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suggested him to Frank.”
    I had to imagine that Frank Collins had not been easy to work with. “Still, it sounds like you tried to do the right thing.”
    “I really did. Matt, the worker from Leopold, is a nice young man, and he’s trying to move up in the business as much as he can.” Dot took a sip of her coffee and made a face. “Ugh. I need a warm-up. Want one?”
    Once she refreshed both our cups she sat down again, just in time to welcome Buck and Hondo into the house. For a change she was firm about not feeding the dog muffins, and Buck seemed to agree with her. I noticed, however, that he took his plate and the newspaper into the living room where we couldn’t see him around a corner.
    “Where was I?” Dot asked after all of that.
    “Matt,” I prompted. “You said he needed the hours and he’s trying to move up in the business. What would keep him from doing that?”
    “I know him through Candace,” Dot said as if that explained everything. In some ways, since I know Dot well, it did. Her daughter had Down syndrome and lived in a group home in Camarillo so if Dot knew Matt through Candace he likely had some challenges in life. “He went through some of the job training classes that she attended at one point. He’s much younger than Candace, so it must have been one of the more recent sets. And he doesn’t have as many problems. I think he’s dating Candace’s roommate Lucy.”
    So there were several ties between Dot and this young man. I said as much, and she nodded. She looked a little worried as she explained all this to me. She stopped talking for a moment, looking thoughtful. “You know, Detective Fernandez asked a lot of questions about Matt.”
    “More than he asked about other subcontractors and their helpers?”
    Dot waggled a hand. “Maybe a few more. But now that I think of it, he was focusing on the young men who worked with all the contractors. I guess that makes sense after what I told him before.” Her brows wrinkled together. “And Matt is one of the taller, skinnier ones among them. He’s built a lot like Ben. You’d never confuse them from the front, because Matt’s dark-haired and clean-shaven….”
    “While Ben is closer to blond and has that awful goatee right now, which I hope he’ll outgrow soon,” I finished for her so she didn’t have to.
    Dot shrugged. “At least he didn’t dye his hair blue his first semester. I don’t know how many freshmen I’ve seen on campus over there with blue or purple or maroon hair. Why do they think that’s attractive?”
    “If you figure it out, let me know,” I told her. “It’s not attractive to me, but I’m not eighteen, either. I don’t think it’s supposed to be attractive to me.”
    I looked out the kitchen window to where I could see my apartment. “This all keeps going back to the apartment one way or another doesn’t it? Did Frank have anything to do with building your apartment when it was new?” I seemed to remember him making claims in that regard, but I wasn’t sure how truthful they might have been.
    “In a way he did. He was somebody else’s ‘helper’ at that point. I’m not too sure how much better he’s gotten at the business, to tell the truth,” Dot said with a grimace. “When we were building he mostly pounded nails and painted, the kind of work it didn’t take much skill to do. He certainly hung around enough after things were done and we were moving the girls in.”
    “Was he married then?”
    “Not yet, although he did marry rather young. I think he would have waited longer, but he made a mistake there and found a girl whose family insisted they get married immediately. If I remember right, Tracy has several older brothers.” Dot still wore a look of distaste over Frank’s behavior.
    That made me think of another question I wanted to ask her. “Does Candace’s original roommate from the apartment still live around here?”
    “No, and we might have Frank to blame for that,