Hotline to Murder

where Fred, the Chameleon, lived, only it was more upscale. Now that Tony had his own house, all apartment houses designed for single people looked pretty much alike to him. The apartments were too small, too seedy, even when well cared for. He was glad that he no longer lived in one. But he became depressed when he thought that if he couldn’t keep up the payments on his townhouse, because of the loss of income from Josh, he might have to return to that life.
    Tony parked the Porsche on the street, several buildings short of the one where Nathan lived. He turned to Shahla, but before he could say anything, she started talking, rapid-fire.
    “I’m going with you. We know that Nathan doesn’t have a gun. You’re still not at full speed, and I can run faster than you can, in case it becomes necessary to go for help. And it will be easier for two of us to overpower him. Besides, it’s not safe for me to stay in the car alone.”
    Tony had opened his mouth to speak when she started her speech, and then closed it. Finally, he opened it again and said, “That’s just what I was going to say.”
    Shahla said, “Let’s go get him, partner,” and gave him a high five.
    The entrance to the apartment building was through a gate made of vertical iron bars, which Tony discovered was locked. He wondered how they could get through the gate. A young man approached it from the inside and opened it. Shahla smiled at him as he walked past her and grabbed the handle before the gate closed behind him. The man kept walking.
    “After you,” she said to Tony, sweeping her hand toward the opening in invitation.
    They walked through a passage into an interior courtyard, with the apartments forming a rectangle around it, on two levels. The doors to the apartments opened off the open courtyard and the balcony above it. The main feature of the courtyard was, of course, a swimming pool. Maximum sun, maximum fun. The quintessential California experience. Except that nobody was using the pool.
    They quickly ascertained that Nathan’s apartment was on the ground floor. Tony’s first thought was that Nathan was certainly not going to bring Tina here. There would be no way to sneak her into his apartment with all this openness. His second thought was that maybe he had taken her somewhere else to kill her. No, no, no. Don’t think like that.
    The drapes were drawn over the windows of Nathan’s apartment. Tony hesitated. Another effect of the sunny courtyard was to wipe out his feelings that this might be in any way dangerous. He knocked on the door. There were no sounds from within. He knocked again, too soon, like in the movies where they assumed that five seconds was enough time for someone to answer.
    “The window’s open,” Shahla said.
    As Tony waited for nobody to answer, Shahla was removing the screen from in front of the window. He looked apprehensively around to see if anybody was watching. He couldn’t see into the other apartments, of course, but the shadow cast by the balcony directly above them did partially mask her efforts.
    “Cover me,” Shahla said.
    She had removed the screen and opened the window wider. She meant for Tony to literally cover her—place his body in between her and the courtyard.
    “Let me go,” he said. Nathan might still be inside.
    “You have to watch your knee.”
    Shahla put her leg up on the windowsill. Tony got directly behind her and gave her a boost as she went through the open window and landed on the floor inside. He quickly replaced the screen, hoping that nobody had seen anything and called the police. Shahla opened the door and let him in.
    “The place is deserted,” she said.
    Tony went into the apartment and looked around. All the furniture was gone. The carpet was dirty and there was some trash on the floor. Nathan hadn’t attempted to clean the place. This was apparently the living room. A divider doubling as a counter was at the other end of the room, with a small kitchen behind it. Dirty dishes filled the sink. Tony’s nose detected the stench of rotten food. The odor came from a metal garbage container, which hadn’t been emptied.
    A short hallway led in one direction to the bathroom and in the other direction to a bedroom. They went into the bedroom. There was no bed, but there was a built-in closet. Tony opened the wooden folding doors. Some clothes were hanging up in the closet. Pants and shirts. Old clothes. On one side of the closet were built-in drawers. Tony