As a Favor by Susan Dunlap Page A

were seeking a euphemism for the ultimately unpleasant word: “… dead?”
    “We don’t know.”
    Fern bit down on the flesh below her lower lip so that the center of the lip itself was entirely hidden by her teeth. Slowly she let the lip back out. “That’s terrible. Poor Anne,” she said without emotion. “Why would someone kill Anne?”
    I made a mental note of her interpretation of murder rather than suicide.
    “Mrs. Day?” The woman sounded closer.
    Recalling my question, I asked, “Monday night?”
    “I was at home.” She glanced nervously toward the door.
    “Did you go out at all?”
    “Oh, no. Donn told me about his day—who he saw, what his ideas were, what innovations he was considering in his work—” She looked past me to the door.
    I stepped back, and Fern rushed from the room.
    Fern Day had set up an alibi for Donn and for herself. There was something she wasn’t telling me but I didn’t have enough information to decide where to press yet. Whatever Fern’s secret, it, and the presence of her waiting client, had sufficiently unnerved her so that she’d abandoned Anne’s office. I was willing to bet that under normal circumstances she would have stood her ground here against the entire Berkeley police force.
    I stood a moment, glancing around Anne’s office. The walls sported neither pictures nor notices; peels of beige paint hung from the ceiling. Welfare manuals were stacked in piles on the desk; uncovered ballpoint pens lay around them. On the left side was a folder marked “To Do” and in it lists headed “Renewals,” “Address Changes,” and “Closings.” All the names on the lists had been crossed out. Anne must have been very efficient.
    I checked the desk, and found it divided, as Anne’s apartment had been, into the messy and the meticulous. In the first of the three left-side drawers were jumbles of cups, tea bags, maps, and phone books, and in the other two, carefully ordered groups of agency memos, work forms, and folders. The folders stood in the deep-bottomed drawer in alphabetical order by the client’s name. On a hunch I checked for Ermentine Brown. Maybe she was a welfare client and the “20” had something to do with her case. But if so, her case wasn’t here.
    I was just about to shut the drawer when I spotted more folders in a heap at the back. They were much thinner than the others. I pulled them out and opened the first, aware that this was illegal. I’d need a warrant to do it right. The first folder held four legal-size forms. One form gave identifying information—name, address, social security number, marital status; on another Anne had written “O/V” and two dates within the past month. The remaining forms appeared to be some sort of financial worksheets.
    The second folder contained the same, plus a few long, brown, curly hairs—obviously not Anne Spaulding’s hair—lying amongst the papers. By the third folder I realized I had no idea what was supposed to be recorded here and what wasn’t, and I could hardly ask Fern Day to explain.
    I satisfied myself with making a list of the names—seventeen in all. There were five sizeable families with addresses in two buildings off Telegraph, and twelve single women, who lived in Telegraph-area hotels. One of the hotels was the place I’d chased Howard’s thief through.
    Four of Anne’s clients lived at that hotel. Perhaps I’d have a talk with them and find out why Anne had separated out their folders. And I’d have another talk with Quentin Delehanty.
    Replacing the folders, I made my way back to the room with the five desks and the shelves of case folders. Glancing around the corner I could see the outline of Fern Day in one of the plexiglass booths. Her client’s voice was soft, the phrasing hesitant. Fern sat unmoving, as if entranced.
    I pulled open the top file drawer, but, though there were numerous Browns, there were no Ermentines.
    I slipped back into the kitchen. It, too, was now an