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Being able to acutely observe with one's peripheral vision is
definitely a learned skill, however, and it can give one a headache
after a while. My head had started to ache, and I had been thinking
that if I didn't spot this thief soon Mama and Papa Garofalo would
be sure to attribute my failure to my gender, when a blur of rapid
movement off to my left caught my eye.

Aha!
I thought.
I am about to be vindicated.
I had
proposed to the Garofalos a theory that their thief might likely be
a woman, who could more easily hide upon her person the wide
variety of objects that were disappearing; in fact, it was this
argument that had finally persuaded them to accept me as their
investigator. And now the only figure in the region where I'd seen
the blur proved to be female. On closer inspection, she was not a
woman so much as a girl who looked scarcely out of childhood,
despite the fact that she appeared to be
enceinte
(as one
says to be polite) herself.

I watched this fallen angel for half an hour, and then I
followed her home. She was clever. Like the deceitful child who
shares by counting out "one for you and two for me," she shopped by
pocketing two items for each one she put in her basket, so that she
appeared to be a paying customer. She lived in the neighborhood,
and in fact, when I went back to the Garofalos' store and told them
to call the police to that address, they were shocked. They did not
want to believe their thief could be their neighbor, a daily
customer.

"Nevertheless," I said, "I observed her in the act of stealing.
I expect the police will find that she has been doing a nice little
business in selling and trading stolen goods out of her home; and
further, that they will find this clever but bent girl is no more
expecting a child than I am."

"Oh!" said Mama Garofalo, shocked that I would mention the
girl's condition. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as if it had
been she, not I, who'd said the indelicate words.

I proceeded to be more indelicate still: "People naturally avert
their eyes. Just think how many things could be hidden beneath her
clothes, in a pouch that size!"

Papa Garofalo bit his lip, narrowed his eyes at me shrewdly, and
with one nod of his head, reached for the telephone. "Hello,
Central," he said, "get me the police."

With a great deal of satisfaction I said, "I won't stay to see
her arrested. I know they will find the evidence on her premises.
And you will receive the bill for my services in tomorrow's
mail."

Then I sailed out of the door in fine fettle. The hat was off
before I'd walked half a block.

I stopped the Maxwell on Broadway in front of the McFadden
house, which I supposed someone like Mr. Jeremy McFadden might call
the McFadden mansion; it was certainly big enough. Being west of
Van Ness, it had received very little damage in the quake and fire
two years before. And while the formerly great neighborhoods like
Nob Hill were still disrupted by the noise and clutter of
rebuilding, this area had come into its own as a desirable place to
live. The view, similar to that from my bedroom window on
Divisadero, was rather spectacular and compensated for the
precipitousness of the house's hillside site.

After carefully setting the handbrake, for I certainly did not
want the Maxwell to roll away, I climbed the sidewalk and far too
many steps up to the front door. It would have been much easier if
I had driven up their driveway and parked beneath the
porte
cochere,
as I'd done when Frances was with me, but on this
occasion I thought it wise not to advertise my presence.

I hadn't thought about the extreme plainness of my dress until
the maid who opened the door to my knock gave me the severest sort
of scrutiny up and down. "I'm Mrs. McFadden's friend, Fremont
Jones," I explained, "and I'd like to see her if she's in."

"You're not expected." The maid, who was neither young nor
pretty, but rather the opposite, stated this flatly.

I did not like her tone at all, so I put on my best
Wellesley-educated persona and declared, "Mrs. McFadden is always
at home to me, and I'm sure she would like to be acquainted with
the fact that I am here inquiring after her health. I know she had
a bit of a turn last evening. It was I, in fact, who brought her
home."

The maid, who was looking to me more like a prison matron every
minute, planted herself quite solidly in the middle of the entry
and said, "No one is expected today. The Missus is not up to seeing
anyone, and Mister said she's not to be disturbed. Not by no one,
all day. So good afternoon." And she started to close the big
door.

"Just a moment!" I stuck my hand out, risking a sore wrist if
she closed it in my face. But she didn't; she held the door with
her fingers curled around its edge and simply glared at me.

I reached into the pocket of my long coat. I had no calling
cards-I hadn't thought about needing any, what with everything else
that had gone on since I'd lost my former home on Vallejo
Street-but I did have some of our J&K business cards with my
name at the bottom, and our address and telephone number. I never
went anywhere without them; in business, one should always be
prepared to advertise. "My card," I said, thrusting it in the
woman's face so that she was forced to take it or risk being
blinded, "which I trust you will give to Mrs. McFadden, along with
my most sincere wish that she will be feeling better soon."

Was it only my imagination, or was there a momentary softening
of the eyes in that hard face? I took advantage by urging quietly,
as if the maid and I had just become confidantes, "Please? Everyone
needs a friend."

"Huh!" she snorted, and this time she did close the door in my
face.

WlSH STEPHENSON was sitting at his desk when I returned to
Divisadero Street. Owing to his seniority in the investigation
business, he has the desk with the most privacy- that is to say, it
is farthest from the door. I do not begrudge him this in the least,
but I did wonder why he took so long before looking up when I
entered. Surely he'd heard the bell?

"Wish?" I inquired, setting my hat down on my own desk and
moving toward him as I began the long unbuttoning. "Are you all
right?"

"Oh, Fremont, I-" His head jerked up and he regarded me with a
slightly dazed expression, as if I'd brought him out of a deep
reverie. Or as if he'd recently been hit upon the head and lost
some of his wits. He rubbed at his forehead with unusually long,
big-knuckled fingers. "I'm sorry, I forgot to go by that club for
you."

"It doesn't matter, and was not what I inquired about anyway. I
merely asked if you were all right, because you appeared so, shall
we say, distracted."

"Oh, yes, I'm okay. I guess, somewhere in the back of my mind I
heard the bell on the door, but this cemetery thing . . . It's
really getting to me."

"I'm sorry," I sympathized. I turned a ladies' chair-so called
because it was made without arms, to accommodate the huge skirts of
the previous century-to face him and sat down. As I carried on
undoing all those buttons on my gray coat, I asked, "Do you want to
tell me about it?"

"You first," he said, brightening; he had a wonderful facility
for letting go of his own woes. "How did your surveillance go
today?"

I smiled with genuine pride and pleasure. "I identified the
thief! As I had suspected, it was a woman." My smile faded.
"Unfortunately she was more of a girl, not long out of childhood.
I'm glad my part was only to identify her, not to place her under
arrest. I fear I would have been tempted to give her a good tongue
lashing and then let her go. I wouldn't make a very good police
officer, Wish. How did you bear it? Didn't you ever feel sorry for
the criminals?"

"Um-hm, some of them," he nodded, his long face serious.
Everything about Wish is long, or big, or bony. But he had been
growing into himself, as it were, during the past couple of years,
so that he no longer looked like a gangly youth. Nor was he so
awkward physically as he once had been. Now he moved with the kind
of gentle gravity that many big men have, as if they must be
careful of all creatures smaller than themselves-in other words, of
most of the rest of us. With that same gravity he said: "But I
concentrate on the victims, and that gets me through. When laws are
broken, Fremont, somebody always gets hurt."

"That's true," I agreed, chewing on my lower lip as I thought
about Mama and Papa Garofalo. They were honest and kind-hearted;
from the hours I had spent in their store I knew there were people
in the neighborhood for whom the Garofalos kept a tab. In some
cases, I suspected, a very long tab. If that girl had only asked
for their help instead of stealing from them, what might they have
been willing to do for her?

"And what's more," Wish continued, "there's people who're always
wanting something for nothing, or wanting to get away with all
sorts of lawbreaking just to prove they can do it. They're your
run-of-the-mill sort of criminal. But the really big ones ..." He
shook his head from side to side, letting his words trail off. Then
suddenly he finished, in a voice so low I had to listen hard to
hear him: "The really big ones are pure evil."

Pure evil!
That gave me the chills, and I shivered in the
small silence that fell. Gathering myself together, I shrugged out
of the gray coat and let it drape over the back of the chair.
"Well," I said briskly, to break the pall, "at any rate, I told Mr.
and Mrs. Garofalo who their thief is, where she can be found, and
instructed them to call the police. Now all I have to do is send
them the bill: case successfully concluded. Your turn, Wish. What
was that you said, about the cemetery thing getting to you?"

"Yeah, but I don't quite know what precisely is bothering me.
That's the hell of it. Probably best not to talk about it." He
turned away and began to fiddle with some papers on his desk.

Ordinarily Wish would have said
heck of it,
so I knew
this was serious. I couldn't stand not knowing, so I somehow had to
persuade him to say more. I tentatively ventured: "I gather this is
something to do with Mr. Fennelly's daughter?"

No response. I tried again: "Oh dear, I've forgotten her name.
Poor girl. And poor you, to have to go poking about in the cemetery
looking for her."

"Cemeteries, plural." My young colleague turned back to me. He
was wavering, but he was also a little cross. "And her name is
Tara, but I've given up on her. I'm not going to find her. This
thing ... it's something else."

I leaned forward. "Michael is out, isn't he?" He usually was at
this time of day.

Wish nodded, frowning in most un-Wishlike manner. "So?"

I urged, "So tell me. If it's tricky, I'll keep it to
myself."

"We-e-ell ..."

"Come on, Wish! You know I'm not as conservative as Michael, and
I can keep my mouth shut if need be. Surely you need someone to
talk things over with; who better than me? I mean, I?"

A look of relief flooded Wish Stephenson's open countenance, for
which I was glad, because I would hate to have caused him further
discomfort. Almost as much as I would have hated not knowing what
was bothering him so. He leaned back in his chair, placed one ankle
on the other knee, and said: "Okay, but I do want you to keep it to
yourself until I've decided what to do."

I nodded encouragement. "I promise."

"I s'pose you know most of the cemeteries in this city are up on
Lone Mountain."

I nodded again, for I did know: that hilltop, to the west and
south of the Presidio, was called San Francisco's necropolis. There
were a few architectural monuments in the area that were said to be
rather grand, but I had not seen them myself, having no reason and
less inclination to go there.

"So that's where I was for most of the day," Wish said.

"It cannot have been pleasant."

"While I didn't find Tara Fennelly Roberts, I did come across
something else. Nobody would have wanted me to find it; and as a
matter of fact, maybe it's not what I thought it was. Most people
wouldn't have noticed, and if I hadn't been investigating, I
probably wouldn't have noticed either."

I gave him a look such as I imagine a big sister might give a
little brother, and said softly but sternly, "If you do not tell me
right
now,
Wish Stephenson, what it was you found, I
swear I will take you back up to that cemetery and tie you to a
tombstone!"

His face turned a shade whiter. "Fremont, it's not so much what
I found as what I didn't find. I swear to the Almighty, there's
empty graves up there!"

His eyes got wider, and so did mine; but we had no chance to
speak of it further because at that moment the door opened,
jingling its bell.

Michael came in, removing his hat and pulling a white scarf from
about his neck. "Well," he said, "what are you two hatching, all
huddled up together like a couple of conspirators?"