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catch; Paula wouldn’t take the next step with me. Two months after I was released from the hospital I asked her to marry me. I assumed it was just a formality. I thought she would cry, call my name and smother me with kisses and whatever else she had handy. It didn’t turn out that way. She hadn’t said no, but she wouldn’t say yes either.
    “Frank, a lot has happened very quickly,” she said as we sat in my car outside of her apartment. “We’ve got the rest of our lives, let’s not rush into marriage just yet.”
    I was confused and a little hurt. What she was saying made sense, but I wanted less logic and more raw emotion.
    “Honey, we’ll both know when the time is right,” she continued. “Let’s just let this pot simmer, okay? You know you can ruin a good stew if you let it boil over onto the burner.”
    I wasn’t in the mood for cooking based homilies, but I agreed to wait until she felt comfortable.
    So we drifted along for a time. We saw each other five nights a week instead of seven. It was still nice. She was still affectionate, even though I could feel a slight chill develop between us. She became irritated at any mention of the Pomeroy affair. She said it was a closed chapter and she didn’t want to talk about it or be around anyone who did. I got the message and dropped it. I could understand her feelings. She hadn’t been exposed to that side of the human condition as I had in my life. There were things that I didn’t like to talk about too and she respected that. The least I could do was reciprocate.
    Things were better for a time, then worse, then a little better. Now I remembered why I didn’t seek out relationships. We began going out only on weekends and gradually, without formally breaking up, we stopped seeing each other.

    I fell back into old patterns. The only changes were that I kept off the sauce and business was still good. I considered the possibility that the two were related and dismissed it out of hand. No sense in kicking myself while I was down.
    I worked several out of town jobs for awhile with mixed results. Two were rich kid runaways. I don’t think I did the parents any favors by finding them, but I’m not paid to judge these things. When I came back to the city I began work on a case at a family owned electronics store undercover. The owner, a guy named Paul Bristol was a vital looking man in his late fifties, couldn’t believe any of his employees, mostly long timers, would rip him off, but it was all he could figure the way the receipts were jibing with the register. I went in as a new salesman with only him knowing my true identity. I was a nine to fiver for two weeks and didn’t discover anything, so I set up a nighttime stake out outside the building for a week. Day seven of the surveillance saw the son of the owner pull up in a car at two in the morning, disappear inside for ten minutes and take off again. When I showed Bristol the tape I had made of the incident he broke down in tears. He hadn’t wanted to know the truth that badly after all. I watched him age ten years in as many minutes. I waited while he pulled himself together.
    “I would have given him the money if he asked for it Randall,” he said. “It only came to five or six thousand. Why did he have to steal it?”
    “I don’t know Mr. Bristol. If I had the answer to that one I’d bottle it and make my fortune.”
    “That’s true enough I suppose,” he mused. “Money will make people do things outside of their normal character.”
    I nodded and he continued.
    “In a roundabout way that’s how I came to hire you.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes. I remembered your name from the Silas Pomeroy case. I read about it in the papers.”
    I allowed myself a smile.
    “I see that you’ve heard that before,” said Bristol. “But I remember it for a more personal reason. You see I knew Silas.”
    “Really?” I said, feigning interest that I didn’t truly feel.
    “Yes, yes,” said Bristol warming