Free As a Favor by Susan Dunlap

Security?”
    “Hey, lady, I’m not disabled.”
    I looked pointedly at the bottle, but Delehantly avoided my stare.
    “I don’t drink all the time. It’s just that, well, one of the guys here died over the weekend. O.D.’d. He was just a kid. Tad. Just twenty-one. I warned him. I told him to watch it. I—” He stared down at the streaked floor. His eyes began to unfocus.
    “Before I go,” I said, “just one more thing. Do you know Anne Spaulding?”
    “His eyes shot open. His face reddened. “Spaulding! Do I know that Spaulding bitch! The bitch at welfare? She’s the one. She made Tad do it. If she’d left him alone he’d be alive today. She did it. She killed him.” His face was red; his fists banged on the bed.
    “What did she do?”
    “Cut him off, that’s what. She cut him off. Tad got the notice last Thursday. No more money. He freaked. Just twenty-one. Jesus!”
    “Did you know Anne Spaulding yourself?”
    “What? Yeah, I know who she is. Everyone knows. You don’t do something like that and remain anon…anon… unknown.”
    “You’re still pretty angry, aren’t you?”
    Delehanty stared at me in disgust. “Don’t give me that social work crap—still pretty angry. Tad’s still pretty dead.”
    I wasn’t getting anyplace with that line of questioning. “Who lives here?”
    “You want who’s in all twenty rooms? Hell, I can’t tell you that. Look at the register, lady. And leave me alone. I’ve got some serious drinking to do.”
    “Where were you Monday night, Delehanty?”
    “What? Go away.”
    “I will when you answer me. Where were you?”
    “Here. Where do you think? You think you get this hung over by just drinking for an hour? You want to see the proof?” He didn’t wait for my reply, but pulled back the bedcovers and displayed six boxes filled with empty wine bottles under the bed.
    Obviously they were more than this week’s collection, but there seemed no point in pressing it. I asked for witnesses, but Delehanty maintained he hadn’t gone out of his room.
    Strange that all the people involved with Anne were such homebodies.
    As I left, Delehanty’s head sunk to his hands. He reached for a bottle of aspirin. And I wondered how long it would be before he joined his friend Tad.
    Making a mental note to find the hotel manager and get a list of tenants, I headed back to the car and sat there, examining what I had learned.
    There was no reason not to believe Ermentine Brown’s story that Anne was extracting bribes from street vendors. There was no reason for Delehanty to insist the women on the list never stayed at the hotel—feigning ignorance would have been easier. But if those clients did not live here, where were they and why had Anne separated out their case folders? Were they living elsewhere and bribing Anne to say they lived here? It didn’t make much sense, but there was something going on with those missing clients and it was the only lead I had—except for Nat’s pen.
    I wondered what Alec Effield, Anne’s supervisor, knew about it.

Chapter 10
    I CHECKED BACK AT the welfare department in case Alec Effield had returned. He hadn’t, a disgruntled Fern Day told me between the ringing of two phones.
    My next stop was at the station to run a quick make on Effield. While I waited, I dialed Nat and listened to the phone ring eight times. He had asked me to start this investigation. He had said to let him know. Dammit, where was he?
    The microfilm had no listing for Alec Effield—no crimes, no complaints. I got his address and headed for a car.
    Rush hour. None of the cross-town streets was more than four lanes wide. Grove Street, with parking on both sides, was effectively two-lane, but it was still predominately residential and I could make better time on it. Even so, it took me twenty minutes to cross most of north Berkeley and turn east into the hills.
    In reality the Berkeley hills are not individual peaks but a long bulge on the eastern edge of the