Free The Night Searchers (A Sharon McCone Mystery) by Marcia Muller

since it would come out overcooked anyway, but maybe that way the cook wouldn’t incinerate it quite as much. It arrived well done, with a slab of American cheese oozing over the sides. I ate it anyway. No sending food back at Carmen’s.
    I was the sole patron except for a very old man—known only as Micah—whom I’d occasionally used as an informant. He ignored me. No skulduggery on the waterfront, nothing to sell, therefore I didn’t exist. Fine with me. He was unpleasant and demanding, and his information was often inaccurate. I paid the check and started for the door, but then he hissed at me.
    For a moment I almost didn’t turn around. When I did, he beckoned for me to come closer.
    “Was a guy askin’ around about you today.”
    “A guy.”
    “Big, ugly guy. Smelled funny—like lime juice. Seemed to me that he thought you was still at the pier.”
    “He tell you his name?”
    “Hell no.”
    “Say why he wanted to see me?”
    “Nope. Wasn’t up to no good, I bet.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Somethin’ about the way he asked. I dunno. What do I look like—a shrink?”
    “You tell him where I’d gone?”
    “How could I? How would I know?”
    “Thanks for telling me.” I dug in my bag, handed him a five.
    “Twenty’d be better.”
    “Five’s what it’s worth. You see him again, you find out more, then we’ll talk money.”
    “Stingy bitch,” he muttered.
    I walked away.
    Big, ugly guy who smelled like lime juice. Well, that could fit any number of men in this city. I thought about the Givens case and the Hoffman inquiry I’d taken on for Hy. No big ugly guys associated with either.
    Wasn’t up to no good.
    A disgruntled former client, like the man who had hired the arsonist who torched my home on Church Street? Somebody whom I’d caused to be arrested and testified against? You made enemies in this business, and even if they were incarcerated there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t be out on the streets again seeking vengeance. Nothing to do but stay alert.
    Might as well head home. The cats would be hungry, and maybe there was something watchable on TV.
    9:13 p.m.
    On the way to the garage I changed my mind, and against my better judgment decided to go by the lot on Saturn Street again. I paused to admire my new car before I got in. When my BMW Z4—sold to me by Rae, since Ricky insisted on buying her a new car every year on her birthday—was destroyed in the house fire, I’d been devastated. For years I’d driven and loved an old MG I’d owned since college, but I’d loved the Z4 even more. For a while I drove rentals, and then Hy surprised me with a Mercedes SLK 350 roadster. Red, with a removable hardtop and a black ragtop.
    At first I’d thought the car was too showy for someone in my position, but Hy explained it was the opposite: nobody would believe that an investigator would drive such a sporty machine. Besides, the car was powerful enough that I could easily lose the most determined of pursuers. All my life I’ve had love affairs with cars, but this was the biggie.
    I took what I thought of as my “skulking clothes” from the trunk, and went back to the office to put them on. Then I drove to Russian Hill, parking even farther away than I had before. Darted for the shadows of the overhang where I’d waited on my previous visit, and checked out the area for pedestrians or people at windows. There were none, but from the pit I heard low voices, their words indistinct.
    An icy wind whistled above the excavation and was sucked down in a vortex. Not a good place for anyone to take shelter tonight. As I stood in the shadows, I heard a moan, and then a gruff voice said, “We better get outta here. A doorway’s better than this.”
    “But the baby…”
    In a moment two figures appeared from the darkness through the hole in the fence and emerged onto the sidewalk. They didn’t see me as they huddled together. The woman was obviously pregnant and close to