Deedra’s apartment was the right rear, just above Becca’s. It overlooked the paved rear parking lot, not an inspiring view. It held a carport divided into eight stalls, a Dumpster, and not much else. I wasn’t sure who, besides Deedra, lived on the second floor now, but I’d known many of the people who’d passed through. Claude Fried-rich, the chief of police and a friend of mine, had moved from the second floor to the first after a leg injury. I figured he and Deedra had been the in the building the longest. Generally, the eight units of the so-called Shakespeare Garden Apartments stayed full because the units were a nice size and fairly reasonable. I was pretty sure Becca had gone up on the rent as the leases ran out, because I had a faint memory of Deedra complaining, but it hadn’t been an outrageous increase.

I knocked on Deedra’s door. The same tall officer answered, the guy who’d been at the crime scene. He filled up the doorway; after a long second, he stepped aside so I could enter. He was lucky looking at me was a free activity, or he would be broke by now.

“Sheriff’s in there,” he said, pointing toward Deedra’s bedroom. But instead of following his hint, I stood in the center of the living room and looked around. I’d been in to clean the past Friday, and today was Monday, so the place still looked good; Deedra was careless with herself, but she had always been fairly tidy with everything else.

The furniture seemed to be in the same spots, and all the cushions were straight. Her television and VCR were untouched; rows of videotapes sat neat and square on their little bookcase by the television. The brand-new CD player was on the stand by the television. All Deedra’s magazines were in the neat stack I’d arranged a few days before, except for a new issue left open on the coffee table in front of the couch, where Deedra usually sat when she watched television. Her bills were piled in the shallow basket where she’d tossed them.