The Faberge Egg by Robert Upton Page B

run-down building divided into several small apartments. McGuffin knew when he got out of the car that he was getting wet for nothing, but it was the only lead he had, and it had to be checked.
    The front door stood partly open, revealing a worn linoleum corridor flanked on both sides by four flimsy, wooden doors. There was a row of mailboxes under the curved stairs leading to the second floor, only a few with names, and McGuffin knew even before he pushed the buttons that none of the buzzers worked. He pushed them all, waited for a minute, then walked down the corridor to the first door and knocked. A moment later a white-haired black man, wearing reading glasses, opened the door as far as the chain would allow.
    “Yes?”
    “My name is Amos McGuffin,” the detective said, showing the old man his choirboy smile. “I’m looking for some old friends who used to live here about eighteen years ago - a woman and her young daughter, named Dwindling.”
    The old man smiled back. “I doubt if there’s anybody lived here as much as half that.”
    “Where can I find the building manager?”
    The old man laughed. “Ain’t seen one of them in all the time I been here. All I know is I’m supposed to send a check every month to something called Preferred Properties on Market Street. So if this is preferred, you know you don’t want to see no unpreferred.”
    “You’re right, thanks,” McGuffin said, backing away. There was no sense going further. Ivey Dwindling was part of the unrecorded history of this building.
    He walked out the front door, skipped down the front stairs into the fog and hurried across the slick, wet street to his car. He was about to get in when he noticed a group of children, unmindful of the dampness, grouped in front of the small grocery store at the corner. It was just the sort of place where Ivey would have stopped for ice cream, McGuffin decided, as he started for the store.
    The kids ignored him as he pushed past them and opened the worn wooden door. A bell over the door jingled lightly when he stepped inside the tiny grocery store. There was no doubt the place had been here when Ivey was a little girl, perhaps even when Queen Victoria was a little girl. The wooden floor was worn to hills and gullies, and cartons and cans were stacked haphazardly wherever they could be fitted. McGuffin walked to the back of the small room as the curtains parted, and a stooped old lady appeared. The woman stared silently as McGuffin introduced himself and produced the picture from his coat pocket.
    “Shirley Temple,” she said, nodding and smiling.
    “You remember her?”
    “Sure, I remember. She live up the street with her mama,” the old woman said, in what sounded to McGuffin like a Russian accent.
    “Her name is Ivey Dwindling.”
    “I call her Shirley Temple. Sweet girl, no trouble.”
    “Do you know what happened to her?”
    “What?” the woman asked fearfully.
    “No, no,” McGuffin said, shaking his head. “I mean do you have any idea where she and her mother might have moved?”
    The old woman thought about it for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “I don’t tink so. Her fadder was killed, I tink she get lots of money.”
    “Why do you say that?” McGuffin asked quickly.
    She shrugged. “One day she have nuttin’, the next she have a big car, den dey move.” It was obvious, the American dream. “Why do you want her?”
    “To give her some more money,” McGuffin answered.
    “Dat’s nice,” the old lady said. “I wish I could help.”
    “You might have,” McGuffin said. Then he thanked her and left.
    The coastal fog changed imperceptibly to rain as McGuffin wove eastward through Golden Gate Park to downtown San Francisco. He returned his car to Gino’s service station on the Embarcadero, then hailed a cab to Goody’s bar. The first of the after-work crowd had already begun trickling in by the time McGuffin arrived. Goody looked up from the beer he was drawing and called to