“You're trying to talk to Mrs. Grentz?”

“Trying being the operative. Police.”

“Yeah, got that.” She bounced up the stairs. “Hey, Mrs. Grentz, it's Hildy. I got your bagels.”

“Why didn't you say so?”

There was a lot of clicking and snicking, then the door opened. Eve looked down, considerably. The woman was barely five feet, skinny as a stick, and old as time. On her head was perched an ill-fitting black wig only shades darker than her wrinkled skin.

“I brought the cops, too,” Hildy told her, cheerfully.

“Are you arrested?”

“No, they just want to talk. About what happened with the Swishers.”

“All right then.” She waved a hand like she was batting at flies and began to walk away.

“My landlady,” Hildy told them. “I live below. She's okay, except for being-as my old man would say-crazy as a shithouse rat. You ought to go on in and sit down while she's in the mood. I'm going to stick her bagels away.”

“Thanks.”

The place was jammed with things. Pricey things, Eve noted as she made her way between tables, chairs, lamps, paintings that were tilted and stacked against the walls.

The air had that old-lady smell, what seemed to be a combination of powder, age, and flowers going to dust.

Mrs. Grentz was now perched in a chair, her tiny feet on a tiny hassock and her arms crossed over her nonexistent breasts. “Whole family, murdered in their sleep.”

“You knew the Swishers?”

“Of course I knew the Swishers. Lived here the past eighty-eight years, haven't I? Seen it all, heard it all.”

“What did you see?”

“World going to hell in a handbasket.” She dipped her chin, unfolded one of her bony arms to slap a gnarled hand on the arm of the chair. “Sex and violence, sex and violence. Won't be any pillar of salt this time out. Whole place, and everything in it, is going to burn. Get what you ask for. Reap what you sow.”

“Okay. Can you tell me if you heard or saw anything unusual on the night the Swishers were killed?”

“Got my ears fixed, got my eyes tuned. I see and hear fine.” She leaned forward, the tuned-up eyes avid. “I know who killed those people.”

“Who killed them?”

“The French.”

“How do you know that, Mrs. Grentz?”

“Because they're French.” To emphasize her point, she slapped a hand on her leg. “Got their der-re-airs kicked the last time they made trouble, didn't they? And believe me, they've been planning a payback ever since. If somebody's murdered in their own bed, it was the French who did it. You can take that to the bank.”

Eve wasn't sure the little soundPeabody made was a snicker or a sigh, but she ignored it. “I appreciate the information,” Eve began, and started to rise.

“Did you hear someone speaking French on the night of the murders?”

AtPeabody 's question, Eve sent her a pitying look.

“You don't hear them, girl. Quiet as snakes, that's the French for you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Grentz, you've been very helpful.” Eve got to her feet.

“Can't trust people who eat snails.”

“No, ma'am. We'll let ourselves out.”

Hildy stood just outside the doorway, grinning. “Buggy, but somehow fascinating, right? Mrs. Grentz?” She lifted her voice, moved into the doorway. “I'm going on down.”

“You get my bagels?”

“All put away. See you. Keep walking,” she instructed Eve, “and don't look back. You never know what else is going to pop into her head.”

“You got a few minutes to talk with us, Hildy?”

“Sure.” Still carrying the market bag, Hildy led the way out, down the stairs, and around to her own entrance. “She's actually my great great aunt-through marriage-but she likes to be called Mrs. Grentz. The mister's been dead thirty years. Never made the acquaintance myself.”

Though below street level, the apartment was bright and cheerful with a lot of unframed posters tacked to the walls and a rainbow scatter of rugs on the floor. “I rent from her-well, her son pays the rent. I'm a kind of unofficial caretaker-her and the place. You saw upstairs? That's nothing. She's loaded. Wanna sit?”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously loaded, like millions, so I'm here to make sure the security's always on, and that she doesn't lie around helpless if she trips over some of that furniture and breaks her leg. She's got this alarm deal on.” Hildy pulled a small receiver out of her pocket. “She falls, or if her vitals get wonky, this beeps. I do some of the marketing for her, listen to her crab sometimes. It's a pretty good deal for the digs. And she's okay, mostly, sort of funny.”

“How long have you had the place?”

“Six months, almost seven now. I'm a writer-well, working on that-so this is a good setup for me. You guys want something to drink or anything?”

“No, but thanks. You knew the Swishers?”

“Sort of, the way you do when you see the same people all the time. I knew the parents to nod to, like that. We weren't really on the same wave.”

“Meaning?”

“They were totally linear, you know. Put the con in conservative. Nice. Really nice. If they'd see me out, they'd always ask about Mrs. Grentz, and if I was doing okay. Not everybody bothers with that. I knew the kids a little more.”

She held up a hand, shut her eyes a minute. “I'm trying to put it in its place, to get to 'they're where their destiny took them to,' that place. But Jesus!” Her eyes opened again, swam a moment. “They were just kids. And Coyle? I think he had a little crush on me. It was really sweet.”

“So you saw them around the neighborhood.”

“Sure. Coyle mostly. They didn't let the little girl run around as much. He'd volunteer to run to the market, or walk with me there. Or I'd see him out boarding with some friends, and wave, or go out to talk.”

“Did you ever see him with somebody you didn't recognize from around the neighborhood?”

“Not really. He was a good kid. Old-fashioned, at least from the way I was raised. Really polite, a little shy, at least with me. Way into sports.”

“How about the comings and goings? Writers notice things, don't they?”

“It's important to observe stuff, file it away. You never know.” Hildy twirled a hunk of her colorful hair around her finger. “And I did think of something I didn't remember before, when the other cops came by to ask stuff. It's just-I couldn't keep anything in my head when I heard about it. You know?”

“Sure. What do you remember now?”

“I don't know if it's anything, but I started thinking about it this morning. That night…” She shifted, gave Eve a weak smile. “Listen, if I tell you something I did that's not a hundred percent legal, am I going to get in trouble?”

“We're not here to hassle you, Hildy. We're here about five people who were murdered in their beds.”

“Okay.” She drew a long breath. “Okay. Sometimes, if I'm up writing late, or if Mrs. Grentz has been a particular pain-I mean, you got a load right? She's funny, but sometimes she wears.”

“All right.”

“Sometimes, I go up on the roof.” She pointed a finger at the ceiling. “There's a nice little spot up there, and it's a place to hang out, look around, sit and think. Sometimes I go up there to, you know, smoke a little Zoner. I can't do that in here. If Mrs. Grentz was to come down- and she does sometimes-and smell it-she's got a nose like a bloodhound-she'd wig. So if I'm in the mood for a toke, not like every night or anything…”

“We're not Illegals, and we're not concerned if you had a little recreational Zoner.”

“Right. So I was up there. It was late because the book had been chugging. I was just hanging up there, about ready to go down, because the long night plus the Zoner made me sleepy. I just sort of looked around, like you do, and I see these two guys. Nice builds- that's what I thought, you know. Prime meat. I didn't think anything much of it, even when the cops came by and I heard about the Swishers, but I was thinking back, and I remembered.”