And if he was, even after my chat with him, I’d have to think of something even more drastic. Maybe even a call to Detective Trimble.

“So, you doing anything after your lecture tonight?” I asked.

“Maybe,” said Angie. “Might see some friends.”

“Hey,” I said, like I’d just remembered something, “you ever keep in touch with any of your friends in Oakwood?”

Angie gave me a look that seemed to suggest a bad smell was coming off me. “God, no. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from out there.”

I nodded. “I thought you kept in touch with some of your Oakwood friends. You did do two years of high school there.”

“No, Dad.”

“How about other than students? You keep in touch with anyone from out there?”

“Dad, when would I even get out there?”

“You don’t actually have to go out there. You could talk, in one of your chat huts.”

Paul and Angie looked at each other. “Chat huts?” they said.

“Rooms. Chat rooms. You know what I mean.”

This set them both off. Paul knocked on the table, said to Angie, “Hello, may I come into your chat hut?”

Angie was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. “Sorry, no, this is a chat condo.”

“Oh, excuse me!” He wanted to get off another line, but he was laughing too hard to do it.

“Okay, enough already,” I said.

Angie, pulling herself together, said, “No, Dad, there’s no one from Oakwood I keep in touch with through my chat huts.” Paul slid out of his chair and onto the floor, clutching his side.

Should I ask her flat out? Ask her why she’d been to visit Trixie? But if I asked her now, I’d have to come clean on the whole surveillance thing, and if I did that now, I wouldn’t be able to take one last crack at it tonight, to see whether I’d scared off Trevor for good.

So I let it go.

“I’ve got stuff to do,” Angie said, taking her plate to the counter. Paul managed to get up and followed her out of the kitchen.

“I have to lie down,” he said, still laughing. “I think I’m gonna die.”

Shortly before eight, Angie went downstairs, shouted, “See ya!”

I scrambled out of my study, where I still tried writing books but more often built models of spaceships and other science fiction kitsch, like my recently completed models of the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, and Gort, the iconic robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

“Hey,” I yelled down to her. “You be careful tonight, okay?”

“Oh!” Angie said. “I just realized. I don’t even have a key for the new car.”

“Two came with it,” I said. “Hang on.” I’d left the second one in a dish where I keep spare change on top of my dresser. “Come to the bottom of the stairs.” She did and I tossed it down to her.

“You look good, by the way,” Angie said, doing up the buttons on her blue coat.

“Huh?”

“Your clothes. I meant to say something at dinner, but got kind of distracted. They look good on you. Are you wearing new boxers?”

“Check it out,” I said, undoing my belt, turning around, and dropping my khakis halfway down my butt.

“Oooh! The ones with the chili peppers on them!” Angie said. “You’re hot, Dad, very hot. But please pull your pants back up.”

I obliged.

Angie had her set of keys out and was slipping the one for the Virtue onto her ring. She was having a bit of trouble with it, so I came down and got it onto the ring for her.

And then I gave her a hug. “Remember, call me if you have a problem, and don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Angie smiled. “You mean, don’t do anything you might do?”

“Exactly.”

She gave me a hug back. “I love you, Daddy.”

And then she was gone.

24

I WAS KEEPING AN EYE on the clock. I figured I’d head out a little before nine, be down by the university twenty minutes after that, at the latest. Paul was up in his room doing, to my astonishment, some homework. I popped my head in, told him I’d be going out in a few minutes.

“Where?” he said, still looking at something he was writing on his computer screen.

“It’s a work thing.”

“A work thing?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “I dunno. I think I need more details.”

I was heading down the hall when the phone rang. Paul grabbed the extension in his room, and when he didn’t call me immediately, I figured it was for him. But by the time I was down to the kitchen, he shouted, “Dad! Phone! It’s Mom!”

I grabbed the kitchen extension. “Hey,” I said.

“Isn’t it awful about Stan?” Sarah said.

“What?” I said. “What about Stan?” I assumed she was speaking of Stan Wannaker, the Metropolitan photographer. I don’t think either of us knew any other Stans.

“Oh my God, you haven’t heard? I’m up here, at this thing, and I hear about it, and you haven’t?”

“Okay, you’re connected. You’re plugged in. What happened to Stan?”

“Okay, you’re not going to believe this. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Stan. He’s dead. I just found out like five minutes ago. We’re all coming back home tonight. Nobody’s in the mood for any more of this touchy-feely management bullshit after something like this has happened.”

“He did that thing with me yesterday,” I said, feeling very cold. “That photo shoot at the car auction. What happened to him? Did he have an accident?”

“Someone beat him to death. Right behind the Metropolitan building, in the lot where the photogs park. Someone smashed his head in his car door.”

I didn’t say anything. I was numb.

“I mean, the guy goes all over the world, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, fucking Iraq, and he gets killed in our parking lot.”

“There was that guy,” I said.

“What guy?”

“Remember, when I called you from the auction, and Stan got in a fight with this guy? Uh, I know his name, Cheese Dick told me.”

“How would Cheese Dick know anything about this?”

“He was looking at Stan’s pics, the ones he took yesterday at the auction, and he said, he said, ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s Barbie Bullock.’ That’s what he said. That’s what he said the guy’s name was.”

“Barbie Bullock?”

“Yeah. Stan wasn’t even taking a picture of him, I guess Bullock was just kind of in the picture, you know? And he tries to tear Stan’s camera away from him.”

“Did he know who Stan was?”

“I mean, I don’t know, it’s possible. Stan did tell him he was a photog from The Metropolitan. Told him to back off.”

“Did Dick Colby say who this guy was, this Barbie guy?”

“He works for Lenny Indigo, that guy that got sent up? That name mean anything to you?”

“Sure. We ran the trial coverage. Sears covered it. He ran half the criminal operations in town.”

“That was the guy.”

“I’m calling Dick, telling him this. He’ll be doing the story on it, he’ll need this info, he can pass it on to the cops.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “I mean, if it was Bullock, there’s no way he’d be able to get the film back at this point. He’d have to know Stan would have turned it in by now. It’s been a day and a half.”

“Maybe he didn’t want the film,” Sarah said. “Maybe he just wanted to get even.”

I glanced at the clock. It was after nine. I had to get going. “Listen, Sarah, call Dick, tell him what I told you.”

“He may want to call you, get more details.”

“He’ll have to call my cell. I’m going out.”

“Where? What do you have to do?”

“Look, I’ll explain everything to you when you get home.”

It was the wrong thing to say. “What do you mean, explain it to me when I get home? Whenever you say something like that, there’s something I need to know right now.”

“Honestly, things are fine.”

“Is this about Paul?”

“No.”

“Then it’s about Angie.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What’s going on with Angie?”