There was a wariness in her eyes that he was enjoying a great deal. “Seeing as all I’ve had since this morning was bar nuts, I was thinking late lunch, early dinner. Why don’t you stop off somewhere? I’ll buy you a burger.”

She frowned over that for a moment, poking the suggestion for pitfalls. “I could use a burger,” she decided. “But we’ll go dutch.”

He smiled and settled back in his seat. “Whatever you say, Sutherland.”

Chapter 4

Mel spent most of the morning doing door-to-doors in Rose’s neighborhood with Sebastian’s sketch in her hand. By that afternoon, the score was three positive IDs, four offers of coffee, and one lewd proposition.

One of the positive IDs also corroborated Sebastian’s description of the car, right down to the dented door. And that gave Mel a very uncomfortable feeling.

It didn’t stop her from backtracking. There was a name on her list that continued to nag at her. Mel had a hunch Mrs. O’Dell in apartment 317 knew more than she was saying.

For the second time that day Mel knocked on the dull brown door, wiped her feet on the grass-green welcome mat with the white daisy in the corner. From inside she could hear the whining of children and the bright applause of a television game show.

As it had before, the door opened a few inches, and Mel looked down into the chocolate-smeared face of a young boy. “Hi. Is your mom home?”

“She don’t let me say to strangers.”

“Right. Maybe you could go get her.”

Bumping a sneakered foot against the doorjamb, the boy seemed to consider. “If I had a gun, I could shoot you.”

“Then it looks like this is my lucky day.” She crouched down until they were eye-to-eye. “Chocolate pudding, right?” she said, studying the smears around his mouth. “Did you get that from licking the spoon after your mom made it?”

“Yeah.” He shifted his feet and began to eye her with more interest. “How’d you know that?”

“Elementary, my dear pudding-face. The smears are pretty fresh, and it’s too close to lunch for your mom to let you have a whole bowl.”

The boy tilted his head. “Maybe I snuck it.”

“Maybe,” Mel agreed. “But then you’d be pretty dumb not to wash off the evidence.”

He started to grin when his mother swooped down from behind. “Billy! Didn’t I tell you not to answer the door?” She hauled him back one-handed. The other arm was full of a wiggling girl with teary eyes. Mrs. O’Dell sent Mel one impatient look. “What are you doing back around here? I told you everything I could already.”