8

She did not come to the door until Garreth had rung the bell five times. He realized that she must be sleeping and would find his visit incon­siderate and inconvenient, but he remained where he stood, leaning on the bell. She finally opened the door, wrapped in a robe, squinting against the light, and he discovered that even by daylight, she looked nothing like a woman in her thirties. If anything, she seemed younger than ever, a sleepy child with the print of a sheet wrinkle across one pale, scrubbed cheek.

She scowled down at him. "You're that mick detective. What—" Then, as though her mind woke belatedly, her face smoothed. He watched her annoyance disappear behind a facade of politeness. "How may I help you, Inspector?"

Why did she bother to swallow justifiable irritation? Did police make her that nervous? Perhaps it was to observe this very reaction, to see what she might tolerate to avoid hassles, that he had persisted on the bell.

"I'm sorry to wake you," he lied. "I have a couple of important questions to ask."

She squinted at him from under the sunshade of her hand, then stepped back. "Come in."

Moving with the heavy slowness of someone fighting a body reluctant to wake up, she led the way to the living room. Heavy drapes shut out the afternoon light, leaving the room in artificial night. She switched on one lamp and waved him into its pool of light. She herself, however, sat in shadow in a suspended basket chair across from the chair by the lamp. A deliberate maneuver on her part?

"This couldn't wait until I got to the club?" Weariness leaked through the careful modulation of her voice.

"I'll be off duty by that time. I try not to work nights if I can help it; the police budget can't stand too much overtime."

"I see. Well, then, ask away, Inspector."

With her face only a pale blur beyond the reach of the light, Garreth found himself listening closely to her voice, to read her through it, and discovered with surprise that she did not sound like he felt she should. Inexplicably, the voice discorded with the rest of her.

"Can you remember what you and Mossman talked about Tuesday night?"

She paused before answering. "Not really. We flirted and made small talk. I'm afraid I paid little attention to most of it even while we were talking. Surely it isn't important."

"We're hoping that something he said can give us a clue to where he went after leaving the Barbary Now. Did he happen to mention any friends in the city?"

"He was far too busy arguing why we should become friends."

Suddenly Garreth realized why her voice seemed at odds with the rest of her. She did not talk like someone in her twenties. Where was the slang everyone else used? Just listening to her, she sounded more like his mother. What was that she had called him at the door? A mick. Who called Irishmen micks these days?

Garreth looked around, trying to learn more about her from the apartment, but could see little beyond the circle of lamplight. The illumination reached only to a Danish-style couch which matched his chair and a small desk with a letter lying on it.

He said, "He told you he was married, didn't he?"

"He wore a wedding ring. I could see that even in the Barbary Now's light."

"Of course." Garreth stood up and moved toward the door. "Well, it was a slim chance he'd say anything useful, I suppose. I'm sorry to have bothered you." On the way, he detoured by the desk to read the address on the letter. Knowing someone she wrote to might be useful.

"It's a price I pay for my unusual working hours." She stood and crossed to the lamp. "I'm sorry I couldn't help."

Garreth had just time enough to read the ornately written address before the light went out, leaving the room in darkness.

On the steps outside, after her door closed behind him, he reread the address in memory. The letter had to be incoming; it had this address. However, it had been addressed not to Lane Barber, but to Madelaine Bieber. The similarity of the two names struck him. Lane Barber could well be a stage name, "prettied up" from Madelaine Bieber.

He eyed the garage under the house as he came down the steps to the sidewalk. Did she drive or did she not?

He tried the door. Locked. However, by shining a flashlight from his car through the windows, he made out the shape of a car inside and illuminated the license plate. He wrote down the number.

Motion above him brought his attention up in time to see the drape fall back into place in the window over the garage. Lane, of course, watching him, but . . . out of curiosity or fear? Maybe the license number would help provide an answer to that.

Back at Bryant Street, he ran Madelaine Bieber through R and I, and asked for a registration check on the license number.

"The car is registered to a Miss Alexandra Pfeifer," the clerk told him. The address was Lane's.

"Give me a license check on that name."

The picture from DMV in Sacramento looked exactly like Lane Barber. Miss Pfeifer was described as five ten, 135 pounds, red hair, green eyes, born July 10, 1956. Which would now make her twenty-seven.

Then R and I came back with a make on Madelaine Bieber. "One prior, an arrest for assault and battery. No conviction. The charges were dropped. Nothing since. She's probably mellowed with age."

Garreth raised a brow. "Mellowed with age?"

"Yeah," the records clerk said. "The arrest was in 1941."

Garreth had the case file pulled for him.

Madelaine Bieber, he read, had been singing in a club in North Beach called the Red Onion. A fight started with a female patron over a man, and when the woman nearly had her ear bitten off, she preferred charges against the singer. Miss Bieber, aka Mala Babra, was described as five ten, 140 pounds, red hair, green eyes. Birth date July 10, 1916. The picture in the file looked exactly like Lane Barber in a forties hairstyle.

Garreth stared at the file. If Lane were born in 1916, she was now sixty-seven years old. No amount of face-lifting would ever make her look twenty-one. This Bieber must be a relative, perhaps Lane's mother, which would explain the likeness and similar choice in professions. But why was Lane receiving her mother's mail? Perhaps the mother was a patient in a nursing home and the mail went to her daughter. It was some­thing to check out. But another question remained: Why have a false driver's license and a car registered to that false license name?

Mystique? Lane generated nothing but, it seemed. The lady definitely deserved further attention.