Vanishing Point

Tuesday

“So are you going to tell Mark Aldin and Terry Wyatt about the postcard?” Patrick asked.

“Not yet. They’ve got enough on their minds. I won’t mention it until we locate Jennifer, and maybe not then.”

It was ten in the morning, and we were seated on the floor of my office, files strewn around us, a big flowchart that Patrick had constructed spread between us. The chart impressed me: each line of investigation was delineated in a different color of ink, and it looked as if he hadn’t omitted a single piece of information. Questions and theories were jotted and circled in the margins. If only my mind were that orderly…

He said, “Don’t you have to make periodic progress reports to the clients?”

“Only if they request them. Even then, I don’t share everything-too much danger of discouraging them or raising false hopes. When I wrap up a case, I make a verbal report, and present them with a copy of the written.”

“Clients ever get pissed at you if the news is bad? Want to kill the messenger?”

“Sometimes. Goes with the territory. So let’s see what you’ve got there.” I motioned at the chart.

“Okay. This is the Laurel case. And this”-he moved the paper aside to reveal a second chart-“is the Jennifer case. Since we’re acting on the assumption that Jennifer’s disappearance is linked to-or maybe it would be better to say caused by-what happened to her mother, we should go over the Laurel chart first.”

“Right.”

“Basic lines of inquiry: Laurel’s last moves. You’ve interviewed Jennifer and Terry, Anna Yardley, Sally Timmerman, and all the official witnesses who could be located except for Bryan Taft, the second dogwalker in Morro Bay. Those lead to secondary lines: Herm Magruder; Jacob Ziff, because he lied to you; Kev Daniel, another liar; Josie Smith, the deceased cousin, because Jennifer seems to think she was posthumously connected with the disappearance. And then there’s the question of the biker.”

“Ira Lighthill, the other dogwalker, phoned to say he couldn’t find Taft’s last known address in Mexico, so that’s a dead end, at least for now. Magruder’s not due to return from vacation till later in the week. I’ve got Derek doing deep background on Ziff and Josie Smith, and starting to background Daniel. The biker could conceivably be someone who was in Laurel’s art class at the Men’s Colony, but we’re having difficulty getting information from DOC.”

Patrick was silent, drawing a circle in pencil around Josie Smith’s name. “I agree with you about Smith. You take a discontented woman like Laurel apparently was, and when a contemporary dies, it makes her question why she’s leading the kind of life she is.”

“The postcard she sent pretty much confirms it. Let’s look at Jennifer now.”

He moved the Laurel chart aside. “Basic lines: bank accounts and credit cards. Haven’t been used. Second home and boat at yacht club. Unoccupied, and the husband’s continuing to have them monitored. Flat on Fell Street. Rae’s looking into that.” Patrick paused. “Why’d she decide to work on this? I mean, she’s got a book to write, and her husband has millions.” When I didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I don’t mean to pry.”

“You’re not. Rae admits she’s blocked on this second book and is looking for a distraction. Plus she genuinely cares about Jennifer. But I see another factor: Rae really loved investigative work; she probably misses it.”

“Then why’d she quit?”

“She’d always wanted to write, and once she and Ricky married, he encouraged her to try. Now she just needs a vacation from it.”

Patrick’s freckled face relaxed some.

“You weren’t afraid she was going to come back permanently and take your job?” I asked.

“A little.”

“Well, you shouldn’t’ve worried. Even if she wanted to come back there’s more than enough work for both of you. And when I hired you, I made a commitment; I wouldn’t go back on that. Besides, I never in my life have seen anything like these charts.” As I spoke, a flash of inspiration hit me: maybe I should assign Patrick to coordinate cases in this way for all the operatives. I’d have to think about that.

“Thanks.” He turned his attention back to the chart. “Okay, the highway patrol’s got a BOLO out on Jennifer. I’ve been monitoring that; no sightings. She may have ditched her own vehicle and rented another. But the husband says she doesn’t carry much cash, and she’d’ve had to pay cash in lieu of using the credit cards and bank accounts.”

“She could have borrowed a friend’s car, but she’s out of touch with all of them except Rae.”

“Unless there’s a friend we’re not aware of.”

“I’ll put Craig onto that and I’ll ask Rae if she can remember anybody we haven’t contacted.”

Patrick nodded. “Now we come to the subject of the husband. The theory that he may have made Jennifer disappear because she’d become a liability.”

“That we have to pursue very carefully. Ricky’s flying back from L.A. this afternoon and plans to visit with Mark. He may pick up on something. Frankly, I’m hoping he doesn’t.”

“But you’re the one who came up with that angle.”

“I’ve got a naturally suspicious mind. That doesn’t mean I have to like my theories.”

“My mind works that way, too.” Patrick smiled wryly. “Of course, given my relationship with the Ex from Hell, that’s to be expected.” He consulted the chart. “I see only one question left: motive for Jennifer’s disappearance?”

I thought, shook my head. “She was impatient for results from us, but that’s not enough.”

“The thing about the cousin’s death being responsible for her mother’s disappearance? The first time that came up was the day she took off.”

“It sounds like a mental tic on the part of a stressed-out person. And it’s not enough either.”

He pushed the chart aside. “Then we’re done with this. But I misspoke before-there is another question left, the biggest of all: where the hell is she?”

I spent the next two hours closeted in my office with Ted, going over agency business. Kendra Williams, he told me, was working out splendidly, in spite of her neglecting to tell him about the San Luis newspaperman’s inquiry about the case.

“She apologized, and I didn’t make a big deal out of it,” he said. “Don’t you either. I can’t lose her. She is indeed a paragon of the paper clips.”

“What kind of an ogre do you think I am?”

“I know exactly what kind of an ogre you can be. Make nice, please.”

A while back, when I’d given Ted a raise and authorized him to hire an assistant, we’d jokingly discussed his new job title, and he’d opted to be called Grand Poobah. Now I sensed he was rapidly growing into the exalted position.

Just as Ted and I were wrapping up our session, Derek appeared in the doorway. “Got a minute, Shar?”

“I’m outta here,” Ted said, gathering up his files.

I motioned for Derek to take one of the clients’ chairs. “You have something for me?” Unnecessary to ask; his dark eyes shone with excitement.

“Well, nothing on Smith, and nothing more on Ziff. But Daniel’s another story.”

“Tell me.”

“Kevin James Daniel. Born Marin County, June ten, nineteen fifty-nine. Parents James William and Janet West Daniel. Father owned a wholesale foods company which was later acquired by a conglomerate, making him a very wealthy man. Plus there was inherited money on both sides. Mother died when Kevin was only eight. He grew up in Ross, attended Catholic schools. Was expelled from high school several times for various offenses, including drug use; then the father sent him to a school for incorrigible teens in Colorado. He seemed to straighten up, so after he graduated his father rented him an apartment here in the city and he began studying business at Golden Gate University. Daniel spent more time in the bars than on the books, however, and in nineteen seventy-nine he was convicted of DUI manslaughter-motorcycle hit-and-run accident-and sentenced to prison at the California Men’s Colony, San Luis Obispo. Served four years of a twelve-year sentence, with time off for good behavior. Was released on probation, and has been clean ever since.”

Which put him in CMC when Laurel had been teaching her art classes there.

“What was his release date?”

“May twenty-third, nineteen eighty-three.”

In time to encounter Laurel Greenwood in Cayucos.

“And where was he paroled to?”

Derek smiled triumphantly. “SLO County. The records show a Cayucos address for him.”

I said, “I think we have our biker.”

It all fit: Kev Daniel had been sentenced to the Men’s Colony for a DUI manslaughter-involving a motorcycle. He was there at the time Laurel taught her art classes. He was released on parole the month before she disappeared. For some reason they met in Cayucos. And then…?

If Daniel was responsible for Laurel’s disappearance, I would need to proceed very cautiously. I already had good reason to be wary of him: he had lied about his whereabouts when the shot was fired at me in the courtyard of the Oaks Lodge.

I sat in the armchair by my office window, putting together a theory while staring at a wall of fog.

Start with the premise that Daniel is the biker. Someone the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department searched intensively for twenty-two years ago.

Even if he was innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with Laurel’s disappearance, a recent parolee wouldn’t have wanted to come under the law’s close scrutiny, so when the call went out for information about her, he didn’t volunteer. Or if he wasn’t innocent, he had even better reason to remain silent.

Jacob Ziff had indicated to me that Daniel came down from San Francisco four years ago, so he’d probably left SLO County at his first opportunity. But now, because he’d returned and bought into a winery there, he found himself in a position of some importance in a community that would not be forgiving were his incarceration and later involvement in the Greenwood case-however innocent-to come out.

So far, so good.

Okay, then I showed up. Daniel found out about me from Jacob Ziff, who thought it interesting to have met with a private investigator, and talked casually about our interview with his client. Daniel was afraid that I would find out about him if I went on probing, so first he tipped the reporter from the San Luis newspaper in the hope that publicity would hamper my investigation-

Wait, when had Ziff told him about me? Before or after the article came out? I’d have to ask him.

The newspaper article aside, Daniel wanted to discourage me. Ziff had referred to him as something of a loose cannon-the kind of man who might discharge a weapon in a public place if the stakes were high enough. From our brief conversation over wine on the patio, I could tell that Daniel thought being shot at would scare a woman off.

Wrong assumption, Daniel.

What to do now? I couldn’t take my theory to Rob Traverso at the Paso Robles PD. He struck me as a man who acted strictly upon facts, and I really didn’t possess anything concrete. I’d first have to ask Ziff to explain his lie about being at the lodge’s bar when the shot was fired, as well as about when he discussed me with his client. Perhaps talk with Mike Rosenfeld, the reporter, too. Only then would I go up against Daniel.

After a moment’s thought I got up and went along the catwalk to Ted’s office, where the agency’s safe is located. He and Kendra were in the supply and copy-machine area in back, so I hurriedly worked the safe’s combination and took out my.357 Magnum. Ted worried about me every time I flew and every time I removed the gun from the safe. That meant he worried often about the former, infrequently about the latter. In this busy time, it was best I kept his unease to a minimum.

When I returned to my office, the fog outside the window looked thicker. I put the gun in my bag, then called aviation weather. Socked in at Oakland; I wouldn’t get off the ground in the Cessna tonight. Clear skies all the way down the Salinas Valley. Naturally.

Commercial flights from both Oakland and SFO would be delayed under these conditions, and no carriers went to Paso Robles anyway. Even if I could get a flight to Monterey or San Luis, I’d have to rent a car and drive some distance and, under the current tight security regulations, I might have difficulty taking the gun aboard, even disassembled and in a checked bag. Better to drive down in the MG-

“Shar?” Derek.

“Yes, what have you got?”

“The additional information on Kevin Daniel. He was paroled to the San Luis area, but in July of the year of his release asked for permission to serve out the rest of his probation in the San Francisco area. The request was granted, he returned to his father’s home, finished his undergrad and graduate degrees-in marketing-and became a model citizen. Worked for his father until the company was sold, then stayed with the conglomerate that bought it until four years ago, when the father died and he inherited big bucks. A few months later he went down to Paso Robles and bought into what was then called the Kane Winery. Daniel has never been married, races motorcycles in area competitions, lives in a million-dollar home on winery property. I’d say he probably gets a lot of women.”

An astute observation from someone who also got a lot of women. I remembered Jamie’s tentative question-“Does Derek ever ask about me?”-and the way Chris had smiled up at him at the party at Touchstone. And frowned.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Stay out of your employees’ private lives, McCone.

“Uh, no. That’s good stuff. Nothing else on Ziff, or Smith?”

“Ziff looks squeaky clean. Smith I haven’t started on.”

“Thanks, Derek. I’m heading out this afternoon for Paso Robles. You can reach me by my cell or at the Oaks Lodge.”

He nodded and left the office. I reached for the phone, to buzz Ted and ask him to reserve me a room, guaranteed for late arrival, but before I could, he buzzed me.

“Rae on line two.”

I picked up. “Hi, how’s it going?”

“I’m at the building on Fell Street. Property records show it’s owned by one Carl Dunn.”

“Why is that name familiar?”

“He’s Josie Smith’s first husband. He says that the year she died, he was letting her live in the second-floor flat while she tried to evict the tenants from a house she’d bought out in the Avenues.”

“He lives in the building?”

“Right. He occupies the same third-floor flat now that he did then. I’ve already confirmed that he rented the second-floor flat to Jennifer, but I think you’d better get over here so we can both interview him. I’ve got a feeling my skills along those lines are kind of rusty.”

“I’m on my way.”

“I had no idea Jennifer Aldin was Josie’s niece,” Carl Dunn said. “I knew her and Terry when they were children, but the last time I saw Jennifer was when she was nine or ten. Why didn’t she tell me who she was?”

I said, “Perhaps she didn’t remember you.”

We were seated in Dunn’s living room in the third-story flat of the Fell Street building, a bright comfortable space with large abstract paintings on the walls. Dunn was a big, bearded man with a mane of silver-gray hair, a real estate agent, Rae had told me.

Dunn frowned. “She might not’ve remembered my name or face, but I’m surprised she didn’t recognize the building. She stayed here several times with her mother.”

“How did Jennifer Aldin come to rent the flat from you?”

“My former tenants vacated it four months ago, and I listed it with my agency, plus posted a sign in the window. A few days later, Jennifer Aldin rang my bell, said she was driving by and saw the sign. I showed the flat to her, and she liked it. Said she would prefer a long-term lease and would be using the place as a studio only one or two days a week. The idea of a tenant who wouldn’t be around much appealed to me; the last pair were noisy and disruptive. And I like long-term leases; the woman on the first floor has been here since I bought the building in nineteen seventy-nine. So I accepted a deposit, and she gave me the names of three of her clients as references. They checked out, and we signed a year’s lease two days later.”

“You still have those names?”

“Somewhere in my files. Let me see.” He got up and went down the hallway.

I said to Rae, “Jennifer just happened to rent the same flat where Josie lived? I don’t think so.”

“Me either. And I now know why she lied to me about how long she’d had it; she didn’t want me to realize that it was connected with her obsession over her mother’s disappearance. Figure it out: her father dies five months ago, she begins to dwell on Laurel. Four months ago she rents a place that she associates with her.”

“Dunn said she came to the door after she saw his sign while driving past. Maybe she was on a sentimental tour.”

“Or had driven by more than once.”

Dunn came back into the room, a slip of scratch paper in his hand. “Here you go. Keep it, if you like.”

“Thanks.” I glanced at it, saw three unfamiliar names. One of the phone numbers was familiar, however: the Aldin residence. I handed the slip to Rae, my eyebrows raised.

She examined it and said, “Home, studio, cellular.”

Jennifer had supplied her own references.

“Mr. Dunn,” I said, “what can you tell us about Josie?”

He smiled-gently, for a man about to discuss his former wife. “When I met Josie, I’d just graduated from San Jose State and was moving up here to take a job at Wells Fargo Bank. We had a hot and heavy romance, and the next spring she dropped out of college to marry me. The marriage was a mistake from the beginning. Not her fault, not mine either. We were just too young, too different. We split up after five years, but remained friends. We’d have lunch every few months, talk on the phone. When she met Don Bernstein, we kind of lost touch, but after he dumped her-the bastard took off with another woman, left her with a heap of credit card debt-we started seeing each other again.”

Dunn paused, narrowing his eyes as if he was in pain. “Josie partied too much-one of the things that broke us up in the first place-but she was also a hard worker. She’d gotten her RN after we split, and when Bernstein took off, she started taking on private-duty nursing jobs, made very good money. Neither of us suspected she’d soon be in need of private-duty nursing herself.”

Another pause, a headshake. “Anyway, she made good on the debts, invested her money, bought a house out on Thirty-third Avenue. But the tenants were putting up a fuss about moving, and until the dispute went to court, I suggested she move into my empty flat. The dispute dragged on and on-suits, countersuits-and just after it was settled she was diagnosed with brain cancer.”

Dunn seemed to sink into thought, and Rae prompted, “So she stayed on here and you took care of her?”

“Of course. I wasn’t going to let her move into her house alone, not in her condition. And neither was Laurel Greenwood. She came often while Josie was sick, although she could only stay a night or two at the most; then, when the insurance that paid for the nursing had run out, she came and stayed to the end.”

“Did Josie die here or in the hospital?” I asked.

“Here. I wish we’d had her hospitalized.”

“Why, Mr. Dunn?”

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with brain cancer, but with the type Josie had and at the stage she was when she died, you can be lucid one moment, totally disoriented the next. While Laurel was napping one afternoon, Josie got out of the bed in the front room where we had her and wandered into the hallway. Fell down the stairs and died.”

It took a moment for my thought processes to kick in. Then I tried to remember the cause of death Derek had reported to me. Complications resulting from brain cancer.

Some complications.

I asked, “Were you here at the time?”

“No, I was out showing a property to a client. I returned just as the ambulance was taking Josie away.”

“And Laurel? You said she was napping?”

He nodded. “She was exhausted. Slept right through Josie’s fall. By the time Laurel found her, she was gone.” He compressed his lips, his eyes moist. “We never got to say good-bye, either of us. And then I never got to say good-bye to Laurel.”

On our way out of the building, I hesitated in front of the door to the first-floor flat. “Didn’t Dunn say the woman down here has been his tenant as long as he’s owned the building?”

“Right.”

“So she would have known Josie, maybe Laurel. And probably Jennifer.” I pressed the doorbell.

After a minute or so a slender, dark-haired woman in a black tailored suit looked out at us. I introduced Rae and myself and handed her my card. “We were speaking with Mr. Dunn upstairs,” I added, “and he tells us you’ve lived here since nineteen seventy-nine.”

“Nineteen seventy-eight, actually. The year before Carl bought the building. Is there some problem?”

“Nothing concerning you, but we would like to talk to you about the tenant on the second floor.”

She glanced at her watch. “I can give you half an hour before I have to change for my book group.”

The woman opened the door wide and ushered us into a flat that was slightly larger than the upper ones because it lacked a staircase. The living room was to the left, darker than Dunn’s or Jennifer’s and furnished in what looked to be good-quality antiques. When we were seated she said, “I’m Melissa Baker, by the way. Or did Carl tell you that?”

“He didn’t mention you by name, but he did say you were a good tenant.”

She smiled. “And he’s a good landlord. Has repairs made promptly and hasn’t ever raised the rent, except for cost-of-living adjustments. He could, you know, since this building is owner-occupied and only three units, and thus isn’t covered by rent control. But you said you’re interested in the people who lived on the second floor. What did they do? Steal the bathroom fixtures?”

“They?”

A look of confusion passed over her features. “You’re asking about the Jordans, aren’t you? The people who vacated a few months ago?”

“No. We’re interested in the present tenant.”

“Jennifer Aldin. Lovely woman. Such a change, after the Jordans.”

“Do you recall when you last saw Ms. Aldin?”

“Last weekend. Sunday. We had a cup of tea together.”

Rae and I exchanged glances. “D’you recall what time that was?” I asked.

“After lunch. One, one-thirty.” Melissa Baker’s brows knitted together in concern. “Has something happened to Jennifer?”

“She hasn’t come home since Sunday, and her husband has asked us to locate her.”

“Oh no. I hope she wasn’t upset by what I told her. Although she didn’t seem to be.”

“Perhaps you could start at the beginning.”

“Well, Jennifer has been renting her flat as a studio. You probably know she’s a textile designer. There was some problem with her studio at home.”

“Did she tell you what?”

“I don’t know exactly. I gather her husband also works at home, and there are tensions in the marriage.”

“Such as?”

“She didn’t mention anything specific, but I could sense she wasn’t very happy. She’s a successful professional woman: there was an article on her in a home-decorating magazine that I picked up at my hairstylist’s; it said her career had really taken off. But whenever I ran into her she seemed depressed and distracted. And I think she drank alone upstairs. A few times when I encountered her, I smelled it on her breath.”

Depressed and distracted-by her marriage, or by her obsession with her mother? Or a combination of the two?

I said, “How often did the two of you get together?”

“Only three or four times. Yes, three.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing special. Her work, mine. The books my group was reading. She did display some interest in Carl and the previous tenants of her flat. I guess that was only natural; she may have been thinking about staying there on a more regular basis.”

“She said that?”

“No, but at first she wasn’t there more than once a week, then I noticed her quite often. I work in the building also-I’m a CPA-and the hours Jennifer put in here at her studio have escalated in, I’d say, the past two or three weeks. Almost as if she didn’t want to go home.”

“And when she stopped by to see you on Sunday…?”

“She seemed much better, as if she’d made up her mind to make some changes. And she hadn’t been drinking. We talked more about the neighborhood and the building, and I felt I had to tell her the one thing I’d been withholding because I was afraid it might upset her. You see, there was a tragedy that happened in her flat. I’ll never forget it. For a while it almost made me want to move away.”

“What Melissa Baker told us puts a different slant on Carl Dunn’s account of Josie’s death,” Rae said.

“A disturbing one.”

We were seated by the pit fireplace in the living room of her Seacliff home-backs to the windows, ignoring the fog that was still streaming toward the Golden Gate. Our feet were propped on the raised brickwork, and we had glasses of wine in hand.

She said, “We should be glad Baker’s office window opens onto the airshaft, and that she’s a bit of an eavesdropper.”

“What’s wrong with eavesdropping?”

“Nothing. I’ve always considered it a professional asset-both as an investigator and as a writer.”

“Okay.” I began ticking off items on my fingers. “Laurel has been staying with Josie for a week. Josie’s in the terminal phase of her illness, but still lucid at times, and has the unfortunate tendency to get out of bed and wander. On the afternoon of Josie’s death, Laurel receives a phone call, which Baker overhears via the airshaft. She can’t make out much of it, but it upsets Laurel, because she shouts, ‘You’re making it up! You’ve always been jealous of my friendship with Josie, and now for some reason you want to hurt me.’

“Then Baker hears Josie’s voice in the background. Laurel moves far enough away from the shaft that Baker can’t make out their conversation-except that very soon after they start arguing. It’s tax season, Baker’s busy, so she closes the window in order to concentrate on the forms she’s preparing. When she goes outside an hour and a half later to walk down to the corner mom-and-pop store, the police and an ambulance are in front of the building, and Josie’s being taken away on a gurney. Laurel’s hysterical. Carl Dunn arrives and takes charge of her, and they retreat to his flat. The next day, Laurel goes back to Paso Robles and doesn’t return, except briefly for the funeral.”

Rae nodded and took a handful of popcorn from a bowl on the hearth. “Easy to jump to the conclusion that Laurel and Josie were quarreling when Josie fell down the stairs.”

“Quarreling for nearly an hour and a half?”

“That’s kind of hard to believe. Maybe they quarreled, Laurel got Josie back to bed, and then took her nap. It could’ve happened the way Carl Dunn thinks it did.”

“Or they quarreled, Josie fell, and Laurel didn’t call nine-one-one till later.”

“Why? Because she was in shock? I don’t think so. Remember, Laurel had also been a nurse.” Rae munched on the popcorn, thinking. “Accidental death? Or did Laurel push her?”

“If there was anything suspicious about Josie’s death, there would’ve been an investigation.”

“Do we know for sure that there wasn’t?”

“Not yet.” I went to where I’d left my purse on a side table, took out my cellular, and speed-dialed the apartment that my friend Adah Joslyn, an inspector on the SFPD homicide detail, shared with Craig Morland. She wasn’t at home, but Craig told me to try the Hall of Justice. Adah was at her desk, working late, and-per usual-in no mood for idle chitchat.

“What?” she said.

“Information on a nineteen eighty-two accidental death that may have fallen under suspicion as involuntary manslaughter.”

“Don’t want much, do you?”

Typical Adah grumbling, but I knew she’d come through for me, because she always had. And she was more bark than bite these days, since the trouble-plagued department, and her career, was on the mend after the appointment of an intelligent, evenhanded female chief of police.

“Too much,” I admitted, “but it’s important to the major case we’re working on.”

“Yeah, Craig’s told me about it. Why can’t you ever come up with something minor, like a skiptrace?”

“We do our fair share of those, too.”

“Okay. Particulars?”

I recited them.

“I’ll get back to you. When I can.”

I set the phone down, saw Rae smiling. “Adah,” she said, “she’s really something. D’you think she and Craig’ll ever get married?”

What was it about married people? As Wolf, my investigator friend, was fond of saying, they all wanted to see everyone else locked up in the same institution. Of course, he was married now and, good God, so was I!

“I don’t know,” I told Rae. “It could be that Adah and Craig don’t want the attendant hassles. Craig is from a WASPy, conservative Virginia family. And you know Adah…”

Adah was half black, half Jewish, and her aging leftist parents still participated in-or helped to organize-whatever radical protest movement was currently gaining momentum. The picture of the Joslyns and the Morlands coming together at a wedding reception made Ma’s gathering for Hy and me seem like a stroll through the park on a sunny spring day.

Rae seemed to be picturing the same scene. Her lips twitched in amusement, but then she looked up at the archway that led to the foyer. I followed her gaze, saw Ricky standing there. He dropped his travel bag on the floor, slung his leather jacket over the back of a chair, and came toward us. His expression was brooding, and he moved as if he was tired.

Rae went to greet him, going up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Hey,” she said, “what’s wrong?”

He hugged her, forced a smile over her shoulder at me. “I’ve just come from the Aldins’ house, and I need a drink. Be right with you.”

Rae watched him walk toward the kitchen, turned to me, and shrugged. Ricky returned shortly, a thick crystal tumbler containing a dark amber liquid in hand. His chestnut hair was tousled, and worry lines stood out on his handsome face. He sat next to Rae, took a swallow, and said, “Something’s wrong down there, other than the obvious, and I really don’t like what I’m thinking.”

When he didn’t go on I said, “And that is…?”

“Mark’s acting very upset and concerned for Jen, but that’s exactly what it is-acting. I’m enough of an actor myself that I can tell it from the real thing. And after we’d been talking a while and he’d let his guard down some, he said that in a way it would be a relief if she disappeared for good like her mother did, because he wasn’t sure he could take any more of her obsessing.”

Rae said, “That’s normal. There’re times in any marriage when one partner thinks it would be a relief if the other disappeared into thin air. And Mark’s had to put up with more than most spouses.”

“Red, this wasn’t like that. It was the first time during our conversation that I heard genuine feeling in his voice. And twice after that he referred to Jen in the past tense. Besides…” He shook his head, sipped his drink.

“Besides?” I prompted.

“I think he’s been having an affair.”

“Oh? What makes you think that?”

“Shar, as you very well know, I’m no stranger to cheating and the kind of behavior it generates. I thought it through on the way home, and there’ve been little signs for a few months now.”

“Such as?”

“He’s late a lot of the times when we get together, and never has a good explanation for it. An attractive woman walks by, I comment on her, the way guys do, and he doesn’t respond, as if he’s trying to avoid the subject of women entirely. He’s overly complimentary in what he says about Jen and his marriage. Overly sympathetic with her obsession with her mother. Overly willing to throw money at the problem, rather than deal with it in a personal sense. Besides, the times he’s been late, he’s had the look.”

“The well-fucked look.”

“Thank you, Sister Sharon, for being so delicate.”

I smiled. “Sister Sharon” had been Charlene’s nickname for me-as in “Sister Sharon who is holier than thou, unless nobody’s looking”-and Ricky still used it occasionally.

I said, “You’re welcome, Brother Ricky, and if anybody could recognize the look, it’s you.”

Rae asked, “Am I gonna have to referee?”

“No,” we said in unison.

I added, “I think you may be on to something, Ricky. And you”-I turned to Rae-“are going to have to pursue this line of investigation while I’m down in Paso Robles.”

She frowned. “Wait a minute, Mark’s the agency’s client. We can’t investigate our own client.”

“No, Jennifer’s the client. Her name’s the only one on the contract.”

Ricky stood. “I don’t want to hear any of this. It’s none of my business and, besides, I need another drink.”

When he’d left the room I said, “You’ll do it? Check out Mark?”

“I’ll do it. If he’s done anything to Jen-”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. It could be Ricky’s reading more into the situation than there actually is.”

“Or it could be he’s right-and we’ve got a real disaster on our hands.”