“Official, I’m afraid,” Harry said.
“In that case, I’ll sit down.” Garreth felt her legs rub against his under the small table as she pulled up a chair. She smiled at Harry. “Konnichi wa, Inspector Takananda. I’ve always enjoyed my visits to Japan. It’s a beautiful country.”
“So I hear. I’ve never been there.”
“That’s a pity.” She turned toward Garreth. “And you are —?”
“Inspector Garreth Mikaelian.”
She laughed. “A genuine Irish policeman. How delightful.”
Irish through and through, true, despite his name, that she apparently heard as McSomething. Which it had once been — McAlan — until his grandfather’s apparent sudden move to Sacramento from Chicago in 1929. A fact he discovered accidentally as a boy, but asking his grandmother about turned her grim and earned him a tight-lipped order to never, ever mention it again. Some day he would really like to investigate his grandfather’s background.
A thought jerking him back to investigation at hand…where studying Lane as well as possible in the club’s dimness, he realized with surprise she was not really a beautiful woman. Her voice and the way she moved, and something radiating from her, almost irresistible in its magnetism, made her seem beautiful. She looked barely twenty.
“Now, what is this unfortunately official visit about?” she asked. “It can’t be a traffic ticket; I haven’t driven anywhere in weeks.”
“Were you working last week?” Harry asked.
She nodded. Oddly, her eyes reflected red in the flame of the candle. Garreth had never seen that in humans before. He watched her, fascinated.
“Do you remember speaking to a man on Monday who was in his thirties, maybe your height when you’re barefoot, wearing a red coat with black velvet lapels and collar? He was with four other men, and four young women.”
She shook her head. “I must have talked to dozens of people that night. I’m afraid I can’t recall any particular one.”
“Maybe this will help.” Garreth showed her the picture of Mossman.
She tilted it to the light of the candle and studied it gravely. “Now I remember him. We didn’t really talk, though. I flirted with him while I sang because he was nice-looking and the one member of the group who didn’t have a companion. As he left, he came over to say how much he liked my singing.” She paused. “You’re from Homicide. Is he a suspect or a victim?”
The lady was cool and fast on the uptake, Garreth reflected. “A victim,” he said. “Did he come back here on Tuesday?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. He asked me out, but I didn’t go. I don’t date married men.”
Harry said, “We need to know exactly what he said and did Tuesday. What time did he come in?”
She frowned in thought. “I don’t really know. He was here when I did my first set at eight. He stayed all evening and we talked off and on, but not too much. I didn’t want to encourage him. Finally I told him I wasn’t interested in going out with him. The bartender, Chris, can confirm that we sat there at the end of the bar. About twelve-thirty he left.”
Garreth made notes by the light of the candle. “Was that the last you saw of him?”
“Yes. Lots of men don’t know how to take no for an answer, but he did.”
“I suppose you have a fair number of guys hitting on you. Do you ever take anyone up on the offer?”
She smiled. “Of course, if the man interests me. I don’t pretend to be a nun. What business is it of yours?”
“Where do you usually go, your place or his?”
Her eyes flared red in the candlelight, but she replied evenly, “Yes.”
Garreth dropped the subject, recognizing evaporating cooperation. There would be time enough later to question her about Adair, if need be. “I’m sorry; that was irrelevant. I’ll need your name and address, though, in case we want to talk to you again.”
“Of course.” She gave him the address, an apartment near Telegraph Hill.
“Are you a permanent resident of the city?” Harry asked.
“I travel a good deal, but this is home base, yes.”
“Are you a native like Harry there, or an immigrant like me?”
“Yes,” she replied, and when their brows rose, she smiled. “Women are more fascinating with a bit of mystique, don’t you think? Leave me mine until you absolutely must have the information, can’t you?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time for the next set. Please excuse me.”
She rose and left, walking gracefully toward the piano. Garreth fought an urge to follow her. If she affected Mossman the same way, no wonder he came back.
Harry grinned at him. “Do you still want to involve her in two murders?”
She began a song in sultry tones that made Garreth’s hormones cheer and brought quick speculation about the feel of those long legs wrapped around him. “I’d rather date than arrest her,” he admitted. “She seems cooperative enough and she didn’t hesitate to admit she’d seen Mossman Tuesday. Still…”
“Still,” Harry agreed. “You never know, so we’d better check her out.”
5
Lying awake in the darkness of his bedroom, Garreth heard the foghorns start. The years living here had taught him to recognize the patterns of a few, like the double hoot of the one on Mile Rocks and the single every-twenty-seconds blast of the one on Point Diablo. Fog moving in, he thought.
He stopped consciously listening when the horns and diaphone on the Golden Gate Bridge joined the chorus. The dial of his watch glowed on the bedside table, but he resisted the urge to look at it. Why see how long he had lain awake?
He folded his hands behind his head. What was wrong? Why should he be bothered that their interviews with the manager of the Barbary Now and the singer’s neighbors last night and today turned up nothing to connect her with the murders?
“I wish everyone I hired were as dependable,” the manager said. “She’s always on time, always polite to even the biggest asshole customers, never drunk or strung out. Lane never causes trouble.”
Her neighbors echoed the sentiment. One said, “You’d hardly know she’s there. She sleeps all day and comes home from work after we’ve gone to bed. If she brings anyone home, I don’t know it because she never makes a sound. She’s away on tour sometimes and it may be a week before I realize she’s gone.”
“Do you ever see any of her friends?” Garreth had asked.
“Once in a while. They’re men, mostly, leaving in the morning, but all very well dressed…none of the dirty, hairy, hippie types.”
Altogether their questions produced a picture of an ideal neighbor and employee. So what did he find so disturbing about that? Maybe just that. People who kept a profile low to the point of invisibility felt suspicious. Even granting differences between professional images and private lives, he could not quite reconcile such a life-style with the sexy, coolly sophisticated young woman from the Barbary Now. The maiden is powerful, I Ching said. One should not marry such a maiden. Beware of that which seems weak and innocent.
Yet, he could not picture her threading a needle into Mossman’s jugular, either…not with his present knowledge of her.
“I need to know more,” he said aloud into the darkness.
The midchannel Golden Gate diaphone sounded out of the fog in its bellow-and-grunt voice, as though replying to his remark.
He would talk to her landlord, he decided, lying back in bed, and then to more of the Barbary Now personnel. He would see if all their opinions matched the ones he had already heard.
That decided, he lay relaxed, listening to the hooting and bellowing of the foghorns reverberate through the night. The rhythmic chorus lulled him to sleep.
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.