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the mirror to look at me. I was telling the truth. She knew it. The smile was grateful.
    “Mr. Peters simply wants to meet everyone,” Lundeen explained. “And to know if you remember where you were and who you saw last week when that workman died.”
    I pulled my pencil and small spiral notebook out of my pocket, ready to start putting things together.
    “We were here,” said Lorna, reaching for a black purse on the dressing table and fishing out a pack of Tareytons. “Stoki was here. A few plasterers, the orchestra, the principals. No chorus.”
    “The crazy old man,” Vera added.
    “Crazy old man?” I asked.
    “Raymond,” Lundeen said. “He came with the place. Caretaker. Knows where everything is. He was here before the place closed down in 1905. Makes little sense. He was with Lorna and me when Wyler fell. The three of us saw the man in the cape.”
    “I’d like to meet Raymond,” I said.
    Lundeen nodded. Since Lorna was standing and smoking, Lundeen took the opportunity to sit in the chair she and Miguelito had vacated. The wooden piece cringed under his weight but held.
    “There were others,” Lorna said. “But who remembers? We were rehearsing.”
    “Vera was in the middle of her second act solo,” Lundeen added. “And Martin was …”
    “Martin?” I asked.
    “Passacaglia, the tenor,” Lundeen explained. “He was in his dressing room, I think.”
    “He wasn’t on stage,” Lorna confirmed. “But neither was Pepe, the … who remembers?”
    I put my notebook away.
    “Do you need me for anything more?” Lorna said, looking into my eyes as she petted Miguelito. It was a Lana Turner line. She handled it so well I couldn’t tell if she was being polite or encouraging.
    “Not now,” I said. “I’d like to talk to Miss Tenatti first.”
    Lorna shrugged a suit-yourself shrug. “John knows how to reach me,” she said, putting out her cigarette in a glass ashtray near Vera’s elbow.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow, Vera.”
    She touched the girl’s shoulder. Vera touched the older woman’s hand and patted Miguelito’s head. The dog liked it. Lorna departed.
    “I do not like that dog,” Lundeen muttered.
    “He’s a sweet dog,” Vera said.
    “I can pick it up on my own from here,” I told Lundeen.
    “Good. I’ll be in my office most of the night,” Lundeen said, moving to the door. “Do you think you can find your way back there?”
    “I’m a detective,” I reminded him.
    He smiled and was gone.
    “I’ve got some questions,” I said to Vera, sitting in the now available chair and taking my notebook out again.
    She shrugged and looked at me. Her eyes were wide, brown, and very deep.
    “Yes.” She gave me her attention.
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-nine.”
    “Twenty-nine,” I said, writing in my notebook.
    “Thirty-two,” she amended.
    I nodded, erased and wrote.
    “How old are you?” she asked.
    “Fifty.”
    “Fifty,” she repeated.
    “Forty-six,” I said.
    She laughed. It was a solid, beautiful, musical laugh.
    “Where did you learn to sing?”
    “St. Louis,” she said. “I’ve been singing since I was four. You want to know my real name?”
    “Sure.”
    “Vera Katz.”
    “Mine’s Tobias Pevsner.”
    “Really?” she said, showing interest. I nodded and she went on. “My mother was a singer. Local, light opera. My father was, is a music professor at Washington University. That’s my life. Sing and get fat.”
    “You’re not fat,” I demurred. “You’re very pretty and voluptuous.”
    She blushed.
    “Brothers, sisters?”
    “I was the only one. You?”
    “A brother,” I said. “Big, mean, a cop. You know what’s going on here?”
    “I’ve heard,” she said with a shrug.
    “You afraid?”
    “No. Yes. A little. This is my big chance.” She looked at herself in the mirror again. “Are there pudgy … voluptuous Japanese women?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Maestro Stokowski says I should eat health food. I don’t like health food.