She made herself huffy. 'I wouldn't know. I don't spy on people.'

'Of course.'

'People come and people go. You're old and livin' alone, no one gives you the time a day.' She went back to C-Span, and now I could smell cat litter and turnips.

'Well, he's a little shorter than me, thinner, glasses, a hairline back to here.'

She turned up the sound and waved the remote. 'People come, people go.'

I nodded, Mr. Understanding, Mr. Of-Course-I-Wouldn't-Expect-You-to-Remember. Then I slapped my head and made like I'd just realized that I was the world's biggest moron. 'Jeez, he must've wanted me to meet him at work! I'll bet we're supposed to meet there, then go out! Of course!' The World's Greatest Detective employs the Relatable Human Failing technique in an effort to cultivate rapport.

The woman frowned at her television, then muted the sound again. 'What a bullshit story.'

'Excuse me?'

Her face cracked into a thin, angry smile that said she was as sharp as a straight razor, and if a guy like me didn't watch out she would hand back his head. 'If there's something you wanna know, just ask. You don't have to make up a bullshit story about old friends getting together. What a crock!'

I smiled again, but now the smile was saying, okay, you nailed me. 'Sorry about that.' Shown up by the Bride of Frankenstein.

She made a little shrug, like it wasn't a big thing. 'You hadda try, you just went too far with it. A guy making out as nice as you wouldn't be caught dead being friends with an asswipe like Will Brownell.' I guess they didn't get along. 'What's the real story?'

'Brownell's friend owes me six hundred dollars.'

She cackled and shook her head. 'I mighta known. Sooner or later it always gets down to money, doesn't it?'

'Uh-huh.' Everyone relates to greed. 'How about the guy I described? Has he been around?'

She made the shrug again, but it seemed sincere. 'That's not much of a description, young man. Could be anyone.'

'Fair enough. Can you tell me where Brownell works?'

'He works at some printing place.'

' New World Printing?'

'Maybe.' The other Seattle number that Clark had phoned.

I said, 'You won't tell Brownell that I was around, will you?'

She turned back to the television. 'What'd the sonofabitch ever do for me?' Nope, I don't guess they got along.

I went back down the stairs to the street and checked out the building. Two of the kids were gone, but the kid in the Mariners cap was sitting in the doorway to the video store on a wooden stool, inspecting a car magazine. The C-Span Lady's apartment was above the metalwork place at the front of the building, which meant Brownell's apartment was in the rear. I walked down to the end of the block, rounded the corner, then came up the service alley. A rickety fire escape ran up the back of the building to the roof like a metal spiderweb. I counted windows and visualized the location of the C-Span Lady's apartment so that I would know which windows belonged to Brownell. There were a lot of windows. Potted plants nested around some of the windows and drying clothes hung from the rails outside others, and a kid's tricycle rested on the fire escape outside still another. Figure that one. Brownell's windows were closed.

I used a Dumpster to reach the fire escape ladder, chinned myself to the rail, and let myself into Wilson Brownell's dining area. One should always lock one's windows, even in friendly cities like Seattle.

Clark Haines was not asleep on the couch. The apartment was quiet and warm from having been closed, and smelled of coffee and Jiffy Pop. The dining area opened into a living room ahead of me and a kichenette to my right. Beyond the kitchenette was a door that probably led to a bedroom and a bath. A vinyl couch and a mismatched chair filled one corner of the living room opposite a Sony Trinitron and a VCR. A coffee table was angled between the couch and the chair, scattered with magazines and a yellow rotary phone. A small pine table and three chairs sat in the dining area, along with an Ikea shelving unit showing a couple of plants, a bright orange goldfish in an oversized pickle jar, and some photographs of an African-American woman with a pretty smile. The woman looked young, but the photographs looked old, and I thought that the woman might now be, also. Precise, photo-realistic drawings of the woman had been framed and hung on the walls. They were signed Wilson , but in style and technique they looked exactly like the drawings that Clark Haines had done of his children.

You hope for the obvious: a sleeping bag and pillows on the couch, a suitcase, a note stuck to the fridge saying 'meet Clark at 5,' anything that might indicate an out-of-town guest, or the location of same. Nada. A case of beer cooled in the fridge and the cabinets were filled with enough booze for a booksellers' convention, but that didn't mean Brownell had company. Maybe he was just a lush. The magazines turned out to be trade catalogs for commercial printing equipment and industry magazines with dog-eared pages and supply brochures. The marked pages all noted paper and ink suppliers in Europe and Asia. Four of the catalogs still had their mailing labels, and all of the labels were addressed to Wilson Brownell. A hot topic in most of the magazines seemed to be Digital Micro-scanning Architecture for Zero Generation Loss. Whatever that meant. I guess if you're a printer, you like to read about printing.

I took a quick peek in the bath, then went to the bedroom. Clark Haines wasn't there either. A neatly made double bed sat against the wall, along with a chest and a dresser and a drafting table. I glanced into the closet. One bed, one toothbrush, one set of toiletries, one used towel, no luggage or alternative bedding. More photographs of the same woman sat upon the chest and the dresser, only some of these showed a smiling African-American man. Wilson Brownell. An in-progress drawing was tacked down onto the drafting table, pen and ink, done with very fine lines, showing an almost photographic reproduction of the Seattle skyline. Wilson Brownell might be a lush, but he was also a gifted artist and I wondered if it was he who had trained Clark. Maybe Clark had come up here for art lessons.

I went through the nightstand and the chest, and was working through the dresser when I noticed a small Kodak snapshot wedged along the bottom edge of the dresser's mirror, half hidden behind yet more photographs of the woman. It was a color shot of two couples standing on a fishing pier, one of the couples Brownell and the woman, the other a much younger Caucasian couple. The Caucasian woman had dark wavy hair, pale skin, and glasses. She looked exactly like an older, adult version of Teresa Haines. She was smiling at the camera, and holding hands with a thin guy whose hairline was already starting to recede. I took down the picture and turned it over. On the back, someone had written: Me and Edna, Clark and Rachel Hewitt, 1986. I looked at the picture again. The Caucasian woman had to be Teri's mother, and the man had to be Clark, only the name wasn't Haines, it was Hewitt.

I put the picture in my pocket, made sure everything else was like I had found it, then let myself out the window, walked around to the street, and once more climbed the stairs. The C-Span Lady's door was still open, and she was still shaking her remote at her television. Guess if I watched Congress all day I'd want to shake something, too.

I said, 'One more thing.'

Her eyes narrowed, and she muted the sound.

I held out the picture, and this time I didn't bother to smile. 'Is this one of the people who come and go?'

She looked at the picture, then she looked back at me. 'He owe you money, too?'

'Everybody owes me money. I have a generous nature.'