“Yes, he is. I won’t claim he’s an angel, but he won’t make a nuisance of himself. If he gives you any trouble, just let me know.”

“Sure. Look, I’ll come by tomorrow to sign the lease and give you a check. I’ll pick up the keys then.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Any special time good for you?”

She looked blank for a moment. “What’s tomorrow?”

“Friday.”

“Friday.” She closed her eyes and flipped through her messy internal calendar. “I’m working between ten and two. I think.” She opened her eyes again, smiled. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Anytime after two thirty?”

“Fine. Nice meeting you, Mrs. Fleming.”

She took his offered hand. “It’s Miss,” she said easily. “I’m not married. And since we’ll be living together, so to speak, you can make it Zoe.”

Chapter 2

No one answered the door. Again. Coop checked his watch and saw that it was a quarter to three. He didn’t like to think he was a man obsessed with time, but as his living centered around deadlines, he did respect it. There was no rusting station wagon in the driveway this time, but he walked around the back of the house, hoping. Before he could start up the stairs to the apartment, he was hailed from across the chain-link fence.

“Young man! Yoo-hoo, young man!” Across the yard next door came a flowered muumuu, topped with a curling thatch of brightly hennaed hair that crowned a wide face. The woman hurried to the fence in a whirl of color. It wasn’t just the dress and the improbable hair, Coop noted. The face itself was a rainbow of rich red lipstick, pink cheeks and lavender eye shadow.

When she reached the fence, she pressed a many-ringed hand over the wide shelf of her breasts. “Not as young as I used to be,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Finkleman.”

“Hi.”

“You’re the young man who’s going to live upstairs.” Mrs. Finkleman, a born flirt, patted her curls. “Zoe didn’t tell me you were so handsome. Single, are you?”

“Yeah,” Coop said cautiously. “Miss Fleming was supposed to meet me. She doesn’t seem to be home.”

“Well, that’s Zoe, flying here, flying there.” Mrs. Finkleman beamed and leaned comfortably on the fence, as if she were settling in for a nice cozy gossip. “Got a dozen things on her plate at once, that girl does. Having to raise that sweet little boy all alone. Why, I don’t know what I’d have done without my Harry when our young ones were coming up.”

Coop was a reporter, after all. That, added to the fact that he was curious about his landlady, put him in interview mode. “The kid’s father doesn’t help out any?”

Mrs. Finkleman snorted. “Don’t see hide nor hair of him. From what I’m told, he lit out the minute he found out Zoe was expecting. Left her high and dry and her hardly more than a child herself. Far as I know, he’s never so much as seen the boy. The little sweetheart.”