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but I could have sworn I'd seen that color in a Clairol ad. He had small blue eyes, blond lashes, and graying sideburns. His face was big and his complexion was ruddy. He wore his shirttail out, probably to disguise the extra thirty pounds he carried. He looked like a fellow who'd played in a rock-and-roll band in his youth, writing his own excruciatingly amateurish tunes. The earring surprised me: a dangling cross of gold. I also caught a glimpse of some sort of religious medal on a gold chain that disappeared under his V-neck T-shirt. His chest hair was gray. Looking at him was like seeing previews of Bucky's coming attractions.
    Might as well be direct. I held my hand out. "Kinsey Millhone, Mr. Lee. I understand you're upset."
    His handshake was perfunctory. "You can knock off the 'Mr. Lee' shit and call me Chester. Might as well be on a first-name basis while I chew your ass out. You better believe I'm upset. I don't know what Bucky asked you to do, but it sure wasn't this."
    I bit back a tart reply and looked past him into the apartment. The place was a shambles: boxes overturned, books flung here and there, the mattress rolled back, the sheets and pillows on the floor. Half of Johnny's clothes had been pulled from the closet and piled in a heap. In the kitchen, through the doorway, I could see cabinet doors standing open, pots and pans strewn across the floor. While the disorder was extensive, nothing appeared to be damaged or destroyed. There was no sign that anyone had taken a blade to the bedding. No graffiti, no food emptied out of canisters or pipes torn from the walls. Vandals will often festoon the walls with their own fecal paint, but there was nothing like that here. It looked more like the methods big-city cops might employ at the scene of a drug bust. But what was the object of the exercise? Fleetingly, I entertained the notion that I was being set up, called in as a witness to a phony crime scene so that Bucky and his father could claim something valuable had been taken.
    Bucky appeared from the kitchen and caught sight of me. In one split second we exchanged curiously guilty looks, like co-conspirators. There's something about being accused of criminal behavior that makes you feel like you did it even if you're innocent. Bucky turned to his dad. "Toilet tank's cracked. Might have been like that before, but I never noticed."
    Chester pointed a finger. "You're paying for it if it has to be replaced. Bringing her into it was your bright idea." He turned to me, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the bathroom. "You ought to see in there. Medicine cabinet's pulled all the way out the wall…"
    He droned on, pouring out the details, which seemed to give him satisfaction. He probably liked to bitch, reciting his grievances in order to justify his ill treatment of other people. His irritation was contagious, and I could feel my temper climb.
    I cut into his monologue. "Hey, I didn't do this,
Chester.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the place was fine when I left. I locked up and put the key back through the mail slot like Bucky suggested. Ray Rawson was here. If you don't believe me, you can ask him."
    "Everybody's innocent. Nobody did nothing. Everybody's got some kind of bullshit excuse," Chester groused.
    "Dad, she didn't do it."
    "You let me take care of this." He turned and looked at me narrowly. "You trying to say Ray Rawson did this?"
    "Of course not. Why would he do this when he's hoping to move in?" My voice was rising in response to his, and I worked to get control.
    Chester's attitude became grudging. "Well, you better have a talk with him and find out what he knows."
    "Why would he know anything? He left the same time I did."
    Bucky interceded, trying to introduce a note of reason. "Pappy didn't have a pot to piss in, so there's nothing here to take. Besides, he died in July. If burglars thought there was anything of value, why wait until now?"
    "Maybe it was kids," I said.
    "We don't have