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The Armour Road address was a rooming house, a three-story Victorian home that had been broken down into apartments. There was a buzzer by the front door labeled MANAGER. Duckworth buzzed. Moments later, a short, heavyset woman with little more than a few wisps of hair came to the door and opened it a few inches.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Selfridge?” he asked.
“Mrs. But the mister died a few years back. We don’t have any vacancies, but you can leave your name if you’d like.”
“I’m not looking for a room,” he said. “That was pretty rude of you, cutting me off like that.”
Her eyes danced. “Huh?”
“On the phone, a few minutes ago. When I was asking for Sarita.”
“How’d you find where I live?”
“You pay the bill on that cell phone, Mrs. Selfridge. There are some things you don’t need Homeland Security for.”
“I told you before, I don’t know any Sarita.”
“I’m thinking you do.”
She started to close the door but Duckworth got his shoe in.
“You got no right,” she said.
“I’m guessing Sarita likes to keep under the radar, so you let her use your phone. That way she doesn’t need to get one in her own name. You tack on a little to the rent every month for the service?”
“I don’t know what you’re jawin’ about.”
Duckworth looked around, like a would-be buyer appraising the house. “When’s the last time you had a fire inspection, Mrs. Selfridge? Someone to go through, room by room, make sure everything’s up to code?”
“You’re talking crazy talk.”
“I could give them a call right now if you’d like. Invite them over to—” He stopped midsentence, his nose in the air. “What’s that I smell?” he asked.
“That’s chocolate-chip banana bread,” she said. “I just took it out of the oven.”
Duckworth gave her his warmest smile. “My God, that smells wonderful. I have this theory that when you arrive in heaven, the first thing you smell will be something like that.”
“I make it whenever I’ve got a lot of old bananas that are too ripe to eat. But you mush them all up and bake ’em and they’re good to eat.”
“My mother used to do that. She’d even put black bananas in the freezer until she got around to making banana bread.”
“I do that, too.” Anxiously, she said, “This business with the fire inspection. I’m pretty up to code here, smoke detectors and all that. There’s no need for them to come in here and get their shorts all in a knot about little picky things.”
“They can be picky,” Duckworth said. “I suppose we could talk about it over some of that banana bread.”
The woman gave him a withering look, sighed, and opened the door wide.
“You don’t even have to tell me where your kitchen is,” he said. “I can follow the scent, like a dog chasing down a rabbit.”
Seconds later he was parked at the woman’s small kitchen table.
“This is asking a lot,” Duckworth said, “but would you mind cutting me off an end piece? Where it’s crustier? It’s never better than when it’s still warm.”
Mrs. Selfridge obliged. She cut him a slice off the end, and one more, set it on a chipped pale green plate, and placed it in front of him.
“You want it buttered?” she asked.
“No, no, that’s fine,” Duckworth said. “I’m trying to cut back.”
“You want milk with it?” she asked. “That’s the way my Leonard would have it. And I got a splash of coffee left in the pot if you’d like that.”
“Coffee’d be just fine,” he said. She set a mug in front of him and sat down. Watched him bite into the end piece.
“Dear God,” he said. “That’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” she said. She paused, then asked, “So what is it you want to know about Sarita?”
Duckworth held up a hand. “Nothing just yet.” He took another bite of banana bread, then sipped his coffee. “I really needed this. And I don’t even feel guilty, because I haven’t had any other treats today.”
“You trying to lose weight? I’m not saying you should. I’m just asking.”
He nodded. “I could stand to lose a few. But it’s hard when you love to eat.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. “Some days I look down and wonder where my feet is.”
Duckworth laughed. “Aren’t we entitled to a little pleasure in life? And if good food gives us pleasure, can we not be forgiven for enjoying it?”
Mrs. Selfridge nodded slowly, rested her hands on the table.
“And I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Today is twenty years.”
“You’ve been married twenty years?”
He shook his head. “Twenty years with the police. It’s my anniversary today.”
“Well, congratulations. They do something special for you today at the police station?”
“Not one damn thing,” Duckworth said, taking another bite.
The woman watched him eat. She said, “I don’t know where she’s gone.”