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set me up to take the fall. So I’ll do what I can to help you find him.”
    Michael sighed. “That would be a start.”
    “But you have to believe I’m innocent.”
    “No, I don’t. I can’t. I believe what the evidence tells me.”
    Now it was Wendy’s turn to sigh. She supposed on the surface she looked guilty as hell. She’d have to settle for the fact that Michael was willing to believe she hadn’t acted alone. “Did you check out the utilities for the house on Monty?” she asked.
    He nodded. “The gas and electric were under the name Pat Walters. Whoever he or she is, they never called in a disconnect order or gave a forwarding address when they left.”
    “Pat Walters,” Wendy repeated thoughtfully. “Maybe Mr. Neff rented, and Walters is his landlord.”
    “My partner is trying to track down this Walters person, but no luck so far. Can you give me a description of Mr. Neff?”
    “Oh, yes.” She’d thought hard about this during the long, sleepless night in jail. Thank goodness shehad a good power of observation. “He was about five ten, in his mid-sixties, gray hair, thinning on top. He had bushy eyebrows, hazel eyes, a kind of sunken mouth—he didn’t have many teeth.”
    Michael made notes. “What about his weight?”
    “He was too thin. I’m not good at guessing weight, but he was frail and stooped. He had arthritis, so he had trouble getting around, and he was on oxygen. How far could a guy like that get?”
    Michael looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then shook his head. “Maybe you’re more innocent than I thought,” he murmured.
    “Pardon me?” She didn’t think she’d heard correctly.
    “You. Innocent. Did it ever occur to you that your Mr. Neff might have been faking the illness? If he lied to you about his mother’s jewelry, he could lie about anything.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. She liked to think of herself as a hardheaded businesswoman, but more than one customer had led her down the garden path, rooking her into loads of work with no intention of paying her.
    Suddenly she remembered how, when she’d seen him the day before, he’d seemed to be feeling great until she reminded him he had a cold. Then he’d abruptly started coughing. “He might have been faking the glasses too. And the gold tooth.”
    “Gold tooth?”
    “Didn’t I mention that?”
    “No. You said he didn’t have many teeth.”
    “He didn’t. But one in front had a gold cap.”
    Michael made more notes in his pad. “What about scars and tattoos?”
    She couldn’t tell whether he was being facetious or not, so she answered him honestly. “Not that I recall.”
    He paused, thinking, and scratched his head with the end of his pen. Wendy watched in fascination as the black waves of his hair danced, then fell back into place.
    “Would you be willing to work with a police artist?” he asked.
    “Sure. When and where?”
    “Now. She works downtown in the Physical Evidence Division. I’ll drive you over there.”
    “I’d rather take my own car,” she said. “I have a couple of errands I can run after I finish with the artist.” She could pick up Mrs. Glover’s restored painting from that little gallery in the Arts District. And Yoda the rottweiler was in Oak Lawn, which she could hit on her way back uptown.
    “Do you need directions?” Michael asked, pulling her back into the present.
    “Just an address. I’ll find it. She held up her battered, beloved map book. Then she grabbed her electronic organizer from the dashboard, opened it, and turned it on.
    “Seven eighteen Cantegral Street,” he said as he pulled the door handle to let himself out. “I’ll meet you there.”
    “Detective?”
    He paused. “Huh?”
    “Don’t you want me to drive you back to your car?”
    “Oh. Right.” He slammed the door and managed, somehow, not to look foolish.
    Wendy liked that about him. He was the most self-possessed, confident person she’d ever met. Still, she