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it is the fee I’m being paid by Intercoastal Insurance. The truth is my game. Smith. The only other thing I’m interested in is Emily Hunter’s welfare.”
    “Now you’re saying Sheila is an unfit mother, is that it?”
    “No. I’m saying whatever she’s hiding, whatever she and her husband were mixed up in before they came to Greenwood, may be putting the child’s future in jeopardy. I don’t want to see that happen. Do you?”
    Smith’s eyes held on mine a few seconds longer. Then the anger went out of him and he backed off. Worry and dismay were what I was looking at then.
    “She won’t talk to me,” he said. “I’ve tried... she just walls herself off.”
    “It might be different when you tell her what I’ve told you.”
    “I don’t know. If it’s bad enough, the thing she’s so scared of...”
    “It may not be as bad as she thinks it is. Even if it’s a police matter, it may not be.”
    A muscle jumped on Smith’s cheek; it pulled one side of his mouth up in a puckery rictus. “Christ,” he said.
    “Will you try to get her to talk to me?”
    “I don’t know...”
    “At her house, some public place, whatever. You can be there, too, if she wants it that way.”
    Long pause. Then, “All right, I’ll try. But you better be on the level about helping her. If you’re not—”
    “I can give you a dozen references.”
    His eyes probed mine, for ten seconds or so this time. Then he shook his head: a gesture of silent acceptance.
    “My home and office numbers are on the card,” I said. “Any time, day or night.”
    “All right.” And then, almost plaintively, “She really is scared. Like a kid in the dark.”
    “I know.”
    “I can’t stand to see her like that. It makes me—”
    He broke off and swung away, quickly, as if there was something in his face he didn’t want me to see. I had a pretty good idea what it was. Maybe he’d been a trophy collector in the past, what Tamara would call an “ass bandit,” and maybe he wasn’t that type at all, but in any event there was more to Trevor Smith than just a hunk’s body and a pretty face.
    He was in love with Sheila Hunter. About as deeply in love as a man can be with a woman.
     
    Thursday evening. No call from Emily Hunter, or Sheila Hunter, or Trevor Smith, or Dale Cooney.
    Friday morning. Nothing from any of them.
    Friday afternoon. Nothing.
    All the silence worried me. Not so much Mrs. Cooney’s; boozers are unpredictable drunk or sober, and she figured to have the least amount of information for me. But why hadn’t Emily kept our appointment and why hadn’t she gotten in touch again? And had I scared her mother even more by taking the risk of confiding in Smith? For all I knew, whatever had caused the Hunters to change their identity ten years ago was a felony of major proportions, and in that case aiming Smith at her might’ve been the same as aiming a loaded gun. The last thing I wanted was to panic her, but I could have done just that. What would she do then? And how would it affect her daughter?
    At four o’clock, just before I left the office to meet Kerry at Bates and Carpenter, I called the Emerald Hills Country Club and asked for the pro shop. The operator said it was closed today. No, Trevor Smith wasn’t at the club; he had called in ill. And no, she would not give me his home number, no matter what kind of emergency I said it was. I had Tamara look him up in the San Mateo and Santa Clara county phone directories while I tried the Hunters’ number. No answer there. And no listing for Trevor Smith.
    “Goddamn it!” I said.
    Tamara said, “Easy, boss. Remember what you always tell me about jumping to conclusions?”
    “Yeah.” But suppose the conclusion I was jumping to was the right one? Suppose I’d screwed up the Hunter situation big time?

7
    If there is one thing I’m not, it’s a party animal.
    I do not deal well with large gatherings in enclosed spaces. Give me a job to do and a one-on-one or even