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 that 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 go in with the painters to repaint her apartment, 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 three times. She must have been with me about ten years. No . . . I've painted four times. She's been there twelve years. She's my oldest tenant."

Twelve 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 twelve years ago? He clearly remembered the face above the candle; it had not be­longed to a woman in her thirties, although her level of sophistication certainly 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 Bryant Street.

As he came into the squad room, Harry said, "You're supposed to call Narco."

Garreth peeled out of his trench coat. "I hope it's about Chiarelli."

He called after the squad meeting. It was about Chiarelli. A Sergeant 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 my hexagram this morning said, 'In adversity, it furthers one to be persevering,' and yours read, 'Success in small matters. At the beginning good fortune; at the end, disorder.'"

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 R and I. It came back negative for local and state, even negative NCIC—the FBI had nothing on her. She did not even have a traffic ticket. In fact, he discovered that she had no driver's license. That brought a frown. She had said something about driving when they talked to her. Had she been only joking?

"Do you think she can be thirty-three years old?" he asked Harry. "She looks much younger."

"In the lighting of that bar, Methuselah would look like an adolescent; it's designed that way. How else could some of those hookers snag a john?" Harry raised his brows at Garreth. "Why so concerned about her age? Isn't that part of the mystique?"

"Maybe there's such a thing as too much mystique." The first chance he had, Garreth decided, he would ask the lady a few pointed questions and dispel some of it.