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that I gave a damn about Aaron Gold anymore. “But why would Soper attack Corinne?”

Zack frowned. “Maybe Corinne knows the incriminating stuff, too? Except I didn’t think she and Mercedes ever worked on the same kind of stories.”

“No. And besides, Corinne would have said something if she had an enemy at the party. Wait, we’re getting into motives again. Let’s just concentrate on who and when, like we’ve been doing, and let the police worry about why.”

“OK,” said Zack. He started decorating my list with doodles as he talked: crescent moons and rocket ships. No hearts with arrows through them, fortunately for my composure. “So, like, we need to find someone who knows if Syd Soper stayed late. And also keep asking if anybody saw someone follow Corinne down the pier.”

“And who on earth Dracula was.” I wiped the tomato sauce off my fingers and picked up the phone. But I got the same old answer.

“Thank you for calling Characters, Inc., Seattle’s finest costume shop. We’re taking a vacation after Halloween, but if you leave your name and number—”

I’d already left them a couple of messages, so I hung up, but it rang right away.

“Hi, Carnegie? It’s Angela. I think I’ve got the wrong dress. Does yours come with this weird bra?”

I laughed, glad to think about something frivolous. “That sounds like mine. Let me call you back.”

I ran downstairs and checked the garment bag from Stephanie’s Styles hanging on the back of my bedroom door. Sure enough, the pink gown inside had a strip of tape on the shoulder marked SIMS. When I went back up to the office, Zack had finished the pizza and was poking through the candy dish out in the good room.

“The ones in red wrappers are the best,” I told him. “Want to go see Angela with me? Maybe she can tell us something.”

We took my rented tin can down to the Harbor Steps complex on First Avenue, where condos rise high above trendy restaurants and antique shops. Zack spotted a parking space not too far from Angela’s building, and carried the garment bag for me. We cut across the polished granite steps, which lead up from the waterfront to the Seattle Art Museum on Second, and serve as a long slanting public plaza for outdoor concerts and lunchtime picnics.

No picnics today, with the gray skies and the chill, but a valiant street-corner fiddler had drawn a little audience. We paused to listen, and Zack shyly dropped a dollar in the open instrument case. Zack’s fuse might be short and his conversation might be limited, especially compared to Aaron’s, but he was pleasant to have around.

“Must be cool living right downtown,” he said as we rode the elevator to the thirteenth floor. “She could have walked home from the Aquarium.”

I remembered Angela laughing as she left the party. In innocent merriment, or in guilty relief at getting away with murder? When she opened her door to us, smiling like a cheerleader, wearing electric-purple leotards and a messy ponytail, the idea seemed absurd. Although Aaron was right: she did look strong.

“Hey, thanks,” she said, turning off the exercise video she had running on a big flat-screen TV in the corner. “But I could have come to your office. Hi, Zack.”

“No problem,” I told her. “We needed to get out for a breather.”

“Oh, really?” Angela pulled on a purple sweatshirt. “I didn’t know you two were—”

“A breather from working on the web site for my business,” I said firmly. “That’s all.”

She tilted her head archly. “Whatever. I’ll get your dress.”

While she was gone, I crossed the cheery, cluttered living room to a pair of sliding glass doors, drawn by the view From the tiny balcony with its tiny potted junipers you looked south over downtown, past the faded old brick buildings of Pioneer Square and the stark new baseball and football stadiums, to green hills and the soft gray horizon.

“You can see Mount Rainier from here when it’s clear,” said Angela, returning with the other Stephanie’s Styles bag. “Sunrise and sunset both. Incredible! It’s why I bought the place. And now that Microsoft has a building downtown, I don’t have that awful commute.”

It was quite a panorama, but even through the glass I could hear the traffic noise a dozen stories down. Give me the lapping of lake water anytime. Angela swapped garment bags with Zack, dropped hers over the back of a chair, and looked pointedly back at her VCR.

“Well, thanks again.”

Zack turned to go