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jammed with all her belongings.
    Now Nat thought they could still be friends? Leery, Kendall said, “Sure. I’d like that.”
    Nat squeezed her hands and disappeared back into the night.
    Kendall watched her leave. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.
    In the intensity of their exchange, neither of them had seen the slight figure huddled in the doorway of the hair salon.

    Intrigued by the conversation she’d overheard, Brynn Zellman waited in the doorway until the tall woman who’d wielded the gun disappeared into the tavern. Her stance had been that of a cop, but why would a cop be visiting the bar? Nearly closing time, there wouldn’t be more than a handful of the regulars still parked on the red-velvet bar stools.
    Brynn unlocked the door leading to the floor above the storefronts, recalling as she scaled the stairway to her apartment, the only unfamiliar car out front had been a dark blue SUV. It was packed to the gills with things that even in the dim lighting looked like personal belongings. It seemed unlikely a cop would be here to look at the empty apartment so late on a Saturday night.
    Brynn had been bugging Morrie to rent it out. It felt kind of creepy to have a vacant apartment right across the hall. She kept imagining sounds coming from the place late at night. It would be a relief to have someone living there again—even a cop.

    The only patrons remaining in the bar were a heavy man in a dark suit sitting at one end of the bar, and at the other end, a couple that seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. A frowsy-haired woman in a red sweater and a white apron stood behind the bar, polishing glasses. Strains of Dean Martin singing Return to Me flowed from an old-fashioned jukebox with glass columns of rotating colors running up each side. When Kendall asked for Morrie, the tightly permed bartender gestured toward the back room. “In there.”
    Morrie looked like an aging hippie in beads and silver earrings. He didn’t seem to go with the Rat Pak motif of the bar, but at least he wasn’t wearing tie-dye. He stood and held out his hand. “You must be Kenny.”
    Kendall cringed. Would she ever get rid of the name Kenny? Although it was the obvious diminutive of Kendall, the name always brought up her mother’s disappointment at Kendall’s lack of femininity and her father’s anxious attempts to turn her into the boy he’d always wanted.
    She shook Morrie’s hand, noticing a narrow strip of brown leather held back his salt and pepper hair in a short tail. “Detective Halsrud.” She didn’t add, “to you,” although at times when people insisted on calling her Kenny, she was tempted.
    Morrie accepted the stiff greeting with a smile. “Let me show you the place.” He picked up a set of keys and led her though a door opening into a back hallway. “There are two ways to get upstairs. The doorway in front is always locked. The door to the parking lot in the back is open unless the bar is closed.”
    At the top of the steps, on the side facing the bluff, a hallway ran toward the south. A short corridor branched off in front of them, on either side a door to an apartment. The upper half of each door had a windowpane of textured glass. Lettered with names of businesses, they’d obviously been in place since the ‘30s or ‘40s. The one on the right was made up of colored, leaded glass like that in a church window and in its center, a beveled crystal circle about ten inches in diameter. From the circle, chips of color radiated out, creating a brilliant kaleidoscope effect. Black lettering along a bottom panel spelled out, “Fortune-teller.” Backlit by light from inside the apartment, small shapes of colored light decorated the hallway.
    “That’s been here forever and a day,” Morrie offered. “When I bought the place I found out a widow lady had it put in. She was a tenant for at least a hundred and ten years. Told fortunes for a living. Her sign’s still downstairs over the front door