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fingers.
    He caught her wrist and pulled her hand away from his body. “We’re in the hall, Melody.”
    Someone coughed.
    Jerry looked and so did Melody. A woman stood in an open door way down the hall with a pinched face and dish gloves on her hands. Melody scowled. “I should have known it would be you.”
    “Straight off the tortilla truck,” the woman said. Then she went back in her apartment.
    “Come inside.” Melody wrapped both her hands around his wrist and pulled.
    “Not on your life.”
    “Please?”
    “Melody, I’m on duty.”
    “Will you come back when you’re not on duty?”
    “Melody.”
    She tugged his hand, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Please, just for a minute. I’ll do whatever you say.”
    That’s what scared him. The warmth of her fingers on his skin was driving him crazy. He wanted to take her into that apartment and find out what those fingers would feel like on other parts of his body.
    “I’m so lonely. I’ve never been alone before.”
    Jeez, she was going to cry. “I can’t stay long. I’m on duty.”
    She smiled, dragging him into her lair.
    Inside, it still didn’t look like anything other than an old man’s apartment. Decorated about twenty years ago and trapped in amber. The coffee table had heaps of change on it and piles of rolled coins. The whole room smelled like copper. So much for the ‘old man stink’ the super complained about having to get out. “What are you doing?”
    “I wanted to ride the bus to get a sweatshirt to wear Saturday like you asked me to, but I didn’t have money for the fare. Then I realized I didn’t have the money for the sweatshirt either. So I went to the bank to get some of this change turned into bills. Billy was always terrible about using his change. It would just pile up and pile up on the dresser until I put it in milk jugs. The bank told me I needed to roll it first. Now I’m rolling it.” Melody grinned and fluttered around the room like it needed straightening. Nothing looked out of place to him.
    Jerry nodded. He scanned the wall. “Lots of pictures.” Most of them were black and white. A couple, sepia-toned. Only a few were in color and even they looked old, judging by the hair and clothes.
    Melody fluttered to a stop next to him and twisted her arms together behind her back, thrusting her breasts forward. Heaven help him. “We used to do a lot of traveling. Billy was a jazz musician.”
    “Is that Billie Holiday?”
    “Yes.”
    Jerry squinted at the picture. Billie Holiday sitting at a table with three other people. Two men and a woman. A woman who looked a lot like–exactly like Melody. “Is this your grandmother?”
    “No, it’s me. Billy used to take me out with him when he could. It was easy when he had a long engagement because we just lived in a hotel, but sometimes he had to travel so I just went into my lamp until he came home.”
    “Your lamp?”
    “Yes. The lamp I brought to your house this morning when I came to you.” She looked up at him with her big, brown, utterly honest, eyes.
    Jerry studied the other pictures. Melody and a man who must be Billy Welsh with Louis Armstrong, Chick Corea, Stewart Copeland, Glenn Miller. Sitting in nightclubs. Posed in front of bandstands. Standing under marquees. Some of the people in the pictures he knew were dead. Billy kept getting older and older. Melody’s clothes changed, but her face didn’t. According to the file, Billy Welsh had been a musician. Apparently, he had been a good one. “That’s impossible.”
    “What’s impossible?”
    “Melody, there is no way that’s you in all these pictures.”
    She shrugged. “It’s me.”
    Great. Now, she was still nuts and she was taking him along with her. But her being nuts wouldn’t put her in these pictures. Could she have Photoshopped them? Maybe, but why? So she could snare the great catch that was Detective Jerry Howland? She couldn’t possibly be– “Okay, I have to go.” Jerry started for