10

I crossed the street and rang the bell of the house that faced Alan's. Within seconds, a young woman in a navy blue linen suit and a strand of pearls opened the door. She was holding a briefcase in one hand. "I don't know who you are, and I'm already late," she said. Then she gave me a quick inspection. "Well, you don't look like a Jehovah's Witness. Back up, I'm coming out. We can talk on the way to the car."

I stepped down, and she came out and locked her door. Then she looked at her watch. "If you start talking about the Kingdom of God, I'm going to stamp on your foot."

"I'm a friend of Alan Brookner's," I said. "I want to ask you about something a little bit strange that happened over there."

"At the professor's house?" She looked at me quizzically. "Everything that happens over there is strange. But if you're the person who got him to cut his lawn, the whole neighborhood is lining up to kiss your feet."

"Well, I called the gardener for him," I said.

Instead of kissing my feet, she strode briskly down the flagged pathway to the street, where a shiny red Honda Civic sat at the curb.

"Better start talking," she said. "You're almost out of time."

"I wondered if you happened to see someone putting a car into the professor's garage, one night within the past week or so. He thought he heard noises in his garage, and he doesn't drive anymore himself."

"About two weeks ago? Sure, I saw it—I was coming home late from a big client dinner. Someone was putting a car in his garage, and the light was on. I noticed because it was past one, and there are never any lights on in there after nine o'clock."

I followed her around the front of the car. She unlocked the driver's door. .

"Did you see the car or the person who was driving it? Was it a black Mercedes sports car?"

"All I saw was the garage door coming down. I thought that the younger guy who visits him was putting his car away, and I was surprised, because I never saw him drive." She opened the door and gave me another second and a half.

"What night was that, do you remember?"

She rolled her eyes up and jittered on one high heel. "Okay, okay. It was on the tenth of June. Monday night, two weeks ago. Okay?"

"Thanks," I said. She was already inside the car, turning the key. I stepped away, and the Civic shot down the street like a rocket.

Monday, the tenth of June, was the night April Ransom had been beaten into a coma and knifed in room 218 of the St. Alwyn Hotel.

I got into the Pontiac and drove down to Pigtown.