“Hi.” Alfred remembered what he had rehearsed. “I’m a cousin of Penny Singleton. I just arrived here from Connecticut and wanted to say hello to her. This is the only address I have for her. Can you give me her forwarding address?”

The man looked at Alfred, his eyes darting from Alfred’s baseball cap to his dark glasses to his potbelly. The small head moved too, with the jerky motions reminiscent of a bird. He said, in a high-pitched voice, “Hasn’t she given you her forwarding address?”

“I’ve been on the road.” Alfred forced a chuckle. “It would have been hard for her to get hold of me. And she doesn’t know my address in Los Angeles because, as I said, I just arrived here.”

“You say you’re from Connecticut? You could contact Penny’s folks and find it that way.”

Alfred was getting irritated, but he tried to hide it. “I’d like to get in touch with Penny right away. I don’t have a lot of money to waste on long distance phone calls.”

“Have you rented a place yet?”

“Yes, I have.” The man was trying to rent him Penny’s apartment. What could he do to convince this sparrow to give him Penny’s address? “The thing is, my mother’s sick. She and Penny’s mother are sisters, but they don’t talk to each other. Some kind of long-standing feud. I felt that Penny would want to know about her aunt.”

“Sorry. I can’t help you.”

He closed the door. Right in Alfred’s face.

Gil couldn’t help the man with the beard who claimed to be Penny’s cousin, because Penny hadn’t told him where she was going. Even if she had, he might not have passed on the information. Something was fishy about the guy. Starting with the fact that Penny had just vacated the apartment yesterday afternoon. How did he know that Penny had moved out? Even if he’d knocked on her door, the fact of her not being there would certainly not be evidence of that.