I paused at David Bridges’s page. Rosie had already told us most of what it contained, especially his management successes. David used his anecdote section to describe his first day on the job as hotel manager-on-duty. He’d had to deal with hundreds of geeks (his term) in alien costumes, at a science fiction convention. One night the geeks descended upon the hotel pool, all of them nude, and David had to round them up and send them home.

“Funniest thing I’ll ever see in my life,” David wrote. My eyes teared up at how true that was. He’d never see anything again.

Cheryl Carroll Mellace’s page was lacking in much text, but included a half-page photo of her in an ALHS maroon-and-gold cheerleading outfit. She had married young, into the family of the locally famous Mellace Construction Company. The Mellaces lived on a villa-like estate on the outskirts of town. This wasn’t Rosie’s description of their residence, but my own interpretation of their home, which Ken and I had visited on a benefit tour. I’d never had the occasion to see the couple around town, and I imagined they did their shopping elsewhere.

I learned that the Mellaces had three children and that Cheryl had never worked outside the home but devoted a lot of time to charity. Besides the open houses for children’s causes, they were active in all manner of good works, from organizing blood drives to paying for a bookmobile for shut-ins. There was something good to be found in everyone, I guessed.

It was hard to reconcile the two Cheryls, the one who shared her wealth so generously and the one who displayed low-class rudeness on the other. I looked at her photo again, arms waving pom-poms in exhilaration. I couldn’t help turning her lovely smile of thirty years ago, one I’d seen often when she sat in my class, into the twisted face that ousted Rosie from David’s doorstep last night.

Rosie’s own page made no mention of her brief union with Ray Normano, a transient worker in the fields outside Lincoln Point whose principal method of communication was violence. The marriage was annulled, but she kept a shortened version of his name as her own. “I just want to keep some memory of him,” she’d said at the time.

I didn’t understand the logic of that decision, but now I saw it as a pattern of Rosie’s-to hold on to men who weren’t good to her. I hoped no licensed therapist ever heard me offer my diagnoses of my family and friends.

“Hey,” Maddie said, looking smashing in her new bright green pants and top. “What’s Callahan and Savage? Are you Googling without me?”

I’d forgotten that what you did on a computer, stayed on the computer.

“Nothing important, sweetheart. Just satisfying my curiosity about something.”

“And you didn’t ask me to do it?”

She made it sound adulterous.

The mood was subdued in the banquet hall. The only light touch was the favor at each place: a hard rubber Abraham Lincoln pencil topper, about one and a half inches long. I turned the likeness over and over in my hands. Lincoln’s signature black top hat sat on a bearded face, the whole affair cut off at the neck.

“You’re trying to figure out where you can use this in a room box, aren’t you?” Henry said.

He knew me well, already.

We’d started the evening with a moment of silence for David, during which the small band played a cheerless version of the class song. There was no word yet on the exact time and place for the memorial service, except that it would be in a few days, in Lincoln Point, where his parents still lived. President Barry Cannon had led the program and closed now with the hope that we’d all try to attend the service.

Once the banquet got under way our table was busy as Henry and I were flooded with compliments from our former students who stopped to visit. The ones who hadn’t liked us stayed away, we decided.

“My mom still has that end table you helped me make,” from Mark Forbes to Henry.

“I saved all my Steinbeck texts for my daughter who’s an English major at UC Berkeley,” from Catherine Jackson to me.

“I used to do my shop sketches in English class and read my crib notes for English in shop,” from John Rawlings to both of us.

“That makes it all worthwhile,” Henry said. I wondered if John caught the sarcasm, delivered so smoothly.

I looked in vain for Rosie. In case she changed her mind and came to the banquet, I didn’t want her to be without company. Other than that, plus planning a call to Skip with a heads-up on Callahan and Savage, worrying about how to return the key card I’d confiscated, wondering what to do with the miniature oval mirror, and questioning the motives of the hulk who accosted me in the hallway, I enjoyed the meal.

And deep down, I was grateful for the company of Henry and the girls.

“The only way to tolerate ‘You Light Up My Life’ is to dance to it,” Henry said, offering his hand.

He was right. It had been a while since I’d danced with anyone other than the men in my family and Maddie. I pushed away any comparisons and went with the music.

On the dance floor I spotted Cheryl Mellace, in cream-colored chiffon that set off her chestnut hair, dancing with Barry Cannon. As they came close I noticed Cheryl was still wearing an eye patch, this one also seeming to blend in with her outfit. I’d heard of women who had dozens of pairs of shoes, but a wardrobe of matching eye patches seemed excessive. Where would one even shop for them?

We were back at the table in time for dessert, cheesecake with blueberries. I enjoyed the taste of the scrumptious, creamy wedge. Until a shadow crossed my plate.

I looked up to see the hallway hulk.

My throat went dry as he hovered over the table. Was he part of the reunion class? He looked vaguely familiar, but I was certain he hadn’t been my student. He wasn’t wearing a name tag-maybe he’d crashed the party to find me. His thin smile did nothing to encourage me that I was safe. I surveyed the banquet room, about twelve tables with eight to ten people at each. Plus, there was a crew of waitpersons carrying heavy trays and coffee carafes, in case I needed a weapon.

The hulk had timed things perfectly, coming up to my chair while Henry was talking to the girls. “I’m sorry I strong-armed you that way in the hallway. Mrs. Porter, isn’t it? Barry pointed you out. I’d had a little too much pre-banquet refreshment, if you know what I mean, and I thought you were someone else.”

“Someone who found something in David Bridges’s room?” I asked. A poorly phrased question, asked in a near whisper, but I was in a state of high anxiety.

He laughed, his expression changing from relatively sweet to bordering on sour. “It’s not your problem, Mrs. Porter.” He reverted to sweet again. “I don’t even remember what I was babbling about in the hallway, but I’m definitely going to have to lay off the three-martini business meetings in the afternoon.”

I should have felt relieved. My mugger was just a poor soul who had a bad habit and failing eyesight when he drank too much. I could put the whole incident to rest now. No harm done.

I wished I believed it more firmly.

Henry, who must have heard part of the conversation (or else had a sixth sense for questionable characters), stretched his arm across the table. “Henry Baker, retired ALHS shop teacher,” he said, shaking hallway hulk’s hand. “And you are?”

Good move, Henry. Why hadn’t I thought of getting his name? I might need it for a police report.

“Walter Mellace,” he said.

“Mellace Construction?” Henry asked.

“Cheryl Mellace’s husband?” I asked.

“Guilty of both,” he said.

And what else? I wondered.

I couldn’t wait to get back to Google.

I did my best to pay attention for the rest of the evening at our table, my mind wandering off now and again to Cheryl’s eye patch and wondering what she was doing in David’s room if she was still married to Walter, who would always be the threatening hallway hulk to me. Had Walter found out where his wife spent the evening and used force to win her back?