Alicia Thorpe lived alone in the basement room of a gingerbread Victorian on upper Masonic, and although by now it was close to two o’clock in the afternoon, as she opened the door to her separate entrance around the back, it was clear that she hadn’t really gotten herself moving for the day. It didn’t take a trained investigator to see that she’d already spent some of the day crying, but the lack of any makeup and a blotchy complexion couldn’t disguise the basic truth of Ian’s description of her. She was, at the very least, kind of pretty. And obviously braless under a San Francisco Zoo T-shirt tucked into the slim waist of a pair of red-striped running shorts.

The day was warm, the sky clear blue, the air windless. A table with four chairs and a Cinzano umbrella graced the small brick patio area just outside her door, and after the introductions, the three of them gravitated there and sat down.

“So,” Mickey began, “no cops so far today?”

“No.”

“And how long did they talk to you yesterday?”

“About an hour. There were two of them, a man and a woman.”

“Did you get their names?”

She shook her head no, but then said, “Wait,” and suddenly jumped up, heading back to the house. She reemerged a few seconds later and handed Mickey two business cards.

“Well, this is pretty decent news,” he said with a smile of genuine surprise.

“What?”

“I know these people. They’re among the good ones. Devin Juhle is probably my boss’s best friend.”

“I don’t see how that really helps,” Alicia said.

“It helps because they’ll probably talk to us off the record. They might be tempted to extend you a few courtesies, which normally isn’t a big part of the arrest procedure. Every little bit helps. You’ll see.”

“I hope I don’t see.” Now her large eyes opened all the way-white showing around startling green irises-and she reached a hand over and touched his arm for a second. “So you think they’re going to arrest me?”