had a warrant and everything, but they were okay.'
A glance at Ben. He said, 'Not too bad.'
'They just wanted to go through her stuff, see if they could find anything that might relate. Course they didn't-that was no surprise.
It didn't happen here and they told us from the beginning they didn't suspect anyone she knew.'
'Why's that?'
'He-this detective-said it was...' She closed her eyes and reached for a cookie. Managed to find it and ate half.
According to the cop, it was a sick psycho thing,' said Ben.
'He said she was really.
Shaking his head.
A mess,' said Bobby.
'They didn't find anything here,' said Ben. The two of them looked shaken.
'What a thing to come home to,' I said.
'Oh, yeah,' said Bobby. 'It really scared us-to have it be someone we knew.' She reached for another cookie, even though half of the first one was still in her hand.
'Was she your roommate?'
'Tenant,' said Bobby. 'We own the house.' Saying it with wonderment.
'We have a spare bedroom, used to use it as a practice room, do some home recording. Then I lost my job over at the daycare center, so we decided to rent it out for the money. Put a card up on the bulletin board at the university cause we figured a student might want just a room. Dawn was the first to call.'
'How long ago was this?' iuly.'
She ate both cookies. Ben patted her thigh and squeezed it gently.
The soft flesh cottage-cheesed. She sighed.
'What you said before,' he said, 'about this medical chart. Was her taking it uncool?'
'She was supposed to return it.'
They looked at each other.
'Did she have a taking' problem?' I said.
'Well,' he said, uncomfortably.
'Not at first,' said Bobby. At first she was a great tenantcleaned up after herself, minded her own business. Actually, we didn't see her much because we had our day jobs, and then sometimes we'd go out to sing at night. When we didn't, we went to sleep early.
She was out all the time-real night owl. It was a pretty good arrangement.
'Only problem,' said Ben, 'was her coming in at all hours, because Homer's a good watchdog and when she came in he used to bark and wake us up. But we couldn't very well tell her when to come in and out, could we? Mostly, she was okay.'
'When did she start taking things?'
'That was later,' he said.
A couple of months after she arrived,' said Bobby. At first we didn't put it together. It was just small stuff- pens, guitar picks.
