He was dressed in the quintessential artist’s costume: faded black T-shirt and jeans. He went to the railing to look at the little gardens. The Korean family on the second floor and Mr. Contreras both grew a few vegetables; the rest of us didn’t have the time or patience for yard work.

Peppy went over to greet him, and I got up to haul her away. Not everyone is as eager to see her as she is to see them.

“It’s okay.” He scratched her ears. “I’m Jake Thibaut. I don’t think you were here when I moved in.”

“V. I. Warshawski. I was in Europe, and can’t seem to adjust to the time change. I’m not usually up this early.”

“I’m definitely not up this early. I just got in from Portland on the red-eye.”

I asked if his band had been playing out there, and he made an odd face. “It’s a chamber music group, but I guess you could call it a band. We were touring the West Coast.”

I laughed and told him what I’d heard from Mr. Contreras.

“Poor Dr. Dankin. She worries so much about the noise I make that I’m tempted sometimes to park my bass outside her front door and serenade her. Of course, your dogs and your criminal associates worry her most.”

“My most criminal associate is this gal’s son,” I said, petting Peppy. Close up, I could see he was older than I’d first thought, perhaps in his forties.

I offered him an espresso, but he shook his head. “I have students in five hours. I need to try to sleep.”

I let myself into Mr. Contreras’s kitchen to collect Mitch and ran over to the lake with him and Peppy. Mr. Contreras was puttering around his kitchen when we got back, but I turned down breakfast. I wanted to get a head start on Lamont Gadsden. I had a full calendar this afternoon, including a job for my most important client, the one whose fees would pay for those Lario boots and a few other expensive unnecessities.

A forty-year-old trail is a cold one, and Miss Ella hadn’t given me much in the way of bread crumbs to follow. In my office, I ran through the databases that make the modern detective’s life so easy these days. Lamont Gadsden hadn’t changed his name, at least not since those records were automated. As Lamont Gadsden, he didn’t own a car in any of the fifty states. He wasn’t being sued for child support or alimony. No department of corrections housed him.

I turned to other work and was in the middle of a report for another client when Karen Lennon called. She had visited Miss Ella this morning.

“We talked for a bit, and she finally was able to remember the names of some of the people who knew her son.”