McCone And Friends

I

I’d been on the Conway case for close to twenty-four hours before I started paying serious attention to Adrian’s bedroom wall. A big oversight, considering it was dark purple and covered with a collage of clippings and photographs and junk that looked like it had been dug out of a garbage can. But then I’ve never been too quick on the uptake on Monday mornings, which was the only other time I’d seen it.

The wall, the missing girl’s mother had explained, was a form of therapy, and even though its creation had more or less trashed the room, she-the mother, Donna Conway-considered it well worth the cost. After all, a sixteen-year-old whose father had run off a year and a half ago with a woman of twenty whom she-the daughter, Adrian Conway-insisted on calling “Dad’s bimbo” needed something, didn’t she? And it was cheaper than paying for a shrink.

Or for any more self-help books, I thought, if there are any left that you don’t already have.

The Conway house made me damn twitchy, and not just because there wasn’t a book in it that didn’t have the words “relationship” or “self” in its title. It was in San Francisco’s Diamond Heights district-a place that looks like some alien hand has picked up an entire suburb and plunked it down on one of our southeastern hills. The streets are cutesily named-Jade, Topaz, Turquoise-and the Conway’s, Goldmine Drive, was no exception. The house, tucked behind its own garage and further hidden from the street by a high wall, was pretty much like all the other houses and condos and apartments around there: white walls and light carpeting and standard modern kitchen; skylights and picture windows and a balcony with a barbecue that could hardly ever be used because the wind would put icicles on your briquettes up there. The view was nice enough, but it couldn’t make up for the worn spots on the carpet and the cracks that showed where the builder had cut corners. When Donna Conway told me-for God knows what reason-that the house was the sum total of her divorce settlement, I started feeling depressed for her. I didn’t get much myself when I got divorced, but a VCR and half the good silverware were at least hockable, and from the rust on the FOR SALE sign out front, I gathered that this house was not.

Anyway, Adrian Conway had been missing for two weeks by the time her mother turned for help to the firm where I work, All Souls Legal Cooperative. We’re kind of a poor man’s McKenzie, Brackman-a motley collection of crusaders and mainstream liberals and people like me who don’t function too well in a structured environment, and one of the biggest legal-services plans in northern California. Donna Conway was a medical technician with a hospital that offered membership in the plan as part of their benefits package, so she went to her lawyer when she decided the police weren’t doing all they could to find her daughter. Her lawyer handed the case to our chief investigator, Sharon McCone, who passed it on to me, Rae Kelleher.

So on a Monday morning in early November I was sitting in Donna Conway’s drafty living room (God, didn’t she know about weather stripping?), sipping weak instant coffee and wishing I didn’t have to look at her sad, sad eyes. If it weren’t for her sadness and the deep lines of discontentment that made parentheses around the corners of her mouth, she would have been a pretty woman-soft shoulder-length dark hair and a heart-shaped face, and a willowy body that made me green with envy. Her daughter didn’t look anything like her, at least not from the picture she gave me. Adrian had curly red-gold hair and a quirky little smile, and her eyes gleamed with mischief that I took to be evidence of an offbeat sense of humor.

Adrian, Donna Conway told me, had never come home two weeks ago Friday from her after-school job as a salesclerk at Left Coast Casuals at the huge Ocean Park Shopping Plaza out near the beach. Turned out she hadn’t even shown up for work, and although several of her classmates at nearby McAteer High School had seen her waiting for the bus that would take her to the shopping center, nobody remembered her actually boarding it. Adrian hadn’t taken anything with her except the backpack she usually took to school. She hadn’t contacted her father; he and his new wife were living in Switzerland now, and the police there had checked them out carefully. She wasn’t with friends, her boyfriend, or her favorite relative, Aunt June. And now the police had back burnered her file, labeled it just another of the teenage disappearances that happen thousands and thousands of times a year in big cities and suburbs and small towns. But Donna Conway wasn’t about to let her daughter become just another statistic-no way! She would pay to have Adrian found, even if it took every cent of the equity she’d built up in the house.

I’d noticed two things about Donna while she was telling me all that: She seemed to harbor the usual amount of malice toward her ex’s new wife, and an even larger amount toward Adrian’s Aunt June.

On Monday I went by the book: talked with the officer in Missing Persons assigned to Adrian’s case; talked with the classmates who had seen her leaving McAteer that Friday; talked with her supervisor at Left Coast Casuals and the head of security at Ocean Park Plaza. Then I checked out the boyfriend, a few girlfriends, and a couple of teachers at the high school, ran through the usual questions. Did Adrian use drugs or alcohol? Had she been having romantic problems? Could she be pregnant? Had she talked about trouble at home, other than the obvious? No to everything. Adrian Conway was apparently your all-American average, which worked out to a big zero as far as leads were concerned. By nightfall I’d decided that it was the old story: gone on purpose, for some reason all her own; a relative innocent who probably hadn’t gotten far before becoming somebody’s easy victim.

Sad old story, as sad as Donna Conway’s eyes.

It was the memory of those eyes that made me go back to take a second look at Adrian’s room on Tuesday afternoon-that, and the thought that nobody could be as average as she sounded. I had to find out just who Adrian Conway really was. Maybe then I could locate her.

I started with the collage wall. Dark purple paint that had stained the edges of the white ceiling and splotched on the cream carpet. Over that, pictures cut from glossy magazines-the usual trite stuff that thrills you when you’re in your teens. Sunsets and sailboats. Men with chiseled profiles and windblown hair; women in gauzy dresses lazing in flower-strewn meadows. Generic romance with about as much relationship to reality as Mother Goose.

But over all that were the words. They leaped out in bold type: black, white, red and other colors. GO FOR IT! HOT. GONE FOREVER. STOLEN MOMENTS. FEAR. YES, NO, MAYBE. LOST. THE RIGHT STUFF. WHAT’S IN/WHAT’S OUT. FLASH, COLOR, CURVES, SPLASH, JUST DO IT! And many more…

Words as typical as the pictures, but interesting because they seemed important to a young woman who lived in a house where there wasn’t a single book, unless you counted her school texts and her mother’s stacks of mostly unread paperbacks on self-improvement.

Now, I’m no intellectual giant. I scraped through Berkeley by the skin of my teeth, and for years afterwards all I could make myself read were shop-and-fucks. I still don’t read what passes for literature these days, but I do get mighty uncomfortable in a place where aren’t any old dust-catchers-as my grandmother used to call them-lying around. Apparently Adrian was fond of the written word, too.

Tacked, nailed, and glued to the words-but never completely covering them-was the junk. A false eyelash, like the hairy leg of a sci-fi spider. A lacy red bra, D-cup, with the nipples cut out. A plastic tag like the stores attach to clothing to prevent shoplifting. A lid from a McDonald’s carry-out cup, Coke-stained straw still stuck through the opening. Broken gold neck chain, pair of fake plastic handcuffs, card with ink smudges on it that looked like fingerprints. Egret feather, dismembered doll’s arm, syringe (unused). Lottery ticket with 7s rubbed off all in arrow, $2.00 value unclaimed. And much, much more…

Not your standard teenage memory wall. A therapy wall, as Adrian’s mom had put it? Maybe. I didn’t know anything about therapy walls. The grandmother who raised me would have treated me to two years of stony silence if I’d trashed my room that way.

Donna Conway was standing in the door behind me. She must have felt my disapproval, because she said, “That wall was Adrian’s only outlet for her pain. She adored her father. After he left us, she needed a way to begin healing.”

So why didn’t she hire out to a demolition company? I thought. Then I scowled, annoyed with myself. Next thing you knew, I’d sound just like my boss, Sharon McCone. The generation gap wasn’t something I needed to leap yet.

Donna was watching my face, looking confused. I wiped the scowl off and said, “Just thinking. If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend some time alone with the wall.” Then I started to blush, hearing how truly stupid that sounded.

She didn’t seem to notice. Maybe because her daughter had put a private part of herself into the wall, it had become a sort of being to her. Maybe people who were “rediscovering and healing” themselves, as she’d said she was, were either too sensitive or too vulnerable to make fun of other people who expressed sudden desires to commune alone with inanimate objects. Whatever, she just nodded and left, closing the door so the wall and I could have complete privacy.

I sat down on Adrian’s brass daybed, kicked off my shoes, and drew my legs up on the ruffly spread. Them I took a good look at the mess on the wall. It had been a long-term project. Adrian started it, Donna had told me, the day the divorce papers were served. “We made an occasion of it,” she said. “I had champagne and caviar, Adrian had coke and a pizza. We painted. I guess it was the champagne that made me paint the edges of the rug and ceiling.”

Now I replayed that. She hadn’t painted the rug and ceiling because she was drinking champagne; the champagne had made her do it. So perfectly in tune with the philosophies of some of the books I’d glimpsed in passing. This was a household where little responsibility was ever assigned or acknowledged. Not healthy for an adult, and definitely bad for a teenager.

Back to the wall, Rae. You should be able to decipher it-after all, you were a psych major.

First the purple paint. Then the layer of pictures. Idealized, because she was trying to look beyond the bleak not to a better future. Next the layer of words. She was trying to talk about it, but she didn’t really know how. So she used single words and phrases because maybe she wasn’t ready for whole sentences. Hadn’t worked through her feelings enough for whole thoughts.

Finally the layer of junk. Pretty ordinary stuff, very different from the pictures. Her feelings were more concrete, and she was trying to communicate them in concrete form. Unconsciously, of course, because doing it deliberately would be too sophisticated for a kid who’d never been in therapy. Too sophisticated for you, Rae-and you have been in therapy. Too bad they didn’t encourage you to make a wall like this. Now, that would’ve given them something to eyeball at All Souls…

Back to this wall. She’s gone through a process of sorts. Has piled concrete things and real words on top of idealized pictures and vague words. And then one day she’s through. She walks out of this room and goes…where? To do what? Maybe if I knew what the very last thing she added to the wall was…

I left the room and found Donna in the kitchen, warming her hands around a cup of tea. “What were the last things Adrian put up on her wall, do you know?” I asked.

For a moment she looked blank. Then she shook her head. “I never looked at the wall before she left. It was her own private thing.”

“You never talked about it?”

“No.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh…” she stared down into the teacup. “I don’t know. About the healing process. About everyone’s potential to be.”

I waited for her to go on. Then I realized that was it. Great conversational diet for a kid to sink her teeth into: healing process, potential to be.

What happened when Adrian was worried about an exam? When she hurt because her favorite guy didn’t ask her to the dance? When she was scared of any one of all the truly scary things kids had to face in the city, in this world? Where did she retreat to lick her wounds?

I was getting mad, and I knew why. Like Adrian, I’d grown up in a home where everything was talked about in abstractions. In my case, should and shouldn’ts, what-will-people-thinks and nice-girls-don’ts. I knew where Adrian Conway retreated: not to a nest of family affection and reassurance, but into a lonely lair within herself, where she could never be sure she was really safe.

I wasn’t mad at Donna Conway for her arm’s-length treatment of her daughter, though. I was mad at my dead grandmother, who raised me after my parents were killed in a car wreck. Donna Conway, even though she wasn’t able to deal with emotion, had said she was willing to spend her last dollar to get Adrian back. Grandma wouldn’t have given two cents for me.

I wanted to go back to All Souls and talk the case over with Sharon, but when I got to Bernal Heights, where the co-op has its offices, I made a side trip to our annex across the triangular park from our main building. Lillian Chu, one of the paralegals who worked our 800 line, lived in Diamond Heights, and I thought she had a kid at McAteer. Maybe there was something going on with Adrian Conway that the classmates the police and I had questioned couldn’t or wouldn’t tell.

Lillian was just going off shift. Yes, she said, her son Tom was in Adrian’s class, and he was due to pick her up in about five minutes. “We’re going shopping for new running shoes,” she added. “The way he go goes through them, I should have bought stock in Reebok.”

“Could I talk with Tom for a few minutes?”

“Sure, I’ve got to run over to the main building and check about my payroll deductions. If you want, you can wait here and I’ll send Tom in.”

I sat in Lillian’s cubicle, listening to phones ringing and voices murmuring on the 24-hour legal hot line. After a while a shaggy-haired young guy with a friendly face came into the cubicle. “You Rae? Mom says you want to talk to me?”

“Yes, I want to task you about Adrian Conway. Her mom’s hired me to find her.”

Tom Chu perched on the corner of the deck. His expression was still friendly, but a little guarded now. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything you want to tell me.”

“You mean like dirt.”

“I mean anything that might help me locate her.”

Tom looked uncertain.

“This isn’t a game,” I told him. “Or a case of a mother trying to find out more than her daughter wants her to know. Adrian’s been missing for over two weeks now. She could be in serious trouble. She could even be dead.”

“Yeah.” He sighed heavily. “Okay, I don’t really know anything. Not fact, you know? But…You talk with her boyfriend, Kirby Dalson?”

“Yes.”

“What’d you think of him?”

“What do you think of him?”

“Bad news.”

“Why?”

Tom drew one of his legs up on the desk and fiddled with the lace of his sneaker; from the looks of the shoe, Lillian should have invested in Reebok. “Okay,” he said, “Kirby’s…always into something. Always scamming. You know what I’m saying?”

“Drugs?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think they’re his main thing.”

“What is?”

He shrugged. “Just…scams. Like a few times he got his hands on some test questions beforehand and sold them-for big bucks, too. And for a while he was selling term papers. Scalping sports and concert tickets that you knew had to be stolen. He’s always got a lot of cash, drives a sports car that everybody knows his folks didn’t buy for him. He tells his parents he’s got this part-time job in some garage, but all the time he’s just scamming. The only job he ever had was cleaning up the food concession area at Ocean Park Plaza, but that didn’t last long. Beneath him, I guess.”

“What about Adrian-you think she was in on his scams?”

“She might’ve been. I mean, this past year she’s changed.”

“How?”

“Just…changed. She’s not as friendly anymore. Seems down a lot of the time. And she’s always with Kirby.”

“Did this start around the time her father left?”

He shook his head. “After that. I mean, her old man left. Too bad, but it happens.” His eyes moved to a photograph on Lillian’s desk – the two of them and a younger girl, no father. “No,” he added, “it was after that. Maybe six months ago.”

“Do you remember anything that happened to Adrian around that time that might have caused this change?”

He thought. “No-sorry, I know Adrian okay, but she’s not really a good friend or anything like that.”

I thanked him and asked him to call me if he thought of anything else. Then I walked across the park to the freshly painted Victorian where our main offices-and the attic nest where I live-are.

The set-up at All Souls is kind of strange for a law firm, but then even the location is strange. Bernal Heights, our hillside neighborhood is the southeastern part of the city, is ethnically mixed, architecturally confused, and unsure whether it wants to be urban or semi-rural. At All Souls we’re also ethnically mixed; our main building is a combination of offices, communal living space, and employees’ separate quarters; and most of us don’t know if we’re nineties progressives or throwbacks to the sixties. All in all, it adds up to an interesting place to work.

And Sharon McCone’s an interesting person to work for. That afternoon I found her behind her desk in the window bay at the front of the second floor-slumped spinelessly in her swivel chair, staring outside with that little frown that says she’s giving some problem a work over. She’s one of those slim women who seem taller than they are-the bane of my pudgy five-foot-three existence-and manages to look stylish even when she’s wearing jeans and a sweater like she had on that day. When I first came to work for her, her dark good looks gave me attacks of inferiority because of my carrot top and freckles and thrift-shop clothes. Then one day I caught her having her own attack-mortified because she’d testified in court wearing a skirt whose hem was still pinned up waiting to be stitched. I told her she’d probably started a new fad and soon all the financial district power-dressers would be wearing straight pains around their hemlines. We had a good laugh over that, and I think that’s when we started to be friends.

Anyway, I’d just about decided to stop back later when she turned, frowned some more, and snapped. “What?”

The McCone bark is generally worse than the bite, so I went in and sat in my usual place on her salmon-pink chaise lounge and told her about the Conway case. “I don’t know what I should do next.” I finished. “I’ve already talked with this Kirby kid, and if I come back at him to soon-”

“Aunt June.”

“What?” I’d only mentioned Adrian’s favorite aunt and Donna’s apparent dislike of her in passing, and Sharon hadn’t even looked like she was listening very hard. She’d been filing her nails the whole time-snick, snick, snick. Someday I’m going to tell her that the sound drives me crazy.

“Go see Aunt June,” she said. “She’s Adrian’s closest relative. Mom disapproves of her. Go see her.”

If it didn’t save me so much trouble, I’d hate the way she puts things together. I stood up and headed for the door. “Thanks, Shar!”

She waggled the nail file at me and swiveled back toward the window.

II

Adrian’s aunt’s full name was June Simoom-no kidding – and she lived on Tomales Bay in western Marin County. The name alone should have tipped me off that Aunt June was going to be weird.

Tomales Bay is a thin finger of water that extends inland from the Pacific forty-some miles northwest of San Francisco. It’s rimmed by small cottages, oyster farms, and salt marsh, and the largest town on its shores-Inverness-has a population of only a few hundred. The bay also has the dubious distinction of being right smack on top of the San Andreas Fault. Most of the time the weather out there is pretty cold and gloomy-broody, I call it-and it’s a hefty drive from the city-across the Golden Gate Bridge, then through the close-in suburbs and rolling farmland to the coast.

It was after seven when I found the mailbox that June Simoom had described to me over the phone-black with a silver bird in flight and the word WINGSPREAD stenciled on it, another tipoff-and bounced down an unpaved driveway through a eucalyptus grove to a small cottage and a couple of outbuildings slouching at the water’s edge.

My car is a 1964 Rambler American. A couple of years ago when I met my current-well, on again, off again-boyfriend, Willie Whelan, he cracked up at this first sight of it. “You mean you actually drive that thing?” he asked. “On the street?” No matter. The Ramblin’ Wreck and I have gone many miles together, and at the rate I’m saving money, we’re going to have to go many more. Barring experiences like Aunt June’s driveway, that is.

The cottage was as bad off as my car, but I know something about real-estate values (money is my biggest fascination, because I have too little of it), and this shoreline property, bad weather and all, would have brought opening offers of at least a quarter mil. They’d have to demolish the house and outbuildings, of course, but nature and neglect seemed to already be doing a fine job of that. Everything sagged, including the porch steps, which were propped up by a couple of cement blocks.

The porch light was pee-yellow and plastered with dead bugs. I groped my way to the door and knocked, setting it rattling in its frame. It took June Simoom a while to answer, and when she did…Well, Aunt June was something else.

Big hair and big boobs and a big voice. My, she was big! Dressed in flowing blue velvet robes that were thrift-shop fancy, not thrift-shop cheap (like my clothes used to be before I learned about credit and joined millions of Americans who are in debt up to their nose hairs). Makeup? Theatrical. Perfume? Gallons. If Marin ever passed the anti-scent ordinance they kept talking about, Aunt June would have to move away.

She swept-no, tornadoed-me into the cottage. It was one long room with a kitchen at the near end and a stone fireplace at the far end, all glass overlooking a half-collapsed deck. A fire was going, the only light. Outside I could see moonshine silvering the bay. June seated me-no, forced me down-onto a pile of silk cushions. Rammed a glass of wine into my hand. Flopped grunting on a second cushion pile nearer the hearth.

“You have news of Adrian?” she demanded.

I was struggling to remain upright in the soft nest without spilling the wine. “Umpfh,” I said. “Mmmm-r!”

Aunt June regarded me curiously.

I got myself better situated and clung to the wineglass for ballast. “No news yet. Her mother has hired me to find her. I’m hoping you can-”

“Little Donna.” She made a sound that might have been a laugh-hinc, hinc, hinc.

“You’re Donna’s sister?” I asked disbelievingly.

“In law. Sister-in-law. Once removed by divorce. Thank God Jeffrey saw the light and grabbed himself the bimbo. No more of those interminable holiday dinners-‘Have some more veggies and dip, June.’ ‘Don’t mind if I do, Donna, and by the way, where’s the gin?’” Now she really did laugh-booming sound that threatened to tear the (probably) rotten roof off.

I liked Donna Conway because she was sensitive and gentle and sad, but I couldn’t help liking June, too. I laughed a little and sipped some wine.

“You remained close to Adrian after the divorce, though?” I asked.

“Of course.” June nodded self-importantly. “My own flesh and blood. A responsibility I take seriously. I tried to take her under my wing, advise her, help her to deal with…everything.” She flapped her arms, velvet robe billowing, and I thought of the name of the cottage and the bird on her mailbox.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Now, June’s expression grew uncertain. She bit her lip and reached for a half-full wineglass that sat on the raised hearth. “Well. It was…of course! At the autumnal equinox firing.”

“Huh?”

“I am a potter, my dear. Well, more of a sculptor in clay. I teach classes in my studio.” She motioned in the direction of the outbuildings I’d seen. “My students and I have ceremonial firings on the beach at the equinox and the solstice. Adrian came to the autumnal firing late in September.”

“Did she come alone, or did Donna come, too?”

June shook her head, big hair bobbing. “Donna hasn’t spoken to me since Jeffrey left. Blames me for taking his side-the side of joy and loving, the side of the bimbo. And she resents my closeness to Adrian. No, my niece brought her boyfriend, that Kirby.” Her nose wrinkled.

“And?”

“And what? They attended the firing, ate, and left.”

“Do you know Kirby well?”

“I only met him the one time.”

“What did you think of him?”

June leaned toward the fireplace, reaching for the poker. When she stirred the logs, there was a small explosion, and sparks and bits of cinder flew out onto the raised stone. June stirred on, unconcerned.

“Like my name,” she murmured.

“What?”

“My name-Simoom. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“A fierce wind of Africa. Dry. Intensely hot. Relentless. It peppers its victims with grit that burns and pits the skin. That’s why I took it-it fits my temperament.”

“It’s not your real name?”

She scowled impatiently. “One’s real name is whatever one feels is right. June Conway was not. Simoom is fitting for a woman of the earth, who shelters those who are not as strong as she. You saw the name on my mailbox-Wingspread?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand. What’s your last name again?”

“Kelleher.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just an Irish name.”

“You see my point? You’re alienated from who you are.”

“I don’t feel alienated. I mean, I don’t think you have to proclaim who you are with a label. And Kelleher’s a perfectly good name, ever thought I’m not crazy about the Irish.”

June scowled again. “You sound just like Adrian used to. For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you young women?”

“What do you mean-about Adrian, that is?”

“Well, there she was, given a wonderful name at birth. A strong name. Adrian, of the Adriatic Sea. The only thing Donna did right by her. But did she appreciate it? No. She wanted to be called Melissa or Kelley or Amanda-just like everyone else of her generation. Honestly, sometimes I despaired.”

“You speak of her in the past tense, as if she’s dead.”

She swung around, face crumpling in dismay. “Oh, no! I speak of her that way because that was before…before she began to delight in her differences.”

“When was that?”

“Well…when she started to get past this terrible thing. As we gain strength, we accept who and what we are. In time we glory in it.”

In her way, June was as much into psychobabble as her sister-in-law. I said, “To get back to when you last saw Adrian, tell me about this autumnal equinox firing.”

“We dig pits on the beach, as kilns. By the time of the firing, they’ve been heating for days. Each student brings an offering, a special pot. The gathering is solemn but joyful-a celebration of all we’ve learned in the preceding season.”

“It sounds almost religious.”

June smiled wryly. “There’s also a great deal of good food and drink. And of course, when the pots emerge from the earth, we’re able to sell them to tourists for very good money.”

Now that I could relate to. “What about Adrian? Did she enjoy it?”

“Adrian’s been coming to my firings for years. She knows a number of my long-term students well, and she always has a good time.”

“And this time was no different?”

“Of course not.”

“She didn’t mention anything being wrong at home or at school?”

“…We spoke privately while preparing the food. I’m sure if there had been problems, she would have mentioned them.”

“And what about Kirby? Did he enjoy the firing?”

Wariness touched her face again. “I suppose.”

“What did you think of him?”

“He’s an adolescent boy. What’s to think?”

“I didn’t care for him,” I said.

“You know him?”

“I’ve spoken with him. I also spoke with a classmate of his and Adrian’s. He said Kirby is always into one scam or another, and that Adrian might have been involved, too.”

“That’s preposterous!” but June’s denial was a shade weak and unconvincing.

“Are you sure Adrian didn’t hint at problems when you spoke privately with her at the firing?”

“She’s a teenager. Things are never right with teenagers. Adrian took her father’s defection very badly, even though he and I tried to explain about one’s need for personal growth.” June gave her funny laugh again-hinc, hinc, hinc. “Even if the growth involves a bimbo,” she added.

“June,” I said, “since you were so close to Adrian, what do you think happened to her?”

She sobered and her fingers tightened on the shaft of the poker. “I can’t tell you. I honestly can’t hazard a guess.”

Her eyes slipped away from mine, but not before I saw something furtive in them. Suddenly she started stirring the fire, even though it was already roaring like crazy.

I said, “But you have suspicions.”

She stirred harder. Aunt June wasn’t telling it like it was, and she felt guilty.

“You’ve heard from her since she disappeared, haven’t you?” Sharon taught me that little trick: no matter how wild your hunch is, play it. Chances are fifty-fifty you’re right, and then their reactions will tell you plenty.

June stiffened. “Of course not! I would have persuaded her to go home. At the very least, I would have called Donna immediately.”

“So you think Adrian’s disappearance is voluntary?”

“I…I didn’t say that.”

“Assuming it is, and she called you, would you really have let Donna know? You don’t seem to like her at all.”

“Still, I have a heart. A mother’s anguish-”

“Come off it, June.”

June Simoom heaved herself to her feet and faced me, the poker clutched in her hand, her velvet-draped bigness making me feel small and helpless. “I think,” she said, “you’d better leave now.”

When I got back to All Souls, it was well after midnight, but I saw a faint light in Sharon’s office and went in there. She was curled up on her chaise lounge, boots and socks lying muddy on the floor beside it. Her jeans, legs wet to the knees, were draped over a filing cabinet drawer. She’d wrapped herself in the blanket she keeps on the chaise, but it had ridden up, exposing her bare feet and calves, and I could see goosebumps on them. She was sound asleep.

Now what had she gotten herself into? More trouble, for sure. Was she resting between stakeouts? Waiting for a call from one of her many informants? Or just too tired to go home?

I went down the hall to the room of an attorney who was out of town and borrowed one of his blankets, then carried it back and tucked it around Sharon’s legs and feet. She moaned a little and threw up one hand like you do to ward off a blow. I watched her until she settled down again, then turned off the Tiffany lamp-a gift long ago from a client, she’d once told me-and went upstairs to the attic nest that I call home.

Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll turn out like Sharon: illusions peeled away, emotional scars turning white and hard, ideals pared to the bone.

Sometimes I’m afraid I won’t turn out like her.

We’re already alike in some ways. Deep down we know who we are, warts and all, and if we don’t always like ourselves, at least we understand what we are and why we do certain things. We often try to fool ourselves, though, making out to be smarter or nobler or braver than we are, but in the end the truth always trips us up. And the truth…

We both have this crazy-no, crazy-making-need to get at the truth, no matter how bad it may be. I guess that’s how we’re most alike of all. The withheld fact, the out-and-out lie, the thing that we just plain can’t understand-none of them stands a chance with us. For me, I think the need began when my grandmother wouldn’t tell me the truth about the car wreck my parents were killed in (they were both drunk). With Sharon, I don’t know how the need got started-she’s never said.

I didn’t used to feel so driven. At first this job was a lark, and I was just playing at being detective. But things happen and you change-Sharon’s living proof of that-and now I’m to the point where I’m afraid that someday I’ll be the one who spends a lot of nights sleeping alone in her office because I’m between stakeouts or waiting for a phone call or just too tired to go home.

I’m terribly afraid of that happening. Or not happening. Hell, maybe I’m just afraid-period.

III

The next morning it was raining-big drops whacking off my skylights and waking me up. Hank Zahn, who pretty much holds the budgetary reins at All Souls, had let me install the skylights the spring before, after listening to some well orchestrated whining on my part. At the time they seemed like a good idea; there was only one small window in the part of the attic where my nest is, and I needed more light. But since then I’d realized that on a bad day all I could see was gray and wet and accumulated crud-nothing to lift my spirits. Besides, my brass bed had gotten crushed during the installation, and although the co-op’s insurance covered its cost, I’d spent the money on a trip to Tahoe and was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

That morning I actually welcomed the bad weather because my rain wear being the disguise it is, it actually furthered my current plan of action. For once the bathroom (one flight down and usually in high demand) was free when I needed it, and in half an hour I was wrapped in my old red slicker with the hood that hides nearly my whole head, my travel cup filled with coffee and ready to go. As I moved one of the tags on the mailboxes that tell Ted Smalley, our office manager, whether we’re in or out, I glanced at Sharon’s. Her tag was missing-she’s always setting it down someplace it doesn’t belong or wandering off and completely losing it-and Ted would have quite a few things to say to her about that. Ted is the most efficient person I know, and it puzzles him that Sharon can’t get the hang of a simple procedure like keeping track of her tag.

The Ramblin’ Wreck didn’t want to start, and I had to coax it some. Then I headed for Teresita Boulevard, up on the hill above McAteer High School, where Kirby Dalson lived. I’d already phoned Tom Chu before he left for school and had a good description of Kirby’s car-a red RX-7 with vanity plates saying KSKAR-and after school started I’d called the attendance office and was told Kirby hadn’t come in that morning. The car sat in the driveway of his parents’ beige stucco house, so I u-turned and parked at the curb.

The rain kept whacking down and the windows of the Wreck kept steaming up. I wiped them with a rag I found under the seat and then fiddled with the radio. Static was all I got; the radio’s as temperamental as the engine. Kirby’s car stayed in the driveway. Maybe he had the flu and was bundled up in bed, where I wished I was. Maybe he just couldn’t face the prospect of coming out it this storm.

Stakeouts. God. Nobody ever warned me how boring they are. I used to picture myself slouched in my car, wearing an exotic disguise, alert and primed for some great adventure. Sure. Stakeouts are so boring that I’ve fallen asleep on a couple and missed absolutely nothing. I finished my coffee, wished I’d brought along one of the stale-looking doughnuts that somebody had left on the chopping block in All Soul’s kitchen. Then I started to think fondly of the McDonald’s over on Ocean Avenue. I just love junk food.

About eleven o’clock the door of the Dalson house opened. Kirby came out wearing jeans and a down jacket and made for his car. After he’d backed down the driveway and headed toward Portola, the main street up there, I started the Wreck and followed.

Kirby went out Portola and west on Sloat Boulevard, toward the beach. By the time we’d passed the end of Stern Grove, I realized he was headed for Ocean Park Plaza. It’s a big multi-story center, over a hundred stores, ranging from small specialty shops to big department stores, with a movie theater, health club, supermarket, and dozens of food concessions. It was built right before the recession hit by a consortium of developers who saw the success that the new Stonestown Galleria and the Serramonte Center in Daly City were enjoying. Trouble is, the area out there isn’t big enough or affluent enough to support three such shopping malls, and from what the head of security at Ocean Park, Ben Waterson, had told me when I’d questioned him about Adrian the other day, the plaza was in serious trouble.

Kirby whipped the RX-7 into the eastern end of the parking lot and left it near the rear entrance to the Lucky Store. He ran through the rain while I parked the Wreck a few slots down and hurried after, pulling up the hood on my slicker. By the time I got inside, Kirby was cutting through the produce section. He went out into the mall, skirted the escalators, and halfway to the main entrance veered right toward Left Coast Casuals, where Adrian had worked before she disappeared.

I speeded up, then slowed to the inconspicuous, zombie-like pace of a window shopper, stopping in front of the cookware shop next door. Kirby hadn’t gone all the way inside, was standing in the entrance talking with a man I recognized as Ben Waterson. They kept it up for a couple of minutes, and it didn’t look like a pleasant conversation. The security man scowled and shook his head, while Kirby went red in the face and gestured angrily at the store. Finally he turned and rushed back my way, nearly bowling over a toddler whose mom wasn’t watching her. I did an about-face and started walking toward Lucky.

Kirby brushed past me, his pace fast and jerky. People in the mall and the grocery store gave him a wide berth. By the time I got back to the Wreck, he was already burning rubber. The Wreck picked that minute to go temperamental on me, and I knew I’d lost him.

Well, hell. I decided to run by his house again. No RX-7. I checked the parking lot and streets around McAteer. Nothing. Then the only sensible thing to do was drive over to the McDonald’s on Ocean and treat myself to a Quarter Pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Diet Coke. The Diet Coke gave me the illusion I was limiting calories.

I spent most of the afternoon parked on Teresita. I’d brought along one of those little hot apple pies they sell at McDonald’s; by the time I finished it, I’d had enough excess for one day.

I’d had enough of stakeouts, too, but I stayed in place until Kirby’s car finally pulled up at around quarter to five. I waited until he was inside the house, then went up and rang the bell.

While I was sitting there, I’d tried to figure out what was so off-putting about Kirby Dalson. When he answered the door, I hit on it. He was a good-looking kid-well built and tall, with nice dark hair, even when it was wind-blow and full of bits and pieces of eucalyptus leaves like now, but his facial features were a touch too pointy, his eyes a touch too small and close-set. In short, he looked rodenty-just the kind of shifty-eyed kid you’d expect to be into all kinds of scams. His mother wouldn’t notice it, and young girls would adore him, but guys would catch on right away, and you could bet quite a few adults, including most of his teachers, had figured it out.

The shiftiness really shone through when he saw me. Something to hide there, all right, maybe something big. “What do you want?” he asked sullenly.

“Just to check a few things.” I stepped through the door even though he hadn’t invited me in. You can get away with that with kids, even the most self-assured. Kirby just stood there. Then he shut the door, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

I said, “Let’s sit down,” and went into the living room. It was pretty standard-beige and brown with green accents-and had about as much character as a newborn’s face. I don’t understand how people can live like that, with nothing in their surroundings that says who or what they are. My nest may be cluttered and have no particular décor, but at least it’s me.

I sat on a chair in a little grouping by the front window. Kirby perched across from me. He’d tracked in wet, sandy grit onto his mother’s well-vacuumed carpet-another strike against him, even for a lousy housekeeper like me-and his fingers drummed on his denim-covered thighs.

“Kirby,” I began, “why’d you go to see Ben Waterson today?”

“Who?”

“The security head at Ocean Park Plaza.”

“Who says I did?”

“I saw you.”

His little eyes widened a fraction. “You were following me? Why?”

I ignored the question. “Why’d you go see him?”

For a moment he glanced about the room, as if looking for a way out. “Okay,” he finally said. “Money.”

“Money? For what?”

“Adrian, you know, disappeared on payday. I thought maybe I could collect some of what she owed me from Left Coast.”

“Owed you for what?”

He shook his head.

“For what, Kirby?”

“Just for stuff. She borrowed when she was short.”

I watched him silently for a minute. He squirmed a little. I said, “You know, I’ve been hearing that you’re into some things that aren’t strictly legal.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Scams, Kirby.”

His puzzled look proved he’d never make an actor.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” I asked. “The term-paper racket. Selling test questions when you can get your hands on them.”

His fingers stopped their staccato drumming. Damned if the kid didn’t seem relived by what I’d just said.

“What else are you into, Kirby?’

“Where’re you getting this stuff, anyway?”

“Answer the question.”

Silence.

“What about Adrian? Did you bring her in on any of your scams?”

A car door slammed outside. Kirby wet his lips and glanced at the mantel clock. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want you talking about this in front of my mother.”

“Then talk fast.”

“All right, I sold some test questions and term papers. So what? I’m not the first ever who did that.”

“What else? That wouldn’t have brought in the kind of cash that brought you your fancy car.”

“I’ve got a job-”

“Nobody believes that but your parents.”

Footsteps on the front walk. Kirby said, “All right, so I sell a little dope here and there.”

“Grass?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Coke? Crack?”

“Adrian use drugs?”

“A little grass now and then.”

“She sell drugs?”

“Never.”

A key turned in the front-door lock. Kirby looked that way, panicky. I asked, “What else are you into?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

The door opened.

“What did you get Adrian involved in?”

“I didn’t-” a woman in a raincoat stepped into the foyer, furling an umbrella. Kirby raised a hand to her in greeting, then said in a low voice, “I can’t talk about it now.”

“When?”

He raised his voice. “I have to work tonight, I’ll be at the garage by seven.”

“I’ll bring my car in then. What’s the address?”

He got a pad from a nearby telephone table and scribbled on it. I took the slip of paper he held out and glanced at it. The address was on Naples Street in the Outer Mission-mostly residential neighborhood, middle-class. Wherever Kirby wanted to meet, it wasn’t a garage.

By seven the rain was really whacking down, looking like it would keep it up all night. It was so dark that I had trouble picking out the right address on Naples Street. Finally I pinpointed it-a shabby brown cottage, wedged between two bigger Victorians. No light in the windows, no cars in the driveway. Had Kirby been putting me on? If he had, by God I’d stomp right into his house and lay the whole thing out for his parents. That’s one advantage to dealing with kids-you’ve got all kinds of leverage.

I got out of the Wreck and went up the cottage’s front walk. Its steps were as bad off as the ones at June Simoom’s place. I tripped on a loose board and grabbed the railing; its spindles shook. Where the bell should have been were a couple of exposed wires. I banged on the door, but nobody came. The newspapers and ad sheets that were piled in a sodden mass against the threshold told me that the door hadn’t been used for quite a while.

After a minute I went back down the steps and followed the driveway alongside the house. There were a couple of aluminum storage sheds back there, both padlocked. Otherwise the yard was dark and choked with pepper trees. Ruts that looked like they’d been made by tires led under them, and way back in the shadows I saw a low-slung shape. A car. Kirby’s, I thought.

I started over there, walking alongside the ruts, mud sucking at my sneakers. It was quiet here, much too quiet. Just the patter of rain in the trees overhead. And then a pinging noise from the car’s engine.

It was Kirby’s RX-7, all right. The driver’s side door was open, but the dome light wasn’t on. Now why would he leave the door open in a storm like this?

I moved slower checking it out, afraid this was some kind of a set-up. Then I saw Kirby sitting in the driver’s seat. At least I saw someone’s feet on the ground next to the car. And hands hanging loose next to them…

I moved even slower now, calling out Kirby’s name. No answer. I called again. The figure didn’t move. The skin on my shoulders went prickly, and the feeling spread up the back of my neck and head. My other senses kicked into overdrive-hearing sharper, sight keener, smell… There was a sweet but metallic odor that some primitive instinct told me was blood.

This was Kirby, all right. As I came closer I identified his jeans and down jacket, caught a glimpse of his profile. He was leaning forward, looking down at his lap. And then I saw the back of his head. God. It was ruined, caved in, and the blood-

I heard somebody moan in protest. Me.

I made myself creep forward, hand out, and touched Kirby’s slumped shoulders. Felt something wet that was thicker than rainwater. I pulled my hand back as he slumped all the way over, head touching his knees now. Then I spun around and ran, stumbling through the ruts and the mud. I got as far as the first storage shed and leaned against it, panting.

I’d never seen a dead person before, unless you counted my grandmother, dressed up and in her coffin. I’d never touched one before.

After I got my wind back, I looked at the car again. Maybe he wasn’t dead. No, I knew he was. But I went back there anyway and made myself touch his neck. Flesh still warm, but nothing pulsing. Then I turned, wiping my hand on my jeans, and ran all the way down the driveway and straight across the street to a house with a bright porch light. I pounded on the door and shouted for them to call 911, somebody had been murdered.

Afterward the uniformed cops who responded would ask me how I knew it was a murder and not natural causes or an overdose. But that was before they saw Kirby’s head.

IV

I sat at the oak table in All Souls’ kitchen, my hands wrapped around a mug of Hank Zahn’s super-strength Navy grog. I needed it more for the warmth than anything else. Hank sat next to me, and then there was Ted Smalley, and then Sharon. The men were acting like I was a delicate piece of china. Hank kept refilling my grog mug and trying to smooth down his unsmoothable wiry gray hair. Every now and then he’d take off his horn-rimmed glasses and gnaw on the earpiece-something he does when he’s upset. Ted, who likes to fuss, had wrapped me in an afghan that he fetched from his own room upstairs. Every few minutes he’d tuck the ends tighter around me, and in between he pulled on his little goatee. Men think that women fiddle with our hair a lot, but really, they do more of it than we do.

Sharon wasn’t saying much. She watched and listened, her fingers toying with the stem of her wineglass. The men kept glancing reproachfully at her. I guess they thought she was being unsympathetic. I knew differently. She was worried, damned worried, about me. And eventually she’d have something to say.

Finally she sighed and shifted in her chair. Hank and Ted looked expectant, but all she did was ask. “Adah Joslyn was the inspector who came out from Homicide?”

I nodded, “Her and her partner…what’s his name? Wallace.” Joslyn was a friend of Sharon’s-a half-black, half-Jewish woman whose appointment to the top-notched squad had put the department in good with any number of civil-rights groups.

“Then you were in good hands.”

I waited. So did Ted and Hank, but all Sharon did was sip some wine and look pensive.

I started talking-telling it once more. “He hadn’t been dead very long when I got there. For all I know, whoever killed him was still on the scene. Nobody knows whose house it is-neighbors say people come and go but don’t seem to live there. What I am afraid of is that Adrian Conway had something to do with Kirby’s murder. If she did, it’ll about kill her mother. I guess I can keep looking for her, can’t I? I mean, unless they tell me not to?”

Sharon only nodded.

“Then maybe I will. Maybe I ought to take a look at that bedroom wall of hers again. Maybe…” I realized I was babbling, so I shut up.

Sharon finished her wine, took the empty glass to the sink, and started for the door. Hank asked, “Where’re you going?”

“Upstairs to collect my stuff, and then home. It’s been a long day.”

Both men frowned and exchanged looks that said they thought she was being callous. I watched her leave. Then I finished my grog and stood up, too.

“Going to bed?” Ted asked.

“Yes.”

“If you need anything, just holler.”

“I’m upset, not feeble,” I snapped.

Ted nodded understandingly. Sometimes he’s so goddamn serene I could hit him.

Sharon was still in her office, not collecting anything, just sitting behind her desk, where I knew she’d be. I went in there and sat on the end of the chaise lounge. After a few seconds, I got up again, and began to pace, following the pattern of the Oriental rug.

She said, “I can’t tell you anything that’ll help.”

“I know.”

“I’d hoped you’d never have to face this,” she added. “Unrealistic of me, I suppose.”

“Maybe.”

“But maybe not. Most investigators don’t you know. Some of them never leave their computer terminals long enough to get out into the field.”

“So what are we-unlucky?”

“I guess.” She stood and started putting things into her briefcase. “You’re going to keep looking for Adrian?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I stopped by the fireplace and pickup up the gorilla mask she keeps on the mantel. It had a patch of hair missing right in the middle of its chin; I’d accidentally pulled it out one day during a fit over something that I couldn’t even remember now. “Shar,” I said, “it never gets any easier, does it?”

“No.”

“But somehow you deal with it?”

“And go on,” she put on her jacket, hefted the briefcase.

“Until the next time,” I said bitterly.

“If there is one.”

“Yeah.” I suspected there would be. Look at what Sharon’s life has been like. And yet, seeing her standing there-healthy and reasonably sane and looking forward to a good night’s sleep-made me feel hopeful.

She came over to me and gave me a one-armed hug. Then she pointed at the gorilla mask and said, “You want to take him to bed with you tonight?”

“No. if I want to sleep with a gorilla, I’ll just call Willie.”

She grinned and went out, leaving me all alone.

After a while I put the gorilla back on the mantel and lay down on the chaise lounge. I dragged the blanket over me and curled up on my side, cradling my head on my arm. The light from the Tiffany lap was mellow and comforting. It became toasty under the blanket. In a few minutes, I actually felt sleepy.

I’d stay there tonight, I decided. In some weird way, it felt safer than my nest upstairs.

Donna Conway called me at eight-ten the next morning. I’d already gone to my office-a closet under the stairs that some joker had passed off as a den when All Souls moved into the house years before-and was clutching a cup of the battery acid that Ted calls coffee and trying to get my life back together. When my intercom buzzed, I jerked and grabbed the phone receiver without first asking who it was.

Donna said dully, “The backpack I told you Adrian always took to school with her? They found it where poor Kirby was murdered.”

I went to put my cup down, tipped it, and watched coffee soak into my copy of the morning paper. Bad day already. “They-you mean the police?”

“Yes. They just brought it over for me to identify.”

“Where was it? In the yard?”

“Inside the house. It’d been there a long time because the yogurt-she always took a cup of yogurt to work to eat on her break-was spoiled.”

Not good at all.

“Rae, you don’t think it means she did that to Kirby, do you?”

“I doubt it.” What I thought it meant was that Adrian was dead, maybe had been dead since shortly after she disappeared-but I wasn’t going to raise that issue yet. “What else was in the pack besides the yogurt?”

A pause. “The usual stuff, I guess. I didn’t ask. I was too upset.”

I’d get Sharon to check that out with her friend Adah Joslyn.

Donna added, “The police said that Kirby was the one who rented the house, and that there was a girl with him when he first looked at it who matched Adrian’s description.”

“When?”

“Late last July. I guess…well, with teenagers today, you just assume they’re sexually active. Adrian and I had a talk about safe sex two years ago. But I don’t understand why they thought they needed to rent a place to be together. I’m not home all that much, and neither are Kirby’s parents. Besides, they couldn’t have spent much time at that house; Adrian worked six days a week, after school and on Saturdays, and she was usually home by her curfew.”

I thought about Kirby’s “job” at the nonexistent garage. Maybe Adrian’s had been a front, too. But, no, that didn’t wash-the store’s manager, Sue Hanford, and the plaza security man, Ben Waterson, had confirmed her employment both to me and the police.

“Rae?” Donna said. “Will you keep looking for her?”

“Of course.”

“Will you call me if you find out anything? I’ll be here all day today. I can’t face going to work.”

I said I would, but I was afraid that what I’d have to tell her wouldn’t be anything she’d want to hear.

“Yeah, the little weasel wanted to pick up her pay, in cash.” Ben Waterson plopped back in the metal chair behind the front desk in the Ocean Park Plaza security office. Its legs groaned threateningly under his massive weight. On the walls around us were mounted about two dozen TV screens that monitored what was going on in various stores in the center, switching from one to another for spot checking. Waterson glanced at one, looked closer, then shook his head. “In cash, no less, the little weasel said, since he couldn’t cash her check. Said she owed him money. Can you imagine?”

I leaned against the counter. There wasn’t another chair in the room, and Waterson hadn’t offered to find me one. “Why’d he ask you for it, rather than Ms. Hanford? Adrian was paid by Left Coast Casuals, not the plaza, wasn’t she?”

“Sue was out and had left me in charge of the store.” Waterson scratched at the beer belly that bulged over the waist of his khaki uniform pants. “Can you imagine?” he said again. “Kids today.” He snorted.

Waterson was your basic low-level security guy, although he’d risen higher than most of them ever go. I know, because I worked among them until my then-boss took pity on me and recommended me to Sharon for the job at All Souls. It’s a familiar type: not real bright, not too great to look at, and lacking in most of the social graces. About all you need to get in on the ground floor of the business is never to have been arrested or caught molesting the neighbors’ dog on the front lawn at high noon. Ben Waterson-well, I doubted he’d been arrested because he didn’t look like he had the ambition to commit a crime, but I wasn’t too sure about his conduct toward the neighborhood pets.

“So you told Kirby to get lost?” I asked.

“I told him to fuck off, pardon my French. And he got pissed off, pardon it again, and left.”

“He say why Adrian owed him money?”

“Nah. Who knows? Probably for a drug buy. Kids today.”

“Did Adrian do drugs?”

“They all do.”

“But did you ever know her to do them?”

“Didn’t have to. They all do.” He looked accusingly at me. From his fifty-something perspective, I probably was young enough to be classified as one on today’s youthful degenerates.

I shifted to a more comfortable position, propping my hip against the counter. Waterson scanned the monitors again, then looked back at me.

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “How well did you know Kirby Dalson?”

His eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s that suppose to mean?”

I hadn’t thought it was a particularly tricky question. “How well did you know him?” I repeated. “What kind of kid was he?”

“Oh. Just a kid. A weasel-faced punk. I had a daughter, I wouldn’t let him near her.”

“You mentioned drugs. Was Kirby dealing?”

“Probably.”

“Why do you say that?”

He rolled his eyes. “I told you -kids today.” Then, unselfconsciously, he started to pick his nose.

I didn’t need any more of this, so I headed downstairs to Sue Hartford’s office at Left Coast Casuals.

Hartford was a sleek blonde around my age, in her late twenties. One of those women who is moving up in the business world in spite of a limited education, relying on her toughness and brains. On Monday, she’d told me she started in an after school job like Adrian’s at the Redwood City branch of the clothing chain and had managed two of their other stores before being selected for the plum position at the then-new plaza. When she saw me standing in the office door, Hanford motioned for me to come in and sit down. She continued working at her computer for a minute. Then she swiveled toward me, face arranged in formally solemn lines.

“I read in the paper about the Conway girl’s boyfriend,” she said. “So awful. So young.”

I told her about Adrian’s backpack being found in the house, and she made perfunctorily horrified noises.

“This doesn’t mean Adrian killed Kirby, does it?” she asked.

“Doubtful. It looked as if the pack’s been there since right after she disappeared.”

For a moment her features went very still. “Then Kirby might have killed…”

“Yes.”

“But where is the…?”

“Body? Well, not at the house, I’m sure the cops would have found it by now.”

“Or else she…”

“She what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she ran away. Maybe frightened her somehow.”

Interesting assumption. “Are you saying Adrian was afraid of Kirby?”

Quickly she shook her head. “No. Well, maybe. It was more like…he dominated her. One look from him was all she needed, and she’d do whatever he wanted her to.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well, one time I saw them at a table near the food concessions in the middle of the mall. He had a burger, she was spooning up her yogurt. All of a sudden, Kirby pointed at his burger, then jerked his chin at the condiment counter. Adrian got up and scurried over there and brought him back some catsup.”

“So he pretty much controlled her?”

“I’d say so.”

“What else?”

She shrugged. “That’s about the best example I can give you. I didn’t really see that much of them together. We try to discourage our girls from having their friends come into the store during working hours.”

“When I spoke with you earlier this week, you said you doubted Adrian was a drug user. Are you sure of that?”

“Reasonably sure. I observe our girls very carefully. I can’t have anything like that going on, especially not on store premises. It would reflect badly on my abilities as a manager.” Her eyes lost focus suddenly. “God, what if something has happened to Adrian? I mean, something like what happened to Kirby? That would reflect badly, too. The damage control I’d need to do…”

I said wryly, “I don’t think that as store manager you can be held responsible for what happens to your employees off-hours.”

“You don’t understand, it would reflect badly on my abilities to size up a prospective employee.” Her eyes refocused on my face. “I can see you think I’m uncaring. Maybe to some degree I am. But I’m running a business here. I’m building a career, and I have to be strong. I have a small daughter to raise, and I’m fiercely protective of her chances to have a good life. I’m sorry Kirby Dalson’s dead. If Adrian’s also been killed, than I’m sorry about that, too. But, really, neither of them has anything to do with me, with my life.”

That’s the trouble, I thought. The poet, whoever he was, said no man is an island, but nowadays every man and woman is one. A whole goddamn continent, the way some of them act. It’s a wonder that they all don’t sink to the bottom of the ocean, just like the lost continent of Atlantis is supposed to have done.

V

I wanted to drive by the house on Naples Street, just to see what it looked like in the daylight. The rain had stopped, but it was still a soppy, gray morning. The house looked shabby and sodden. There was a yellow plastic police line strip across the driveway, and a man in a tan raincoat stood on the front steps, hands in his pockets, staring at nothing in particular.

He didn’t look like a cop. He was middle-aged, middle height, a little gray, a little bald. His glasses and the cut of his coat were the kind you used to associate with the movers and shakers of the 1980’s financial world, but the coat was rumpled and had a grease stain near its hem, and as I got out of the Wreck and went closer, I saw that one hinge of the glasses frame was wired together. His face pulled down in disappointed lines that looked permanent. Welcome to the nineties, I thought.

The man’s eyes focused dully on me. “If you’re a reporter,” he said, “you’d better speak with the officers in charge of the case.” He spoke with a kind of diluted authority, his words turning up in a question, as if he wasn’t quite sure who or what he was any longer.

“I’m not a reporter.” I took out my i.d. and explained my connection to the case.

The man looked at the i.d., nodded, and shrugged. Then he sighed. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? I wish I’d never rented to them.”

“This is your house?”

“My mother’s. She’s in a nursing home. I can’t sell it-she still thinks she’s coming back someday. That’s all that’s keeping her alive. I can’t fix it up, either.” He motioned at the peeling façade. “My business has been in a flat-out slump for a couple of years now, and the nursing home’s expensive. I rented to the first couple who answered my ad. Bad judgment on my part. They were too young, and into God-knows-what.” He laughed mirthlessly, then added, “Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. Ron Owens.”

I’d inched up the steps toward the open front door until I was standing next to him. I shook his outstretched hand and repeated my name for him.

Owens sighed again and stared glumly at the wet street. “It’s a hell of a world.” He said. “A hell of a thing when a kid dies like that. Kids are supposed to grow up, have a life. At least outlive their parents.” Then he looked at me, “You said the girl’s mother hired you?”

“Yes. I haven’t come up with any leads, and she’s getting frantic. I thought maybe if I could see the house…” I motioned at the door.

For a moment Owens hesitated. “What the hell-they said they were done there. Come on in, if you want.”

I followed him into a narrow hallway that ran the length of the cottage. “Were you here when they found the girl’s backpack?’

“Did that belong to her? Yeah. I came over and let them in as soon as they contacted me. First time I’d been here since the kids rented it. Place is a mess. I’m glad I stored most of my mother’s things in the sheds and only left the basic furnishing. They didn’t exactly trash it, but they didn’t keep it, either.”

Mess was the word for it. Dust-both natural and from finger-print powder saturated all the surfaces, and empty glasses and plates stood among the bottles and cans and full ashtrays in the front room. Owens led me back past a bathroom draped in crumpled and mildewy-smelling towels and a bedroom where the sheets and blankets were mostly on the floor, to a kitchen. It contained more dirty crockery and glassware. Wrappings from frozen entrees and fast food overflowed the trashcan. A half-full fifth of Jim Beam stood uncapped on the counter. The entire place reeked.

“The cops went through everything?” I asked.

“Yeah. They didn’t think anybody had been here for a while. At least not last night. There weren’t any muddy footprints inside, and the door was blocked by a few days’ worth of newspapers.”

“Where did they find the backpack?”

“Front room. I’ll show you.”

The table where the backpack had been was just inside the living room door. What was left there was junk mail and ad sheets-the sort of stuff you drag inside with you and dump someplace until you get around to throwing it out. “So,” I said, “this was where she’d leave the pack when she arrived. But why not pick it up again when she left?”

Ron Owens made a funny choking sound, and I realized he’d jumped to the obvious conclusion. “No,” I said quickly, “the cops would have found evidence if she was killed here. Did you see what was in the pack?”

He shook his head. “One of them said something about there being no money or i.d.”

Adrian had been smart, carrying her cash and i.d. someplace else where it wouldn’t be snatched if somebody grabbed the pack on the street or on the bus. Smart, too, because if she’d had to run out of this house suddenly-if Kirby had frightened or threatened her, as Sue Hanford had suggested-she’d at least have had the essentials on her.

I’d seen enough here, so I thanked Owens and gave him one of my cards in case he thought of anything else. I was halfway down the front walk when I remembered to ask him I could see the sheds where he’d stored his mother’s things.

For a moment he looked puzzled at the request, then he shrugged and fished a key ring from his pocket. “Actually, it wouldn’t hurt to check them.”

We ducked under the police line tape and went up the driveway. The trees dripped on the muddy ground where Kirby’s car had been parked. There were deep gouges and tracks were the tow truck had hauled it out. Other than that, you would never have known that anything unusual had happened there. It was just an ordinary backyard that the weeds and blackberry vines were trying to reclaim.

Ron Owens fit a key into the padlock on the first shed. Unfastened it and then the hasp. The door grated as he opened it.

There was nothing inside. Nothing at all except for a little heap of wood scraps.

Owens’ face went slack with surprise. Then bright red splotches blossomed on his cheeks. “They cleaned me out,” he said. “Check the other shed.”

We hurried back there. Owens opened it. Nothing except for some trash drifted in the corners.

“But how did they…?” He held up his key ring. “I had the only…There were no other keys.”

I looked closely at the padlock. Cheap brand, more pickable than most. My boyfriend Willie would have had that off of there in five minutes, max-and he’s out of practice. Willie’s a respectable businessman now, but there are things in his past that are best not discussed.

“You better call the police,” I told Owens.

He nodded, shoulders slumping. “I’m glad my mother will never have to find out about this,” he said. “Her good china, Grandma’s silver, the family pictures-all gone. For the first time I’m glad she’s never coming home. There’s no home left here anymore.”

I watched Owens hurry down the drive to a car with a mobile phone antenna on its trunk. I knew how he felt. For me, the word “home” has a magical aura. Sometimes I can actually see it-velvety green like the plants in my nest at All Souls, gold and wine-red like the flames in a good fire. Silly, but that’s the way it is for me. Probably for all of us people who’ve never had a real home of our own.

I turned away and looked back into the empty shed. Adrian had had a real home, but she’d left it. For this shabby little house? I doubted that. But she’d been here shortly after her school mates had last her, and then she’d probably fled in fear. For where? Where?

I decided to consult the therapy wall once more.

VI

The Conway house was warm for a change, and Donna had closed the drapes to hide the murky city view. Adrian’s room, though, was frigid. Donna saving on the heating bill now that Adrian was gone? Or maybe the registers were closed because Adrian was one of those human reptiles who never need much warmth. My ex-husband, Doug, is like that: when other people are bundled in two layers of sweaters, he’s apt to be running around in his shirtsleeves.

Before she left me alone, Donna said, “My sister-in-law called and said you’d gone to see her.”

“Yes, Tuesday night.”

“What’d you think of her?”

“Well, she’s unconventional, but I kind of liked her. She seems to have a heart, and she certainly cares about Adrian.”

Donna pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead and sighed. She looked depressed and jumpy, dark smudges under her eyes. “I see she’s fooled you, too.” Then she seemed to relent a little. “Oh, I suppose June’s got a good heart, as you say. But she also has an unfortunate tendency to take over a situation and tell everyone what to do. She’s the original earth mother and thinks we’re all her children. The straw that broke it for me was when she actually advised Jeffery to leave me. But… I don’t know. She seems to want to patch it up now, and I suppose for Adrian’s sake I should.”

The words “for Adrian’s sake” hung hollowly in the cold room. Donna shivered and added, “I’ll leave you alone with the wall now.”

Honestly, the way she acted, you’d have thought the wall was my psychiatrist. In a sense that was what it had been to her daughter.

I sat on Adrian’s bed like the time before and let the images on the wall speak to me. One, then the other, cried for attention. Bright primary colors, bold black and white. Words, pictures, then more words. And things-incongruous things. All adding up to…what?

After a while I sat up straighter, seeing objects I hadn’t noticed before, seeing others in a new light. What they communicated was a sense of entrapment, but not necessarily by the family situation. Material relating to her absent father-GONE FOREVER, THE YEAR OF THE BIMBO, a postcard from Switzerland where Jeffrey Conway now lived-was buried deep under more recent additions. So were the references to Adrian’s and her mother’s new life-JUST THE TWO OF US, A WOMAN ALONE, NEW DIRECTIONS. But on top of that…

Fake plastic handcuffs. Picture of a barred window. NO EXIT sign. SOLD INTO WHITE SLAVERY. Photo of San Quentin. Images of a young woman caught up in something she saw no easy way out of.

I got up and went over to the wall and took a good look at a plastic security tag I’d noticed before. There were similar ones on the higher-priced garments at Left Coast Casuals. Next to it, the word “guilt” was emblazoned in big letters, smaller repetition of it tailed down like the funnel of a cyclone. My eyes followed them, they were caught hypnotically in the whorls of a thumb-print on a plain white index card.

On top of all these were Adrian’s final offerings. Now that I’d discovered a pattern, I could tell which things had been added last. FREEDOM! Broken gold chain. A WAY OUT. Egret feather and silhouette of a soaring bird. She was about to break loose, fly away. I wasn’t sure from what, not exactly. But guilt was a major component, and I thought I knew why.

I started searching the room. Nothing under the lingerie or sweaters or socks in the bureau drawers. Nothing pushed to the back of the closet or hidden in the suitcases. Nothing under the mattress or the bed. Nothing but school supplies in the desk.

Damn! I was sure I’d figured out that part of it. I had shameful personal experience to guide me.

The room was so cold that the joints of my fingers ached. I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them. The heat register was one of those metal jobs set into the floor under a window, and its louvers were closed. I squatted next to it and tried to push the opener. Jammed.

The register lifted easily out of its hole. I peered through the opening in the floor and saw that the sheet metal furnace duct was twisted and pushed aside. A nail had been hammered into the floor joist, and something hung down from it into the crawl space. I reached in and unhooked it-a big cloth laundry bag with a drawstring. I pulled the bag up through the hole and dumped its contents on the carpet.

Costume jewelry-rings, bracelets, earring, necklaces-with the price tags still attached. Silk scarves. Pantyhose. Gloves, bikini underpants, leather belts, hair ornaments. They were all from Left Coast Casuals.

Although the items were tagged, the tags were not the plastic kind that trip the sensors at the door. Left Coast Casuals reserved the plastic tags for big-ticket items. All of the merchandise was brand new, had never been worn. No individual item was expensive, but taken together, they added up to a hell of a lot of money.

This told me a lot about Adrian, but it didn’t explain her disappearance. Or her boyfriend’s murder. I replaced the things in the bag, and the bag beneath the flooring. Then I got out of there and went to bounce this one off Sharon.

Sharon was all dressed up today, probably either for a meeting with one of our tonier clients or a court appearance. The teal blue suit and silk blouse looked terrific on her, but I could tell she wasn’t all that comfortable in them. Sharon’s more at home in her jeans and sweater and sneakers. The only time she really likes getting gussied up is for a fancy party, and then she goes at it with the excitement of a kid putting on her Halloween costume.

She said she had some time on her hands, so I suggested we stop down at the Remedy Lounge, our favorite bar-and-grill on Mission Street, for burgers. She hesitated. They serve a great burger at the Remedy, but for some reason Sharon-who’s usually not fastidious when it comes to food-is convinced they’re made of all sorts of disgusting animal parts. Finally she gave in, and we wandered down the hill.

The Remedy is a creaky local tavern, owned by the O’Flanagan family for longer than anybody can remember. Brian, the middle son and nighttime bartender, wasn’t on yet, so we had to fetch our own food and drinks. Brian’s my buddy, and when he’s working, I get table service-something that drives everybody else from All Souls crazy because they can’t figure out how I manage that. I just let them keep guessing. Truth is, I remind Brian of his favorite sister, who died back in ’76. Would you refuse table service to a family member?

While we waited for the burgers, I laid out the Adrian Conway situation for Sharon. When I was done, she went and got our food, then looked critically at her burger, taking off the top half of the bun and poking suspiciously at the meat patty. Finally she shrugged, bit into it, and looked relieved at finding it tasted like burger instead of entrail of monkey-or whatever she thinks they make them from. She swallowed and asked, “All the stuff was lifted from Left coast Casuals?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Employee pilferage.” She shook her head. “Do you know that over forty-three percent of shrinkage is due to insiders?”

I didn’t, but Sharon a former department-store security guard and she keeps up on statistics. I just nodded.

“A lot of it’s the employers’ fault,” she added. “They don’t treat their people well, so they don’t have a real commitment to the company. The clerks see it as a way of getting ever for low wages and skimpy benefits.”

“Well, whatever Adrian’s reasons were,” I said, “she dealt with the loot in the usual way. Once she got it home, it wasn’t any good to her. Her mother would notice if she wore a lot of new things and ask where she got the money to buy them. Plus she felt guilty. So she hid the loot away were Donna wouldn’t find it and-more important-where she couldn’t see it and be reminded of what she’d done. Out of sight, out of mind. Only it doesn’t work that way. She was probably aware of that bag of stuff hanging between the floor joists every minute she was in that room. She probably even dreamed about it.”

My voice had risen as I spoke, and I couldn’t keep an emotional quaver out of it. When I finished, Sharon didn’t say anything, just watched me with her little analytical frown. I ate some of my burger. It tasted like cardboard. I drank some Coke. My hand shook when I set the glass down.

“Anyway,” I said, “Adrian being a shoplifter doesn’t explain the important things. Did you ask Adah Joslyn what was in the backpack, like I asked you to?”

She was still watching me. After a moment I gave it up. “All right,” I said, “I used to shoplift.”

“I suspected as much.”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Well, you did get pretty worked up for a moment there. You want to tell me about it?”

“No! Well, maybe.” I took a deep breath, wishing I’d ordered a beer instead of a Coke. “Okay, it started one day when I was trying to buy some nail polish. The clerk was off yapping with one of the other clerks and wouldn’t stop long enough to notice me. So I got pissed, stuck the bottle in my purse, and walked out. Nobody even looked at me. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten away with it. It was like…a high. The best high I’d ever felt. And I told myself the clerk had goaded me into it, that it was a one-shot thing and would never happen again.”

“But of course it did.”

“The second time it was a scarf, and expensive scarf. I had a job interview and I wanted to look nice, but I couldn’t afford to because I didn’t have a job-the old vicious circle. I felt deprived, really angry. So I took the scarf. But what I didn’t count on was the guilt. By the day of the interview, I knew I couldn’t wear the scarf-then or ever. I just tucked it away where I wouldn’t have to see it and be reminded of what I’d done. And where my husband wouldn’t find it.”

“But you kept stealing.”

“Yeah. I never deliberately set out to do it, never left the apartment thinking, today I’m going to rip some store off. But…the high. It was something else.” Even now, years after the fact, I could feel aftershocks from it-my blood coursing faster, my heart pounding a little. “I was careful, I only took little things, always went to different stores. And then, just when I thought I was untouchable, I got caught.”

Sharon nodded. She’d heard it all before, working in retail security.

I looked down at my half-eaten burger. Shame washed over me, negating the memory of the high. My cheeks went hot, just thinking about the day. “God, it was awful! The security guy nabbed me on the sidewalk, made me go back inside to the store office. What I’d taken was another scarf. I’d stuffed it into a bag with some underpants I’d bought at K-Mart. He dragged it out of there. It was still tagged, and of course I didn’t have the receipt.”

“So he threatened you.”

“Scared the hell out of me. I felt like…you know those old crime movies where they’re sweating a confession out of some guy in a back room? Well, it wasn’t like that at all, he was very careful not to do or say anything that might provoke a lawsuit. But I still felt like some sleazy criminal. Or maybe that was what I thought I deserved to feel like. Anyway, he threatened to call my employer.” I laughed-a hollow sound. “That would really have torn it. My employer was another security firm.”

“So what’d you do-sign a confession?”

“Yes, and promised never to set foot in their store again. And I’ve never stolen so much as a stick of gum since. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to take the free matchbooks from restaurants!”

Sharon grinned. “I bet one of the most embarrassing things about that whole period in your life is that you were such a textbook case.”

I nodded. “Woman’s crime. Nonsensical theft. Doesn’t stem from a real need, but from anger or the idea you’re somehow entitled to things you can’t afford. You get addicted to the high, but you’re also overcome by the guilt, so you can’t get any benefit from what you’ve stolen. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“We’re all pretty stupid at times-shoplifters haven’t cornered the market on that.”

“Yeah. You know what scared me the most, thought? Even more than the security guy calling my employer? That Doug would find out. For a perpetual student who leaned on me for everything from financial support to typing his papers, he could be miserably self-righteous and superior. He’d never even have tried to understand that I was stealing to make up for everything that was missing in our marriage. And he’d never have let me forget what I did.”

“Well, both the stealing and Doug are history now.” Sharon patted my hand. “Don’t look so hangdog.”

“Can’t help it. I feel like such a…I bet you’ve never done anything like that in your life.”

Sharon’s eyes clouded and her mouth pulled down. All she said was, “Don’t count on it.” Then she scrubbed her fingers briskly on her napkin and pushed her empty plate away. “Finish your lunch,” she ordered. “And let’s get back to your case. What you’re telling me is that Adrian was shoplifting and saw a way to break free of it?”

“A way to break free of something, but I’m not convinced it was the shoplifting. It may have been related, but then again, it may not.” My head was starting to ache. There was too damn big a gap between the bag of loot under the floor of Adrian’s room in Diamond Heights and the abandoned backpack in the living room of the house on Naples Street. I’d hoped Sharon would provide a connection, but all she’d done was listen to me confess to the absolutely worst sin of my life.

She looked at her watch. “Well, I’ll try to find out what you need to know from Adah later this afternoon, but right now I’ve got to go. I’m giving a deposition at an upscale Montgomery Street law firm at three.” Her nose wrinkled when she said “upscale.”

I waved away the money she held out and told her I’d pick up the tab. It was the least I could do. Even though she hadn’t helped me with the case, she’d helped me with my life. Again.

I’ve always felt like something of a fraud-pretending to be this nice little person when inside I’m seething with all sorts of resentments and peculiarities and secrets. But since I’ve been with All Souls, where people are mostly open and nonjudgmental, I’ve realized I’m not that unusual. Lately the two me’s-the outside nice one and the inside nasty one-are coming closer together. Today’s conversation with Sharon was just one more step in the right direction.

VII

I’d come up with a plan, an experiment I wanted to try out, and while it probably wouldn’t work, I had a lot of time on my hands and nothing to lose. So after I finished my burger, I went back up the hill to our annex and got Lillian Chu to call her son Tom at McAteer and command his presence at my office as soon as school let out. When Tom arrived, he’d traded his friendly smile for a pout. To make up for my high-handedness, I took him to the kitchen and treated him to a Coke.

Tom perched on one of the counter tops and stared around at the ancient sink and wheezy appliances. “Man,” he said, “this is really retro. I mean, how can you people live like this?”

“We’re products of a more primitive era. You’re probably wondering why I-”

“Pulled this authority shit. Yeah. You didn’t have to get my mom to order me come here.”

“I wasn’t sure you would, otherwise. Besides, the people at McAteer wouldn’t have called you to the phone for me. I’m sorry, but I really need your help. You heard about Kirby, of course.”

The anger in his eyes melted. He shook his head, bit his lip. “Oh man. What an awful…You know, I didn’t like the dude, but for him to be murdered…”

“Did you hear that Adrian’s backpack was found in the house whose backyard he was killed in?’

“No.” For a few seconds it didn’t seem to compute. Then he said, “Wait, you don’t think Adrian…?”

“Of course not, but I’m afraid for her. If she’s alive, it’s possible Kirby’s killer is after her, too. I need to find her before anyone else does.”

Tom sat up straighter. “I get you. Okay, what can I do to help?”

“You have a group of friends you hang out with, right? People you can trust, who aren’t into anything-”

“Like Kirby was.”

“Right.”

“Well, sure I do.”

“Can you get some of them together this afternoon? Bring them here?”

He frowned, thinking. “Today’s Thursday, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, football practice’ll be over in about an hour, so I can get hold of Harry. Cat and Jenny don’t work today, so they should be around. Del-he’s just hanging out these days. The others…probably. But it’ll getting close to suppertime before I can round them all up.”

“I’ll spring for some pizzas.”

Tom grinned. “That’ll help. At least it’ll get Del and Harry here.”

I realized why when I met Del and Harry-they each weighed around two hundred pounds. Harry’s were all football player’s muscle, but Del’s were pure flab. Both waded into Mama Mia’s Special like they hadn’t eaten in a week. Even the girls-Anna, Cat, Jenny, and Lee-had appetites that would put a linebacker to shame.

They perched around the kitchen on top of the counters and table and chopping block, making me wonder why teenagers always feel more at home on surfaces where they have no right to plant their fannies. Each had some comment on the vintage of the appliances, ranging from “really raunchy” to “awesome.” The staff couldn’t resist poking their noses through the door to check out my young guests, but when Tom Chu, who knew full well who Hank Zahn was, pointed to him and called, “Hey, Rae, who’s the geezer?” I put a stop to that and got the meeting underway. After shutting the swinging door and shouting for them to get serious, I perched on the counter next to Tom. Seven tomato sauce-smudged faces turned toward me.

I asked, “Do all of you know what brainstorming is?”

Seven heads nodded.

“What we’re going to do,” I went on, “is to share information about Kirby and Adrian. I’ll ask questions, throw out some ideas, you say whatever comes into your heads. Anything, no matter how trivial it may seem to you, because you never know what might be important in an investigation.”

The kids exchanged excited glances. I supposed they thought this was just like Pros and Cons.

“Okay,” I began, “here’s one idea-shoplifting.”

Total silence. A couple of furtive looks.

“No takers? Come on, I’m not talking about any of you. I could care less. But think of Adrian and Kirby.”

The angelic-looking blonde-Cat-said, “Well, Adrian took stuff from the place where she worked sometimes. We all suspected that.”

“I didn’t,” Harry protested.

“Well, she did. At first she thought it was a giggle, but then…” Cat shrugged. “She just stopped talking about it. She’d get real snotty if you mentioned it.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Sometime last spring. Right about the time things started getting very heavy between her and Kirby.”

“When she started sleeping with him,” Del added.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about Kirby’s scams.”

Beside me, Tom muttered, “Dope.”

“Test questions.” Anna, a pretty Filipina, nodded knowingly.

Cat said, “He sold stuff.”

“Like L.L. Bean without the catalog.” The one sitting cross legged on the chopping block was Jenny.

I waited, letting them go with it.

Harry said, “Kirby’d get you stuff wholesale. He sold me the new Guns ‘n Roses CD for half price.”

“You wanted something,” Anna added, “you’d give him an order. Kirby filled it.”

“A real en-tree-preneur,” Del said, and the others laughed. All of them, that is, except Lee, a tiny girl who looked Eurasian. She sat on the far side of the oak table and had said nothing. When I looked at her, she avoided my eyes.

Jenny said, “It’s not funny Del. Kirby was so into money. It was like if he got enough of it, he’d really be somebody. Only he wouldn’t’ve been because there was no one there. You know what I mean? He had nothing inside of him-”

“Except money hunger,” Tom finished.

“Yeah, but don’t forget about his power trip,” Cat said. She looked at me and added, “Kirb had a real thing about power. He liked pushing people round, and I think he figured having money would mean he could push all he wanted. He really was a control freak, and the person he controlled best was Adrian.”

“Jump, Adrian,” Harry said. “How high, Kirby?”

Anna shook her head. “She was getting out from under that, though. Around the week before she disappeared, we were talking and she said she’d about had it with Kirby, she was going to blow the whistle and the game would be over. And I said something like, ‘Sure you are, Adrian’ and she goes, ‘No, I’ve worked it all out and I’ve got somebody to take my side.’ And I go, ‘You mean you got another guy on the line who’s going to stand up to Kirb?’ And she goes, ‘Yes, I’ve got somebody to protect me, somebody strong and fierce, who isn’t going to take any shit off of anybody.’”

“Did you tell the cops about that when they came around?” Del asked. Anna tossed her long hair. “Why should I? If Adrian took off with some guy, it’s her business.”

I caught a movement to one side, and turned in time to see Lee, the silent one, slip off the table and through the swinging door to the hall. “Lee?” I called.

There was no answer but her footsteps running toward the front of the house. I was off the counter top and out the door in seconds. “Help yourself to more Cokes,” I called over my shoulder.

By the time I spotted her, Lee was on the sidewalk heading downhill toward Mission. As I ran after her I realized what truly lousy shape I’d let myself get into these past few months, what with the caseload I’d been carrying and spending too much time with Willie. There’s only one kind of exercise that Willie likes, and while it’s totally diverting, it doesn’t do the same thing for you as aerobics.

Lee heard my feet slapping on the pavement, looked back, and then cut to the left and started running back uphill through the little wedge-shaped park that divides the street in front of All Souls. I groaned and reversed, panting.

At the tip of the park two streets came together, and two cars were also about to come together in a great blast of horns and a shout from one of the drivers that laid a blue streak in the air. Lee had to stop, I put on some speed, and next thing I knew I had hold of her arm. Thank God she didn’t struggle-I had absolutely no wind left.

Lee’s short black hair was damp with sweat, plastered close to her finely fashioned skull, and her almond-shaped eyes had gone flat and shiny with fear. She looked around desperately, then hung her head and whispered, “Please leave me alone.”

I got my breathing under control-sort of. “Can’t. You know something, and we have to talk. Come on back to the house.”

“I don’t want to face the rest of them. I don’t want any of them to know what I’ve done.”

“Then we’ll talk out here.” There was a makeshift bench a few yards away-a resting place one of the retired neighborhood handymen had thrown together for the old ladies who had to tote parcels uphill from the stores on Mission. Hell, I thought as I led Lee over there, he’d probably watched me trying to jog around the park before I totally lost it in the fitness department, and built the thing figuring I’d need it one of these days. Eventually I’d keel over during one of my workouts and then they’d put a plaque on the seat: Rae Kelleher Memorial Bench-Let This Be a Warning to All Other Sloths.

I gave Lee a moment to compose herself-and me a moment to catch my breath-and looked around at the commuters trudging up from the bus stop. The day had stayed gray and misty until about three, then cleared some, but new storm clouds threatened out by the coast. Lee fumbled through her pockets and came up with a crumbled Kleenex, blew her nose and sighed.

I said, “It can’t be all that bad.”

“You don’t know. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. When my father finds out, he’ll kill me.”

I tried not to smile, thinking of all the kids down through the ages who had been positively convinced that they would be killed on the spot if they were ever caught doing something wrong. I myself was in college before it occurred to me that parents-normal, sane parents, that is – don’t kill their offspring because kids are too damned expensive and troublesome to acquire and raise. Why waste all that money and effort, plus deprive yourself of the pleasure of becoming a burden to them in your old age?

“Maybe,” I said to Lee, “he won’t have to find out.”

She shook her head. “No way, not this.”

“Tell me about it, then we’ll see.”

Another tremulous sigh. “I guess I better tell somebody, now that Kirby’s been murdered and Adrian…but I’m afraid I’ll go to jail.”

Big stuff, then. “In that case, it’s better to come forward, rather than be found out later.”

Lee bit her lip. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “Okay. I didn’t know Kirby very well, just to say hi when I’d see him around, you now? But then one day last August he came to my house with these pictures while my parents were at work.”

“What pictures?”

“Of my taking stuff from where I work. You know that stationery and gift shop at Ocean Park Plaza-Paper Fantasy? Well, I worked there full time last summer and now I go in three days week after school. I kind of got into taking things-pen-and -pencil sets, jewelry, other gift items. I didn’t even want them very much. I mean, the stuff they sell is expensive but pretty tacky. But it made me not feel so bad about having this crummy job…Anyway, that’s what Kirby’s pictures showed, me taking jewelry from the case and stuffing it under my sweater.” Lee’s words were spilling out fast now; I was probably the only person she’d ever told about this.

“There was no way you could mistake what I was doing,” she went on. “The pictures showed it clear as could be. Kirby said he was going to go to my boss unless I did what he wanted. At first I thought he meant, you know, sex, and I could have died, but it turned out what he wanted was for me to steal stuff and give it to him. I said I would. I would have done anything to keep from being found out. And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“So Kirby got the merchandise he was selling by blackmailing people into shoplifting for him. I wonder if that’s the hold he had over Adrian?”

“It might have been. When they were first going together, they were, you know, like a normal couple. But then she changed, dropped all her friends and other activities, and started spending every minute with Kirby. I guess he used her shoplifting to get control of her.”

“What about the other kids? Do you know anybody else who was stealing for Kirby?”

“Nobody who’ll talk about it. But there’s a rumor about a couple of guys, that they take orders and just go out and rip off stuff. And a lot of the things he has for sale come from stores where I know other kids from school work.”

Kirby had had quite a scam going-a full-blown racket, actually. And Lee was right: there was no way this could be kept from her father. She might even go to juvenile hall.

“The pictures,” I said, “did Kirby say how he took them?”

“No, but he had to’ve been inside the store. They were kind of fuzzy, like he might’ve used a telephoto.”

“From where?”

“Well, they were face on, a little bit above and to the left of the jewelry counter.”

“Did you ever see Kirby in the store with a camera?”

“No, but I wouldn’t’ve noticed him if we were busy.”

“Would you have taken something while the store was busy?”

“Sure. That’s the best time,” Lee seemed to hear her own words, because she hung her head, cheeks coloring. “God, those pictures! I looked like a criminal!”

Which of course, she was. I thought about Kirby and his corps of teenage thieves. What if he’d tried to hit on the wrong person? Homicides committed by teenagers, like all other categories, were on the upswing…

“Lee,” I said, “you’re going to have to tell the cops investigating Kirby’s murder about this.”

She nodded numbly, hands clenching.

The phrase, “shit hitting the fan” isn’t a favorite of mine, but that was exactly what was about to happen, and a lot of perfectly nice parents were going to be splattered, to say nothing of their foolish, but otherwise nice children. Parents like Donna Conway. Children like Adrian.

I pictured the pretty redhead in the photo Donna had given me-her quirky smile and the gleam in her eyes that told of a zest for living and an offbeat sense of humor. I pictured her quiet, concerned, sad mother-a lonely woman clinging to her stacks of self-help books for cold comfort. Maybe I could still find Adrian, reunite the two so they could lean on each other in the tough times ahead; if Adrian was still alive, there had to be a way.

And if she was dead? I didn’t want to think about that.

VII

Lee and I went back to All Souls, where the rest of the kids were standing around the foyer wondering what to do next, and while she escaped to my office to call her father, I thanked them and showed them out. Tom Chu hung back, looking worried and throwing glances at my office door. Since he was the one who had put this together for me, I filled him in on some of what Lee had told me, after first swearing him to secrecy.

Tom didn’t look too surprised. “I kind of suspected Lee was in trouble,” he said. “And you now what? I think Del might’ve been mixed up with Kirby, too. He got real quiet when Lee ran out on us, and he left in a hurry right afterwards.”

“Those’re pretty shaky grounds to accuse him on.”

“Maybe, but Del…I told you he’s basically just hanging out this fall? Well, where he’s hanging out is Ocean Park Plaza.”

Ocean Park Plaza-the focus of the whole case. I thanked Tom and gently chased him out the door so Lee wouldn’t have to deal with him when she finished calling her dad.

Her father arrived some fifteen minutes later, all upset but full of comforting words, and agreed to take Lee down to the Hall of Justice to talk to Adah Joslyn. I called Joslyn to let her know a witness was on her way. “Adah,” I added, “did Sharon ask you what was in Adrian Conway’s backpack?”

“Yeah. I’ve got the property list right here.” There was a rustling noise. “Some raunchy-smelling yogurt, makeup, a golden Gate Transit schedule, a couple of paperbacks-romance variety-and an envelope with the phone number of the Ocean Park Plaza’s security office scribbled on it.”

“Security office? You check with them?”

“Talked to a man named Waterson. He said she’d lost her i.d. badge the week before she disappeared and called in about getting it replaced. What is this-you trying to work my homicide, Kelleher?”

“Just trying to find a missing girl. I’ll turn over anything relevant.”

When I got off the phone, Lee and her father were sitting on the lumpy old couch in the front room, his arm protectively around her narrow shoulders. He didn’t look like much of a teenager-killer to me; in fact, his main concern was that she hadn’t come to him and admitted about the shoplifting as soon as “that little bastard”-meaning Kirby -had started hassling her. “I’d’ve put his ass in a sling,” he kept saying. I offered to go down to the Hall with them, but he said he thought it would be better if they went alone. As soon as they left, I decided to head over to Ocean Park Plaza, check out a couple of things, then talk with Ben Waterson again.

The mall wasn’t very crowded that night, but it was only Thursday, and the merchants were still gearing up for a big, weekend sales push designed to lure in all those consumers who weren’t suffering too much from the recession-getting started early on the Christmas season by urging everybody to spend, spend, spend, in order to stimulate the economy. The sale banners were red, white, and blue and, really, they were making it sound like it was our patriotic duty to blow every last dime on frivolous things that-by God!-had better be American-made if Americans made them at all. Even I, much as I love to max out my credit cards, am getting totally sick of the misguided economists’ notion that excess is not only good for the individual but for the nation. Anyway, the appeals from the politicians and the business community probably wouldn’t meet with any more success with patrons of the Ocean Park Plaza this coming weekend than they had with downtown shoppers the previous one, and tonight they were having no affect at all.

When I got to Paper Fantasy I found I was the only browser-a decided disadvantage for checking out the possible angles from which Kirby might have taken the photographs of Lee. I checked anyway, under the suspicious eyes of the lone clerk. Over there was the counter where Lee had been standing when she’d five-fingered the jewelry, and from the way she’d described the pictures, Kirby would have had to be standing not only in front of it, but some three feet in the air. Impossible, unless…

Ahah! There it was-a surveillance camera mounted on the wall above and to the left of the counter. One look at that and I recalled the banks of screens in the security office upstairs, closed-circuit TV that allowed you to video tape and photograph.

I hurried out of Paper Fantasy-possibly provoking a call to security by the clerk-and headed for Left Coast Casuals.

Only two salesclerks manned the store, and there were no customers. I wandered up and down the aisles, scanning for the cameras. There were four, with a range that covered the entire sales floor. While stealing jewelry, Adrian would have had to stand around here, in plain sight of that one. For lingerie, camera number two would have done the observing. Stupid. How could the kids be so stupid?

Of course I knew the answer to that-anybody who’s ever shoplifted does. The cameras are there, sure, but you just assume they’re not recording your particular store at the time, or being monitored. And you’re certain that you’re being oh-so-subtle when actually you’re about as discreet as a moose picking its way through a bed of pansies. And then there’s the urge that just washes over you -ooh, that irresistible impulse, that heady pulse-quickening temptation to commit the act that will bring on that delicious soaring high.

Yeah, the kids were stupid. Like I’d been stupid. Like a drug addict, an alcoholic, a binge-eater is stupid.

“Ms. Kelleher?” the voice was Sue Hanford’s. “Can I help you?”

I swung around. She’d come out of the stock room and stood a few feet away from me, near the fake angora sweaters. “I was just looking the store over once more, before going up to see Ben Waterson.”

Her face became pinched, two white spots appearing at the corners of her mouth. “You won’t find him in the office. I know, because I just called up there. I’ll tell you, I’ve about had it with him not being available when I need him.”

”This happens a lot?”

“Well, yesterday morning around eleven-thirty. He said he’d come and talk about the problem I’ve been having with a gang of girls who are creating disturbances outside and intimidating my customers, but then he never showed up. I called and called, but he’d taken off without saying why. He didn’t come back until six.”

But yesterday morning around eleven-thirty I’d seen him just outside the store, arguing with Kirby Dalson. Waterson had claimed Sue Hanford was the one who was away, leaving him in charge. “Were you in the store all day yesterday?” I asked.

She nodded. “I worked a fourteen-hour shift.”

“And today?” I asked. “Waterson wasn’t available again?”

“Yes. He took off about half an hour ago, when he’s supposed to be on shift till nine-thirty.”

“I see.”

“Ms. Kelleher? If you do go up there and find Ben has come back will you ask him to come down here?”

“Sure,” I said distractedly. Then I left the store.

A taco, I thought. There was a taco stand down in the food concession area. Maybe a taco and a Coke would help me think this one through.

Okay, I thought, reaching for Gordito’s Beef Supreme taco-piled high with extra salsa, guacamole, and sour cream-somebody in the security office here has been getting the goods on the kids who are shoplifting and turning the evidence over to Kirby so he could blackmail them into working for him. If I wasn’t trained not to jump to conclusions I’d say Ben Waterson, because his behavior has been anything but on the up-and-up lately. Okay, I’ll say it anyway-Ben Waterson. Kirby was a good contact man for Waterson-he knew the kids, knew their weak spots, and after they ripped off the stuff he would wholesale some of it at school, keeping Waterson out of the transaction. Kind of a penny-ante scheme, though, if you think about it. Would hardly have brought in enough to keep Kirby, much less Waterson, in ready cash. And there had to be something in it for Waterson. But then there were the other kids-like Del-who didn’t work here but ripped things off for Kirby, maybe big-ticket items, here and at other malls as well. And there was the rented house on Naples Street.

Those storage sheds in the backyard-sheds full of Ron Owens’ mother’s things that Owens claims were worth quite a bit-I’ll bet all of that got fenced, and then they filled up the sheds with new merchandise while they tried to find a buyer for it. Not hard to find one, too, not in this town. Neighbors said a lot of people came and went at Naples Street, so it could have been a pretty substantial fencing operation.

I know a fair amount about fencing, courtesy of Willie Whelan, who in recent years, thank God, has “gone legit,” as he puts it. So far the scenario made sense to me.

The taco was all gone. Funny -I’d barely tasted it. I looked longingly at Gordito’s, than balled up the wrappings and turned my attention back to the case.

Where does Adrian fit into all this? Last spring she starts to change, according to her school friends. She’s been taking her five-finger employee discount for a while, oblivious to what Kirby and Waterson are up to. Then Kirby comes to her with pictures, and suddenly he’s got the upper hand in the relationship. Adrian’s still pretty demoralized-the father leaving, the mother who’s always spouting phrases like “potential to be”-so she lets Kirby control her. Did she steal for him? Help him with the fencing? Had to have, given that she was familiar enough with the Naples Street house to walk in and plunk her backpack down in the living room. I’m pretty sure she slept with him-even the other kids know that.

Okay, suppose Adrian does all of that. Maybe she even glamorizes the situation as young women will do in order to face themselves in the morning. But fetching the condiments for the hamburgers of a young man who can damned well get them himself grows old real fast, and after a while she starts to chafe at what her therapy wall calls “white slavery.” So, as she tells her friend Anna, she’d decided to “blow the whistle and game will be over.”

How? By going to the cops? Or by going to the head of mall security, Ben Waterson?

I got up, tossed my cup and taco wrappings in a trash bin, and headed for the security office.

Waterson wasn’t there. Had left around six after a phone call, destination unknown, the woman on the desk old me. I persuaded her to check their log to see if Adrian Conway had reported losing her i.d. badge about a week before she disappeared, as Waterson had told Adah Joslyn. No record of it, and there would have been had it really happened.

Caught you in another lie, Ben!

Back down to the concession area. This time I settled for coffee and a Mrs. Fields cookie.

So Adrian probably went to Waterson, since she had the phone number of the security office scribbled on an envelope in her backpack. And he…what? Lured her away from the mall and killed her? Hid her body? Then why was her backpack at Naples Street? Waterson would have left it with the body or gotten rid of it. And would Waterson have gone to such lengths, anyway?

Well, Kirby was murdered, wasn’t he?

But would Kirby have kept quiet if he thought Waterson had murdered his girlfriend? The kid was a cold one, but…Maybe I just didn’t want to believe that anybody that young could be that cold. And that was poor reasoning-if you don’t believe me, just check out the morning paper most days.

Another thing-who was this person Adrian had talked about, who would take her side and not take any shit off of anybody? Maybe Waterson had played it subtle with her, pretending to be her protector, then spirited her off somewhere and-

The prospects for her survival weren’t any better with that scenario.

I was so distracted that I bit clear through the cookie into my tongue. Swore loud enough to earn glares from two old ladies at the next table.

Back to Ben Waterson. Kirby came to the mall the other day and argued with him-not about getting hold of Adrian’s back pay, as they both claimed, because Waterson had lied about Sue Hanford leaving him in charge at Left Coast Casuals. And right after the argument, Kirby stormed out of the mall and drove off burning rubber. Waterson took off around that time, too. And tonight Waterson left again, after a phone call around six-about the time the kids, Del preceding them, left All Souls. Did Del or another of them warn him that everything was about to unravel? Is Waterson running, or did he leave for purposes of what Sue Hanford calls damage control?

Damage control. I suppose you could call Kirby’s murder damage control…

I got up, threw my trash in the bin, and began walking the mall-burning off excess energy, trying to work it out. If only I knew what Kirby and Waterson had argued about. And where they’d each gone Wednesday afternoon. And why Kirby had asked me to meet him at the Naples Street house. Had Waterson found out about the meeting, gotten there early? Killed Kirby before he could talk with me? And what about Adrian? If she was dead, where was her body? And if she was alive-

And then I saw something. It wasn’t related to my case at all, was just one of those little nudges you get when you have all the information you need and are primed for something to come along and help you put it all together. I’m sure I’d have figured it out eventually, even if it hadn’t been for the poster that made the land look so parched and windswept and basically unpleasant that you wondered why they thought it would sell tours. But as it was, it happened then, and I was damned glad of it.

VIII

The Wreck and I sped through the night, under a black sky that quickly started leaking rain, then just plain let go in a deluge. The windshield wipers scraped and screeched, smearing the glass instead of clearing it. Dammit, I thought, why can’t I get it together to buy a new car-or at least some new wiper blades? No, a whole car’s in order, because this defroster isn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell, and I’m so sick of being at the mercy of third-rate transportation.

Then I started wondering about the tread on the Wreck’s tires. When was the last time I’d checked it? It had looked bad, whenever, and I’d promised myself new tires in a few hundred more miles, but that had to be several thousand ago. What if I got a flat, was stranded, and didn’t reach Adrian in time? She was probably safe; I didn’t know for sure what Waterson had figured it out. Hell, I’d barely done that. Could anybody manage, without knowing Adrian the way I did from her therapy wall?

The rain whacked down harder and the wind blew the Wreck all over the road. My shoulders got tense, and my hands actually hurt from clinging to the wheel. Lights ahead now-the little town of Olema where this road met the shoreline highway. Right turn, slow a little, then put the accelerator to the floor on the home stretch to Aunt June’s.

She lied to me-that much was obvious at the time-but I hadn’t suspected it was such a big lie. How could I guess that Adrian was with her-right there on the premises, probably in June’s studio-and had been with her since shortly after her disappearance? Maybe I should have picked up on the fact that June didn’t seem all that worried about her niece, but otherwise I’d had no clues. Not then.

Now I did, though. The Golden Gate Transit schedule in Adrian’s backpack, for one. Golden Gate was the one bus line that ran from the city to Marin County, and she would only have needed it if she planned a trip north. There had been no one with a Marin address other than June Simoom on the list of people who were close to Adrian that the police had checked out. And then there was the graphic evidence on the therapy wall-the soaring bird so like the symbol June’s place. Wingspread, next to one broken gold chain and the word FREEDOM. But most of all it was Adrian’s own words that had finally tipped me: “somebody to protect me, somebody strong and fierce.” That was June’s way of describing herself, and Adrian had probably heard it enough to believe it. After all, her aunt had taken the name of a fierce, relentless African wind; she had called her home Wingspread, a place of refuge.

But there was another side to June-the possessive, controlling side that Donna Conway had described. Frying pan to fire, that’s where Adrian had gone. From one controlling person to another-and in this case, a control freak who probably delighted in keeping the niece from the hated sister-in-law. June hadn’t called Donna after my visit to make peace; she’d probably been fishing to find out if I’d relayed any suspicions to her.

Slowed to a crawl, peering through the smears on the windshield and the rain soaked blackness for the mailbox with the soaring bird. That stand of eucalyptus looked about right, and the deeper shadows behind it must hide Tomales Bay. Hadn’t the road curved like this just before the turnoff to the rutted driveway? Wasn’t it right about here…?

Yes! I wrenched the wheel to the left, and the Wreck skidded onto the gravel shoulder.

What I could see of the driveway looked impassable. Deep tire gouges cut into the ground but they were filling with muck and water. Better not chance it. I turned off the engine-it coughed and heaved several times, not a good sign, Willie had recently told me-and then I got out and started for the cottage on foot.

The wind blew even stronger now, whipping the branches of the trees and sending big curls of brittle bark spiraling through the air. The rain pelted me, stinging as it hit my face, and the hood of my slicker blew off my head. I grabbed at it, but I couldn’t make it stay up, and soon my hair was a sodden mess plastered to my skull.

Adrian, I thought, you’d better be worth all this.

I couldn’t see any lights in the cottage, although there was a truck pulled in under the trees. That didn’t mean anything-the other night June had relied on the fire for both heat and light, and there was no reason she would have turned on the porch lamp unless she was expecting company. But what kind of a life was this for Adrian, spending her entire evenings in darkness in that crumbling shack? And what about her days-how could she fill the long hours when she should have been in school or working or doing things with her friends? If her mother hadn’t hired me and I hadn’t figured out where she was, how long would she have hidden here until reality set in and she began to want to have a life again?

My slicker was an ancient one, left over from my college days, and its waterproofing must have given out, because I was soaked to my skin now. Freezing too. Please have a fire going, June, because I’m already very annoyed with you, and the lack of a fire will make me truly pissed off-

Movement up ahead, the door of the cottage opening. A dark figure coming out, big and barrel-shaped, bigger than June and certainly bigger than Adrian…Ben Waterson.

He came down the steps, hesitated, then angled off toward the left, through the tress. Going where? To the studio or the other outbuilding?

I began creeping closer to the cottage, testing the ground ahead of me before I took each step. Foot-grabber of a hole there, ankle-turner of a tree root here. At least the wind’s shrieking like a scalded cat so he can’t possibly hear me.

The cottage loomed ahead. I tripped on the bottom step, went up the rest of them on my hands and knees, and pushed the door open. Keeping low, I slithered inside on a splintery plank floor. There was some light at the far end of the room, but not much; the fire was burning low, just embers mainly.

What’s that smell?

A gun had been fired in there, and not too long ago. I opened my mouth, tried to call to June, but a croak came out instead. The room was quiet, the wind howling outside. I crept toward the glowing embers…

There June was, reclining on her pile of pillows, glass of wine beside her on the raised hearth. So like the other night, but something was wrong here, something to do with the way she was lying, as if she’d been thrown there, and why was the fireplace poker in her hand-Oh God June no!

I reeled around, smashing my fist into the wall beside me. My eyes were shut but I could still see her crumpled there on the gaudy silk pillows, velvet robes disarrayed, hand clutching the poker. Why was she still holding it? Something to do with going into spasm at the moment of death.

Disconnected sounds roared in my ears, blocking the wind. Then I heard my voice saying bitterly to Sharon, “Until the next time,” meaning until the next death. And Sharon saying to me, “If there is one.”

Well, Shar, this is the next time, and I wish you were here to tell me what to do because what I’m about to do is go to pieces and there’s a killer somewhere outside and a helpless young woman who I promised to bring back to her mother-

Go to the phone, Rae, and call the sheriff.

It wasn’t Sharon’s voice, of course, but my own-a cool, professional voice that I’d never known I had. It interrupted the hysterical thoughts that were whirling and tumbling in my brain, calmed me and restored my balance. I dredged up memories of the other night, pictured an old-fashioned rotary-dial phone sitting on the kitchen counter. I felt my way until I touched it, and picked up the receiver. No dial tone.

Maybe the storm, maybe something Waterson had done. Whatever, there wasn’t going to be any car full of Marin County Sheriff’s deputies riding to my rescue.

You’ll just have to save yourself-and Adrian.

With what? He’s armed. I don’t even have a flashlight.

Kitchen drawer. I felt along the edge of the warped linoleum counter, then down to a knob. Pulled on it. Nothing in there but cloth, dishtowels, maybe. Another knob, another drawer. Knives. I took one out, tested its sharpness. Another drawer, and there was a flashlight, plus some long, pointed barbecue skewer. I stuck them and the knife in the slash pocket of my slicker.

And then I went outside to face a man with a gun.

The wind was really whipping around now, and it tore the cottage’s door from my grip and slammed it back against the wall. I yanked it closed, went down the slick, rickety steps, and made for the eucalyptus trees. As I ran I felt the flashlight fall from my slash pocket, but I didn’t stop to find it. Silly to have taken it, anyway-if I turned it on, I’d be a target for Waterson.

Under the trees I stopped and leaned against a ragged trunk, panting and feeling in my pocket for the knife and the skewers. They were still there-not that they were much of a match against a gun. But there was no point in stewing over the odds now. I had to pinpoint those outbuildings. If I remembered correctly, they were closer to the shore and to the left of this grove.

I slipped through the trees, peering into the surrounding blackness. Now I could make out the shoreline, the water wind-tossed and frothy, and then I picked out the shapes of the buildings-two of them, the larger one probably the studio. Roofs as swaybacked as the cottage’s, no lights in either. Windows? I couldn’t tell. They sat across a clearing from me, a bad way to approach if there were windows and if Waterson was inside and looking out. A bad way if he was outside and looking in this direction.

How else to get over to them, then? Along the shore? Maybe. June had said something about a beach…

I went back through the trees, their branches swaying overhead, ran for the cottage again, then slipped along its side and ducked under a half-collapsed deck. The ground took a sudden slope, and I went down on my butt and slid toward the water, waves sloshed over my tennis shoes-icy waves.

Dammit! I thought. What the hell am I doing out here risking pneumonia-to say nothing of my life-for a thieving teenager I’ve never even set eyes on?

I pulled myself up on one of the rotten deck supports-nearly pulling it down on my head-and started moving again. Then I stopped, realizing there was no beach here now, just jumbled and jagged rocks before the spot where the sand should begin. The beach was completely submerged by the high storm-tide.

Stupid, Rae. Very stupid. You should have realized it would be this way and not wasted precious time. You should have gotten back into the Wreck as soon as soon as you found June’s body and driven to the nearest phone, called the sheriff’s department and let them handle it.

No time for recriminations now. Besides, the nearest phone was miles away, and even if I had driven there immediately, the deputies wouldn’t have gotten here fast enough to save Adrian. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten here fast enough to save her.

I crawled back up the incline and looked around, trying to measure the distance I’d have to run exposed to get to the shelter of the outbuildings. From here it was twenty, maybe twenty-five yards. Not that far-I’d go for it.

I hunched over, made myself as small as I could, and started running-not much of a run, but still the longest, scariest of my life. I kept expecting the whine of a bullet-that’s what you hear, Sharon’s told me, before you hear the actual report, and she ought to know. You hear the whine, that is if the bullet doesn’t kill you first.

But all I heard was the howl of the wind and the banging of a door someplace and the roaring of my own blood in my ears. Then I was at the first outbuilding, crouching against its rough wood wall and panting hard.

The banging was louder here. When my breathing had calmed, I crept around the building’s corner and looked. Door, half off its hinges, and no sound or light coming from inside. I crept a little closer. Empty shed, falling down, certainly not June’s studio.

I moved along until I could see the larger building the space between the two was narrow, dark. I ran again, to a windowless wall and flattened against it, putting my ear to the boards and trying to hear if anyone was inside.

A banging noise, then a crash-something breaking. Then an angry voice-male, Waterson’s. “Where the hell is it?”

Sobbing now, and a young woman saying, “I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where’s Aunt June? I want-”

“Shut up!” It sounded like he hit her. She screamed, and my hand went into my pocket, grasping the knife.

More sobbing. Waterson said, “I want those pictures and the negatives, Adrian.”

“What pictures? What negatives? I don’t know anything about them!”

“Don’t give me that. Kirby said you were holding them for him. Just tell me where they are and I’ll let you go.”

Sure he would. He’d shoot her just like he had June, and hope that this would go down as a couple of those random killings that happen a lot in remote rural areas where weirdos break into what look like empty houses for stuff to steal and sell for drug money.

“I wouldn’t hold anything for Kirby!” Adrian said through her sobs. “I’m scared of him!”

“Then why did he come out here yesterday after he tried to hit me up for money? Coming to get his evidence to prove to me that I’d better pay up, that’s why. And don’t lie to about it-I followed him.”

“No! I didn’t even see him! He figured out where I was and wanted to talk me into going back to the city. I hid from him, and Aunt June ran him off.”

So this was where Kirby had gone when I’d lost him. I remembered the eucalyptus leaves in his hair, the sand on his shoes when I’d talked to him at his parents’ house-probably picked up while he was skulking around outside here, looking for Adrian after June had told him he couldn’t see her. Waterson had not only followed Kirby here, but later to the Naples Street house, where he’d killed him.

There was a silence inside the studio, then Adrian screamed and cried some more. He’d hit her again, I guessed. Then he said, “I’m not going to ask you again, Adrian. Where’re the pictures?”

“There aren’t any! Look, Kirby’s always bullshitting, he had me fooled. I was going to go to you about what he was doing at the plaza, until I saw you at the house with him, making a deal with that fence.”

That was what had made her run out of the Naples Street place so fast she’d left her backpack-made her run straight to Aunt June, the only person she’d told about the trouble she was in, the person who’d offered to take her side and shelter her. Well, June had tried. Now it was up to me.

I started moving around the building, duck-walking like my high-school phys ed teacher had made us do when we goofed off in gym. Inside, I heard Waterson say, “You never knew about a hidden camera at that place in the Outer Mission?”

“No.”

“Kirby never asked you to take pictures of me doing deals the fences?”

“Neither of us took any pictures. This story is just more of Kirby’s bullshit.”

Waterson laughed-an ugly sound. “Well,” he said, “it was Kirby’s last shovelful of bullshit. He’s dead.”

“What…?” Adrian’s question rose up into a shriek.

I stopped listening, concentrated on getting to the corner of the building. Then I peeked around it. On this side-the one facing the water-there was a window and a door. I duckwalked on, thanking god that I still had some muscles left in my thighs. At the window I poked my head up a little, but all saw were shadows-a big barrel-shaped one that had to be Waterson, and some warped, twisted ones that were downright weird the light shivered and flickered-probably from a candle or oil lamp.

The door was closed, but the wind was rattling it in its frame. It made me think of how the wind had torn the cottage door from my grasp. I stopped, pressed against the wall, and studied this door. From the placement of its hinges, I could tell it opened out. I scuttled around to the hinged side, paused and listened. Adrian was screaming and sobbing again. Christ, what was he doing to her?

Well, the sound would hide what I was about to do.

I stood, pressed flat as could be against the wall, then reached across the door to its knob and gave it a quick twist. The door opened, then slammed shut again.

“What the hell?” Waterson said.

Heavy footsteps came toward the door. I tensed, knife out and ready.

Don’t think about how it’ll be when you use it, Rae. Just do it-two lives are at stake here, and one’s your own.

The door opened. All I could see was a wide path of wavery light. Waterson said, “Fuckin’ wind,” and shut the door again. Well, hell.

I waited a few seconds until his footsteps went away, reached for the knob again, and really yanked on it this time. The wind caught the door, slammed it back, and it smashed into me, smacking my nose. I bit my lip to keep from yelling, felt tears spring to my eyes. I wiped them away with my left hand, gripped the knife till my right hand hurt.

The footsteps came back again, quicker now, and I grasped the knife with both hands-ready, not thinking about it, just ready to do it because I had to. When he stepped outside, I shoved the door as hard as I could with my whole body, slamming him against the frame. He shouted, staggered, reeled back inside.

I went after him, saw him stumbling among a bunch of weird, twisted shapes that were some sort of pottery sculptures-the things that had made the strange shadows I’d glimpsed through the window. Some were as tall as he was, others were shorter or stood on pedestals. He grabbed at one and brought it down as he tried to keep his balance and raise his gun.

The gun went off. The roar was deafening, but I hadn’t heard any whine, so his shot must have gone wide of me. Waterson stumbled back into a pedestal, flailing. I lunged at him, knife out in front of me. We both went down together. I heard the gun drop on the floor as I slashed out with the knife.

Waterson had hold of my arm now, slammed it against the floor. Pain shot up to my shoulder, my fingers went all prickly, and I dropped the knife. He pushed me away and started scrambling for the gun. I got up on my knees, grabbed at the base of the nearest sculpture, pushed. It hit his back and knocked him flat.

Waterson howled. I saw the gun about a foot from his hand and kicked out, sending it sliding across the floor. Then I stood all the way up, grabbed a strange many-spouted vase from a pedestal. And slammed it down on his head.

Waterson grunted and lay still.

I slumped against the pedestal, but only for a moment before I went to pick up the gun. The room was very quiet all of a sudden, except for sobbing coming from one corner. Adrian was trussed up there, dangling like a marionette from one of the support beams, her feet barely touching the plank floor.

She had the beginnings of a black eye and tears sheened her face, and she was jerking at her ropes like she was having some kind of attack. I located the knife, made what I hoped were reassuring noises as I went over there, and cut her down, she stumbled toward a mattress that lay under the window and curled up fetus-like, pulling the heavy blanket around her. I went over to Waterson and used the longer pieces of rope to truss him up.

Then I went back to Adrian. She was shivering violently, eyes unfocused, fingers gripping the edge of the blanket. I sat down on the mattress beside her, gently loosened her fingers, and cradled her like a baby.

“Sssh,” I said. “It’s over now, all over.”

I was lolling around All Soul’s living room on Friday night, waiting for Willie and planning how I’d relate my triumph in solving the Conway-Dalson case to him, when the call came from Inspector Adah Joslyn.

“I just back from Marin County,” she told me “Waterson’s finally confessed to the Simoom murder, but he denies killing Kirby Dalson.”

“Well, of course he would. Dalson was obviously premeditated, while the poker in Simoom’s hand could be taken to mean self-defense.”

“He’ll have to hire one hell of a lawyer to mount a defense like that, given what he did to the niece. But that’s not my problem. What is it that he’s got a verifiable alibi for the time of Dalson’s death.”

“What?”

“Uh-huh. Dalson didn’t leave his parents’ house until six-twenty that night. Six to seven, Waterson was in a meeting with several of the Ocean Park Plaza merchants, including Adrian Conway’s former boss.”

I remembered Sue Hanford saying Waterson had taken off the morning before Kirby was killed and hadn’t come back until six. I hadn’t thought to ask her how she knew that or if he’d stayed around afterwards. Damn! Maybe I wasn’t the hot shot I thought I was.

Adah asked, “You got any ideas on this?”

Unwilling to admit I didn’t, I said, “Maybe. Let me get back to you.” I hung up the phone on Ted’s desk, then took the stairs two at a time and went to Sharon’s office.

She wasn’t there. Most of the time the woman practically lived in the office, but now when I needed her, she was gone. I went back downstairs and looked for her mailbox tag. Missing. There was one resting on the corner of the desk, like she might have been talking with Ted and absentmindedly set it down there. I hurried along the hall to the kitchen, where five people hadn’t yet given up on the Friday happy hour, but Sharon wasn’t one of them. Our resident health freak, who was mixing up a batch of cranberry-juice-and-cider cocktails, said she’d gone home an hour ago.

I said, “If Willie shows up before I get back, will you ask him to wait for me?” and trotted out the door.

Sharon doesn’t live far from All Souls-in Glen Park, a district that’s been undergoing what they call gentrification. I suppose you could say her brown-shingled cottage-one of the few thousand built as temporary housing after the ’06 quake that have survived far better than most of the grand mansions of that era-has been gentrified, since she’s remodeled it and added a room and a deck, but to me it’s just nice and homey, not fancy at all. Besides, things are always going wrong with it-tonight it was the porch light, shorting out from rain that had dripped into it because the gutters were overflowing. I rang the bell, hoping it wouldn’t also short out and electrocute me.

Sharon answered wearing her long white terry robe and fur lined slippers and looking like she was coming down with a cold-probably from the soaking she’d gotten Tuesday night, which meant I would be the next one in line to get sick, from the soaking I’d gotten last night. She looked concerned when she saw me on the steps.

Last night, after I’d dealt with the Marin authorities and driven home feeling rocky and ready to fly apart at the slightest sound or movement, she’d come over to the co-op-Ted had called her at home, I guess-and we’d sat quietly in my nest for a while. Neither of us had said much-there was nothing to say, and we didn’t need to, anyway. This second horror in a week of unpleasantness had changed me somehow, maybe forced me to grow up. I wasn’t looking to Sharon for wisdom or even comfort, just for understanding and fellowship. And fellows we were-members of a select group to which election was neither an honor nor a pleasure.

Tonight I could tell that she was afraid I was suffering delayed repercussions from the violent events of the week, so quickly I said, “I need to run some facts by you. Got a few minutes?”

She nodded, looking relieved, and waved me inside. We went to the sitting room off her kitchen, where she had a fire going, and she offered me some mulled wine. While she was getting it, her yellow cat, Ralph, jumped into my lap. Ralph is okay as cats go, but really, I’m more of a dog person. He knows that, too-it’s why he always makes a beeline for me when I come over. The little sadist looked at me with knowing eyes, then curled into a ball on my lap. His calico sister Alice, who was grooming herself in the middle of the floor, looked up, and damned if she didn’t wink!

Sharon came back with the wine, wrapped herself in her afghan on the couch, and said, “So run it by me.”

I did, concluding, “Adrian couldn’t have killed Kirby. Her hysterics when Waterson told her he was dead were genuine.”

“Mmmm.” Sharon seemed to be evaluating that. Then she said, “Maybe one of the other kids Kirby was blackmailing?”

“I thought of that, too, but it doesn’t wash. Adrian talked a little while we were driving to Point Reyes to call the sheriff. She said none of the kids knew about the house on Naples-Kirby insisted it be kept a secret.”

“What about one of the fences he dealt with? Maybe he’d crossed one of them.”

“I tend to doubt it. Fences don’t operate that way.”

“Well, you should know. Willie…”

“Yeah.” I sipped wine, feeling gloomy and frustrated.

Sharon asked, “Who else besides Adrian knew about that house?”

“Well, Waterson, but his alibi is firm. And Aunt June. Adrian called her from a pay phone at a store on the corner the day she walked in on Kirby and Waterson making a deal with a fence, and June drove over to the city and picked her up. Adrian had told June about the trouble she was in when she and Kirby went to Tomales for the autumnal equinox firing in late September, and June’d offered to take her in after she went to security about what was going on. I don’t know how June thought Adrian could escape prosecution for her part in the scam, but then, she didn’t strike me as a terribly realistic person.”

“Caring, though,” Sharon said. “Caring and controlling.”

I nodded. “June, the fierce protectress. Who died with a fire place poker in her hand. Waterson had a gun, and she still tried to go up against him.”

“And Kirby had come out to her place. Had scared Adrian.”

“Yes,” I said.

Sharon got up, took out glasses, and went to the kitchen for refills. I stared moodily into the fire. When I’d taken this job. I’d assumed I’d be running skip traces and interviewing witnesses for lawsuits. Now I’d found two dead bodies, almost killed a man, almost gotten killed myself-all in the course of a few days. Add to that an ethical dilemma…

When Sharon came back I said, “If I suggest this to the police, and June really was innocent, I’ll be smearing the memory of a basically good woman.”

She was silent, framing her reply. “If June was innocent, the police won’t find any evidence. If she was guilty, they may find a weapon with blood and hair samples that match Kirby’s somewhere on the premises at Tomales, and be able to close the file.”

“But what will that do to Adrian?”

“From what you tell me, she’s a survivor. And you’ve got to think of Kirby’s parents. You’ve got to think of justice.”

Leave it to Sharon to bring up the J-word. She thinks about things like that all the time, but to me they’re just abstractions.

“And you’ve got to think about the truth,” she added.

Not fair-and she knows how I feel about the truth. “All right,” I finally said. “I’ll call Adah back later.”

“Good. By the way, how are Adrian and her mother doing?”

“Well, all of this has been tough on them. Will be tough for a while. But they’ll make it. Adrian is a survivor, and Donna-maybe this will help her realized her ‘potential to be.’”

We both smile wryly. Sharon said, “Here’s to our potential to be,” and we toasted.

After a while I went into her home office and called Adah. Then I called All Souls and Hy, who was regaling the folks in the kitchen with stories about the days when he was on the wrong side of the law, and told him I’d be there soon.

“So,” Sharon said as I was putting on my slicker. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m still rocky, but that’ll pass.”

“Nightmares?”

“Yeah. But tonight they won’t bother me. I plan to scare them off by sleeping with my favorite gorilla.”

Sharon grinned and toasted me again, but damned if she didn’t look melancholy.

Maybe she still knew something that I didn’t.