"Watching TV?"
"Well, she's with her father and he's watching TV. They both like sitcoms.... Say, which apartment is Amanda LeClerc in again?"
"Oh, Amanda? On the second floor?"
"Yeah."
"I think 2F."
"Right, right, right." Rune started up the stairs two at a time.
"Don't you think you should take it a little easy?"
"Peasant stock," she called back cheerily.
On the second-floor landing she noticed that there was a piece of plywood over the hole in Mr. Kelly's door. There was also a large padlock on it. The police tape had been replaced. She walked past it.
It'd been hard to turn down Phillip Dixon (he, unlike Richard, was somebody who had no problem with either the word or the concept of "date").
"Rain check?" he'd asked.
"You bet. Hey, you like junkyards?" she'd asked him on her way out the door of the video store.
He hadn't missed a beat. "Love 'em."
Rune now knocked on Amanda's door and the woman called, "Who's there?"
"Me, Rune."
The door opened. "Good. She's upstairs. I talk her inta staying to see you. Didn't want to but she is."
"Has she heard anything from her father?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask her. I just said you were looking for him and it was important."
"What apartment is he in again?"
"Three B."
Rune remembered that Symington lived directly above Mr. Kelly.
Rune climbed the stairs. Amanda's and Mr. Kelly's floor had smelled like onions; this one smelled like bacon. She paused in the hallway. The door to 3B was six inches open.
Rune eased forward, seeing first the hem of a skirt, then two thin legs in dark stockings. They were crossed in a way that suggested confidence. Rune started to knock but then just pushed the door open all the way. The woman on the bed turned to her. She was looking through a stack of papers.
She had high cheekbones, a face glossy with makeup, frosted hair forced into place with a ton of spray. She looks like my mother, Rune thought, and guessed she was in her early forties. The woman wore a plaid suit and she smoked a long, dark brown cigarette. She gazed at Rune then said, "That woman downstairs ... she said somebody was looking for my father. Is that you?"
"Yes."
The woman turned away slowly, stubbed out the cigarette, pressing it into an ashtray. It died with a faint crushing sound. She looked Rune up and down. "My, they're getting younger and younger."
"Like, excuse me?"
"How old are you?"
"Twenty. What's that got to do with anything? I just want to ask you a few--"
"What did he promise you? A car? He did that a lot. He was always giving away cars. Or saying he would. Porsches, Mercedes, Cadillacs. Of course then there'd be problems with the dealer. Or the registration. Or something."