I didn’t drive home to my apartment.

I parked in the empty lot outside Howard Cobb’s office in the Oak Creek strip mall at ten past five.

The blinds were down, but a thin strip of fluorescent light showed under the front door.

I knocked twice, hard enough to rattle the glass in its frame.

Howard opened the door himself, in his brown tweed vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

Arlene Vance sat in a green leather armchair by the window with a thick yellow legal pad on her knees.