asshole customers, never drunk or strung out. Lane never causes trouble.”
Her neighbors echoed the sentiment. One said, “You’d hardly know she’s there. She sleeps all day and comes home from work after we’ve gone to bed. If she brings anyone home, I don’t know it because she never makes a sound. She’s away on tour sometimes and it may be a week before I realize she’s gone.”
“Do you ever see any of her friends?” Garreth had asked.
“Once in a while. They’re men, mostly, leaving in the morning, but all very well dressed…none of the dirty, hairy, hippie types.”
Altogether their questions produced a picture of an ideal neighbor and employee. So what did he find so disturbing about that? Maybe just that. People who kept a profile low to the point of invisibility felt suspicious. Even granting differences between professional images and private lives, he could not quite reconcile such a life-style with the sexy, coolly sophisticated young woman from the Barbary Now.
Yet, he could not picture her threading a needle into Mossman’s jugular, either…not with his present knowledge of her.
“I need to know more,” he said aloud into the darkness.
The midchannel Golden Gate diaphone sounded out of the fog in its bellow-and-grunt voice, as though replying to his remark.
He would talk to her landlord, he decided, lying back in bed, and then to more of the Barbary Now personnel. He would see if all their opinions matched the ones he had already heard.
That decided, he lay relaxed, listening to the hooting and bellowing of the foghorns reverberate through the night. The rhythmic chorus lulled him to sleep.
6
The woman inside the protective grille across the doorway wore a bathrobe and slippers. She blinked through the grille at Garreth’s identification. “Police? This early?”
“I’m sorry about the hour, Mrs. Armour, but I need to ask a few questions about a tenant of yours.” He himself had been up for hours, finding out who owned the house where Lane Barber lived.
Mrs. Armour opened the grille with a frown and led the way up a steep flight of stairs to a sunny kitchen looking out over the fog that shrouded the lower marina and bay. “Which one, and what have they done?”
“I don’t know Lane Barber has done anything. She merely knows someone involved in a case I’m investigating.”
The frown faded. She sat down at the table, returning to the toast and coffee that Garreth’s ring had obviously interrupted. “Coffee, Inspector?” When he accepted with a nod, she poured a cup for him. “I’m glad Miss Barber isn’t in trouble. Actually, I would have been surprised if you’d said she was.”
Mrs. Armour, too? Garreth added cream and sugar. “You know her well?”
“Not personally, but she’s one of my best tenants. I have a number of properties in that area and most of them are rented by restless young people who are here this year and gone the next. I wish you could see the state they leave their apartments in. It’s appalling. But Miss Barber pays her rent on time every month and when I have her apartment repainted, as I feel ought to be done every few years, her place is always spotless. She takes beautiful care of it.”
Garreth stopped stirring his coffee. “Every few years? How long has she been a tenant?”
Mrs. Armour pursed her lips. “Let’s see. I think I’ve had her apartment done twice. She must have been with me about ten years. No…I’ve painted three times. She’s been there fourteen years. She’s my oldest tenant.”
Fourteen years? Garreth blinked. “How old was she when she moved in?”
“Very young, but at least twenty-one. I remember she told me she was singing in a club.”
Garreth stared at her. The singer was twenty-one fourteen years ago? That face above the candle had not belonged to a woman in her thirties. Although her level of sophistication seemed more commensurate with that age than with twenty-one. Had she had a face-lift, perhaps?
“What has her friend done?” Mrs. Armour asked.
For a moment, Garreth struggled to think what the woman was talking about. “Oh…he died. In the time Miss Barber has been your tenant, have you ever had any trouble with her? Has the apartment smelled…strange, or have neighbors complained of strange people coming and going?”
Cult types. It occurred to him that if she lived in the middle of a shifting population, former neighbors may have seen things present ones could not know about.
“Smelled strange? Like marijuana?” Mrs. Armour sat bolt upright in indignation. “Certainly not! I’ve never had a single word of complaint about her.”
Garreth could not believe in this paragon. It was obvious, however, that Mrs. Armour was not going to add any clay to the lady’s feet, so he thanked her for her help and headed for the Hall.
As he came into the office, Harry said, “You’re supposed to call Narcotics.”
Garreth peeled out of his coat. “I hope it’s about Chiarelli.”
It was about Chiarelli. An Inspector Woodhue said, “It’s arranged for you to meet him. Join us in the garage at twelve-thirty.”
Garreth hung up. “Let’s hope Chiarelli can help us.”
“Maybe. But your hexagram this morning said, ‘
Garreth grimaced. “Thanks. I really needed to hear that.”
He thought about his conversation with the landlady on the Barber girl’s age. A strange lady, this redhead. He ran her name through Records. It came back negative for local and state, negative NCIC. She never had even a traffic ticket. In fact, she had no driver’s license.
That brought a frown. She said something about not having driven for a while when they talked to her. Had she been only joking?
“Do you think she can be thirty-five years old?” he asked Harry. “She looks much younger.”
