Death Notes

instrument like she was really giving it the onceover. Then she smiled up at Post.
    ‘This isn’t Match’s,’ she announced.
    ‘What?’ I shot out of my chair and grabbed the mangled sax. ‘Look at this detail here. And this. Look at how this M fits in right here. This has got to be Match’s.’
    ‘That’s not an M, honey. Look at it.’ She glanced at Post. ‘Is that an M, Lieutenant? It could be a W if it’s upside down. And you know what? I think it is upside down.’
    I looked over at Post for help.
    ‘Well?’ I demanded.
    ‘It fits the description you gave us, ma’am,’ Post said, but he seemed weirdly unperturbed.
    ‘I ought to know,’ Sharon said in a tone that dared him to question her further. She scooped up her purse and glanced around the room like she was getting ready to leave. ‘Call me when you find the right one.’
    She started for the door. I watched her retreating back, then turned to Post.
    ‘Aren’t you going to stop her?’
    ‘For what? She’s not breaking any law.’
    I ran out the door and followed Sharon.
    ‘What are you doing!' I demanded once we were alone inside the elevator.
    ‘What do you mean, honey?’
    ‘You know as well as I do that saxophone belonged to Match.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I know what Match’s saxophone looks like, honey, more than anyone else. That wasn’t it.’
    The elevator doors swished open and she swished out. ‘You’re not going to find a replacement, Sharon, not in two weeks.’
    She’d told me on the way up that the museum wanted to take possession in two weeks.
    ‘You act like I’m tryin’ to pull something over, honey. You ought to know me better than that.’
    The sad thing was, she was right. I should have known her better than I did. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
     

36
     
    S haron went with me to her bank to make good on the bad check and acted like she’d been monumentally blindsided when the manager declined the transaction. Between her sputters of indignation, I made her give me - in cash - the $237.45 the manager said was in her account, then drove over to Toby’s and gave it to him. Hakim, my landlord, would have to wait.
    Being a business owner, Toby’d been through it all before, so he already had all the papers for a mechanic’s lien, which he filled out and gave to me to record at City Hall. Forty-five minutes later, we had it covered. If we couldn’t convince her to cough up the rest of the cash, we’d eventually get paid principal and interest if Sharon ever sold her house.
    Outside City Hall, the news rack offered today’s copy of The Explorer for twenty-five cents. It was a cheap rag and a gip at a penny, but I plunked in a quarter to read Abby Stark’s lies.
    Her story was exactly what I thought it’d be: a misinformed, garbled account of something she’d imagined. No wonder Post was fuming. It would have been laughable if I didn’t know the killer most likely would read it, too.
    Abby wrote that I had ‘vowed solemnly’ to track the killer of my ‘father’s dearest, closest friend.’ Then she said that I’d refused to comment about the possibility that Match had whispered a clue to me before he died. Great. She should have just drawn a bullseye on my forehead.
    I tossed the paper in the garbage can on the corner and headed for ray car. As much as I wanted to, I had better things to do than hunt Abby Stark down and pound some sense into her.
     

37
     
    M y first stop was Pear-face Barnes’s apartment above the tailor shop on Market Street. On the way over, my cell phone rang. It was Danilo Ruben, the cop from last night, telling me the secret find behind the Riff Club was a banged-up saxophone tied to the murder.
    ‘Did anybody know why it was there? Why it was banged up?’
    If Philly Post wasn’t going to give me information, I’d get it second-hand.
    ‘Nobody figured a bead on it, Ronnie. It’s weird, huh? Somebody could have made some money off it. A good saxophone’s not cheap and this one’s got history. It’s a collector’s item, right?’
    He offered to let me know if he heard anything else and asked me again to come see his father, promising me homegrown tomatoes from the garden this time. By the time he hung up I was standing outside Pear’s apartment door.
    I could smell the garlic wafting into the hallway from their kitchen, and got a solid blast of it when Mabel opened the door. She was very pregnant and glowing with a smile as big as the