Art turned to find out who had called his name.

Monica was passing the morose receptionist's counter. She wore a red winter coat, a parka that seemed thick, long, and padded enough to keep its inhabitant alive and happy through the worst of polar winter. She waved at him.

"Monica!" He was pleased to see her. "Did you also get your stuff back?"

She waved a bag with blue 112 advice at him. "Yep."

"Looks like we're both buying at the same shop." He waved back with his own.

She grinned and peeked into hers. "Right, but you know, I got nothing but crap, here."

Art laughed.

The receptionist left her perch and approached, her slow steps loud and reproachful on the stone floor.

Monica glanced at her, then back at Art. "Let's get away from here..." Her voice was hushed. "...or she'll arrest us for improper bag waving."

The snowflakes outside were dense and heavy, fleeing before the freezing wind in panicky droves. The ground was white.

"You're heading home?" Art asked.

"Yep." The word emanated from somewhere under her oversized, red hood.

"Great, me too."

A tram stop was conveniently placed right in front of the police station. As they reached its small shelter, Art studied the list of lines stopping here.

"We can take the number 2." Monica extracted her head from the safety of her parka. "It takes us right to Dumstreet."

Art nodded as he looked down the street from where their transport was bound to arrive. Right then, the street lamps were turned on, glowing timidly dim for some seconds, as if afraid of someone objecting, but they quickly gained confidence and brilliance.

A daily occurrence—but so rarely witnessed.

"Have they grilled you, too?" she asked.

"Who?" His musings on street illumination faded and were replaced by harsh reality. "The police?"

"Yep." She nodded. "Inspector Savage—I thought he'd never stop." Her hand dove into the police bag and returned clutching her phone. Its lock screen activated and showed a series of message bubbles. She flicked her thumb to make them scroll—the list was long—and looked back at him. "He asked all sorts of questions." She let the phone disappear in the folds of her coat and gazed into the snowscape, her face blank.

"I was interviewed by Betty Bossi," Art said. "They've gone through my e-mail, and I think I'm their prime suspect now."

She looked at him and tilted her head. "Why?"

Art huffed. "You won't believe it. The night before Mrs. Knooch died, I wrote an e-mail to a friend of mine. I told him that a neighbor of mine was stalking me, making sure I did my sweeping chores... Mrs. Knooch, that is. And I wrote... and this is probably when things got interesting for the police... I told him she looks like a wigged turtle."

A brief smile played on her lips. "I can see why you thought this funny at the time. But... it's not, not now."

"Yes, I know. I do feel sorry for it, now."

"Well..." She shrugged. "Do you remember how I faced Savage on Sunday, in Mrs. Meier's apartment? Objecting to his requests? Telling him about wearing black and white stripes?"

"Yeah."

"I thought that funny, too. But it wasn't. Not really. Not after her death. Sometimes I say things I shouldn't. I got angry for him bossing us around. Reminded me of my family back home... of my father." She took a breath. "Anyway... you don't have to worry."

"Why worry?"

"About you being their prime suspect. They have a better one." Her eyes were on the street. "Oh, our tram's coming."

Art turned his head to watch the approaching vehicle. Its blue carriage was last millennium, but a white "2" on a red square promised that it would take them home safely. It lumbered into the stop, its ancient brakes squealing and giving off the acrid smell of struck flint.

The smell of hell on wheels.

They boarded the thing and found an empty, wooden bench for two, built for the express purpose of making its occupants suffer.

"A better suspect?" Art was still mulling over her statement about the police having a better suspect than him.

She pressed her lips together and moved her finger over the dark panel of the phone she had retrieved from the depths of her coat. "Yep, a better suspect... me."

"You?"

She nodded. "I had a shouting match with Knooch. The day before she died." Her eyes were still on her dark device.

Art remembered the altercation that Bossi had mentioned. He said nothing and just looked at Monica.

She bit her lip, lit up the phone's display with her thumb, just to switch it off again. "A bad one. We met on the stairs. I was about to leave as she popped out of her apartment. She accused me of having dropped an egg at the ground floor landing. I told her I didn't know about any egg. She didn't believe me."

"What made Mrs. Knooch think that you were the one who had dropped that egg?"

"I asked her that, too. She said somebody had told her, but she wouldn't say who it was." She shrugged. "But it wasn't me. And I said so."

That's probably when the discussion got loud.

"And what did she say?"

"She threatened me." Her right thumb juggled the messages on the lock screen. Then she looked at him. "She told me she would report this to the owner of the building. She would get me thrown out of the house. I answered that she..." She took a long breath. "...that she could go fuck herself and left her standing there. One floor down, I ran into Adriana and Ralph. They probably had been enjoying the show."

"Did they comment?" Art asked.

"Nope. But I didn't ask them for opinions. I just left the place. I was so livid." She shook her head. "Can you see how this must look for the police?"

"Yeah. I see what you mean. But..." He desperately wanted to add a 'but', to put this into perspective, to shrink it from the looming elephant it looked like into the innocent mouse it should be. "...no one would kill anyone over such a triviality. And the police are aware of that."

Her smile dug dimples into her cheeks. "Thanks. I hope they do. I... I do feel sorry for having talked to her like that. I really do... But I was so angry back then." She snorted. "Anyway, you see, your calling her a wigged turtle must look totally innocent on their scale, at least compared to what I did."

Art nodded. There was something that didn't add up, though. When he had talked to Knooch that morning, Rashid Pathan had been her primary suspect. He considered telling Monica about it, but he hadn't told the police about Knooch's suspicion. If he told Monica now, and Monica told the police about it—

"What's the matter?" Monica arched her eyebrows at him.

"What?" Her question took him by surprise.

"You're looking worried."

"Oh, it's nothing." He felt like being caught in a quagmire—at least he thought that's what a quagmire would be like. A complicated mess, lacking purchase, clarity, and symmetry. "This whole business, it's just so weird."

"Yep. I know what you mean." Her dimples deepened. The moving lights of the street lamps were reflected in her eyes.

Tiny stars flitting over dark coal.

She arched her eyebrows at him.

He felt himself blush, not for the first time this afternoon. But this blush felt much more pleasant than the one in Bossi's office. Monica intrigued him, he wanted to know more about her. "So what is it, about your father?"

"My father?"

"You've mentioned him, just before. When you talked about your reaction to Savage bossing us around. Is he like the Inspector?"

"He..." She closed her mouth, then shook her head, smiling faintly. "I'm not going to expose one of my life's pivot points to a stranger." Her smile grew more confident. "Why should I?"

He shrugged. "We're neighbors. That's what neighbors are for."

The passing lamps cast ever-changing shadows on her face—ever-changing facets, all of them somewhere between mysterious and mischievous.

"We have to get out at the next station." She buried her phone in her coat.

"Sure."

Monica got up, and he followed her, nearly losing his balance when the tram came to a sudden halt at its stop.

"But you know what?" She glanced back at him, over her shoulder. "We can play the question game."

"The question game?"

"Yep. Each one of us can ask one question, and the other must answer it truthfully. Okay?"

"Okay." This sounded interesting.

The tram's doors opened with a pneumatic hiss.