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gently disheveled, clothes and books strewn about, and it had that expectant smell of pricey perfumes and broken-in denim that you find in the apartments of some young women. A pile of old mail was on the desk—nothing but some bills and advertisements. The room was dominated by a watercolor from a Santa Fe artist. Several gorgeous pieces of Acoma and Santa Clara pottery sat under a light sheen of dust on a shelf. In one corner was a music stand, chair and a cello case. Monochromatic Scandinavian furniture: tasteful, minimalist, and expensive. Not exactly like my apartment when I was twenty-eight—or now.
    Back in the bedroom, a queen-sized bed was neatly made. More clothes were piled onto a wicker basket. She had photos of Julie and her parents on the bedside table, as well as a paperback copy of
Atlas Shrugged
. I whispered the book’s first line in my head: “Who is John Galt?” I picked carefully through drawers, looked under her bed, pulled up the mattress. The closet was full of clothes and two pieces of luggage, both empty. The bathroom was spotless, but if she was off with a new lover, as Peralta was so sure, she’d left her diaphragm and a partly used tube of spermacide in the medicine chest.
    I closed the cabinet gently enough to hear a movement on the carpet behind me, then to see a shadow against the wall. I’d like to say I didn’t jump.
    “No, you get back,” she yelled, holding out a small can of Mace.
    “Wait, I’m a cop,” I said, the words sounding so strange to me. She stepped back to the bedroom door. “I’m going to reach in my pocket for an ID.” I opened up the wallet with my star and identification. She read it, compared my face with the one on the ID card, and reluctantly put the Mace down.
    She was not Phaedra, but she looked the way I might imagine Phaedra in, say, fifteen years. She was slim and fairly tall, wore a tailored charcoal gray suit, its skirt cut above the knees. Her strawberry blond hair fell to just above her shoulders, and her fine, high cheekbones had a heavy dusting of freckles. She stood, wary, watching me with green eyes.
    “Mapstone,” she said. “What kind of name is that?”
    “Welsh.”
    “Ah. You look more like a college professor than a deputy,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
    “I might ask you the same thing,” I said. “And I will. But I’d like to know who you are.”
    “I’m Phaedra’s boss,” she said. “Susan Knightly. I run the photo studio where Phaedra was working. She’s my assistant.”
    She dug into her shoulder bag and handed me a business card:

    “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Susan Knightly asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “Phaedra’s sister filed a missing person’s report.”
    “Julie,” she said, with something untranslatable in those green eyes. “I know about that. Have you found her?”
    I shook my head.
    “I’ve been watering her plants, keeping an eye on the place. Phaedra had given me a key.”
    That struck me as odd. Why hadn’t Julie told me this?
    “Do you know where Phaedra is?” I asked.
    “No idea,” she said. “She told me she might need to take a few days to take care of some business, and she asked me if I’d water her plants. Then I didn’t hear a word from her. I’ve been worried, but I didn’t know what else to do but wait, since Julie went to the police and all.”
    “That’s how she put it? ‘Take care of some business’?” She nodded. “Did Phaedra seem different, upset?”
    “She was a creative person, very tightly wound. But, yeah, she seemed, you know, strung out about something.”
    “But no idea what?”
    “No,” she said. “Here, help me water.” We went to the kitchen and filled a couple of pitchers. “Give the cactus just a shot. Give the ivies lots of water.”
    “What kind of an employee was she?” I asked, moving over to one shelf of greenery.
    “Very conscientious. Very hardworking. Being a photographer’s assistant can be real shit