“Pinocchio Productions… I’m not in right now, but if you’ll—”

A woman’s voice broke in over his own, her tone impatient. “Pick up if you’re there, Jack. Otherwise I’ll call back later.”

Gia!

Jack nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to reach the phone. He turned off the answerphone with one hand and picked up the receiver with the other.

“Gia? That you?”

“Yes, it’s me.” Her voice was flat, almost resentful.

“God! It’s been a long time!” Two months. Forever. He had to sit down. “I’m so glad you called.”

“It’s not what you think, Jack.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not calling for myself. If it were up to me I wouldn’t be calling at all. But Nellie asked me to.”

His jubilation faded but he kept talking. “Who’s Nellie?” He drew a blank on the name.

“Nellie Paton. You must remember Nellie and Grace—the two English ladies?”

“Oh, yeah. How could I forget? They introduced us.”

“I’ve managed to forgive them.”

Jack let that go by without comment. “What’s the problem?”

“Grace has disappeared. She hasn’t been seen since she went to bed Monday night.”

He remembered Grace Westphalen: a very prim and proper Englishwoman pushing seventy. Not the eloping sort.

“Have the police—?”

“Of course. But Nellie wanted me to call you to see if you’d help. So I’m calling.”

“Does she want me to come over?”

“Yes. If you will.”

“Will you be there?”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes. Are you coming or not?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Better wait. The patrolmen who were here said a detective from the department would be coming by this morning.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t good.

“I thought that might slow you up.”

She didn’t have to sound so smug about it. “I’ll be there after lunch.”

“You know the address?”

“I know it’s a yellow townhouse on Sutton Square. There’s only one.”

“I’ll tell her to expect you.”

And then she hung up.

Jack tossed the receiver in his hand, cradled it on the answerphone again, and flipped the switch to ON.

He was going to see Gia today. She had called him. She hadn’t been friendly and she had said she was calling for someone else—but she had called. That was more than she had done since she had walked out. He couldn’t help feeling good.

He strolled through his third-floor apartment’s front room, which served as living room and dining room. He found the room immensely comfortable, but few visitors shared his enthusiasm. His best friend, Abe Grossman, had, in one of his more generous moods, described the room as “claustrophobic.” When Abe was feeling grumpy he said it made the Addams Family house look like it had been decorated by Bauhaus.

Old movie posters covered the walls along with bric-a-brac shelves loaded with the “neat stuff” Jack continually picked up in forgotten junk stores during his wanderings through the city. He wound his way through a collection of old Victorian golden oak furniture that left little room for anything else. There was a seven-foot hutch, intricately carved, a fold-out secretary, a sagging, high-backed sofa, a massive claw-foot dining table, two end-tables whose legs each ended in a bird’s foot clasping a crystal sphere, and his favorite, a big, wing-back chair.