The change was more marked in the behavior of her cat, who watched him warily, tail lashing, while he sipped tea, and sneaked amazed glances at the television. It had materialized overnight.

"It's my boss. Lieutenant Railsback. The woman claims the dead man's her brother. He says that, being's you're the only other one we can find who knew him, you'll have to come down and take a look too."

The woman was no fool. From her four-feet-ten she looked up and smiled a thin, I-don't-believe-a-word smile. Well, so much for poor Hank, he thought. For once the horns and tail couldn't be sloughed off on him. My turn in the barrel.

But she didn't call him on it. He suspected she had already decided that it would come to this and had elected for continued cooperation. Even if she were guilty of something, the net he was drawing closer had holes big enough for much larger fish to slip through.

"Just let me get my hat and coat," she said. "I'll only be a minute."

To his surprise, that was all it took. As she returned, she said, "I hope you will understand if I'm nervous. I have not been anywhere in so long."

Her stepping-out togs, which included a parasol, confirmed her claim. Coat and hat were ancient, and looked it, though they weren't threadbare. Cash thought his mother, at thirty, would have looked stylish in them. He hoped no one laughed. He was causing the woman enough distress as it was.

"I look how?"

His pause gave him away.

"Behind the times, yes? I can see out my windows, Sergeant." Her accent thickened. She smiled nervously. "Maybe, for my trouble, around the shops I should make you take me."

He groaned inwardly, dreading the chance. Annie was a window-shopping terror who drove him squirrely, and her wardrobe was up to date. Shopping with any of the women he knew sent him up the wall. His style was to decide what he wanted beforehand, get in, grab it, and get the hell out.

His dread showed. "Not to fret," she said. "Force you I won't. Well, let us be off." Her nervousness grew more intense.

Cash glanced at his watch. He was running early. He led the way to the car, making sure he held doors and gates. Neighborhood children stared. Some ran to inform their mothers. Miss Groloch pretended not to notice.

Cash was about to pull out when a truck stopped alongside him. A boy ran the afternoon paper to Miss Groloch's door. No big thing, Cash thought, but proof she wasn't completely out of touch.

Cash's home was just two blocks south and two east. He had to kill time. Miss Groloch had gotten ready far faster than expected.

"This's my home," he told her as he rolled to the curb. "I'm going to pick up my wife. I thought you'd be more comfortable if she went with us."

She did not respond positively or negatively. All during the drive her gaze had been aflutter as she devoured the changes time had wrought on the neighborhood.

"Is possible I can wait inside? Meaning no imposition."

"Of course." She would feel exposed, Cash thought. He hurried around to her door, saying hello to a neighbor's child on her way home from some special event at St. Margaret's School. Another dozen children were in sight. Miss Groloch paid them no heed.

He hoped Annie would be as slow as usual.

She was, the mindreader.

Miss Groloch prowled his living room like a cat in a strange environment, saying, when he offered her a chair and tea, "I'm too skittery. You don't mind?"

"No. Go ahead and look around."

She examined the television, apparently comparing it to her own, the telephone, a clock radio, and other impedimenta that had been developed or refined since she had gone into seclusion, and seemed especially intrigued by the concept of a paperback book. Several lay scattered about. Annie couldn't work on just one at a time.

"The kitchen? May I look?"

"Sure. Sure. I like to show it off. Did it over myself, about five years ago. It was a real antique. Same icebox and stove as when we moved in in forty-nine."

Miss Groloch seemed amazed by the smooth, coilless surface of the electric stove, and by the freezer compartment atop the refrigerator.

"So pretty. And convenient. And reliable? But wasteful, I suppose."

"Up here, someday, I'm going to put a microwave oven."

In moments he was doing all the talking, revealing plans of which even Annie was unaware. Time whipped past. He might have conducted the grand tour had Annie not decided it was time to go.

Miss Groloch had not, till that moment, seen Cash's wife. When she did, she peered at her queerly for a moment, then snapped her fingers. "The pears. Ripe pears from the tree beside the carriage house. I never did catch you, did I? "

Annie's eyes got big. One hand fluttered to her mouth. She grew more red than she had when Cash's Uncle Mort, drunk as usual, had gone further than usual with his off-color remarks at Michael's wedding reception. "Oh…" was all she could say, then and now.

Cash frowned at each in turn.

"Oh, she was a demon," said Miss Groloch. "Bolder than any of the boys. They thought I was a witch, you know. She would climb the fence and steal the pears. The boys would hide in the alley behind the carriage house."

Cash looked at his wife, trying to picture her as a tomboy child. He didn't doubt that she was guilty as charged. He decided not to tease her about it just yet, though. She looked frightened.

A memory that good did seem witchy.

Annie valiantly tried playing hostess all the way downtown, but couldn't get into the role. She kept lapsing into long silences. For Cash's part, he was thinking about carriage houses. Miss Groloch's, and any neighboring pear tree, was gone now, but its location was interesting.

He had seen Miss Groloch's backyard. There was room for a carriage house in just one place. Against the alley where the body had been discovered.

Had the carriage house been there still, there would have been little mystery in most of the physical evidence. The man could have stepped out and collapsed.

The bustle of downtown did nothing to settle anyone's nerves.

John met them in the hallway outside the morgue. He looked grim.

"Problems?" Cash asked.

"I feel like a Fed trying to make a tax case against Tony G. The trails are invisible. And none of them lead anywhere anyway." He then shut up. Miss Groloch was perturbed enough.