Act of God

could get me into your paper’s morgue for some stories on a killing that happened a few weeks ago, a killing that might be related to the missing-person case I’ve got now.”
    “Sure thing. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
    “My oversight, Mo. ”
    He got me the issues for the days after Abraham Rivkind’s death. The stories didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already learned, and the obit with Pearl Rivkind mentioned prominently just reminded me of why I agreed to take the case to start with.

5

    When I called my answering service, there was a message from William Proft.He’d reached Traci Wickmire, and she’d told him that I could come see her anytime that afternoon. I took the Mass Pike a few miles west to avoid the downtown traffic, then wound up Western Avenue and Harvard Street to Commonwealth Avenue .
    Commonwealth stretches for a lot of miles and is featured prominently in the Boston marathon. The avenue starts at the Public Garden in Back Bay, where it’s lined with stately townhouses and mansions that were once single-family, a few remaining so even today. Within a mile, though, Commonwealth winds through Boston University and Kenmore Square , just a bad hop from the Red Sox home at Fenway Park . After that, it’s fast-food and electronics stores and mostly closed car dealers before doglegging left and climbing the long, slow hill toward Boston College, where Father Drinan once headed the law school and Doug Flutie once guided the football team, though not many alums would put the two men in that order.
    About a mile from BC, the numbers approached the address Proft had given me for his sister’s apartment house. It turned out to be a three-story stucco with a Bauhaus look to the beams in the walls. I found a parking space about a block away and walked back to it.
    The entryway was recessed under a peaked miniroof. There were ten buzzers and mailboxes, none marked superintendent. I found WICKMIRE, T. under the button marked 31 and PROFT, D. under 21. Enough of the last names had full male first names after them that I wasn’t sure the women were fooling anybody by using only their first initials.
    I pressed 31 and heard an internal ringing. Then the glass doorway buzzed at me. I pushed through just before the buzzing stopped, entering a hallway with white and black diamond tiles and no rug except for a remnant that served as makeshift welcome mat. The bulb in the fixture overhead was maybe twenty-five watts, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the central staircase in front of me. It had a steel bannister and posts painted black and a carpet runner that could have started almost any color but now was dirt-brown.
    From an upper floor came a woman’s voice that trilled like a dolphin’s. “I’m on three.”
    I walked past a black door with a couple of locks showing through it and a single brass “1” at eye-level, a red blotch in the outline of what might have been another “1” next to it. After a full morning of using my knee, the joint seemed okay going upstairs, wobbling only on the way down them, but I still took it easy. At the first landing were three doors marked in brass 21, 22, and 23. Climbing to the second landing I could see only a 32 and a 33, because the door to 31 was swung in.
    I knocked on the jamb of the open door.
    From somewhere inside, the trilling voice said, “That’s why I left it o-pen,” a lift to the last syllable.
    The apartment had a short corridor beyond the door, which I closed behind me.
    The voice said, “Just throw that bolt, o-kay?”
    There was a deadbolt, and I turned it.
    “Find me if you can,” again with the last syllable rising.
    I found myself not looking forward to spending time with a Flipper impersonator.
    At the end of the short corridor, the apartment branched right and left. To the right was another short, darker corridor with two doors, both closed, that I assumed led to bedroom and bath. To the left was brighter, a gift of sunshine from the front of the building having southern exposure.
    Walking left, I entered a living room/dining area. A small gateleg table and one straight-backed chair stood outside a kitchen barely big enough for the appliances in it. The scent of potpourri wafted from the stovetop, the gas on underneath it even though the outside temperature was pushing seventy-five. The living area had framed, artsy photos of women in aerobic tights on the walls and sectional furniture upholstered in