She left home in good time. The journey from Zebra Drive to the offices of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, shared with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, took about ten minutes or less by car, but on foot it would take at least forty minutes. Mma Ramotswe decided to allow an hour, although it would not matter too much if she took longer; her first appointment, with Mr. Molofololo, was not until eleven o'clock, and there would not be much to do before then. Mma Makutsi would have collected the mail, such as it was, and done whatever filing was left over from yesterday. There were also one or two minor cases that her assistant was working on, and she might busy herself with writing reports on these. Mma Makutsi was an enthusiastic writer of reports and maintained a bulging file labelled Incidental and Interim Reports that served little purpose in Mma Ramotswe's view, but that kept her busy at slack times. Mma Ramotswe thought of this file as Mma Makutsi's diary, but never described it as such. Her assistant, she remembered, was temperamental, and Mma Ramotswe had not forgotten that she had handed in her resignation not all that long ago. Even if she had stayed out of the office for less than a day, and had returned as if nothing had happened, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself that Mma Makutsi had no real need to work now that she was engaged to be married to Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop and, as such, a man of considerable means. So she was careful not to offend her sometimes prickly assistant, and calling the Incidental and Interim Reports file a diary would undoubtedly have been very offensive.

The walk down Zebra Drive itself was uneventful. Her neighbour's dogs, those strange yellow dogs that Mma Ramotswe did not particularly like, barked at her as if she was any other passerby, running along the fence at the side of the neighbour's property, baring their teeth in impotent anger. She saw a curtain move in the neighbour's window and heard a shout as the dogs were called in; she waved, and the neighbour returned her greeting, a quick movement of a hand in a still-darkened room.

At the top of Zebra Drive there was more traffic, and she had to wait a few moments before she crossed to the other side of the road. The day still had the early morning feel about it, and the air was still sharp with a whiff of wood smoke. There were small huddles of people waiting beside the road for the early minibuses to sway past and a few others walking; domestic employees, Mma Ramotswe thought—cooks, maids, nannies of children—making their way to the well-set houses in the roads near Maru-a-Pula School. One of the women she recognised, a traditionally built woman like herself, who came from somewhere near Kgale Junction and who had served Mma Ramotswe tea when she had called on the principal of Maru-a-Pula to discuss with him the possibility of her taking part in a careers fair at the school.