Death Notes

ever-present scowl.
    ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ I said. ‘Are you working Burglary now?’
    ‘Didn’t I warn you to keep out of this?’
    ‘I wired the place. I need to know what happened, how the system failed.’
    A skinny black man in an expensive suit came up the hall behind Post. Post exchanged glances with him.
    ‘You hear that, Johnson? She wants to know how the system failed. It failed, all right, didn’t it?’
    ‘Did it ever!’
    Johnson chuckled gleefully as he walked past me and out the front door.
    ‘Care to let me in on the joke?’
    Post jerked his head toward the living room and lowered his voice.
    ‘I’ll let her do that.’
    ‘What’s missing?’
    ‘Just a few collector’s items.’
    ‘How’d he get in?’
    Post smirked. ‘Ask your client, Ventana. The whole thing’s routine.’
    ‘Is that why you’re here?’
    ‘I’m here because Johnson and I are working the homicide and the uniform who responded was sharp enough to remember the tie-in.’
    ‘Does it tie in?’
    He scowled.
    ‘Whoever hit Margolis was a pro. This break-in’s strictly amateur. I think even you’ll see that right away.’
    I ignored the barb.
    ‘But the system—’
    ‘Yeah,’ he snickered. ‘Tell me about your system. She’s in there.’
    He raised his bushy eyebrows long enough to reveal his eyes rolling in the direction of the living room. Then he sauntered down the hall toward the back of the house. I followed him as far as the living-room door and peered inside. Sharon Margolis was huddled on the couch next to a box of tissues, quivering and sniveling like a sloppy three-year-old.
    When I tapped lightly on the door frame, she looked up. Her face was a mess - big crocodile tears running down both chubby cheeks, splotchy skin, red eyes. There was a jagged rip on the sleeve and a narrow brown coffee stain down the front of her faded green peignoir.
    I felt sorry for her. She’d been good when Match died. She hadn’t cried then, at least not in public and not in front of me. Seeing her now, I wondered if she’d finally reached a breaking point, a point where she couldn’t hold her sorrow in any more. Then she spoke.
    ‘What took you so long, honey?’
    When she hoisted herself out of her seat, her painted red toenails squished out from under the dingy white pompons of her open-toed scuffs.
    ‘Come on in.’
    Having designed the system that had just failed her, I didn’t expect her to be so civil, much less tame.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘They took his sax,’ she moaned. ‘And his book, too.’
    She raised the back of her hand to her forehead in a gesture worthy of an opera star and started to cry all over again.
    ‘Sit down,’ I said, and gently guided her back into the chair. Her muddy green peignoir contrasted horribly with the green brocade upholstery. I noticed a thin film of dust on the table by the chair that I hadn’t noticed yesterday.
    ‘And the sheet music,’ she sobbed. ‘His new songs... the original scores... all the copies.’
    She wept inconsolably without grace, snorting and snuffling into tissues, while I sat across from her and just felt lousy.
    ‘The system,’ I said, after a moment. ‘Where did they get in?’
    She hiccuped twice, blew her nose, and eyed the worn carpet on the floor.
    ‘The cops think it was just one person.’
    ‘Oh?’
    Why couldn’t Post have told me that?
    ‘Where did he get in?’
    She squirmed, blew her nose some more and shifted her gaze from the carpet to the grungy pompons on her feet.
    ‘Uh... ah... uh... the back door.’
    ‘That’s impossible! He couldn’t have. The whole security office would have been here the minute he touched that door. I went over all the wiring myself. No, security would have been crawling all over the place. There is no way. Unless...’
    I looked at her more closely. She still wouldn’t meet my
    eyes.
    ‘Unless... Mrs Margolis.’ I raised my voice. ‘Sharon, was the system onT
    She wrung her hands and stared at her pompons like her life depended on it.
    ‘Did you remember to turn it on?’
    Eyes pinned to the floor, she answered in a tiny voice. ‘No.’
    ‘Oh, no. No I Sharon, no. I showed you how - I explained it all to you.’
    ‘You’ve got to understand, honey.’ Her words spilled out. ‘I’ve been dealing with a lot lately. I had an interview last night and it didn’t go so hot. The pictures, well, they wanted pictures of Match instead of me, honey. I was so put out by the