"How are things at work?" Alec lifted his feet onto the edge of his desk and clapped his feet together rhythmically to the tune in his head.

"A lot of nasty gossip and very little remorse. I have become a bit of a celebrity." Darlene asked him to hold while she took a call. He stretched his shoulders and plupped his lips together in an imitation of music. "Hi, still there?"

"Yup."

"What's happening at your end?"

"Well if it's the building you're asking about, nothing much."

"Pig."

"The police came by once to see Molly but that's about it." He grinned, picturing her face with a comfortable pleasure.

"I would like to have dinner like we talked about, but I wonder if we should."

"Why not? We're not under house arrest or anything. We didn't do anything, Darlene."

"Pity."

"Sow."

"Call you later." She rang off and he hung up at his end, knuckling his eyes and smiling very wide.

*****

Sophia took the call at work and pushed the door to the storeroom closed so she could argue without annoying the customers. "It's your own fault, Seb. You run off in the middle of the party right after Wally went inside; you make yourself look guilty acting like that. The police don't know that you're a jerk all the time." She set her jaw and listened to him roar. "Oh really? Well I happen to have Detective White's phone number and if you so much as lay one finger on me again, you're going to be dealing with him."

She looked out the door to make sure nobody was nearby. "Yeah, that's right, Seb. Detective White and I are getting it on. Instead of questioning me that night, we did it in on the kitchen table—you ass." Her boss cracked the door and gave her the high sign. "I have to go. Somebody has to make enough money to pay the bills." She hung up in the middle of a garbled tirade.

Sebastian flung the phone against the couch and snatched up his beer, setting it down again and pounding his fist into the side of his beanbag chair. She was right, the way he'd acted up during the interview with the police was stupid; it did make him look suspect. He paced back and forth growling obscenities and stating aloud his intentions toward his wife when she returned home.

*****

Brenda had cleared a space in her closet for a few of Geena's clothes and had also made some space on the bathroom counter. The folding cot that had traveled with her since university was dragged out of another cupboard and situated alongside her own bed.

Geena unpacked the few items she'd brought and then tested the cot. "It'll be like going back to camp," she smiled.

"Are you okay?" Brenda sat on the cot beside her.

"Not really. I feel like I just woke up from a bad dream." She turned to Brenda and searched her face as if for some resolution. "I think I've wasted the best years of my life, Bren."

"Don't be silly, you've got your best years ahead of you. What are you, thirty-two?" Brenda tried to sound light.

"Hah! I need you around a little more. I'm forty-three."

Brenda's mouth dropped. "Geena, god...you are one great looking forty-three. I never would have guessed."

"Gary's the kid," she said ruefully. "He's only thirty-five." She hunched her shoulders and stared at her clasped hands. "I think it's over with him, I really do."

"Oh c'mon, Geena, you guys are perfect together. Everybody has spats like these."

"No you don't understand. We are nothing together. We're just a pair of computer jacks plugging into anything that smacks of technology. Gary and I haven't plugged into one another, in any sense of the term, for years. Remember I said about waking from a bad dream? Well, that was it—a cyberspace existence void of anything remotely real."

"But that was what you do... did. You guys were really successful." Brenda put her arm around Geena and squeezed comfortingly.

"Not at what really counts." She looked worried. "Brenda, I'm too old to keep up this ridiculous pace. My god, I haven't read a book, taken a stroll or even slept in for the past ten years. And for what? More of the bloody same day in and day out." I want to know a bit of life before it's too late, Brenda. I want to actually smell some roses."

"You came to the right place, girl. Roses it is."

***************

The book was black leather with red leather corners. A gold ribbon page marker looped over the top covering part of the gold stamped lettering that defined the ledger. Detective White ran his fingers over the surface and clucked his teeth.

"This is really beautiful, Miss Degrew. I can't believe you do all your entries by hand—and with a quill pen yet."

"Thankyou, young man. While I'm not close to being a Luddite, I simply cannot abide the rush, rush, rush of today's technology."

"I hear you, ma'am. Your neighbour across the hall seems to share the same view."

"Mister Whiteside?"

"Yeah. He seems to like the old fashioned hands on approach to things... his models and all." White added as an example.

"Oh yes. Stanley is very talented in that way."

"His dog doesn't bother you?"

"Why should it? Haggis is a great burglar alarm, he barks at everything and everyone."

"Must be a nuisance."

"We've grown to ignore it, it's like living beside a railway, eventually you don't even hear the trains go by."

White nodded and carefully opened the book and noted that there was an alphabetical designation down the edge of the pages, each letter in a silver box. He ran his finger down to the letter 'S' and opened to that section. There were several surnames beginning with 'S' with dates going back into the late twenties. "How long have you been here, Miss Degrew?"

"My family built this building in nineteen twenty-one, I was five and a half. My father died and my mother turned it into a rooming house during the depression. Some of those early entries are in her hand." White looked closely and saw the feathery script that she referred to. "In nineteen thirty-two my mother passed away and I took over the business. That was when I named it Garbo Towers and began restricting the renters. I confess that I still retain that right in spite of the regulations."

White laughed. "You won't get any hassle from me on that front, Miss Degrew." He turned his attention to the current entries and read about Walter Spade. "You really go in for profiling your tenants, don't you?"

"This is my home, detective. Wouldn't you want to know about the people staying in your home?"

The logic was too good. He nodded. "I see that you also run background searches." He raised his eyes and she out-waited him. "Mind if I ask how you go about that, I mean with a quill pen and all?"

"I have my sources, detective. I don't think that revealing them in this case is really necessary, do you?" Millicent gestured toward his teacup with the pot, accepting his raised hand as a no, before refilling her own.

"It says here," he went on without answering, "Wally Spade changed his name from Béiche. Any idea why?"

"He anglicized it, detective. Béiche is French for spade."

White nodded and ran his finger down the alphabet, flipping over to "H'. "I notice that Regina Hasslet uses her maiden name yet she was married with a son... two, actually. One stepson."

"Many women revert to their family names after divorce." She sipped her tea and watched him read the ledger.

"Yes, but you've recorded her married name as well, Miss Degrew—Regina Béiche." White helped himself to a social tea cookie and chomped complacently, waiting for Millicent to respond.

"Please state your insinuation, detective, I don't improvise well."

"Did Regina Hasslet know that she was living I the same building as her stepson?"

"If she did, she didn't find out from me." Millicent set her cup down and folded her hands on her lap. The body language indicated to White that she was digging in.

"Hmm. Perhaps your unnamed source provided the information." He closed the book and placed it carefully on the side table, putting a wave in one of Millicent's doilies. She didn't answer.

"Thankyou for your help, Miss Degrew. If I have further questions I'll be in touch. And thank you also for the tea and cookies."

He stood, towering over her, smiled, and went out the door.