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warehousing rooming houses for the mentally ill and downand-out had populated the streets with frightening people.
    Lena Kalma lived in a former store on Queen Street. Two display windows flanked a glass-fronted door from which she’d removed all hardware. She’d painted almost everything vermillion, wood and glass alike. The exception—each window and the door had a shoebox-sized unpainted glass rectangle located at the average person’s eye level. Underneath she’d stencilled the word “LOOK” in white.
    Naturally, they did.
    She’d affixed boxes to the other side of the unpainted glass rectangles. A colour diorama filled the first one. Somehow, inside the small space, she’d created an illusion of great depth. Far in the distance, an ambiguous tiny figure, arms uplifted, screamed in terror or ecstasy. The second box contained a foreground unisex face pressing against the glass. A viewer could read its enigmatic expression as horror or jubilation. The third box’s black interior held the white floating word “oh”. Nothing made immediate sense but challenged a viewer to provide her own explanation.
    Rhona stepped back. “As if this neighbourhood’s residents don’t have enough problems. Now they have peepholes in blood red windows to make them question their sanity.” She grinned at her partner. “If I had to, I’d make a wild guess that an artist lives here.”
    Since the centre door lacked a doorknob, they moved to the bright red door next to the storefront. Zee Zee lifted her hand to press the bell. Before she touched it, the door opened a crack and a tall woman peered at them.
    â€œI’ve been waiting,” she said, hovering behind the partially open door. She wore a white coverall and head scarf. A surgical mask dangled on her chest. Her red-rimmed eyes stared at them balefully.
    After Rhona and Zee Zee identified themselves, Zee Zee said, “You’re Lena Kalma?”
    â€œYes,” the woman said, widening the opening and allowing them inside. Stairs climbed from the small hall.
    â€œFollow me,” she ordered and passed through a doorway into the storefront’s front room. Here the opaque paint on windows and door allowed no natural light inside. Overhead fluorescents illuminated chaos. Tiers of stacked containers teetered and threatened to topple. Rusty buckets, feather boas, old clothes from a dozen ethnic groups—an eclectic mix—swung from ceiling racks. A stew of smells defied cataloguing—old leather, dust, sweat and stale air. Lena tacked through the room and wove down the hall through the labyrinth of cartons. One or two stacks climbed upward and scraped the ceiling.
    â€œWouldn’t the fire department be unhappy?” Zee Zee murmured. “Isn’t this house a four alarm waiting to happen?”
    Low wattage wall sconces lit their way. Finally they emerged into a large room. Dazzling late afternoon June light flooded through floor to ceiling windows. Although not as crowded as the front room or the hall, a host of unrelated objects hung on the white walls. Magenta, ochre, indigo, fluorescent orange—Rhona’s eyes flitted from object to object. Possibly the room contained something made from every natural and unnatural colour. It pulsed with energy. Hundreds of photos littered three tables ranged along one side. Lena indicated that they should sit on one of the four straight chairs lined up as if they’d entered a doctor’s waiting room.
    Rhona chose the one burdened with the smallest pile. She carefully lifted off a tricorn hat, three art books and a Mexican serape before she lowered herself to the lime green and orangestriped chair. Zee Zee gingerly removed a nest of fifties style Pyrex mixing bowls topped with an actual bird’s nest before she sat down. While the detectives cleared space for themselves, Lena tipped miscellaneous items from a short antique wooden bench