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said.
    *   *   *
    When morning came, Julia sucked down a coffee and two jelly doughnuts. She picked up the black nylon messenger bag that contained the Defonte case file, stalked over to the fire escape, and started climbing down.
    “Where are you going?” I said. “You just made a breakfast run.”
    “Fuck this motherfucker,” Julia said, her hands gripping the ladder.
    I followed her down the fire escape. She didn’t check for cars before crossing the street. When I caught up with her, she was looking for the blond woman’s name on the row of silver mailboxes in the lobby.
    “There she is.” Julia pointed at box 703. Belinda Singer. Flecks of icing were stuck to her finger.
    “This isn’t what we do,” I said. Private investigators were watchers, waiters. We waited for people to do whatever it was they were going to do, recorded it, and then handed over the evidence. We didn’t jump into the middle of situations. We didn’t intervene.
    “We went to detective school, am I right?”
    “ I went to detective school,” I said. “I did all the work. Everything is in my name.”
    “Well, we call ourselves detectives, don’t we?”
    I gave her a little shrug. The lack of sleep had made everything bleary.
    “I’m ready to do some detecting.” Julia held me in a hard stare. She had bright hazel eyes, more green than brown, and could be very convincing.
    We rode the elevator to the seventh floor and knocked on the blond woman’s door. She looked older up close, her tanned skin creased lightly around the eyes and forehead, her lips thin and dry. She wore a white sleeveless tennis dress and white sneakers with ankle socks. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail.
    “Are you Belinda Singer?” Julia flipped open her wallet and flashed the heavy brass badge issued to licensed PIs; if you didn’t look closely, it could pass for the real thing. “Let us in. We’re detectives. Police.”
    The woman didn’t move from the doorway. I peered over her shoulder, but didn’t see anyone inside.
    “Ms. Singer? Did you hear me?” My sister’s voice was forceful. I would have believed anything she said. The blond woman opened the door a little wider. Julia edged into the apartment.
    “You’re a detective too?” she asked as I entered.
    I glared at her in a way I hoped was intimidating.
    My sister moved into the blond woman’s living room. She stood on a leopard-print rug, next to a glass coffee table piled high with issues of South Florida Living . I hung out closer to the front door. The floor was cream tile; large cockleshells, each the color of a sunset, had been arranged on the pale pink walls.
    “Where is Peter Defonte?” Julia asked.
    The woman cocked her head. “Who is Peter Defonte?”
    Julia told the woman that she knew exactly who Peter Defonte was, that he had been in this apartment for the last two nights and was probably still here.
    “I wish,” the blond woman said.
    “Do you think this is a joke, Ms. Singer?” Julia replied.
    “No one’s been here. Look around.”
    We checked the two bedrooms, the closets, the bathrooms. We looked under the beds and behind the shower curtains. When we were finished, Julia pulled a head shot of Mr. Defonte from her messenger bag and handed it to the blond woman.
    “This man, we know that you know him.” Julia’s voice was softer. She touched the woman’s forearm. “Go on, take a look.”
    The woman pinched the sides of the photo and frowned. “I don’t know him at all.” She handed the photo back to Julia and surveyed us for a moment, her nose wrinkling like she’d just smelled something unpleasant, which was entirely possible, seeing as we’d been baking on the roof, unshowered, for two days.
    “I think your detecting skills need some work,” she told us.
    “This is the law you’re talking to,” Julia said. And then we got out of the apartment as quickly as we could. We went back down to the ground floor and showed the photo to the