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It’s the only exercise I can stand besides volleyball. I can skate forward and backward, but I can’t do any of the loop-de-loop fancy stuff. Valerie could.
    Valerie despised field hockey. She was a good dancer. She didn’t cheat on tests, like most of the kids. She had a small scar on the inside of her left wrist. He didn’t know how it happened. It had always been there. Maybe it was a birthmark. There was lots of that kind of stuff. I asked him to describe her, and his hand reached for his wallet. When he realized his picture of Valerie was gone along with his money, his face got even paler, and I decided that sixteen or seventeen didn’t matter. He was still a kid and he’d had a long day.
    I got a blanket and a pillow out of the hall closet and told him he could sleep on the ouch for a couple of hours. Plenty of time for the inquisition to continue after sunrise.

CHAPTER 5
    There’s a dress code for taxi drivers in this town. Shirts have to have collars, and no shorts are allowed, not even on the hottest August scorcher. Private investigators, on the other hand, can wing it. After two hours of blissfully undisturbed slumber, I went downstairs, attired in an electric blue sweater and black wool slacks.
    The blanket was folded neatly on the couch, the pillow smoothed and piled on top of it. I called Jerry’s name. Nothing. I checked to see if the bathroom was occupied. The client seemed to have flown the coop, which puzzled me because I have deadbolt locks on all the doors, so you need a key to leave as well as enter my dwelling.
    Then I met Roz coming out of the kitchen.
    Roz is always a delight to the eye. This morning her hair was the color of cranberries, the kind that slide out of the can in a log. She wore a fuchsia T-shirt that almost met the hem of a thigh-high black denim skirt, black lacy pantyhose with a run up the right leg, and green leather pointy-toed ankle boots. Roz is short and skinny, except for her breasts. With Roz, first you notice her hair, because it’s generally an unnatural color, then you notice her eyes, because she wears killer makeup—fake eyelashes and glued-on sequins—and then you become aware of her breasts, because they’re emphatically there and because she has the world’s best T-shirt collection, bar none. This one featured a picture of Smokey, and said: DEFEND YOUR RIGHT TO ARM BEARS .
    I’m fascinated by Roz’s shoes. She wears one of those ridiculously small sizes, a five or something, so she can buy all these weird shoes nobody else wants. They have mounds of them in Filene’s Basement, cheap. Today’s ankle boots had incredibly skinny four-inch heels. She was perched so high on her toes that her feet looked like little hooves.
    Well, not really. It’s just shoe jealousy. Size eleven shoes, on the rare occasion you can find them, come in basic brown.
    â€œHe in there?” I asked, nodding toward the kitchen.
    â€œHuh?” she replied, licking a sticky finger. Roz eats peanut butter for breakfast, straight from the jar. She has mastered the art of not looking after herself. She does all the cleaning, and she’s figured out that if you don’t make it dirty you don’t have to clean it. Some days she can go entirely without forks, spoons, knives, plates, or glasses. I’m glad we keep separate food supplies, because when Roz’s fingers are not stained with peanut butter they’re usually covered with paint, turpentine, or developer fluid.
    I admire Roz’s basic laziness. Other people her age, which I put at around twenty, are not doing aerobics and eliminating toxins. They’re improving their eating habits, getting in touch with their inner selves. Roz has a T-shirt that says “Live Hard, Die Young.” McDonald’s is her idea of a health food restaurant.
    â€œI have a missing client,” I said. “He spent the night on the couch.”
    â€œOh,” she