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Now it’s your turn.”
    “Where’s Lyle?” she said. “I keep phoning and no one answers. I keep coming. I need my flute and my oboe. Nobody answers the doorbell. So today I tried getting in. Somebody phoned the security patrol. Luckily I saw them coming and ran around back and climbed the wall. If they’d found me I’d probably be in jail now. For attempted burglary. Are you going to call the police on me?”
    “It would be the sheriff,” Dave said, “and I’ve talked to the sheriff, and he doesn’t want to come here.”
    “Everything was locked up tight,” she said. “I was going to break a window tonight. Then I saw the lock was off the garage door. First I thought they were back, but their cars weren’t here. You got the lock off, right?”
    Dave took it out of his pocket and held it up.
    She blinked. “Did you break it?”
    “I didn’t have to,” he said.
    “Where’s Mr. Westover?” She tilted her head, puzzled. “Insurance? Did something happen to him?”
    “I don’t know. No one seems to know. I’m here because he filed an insurance claim with a company called Banner, only when I came to see him about it, he was gone. Appears to have been gone for days. I don’t see the sense of that. Except that he was in financial trouble. Maybe he couldn’t wait for his claim to be settled. What kind of trouble was Lyle in?”
    “He couldn’t go back to school.” She went to the circle of glittering music racks. She crouched and brought out from under the harpsichord two leather-covered instrument cases and laid them open on the polished wood of the harpsichord. One case was lined with dark blue plush, the other with maroon-color plush. “He was working.” She pulled the flute to pieces and laid the parts in grooves in one of the cases. “In the studios, TV background scores, you know—and recording studios. To help his father out.” She pulled the oboe to pieces and laid its parts in the second case. “He joined the union long ago, he was one of the youngest members. And good harpsichordists who can play classical, pop, rock, on sight, and tune their own instrument besides—they’re not common, okay?” She closed the cases. “That was the only ‘trouble’ he had—that he couldn’t go to school. He’s got a lot of studying to do yet—or that’s how he feels.” She snapped the catches closed on the cases. “Can I show you something?” she said.
    Dave went to her.
    She turned the cases and with plump, dimpled fingers touched little metal tags riveted into the hard leather. Dave put on his glasses and peered through them at the tags. Each tag read “T. Foley.” “‘T’ is for Trio,” she said. She was a homely girl. Her nose was a knob with a pushed-up tip like a pig’s. She was too old for pimples but she had them. Her cheeks were balloons. The lenses in those wire frames that made her little eyes seem to swim were thick because one of the eyes was crossed. Her voice was colorless. Her mouth turned down at the corners. But she had a beautiful smile. “With a name like Trio”—she groped in a crossways pouch pocket in the front of the Mexican pullover—“what could I be but a musician?” She brought out a wallet whose leather lacing had come loose. She showed Dave her automobile operator’s license, covered in cracked plastic that had turned yellow. “Trio Foley” was the name on the license, and the color photo made her look fatter than she was. She put the wallet away. “I wanted you to know I wasn’t stealing someone else’s instruments. Can I go now?”
    “You can go without asking me,” Dave said, “but I wish you’d tell me first where you think Lyle has gone.”
    “He didn’t say he was going anywhere,” she said. “If he had, I wouldn’t have left my instruments here, would I? The others took theirs, violin, cello. I had a score-copying job that wouldn’t leave me time to practice. We were set up to meet here again Friday. No one was home. We