"Mildred Mead, I think it was. In fact, I'm sure of it. I think she found her, too. She took off in a hurry, and she had that light in her eyes-you know?-a young news hen on a breaking story." She let out a sighing breath. "I used to be one myself."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"Not Betty Jo." The woman smiled with shrewd pleasure. "When she's on a story, she wouldn't give her best friend the time of day. She started late in the game, you know, and the virus really got to her. But you probably know all that if you're a friend of hers."

The unspoken question hung in the air between us.

"Yes," I said. "I am a friend of hers. How long ago did she leave here?"

"It must have been two hours ago, or more." She looked at her watch. "I think she took off about five-thirty."

"By car?"

"I wouldn't know that. And she didn't give me any hint at all as to where she was heading."

"Where does she eat dinner?"

"Various places. Sometimes I see her in the Tea Kettle. That's a fairly good cafeteria just down the street." Mrs. Brighton pointed with her thumb in the direction of the sea.

"If she comes back here," I said, "will you give her a message for me?"

"I'd be glad to. But I'm not staying. I haven't eaten all day, and I really only waited for you to give you Betty's message. If you want to write one to her, I'll put it on her desk."

She slid a small pad of blank paper across the counter to me.

I wrote: "Sorry I missed you. I'll check back in the course of the evening. Later you can get me at the motel."

I signed the message "Lew." Then, after a moment's indecision, I wrote the word "Love" above my "name. I folded the note and gave it to Mrs. Brighton. She took it into the newsroom.

When she came back, she gave me a slightly flushed and conscious look that made me wonder if she had read my message. I had a sudden cold urge to recall it and cross out the word I had added. So far as I could remember, I hadn't written the word, or spoken it to a woman, in some years. But now it was in my mind, like a twinge of pain or hope.

I walked down the block to the Tea Kettle's red neon sign and went in under it. It was nearly eight o'clock, which was late for cafeteria patrons, and the place looked rather desolate. There was no line at the serving counter, and only a few scattered elderly patrons at the tables.

I remembered that I hadn't eaten since morning. I picked up a plate, had it filled with roast beef and vegetables, and carried it to a table from which I could watch the whole place. I seemed to have entered another city, a convalescent city where the wars of love were over and I was merely one of the aging survivors.

I didn't like the feeling. When Mrs. Brighton came in, she did nothing to relieve it. But when she brought her tray into the dining room, I stood up and asked her to share my table.

"Thank you. I hate eating alone. I spend so much time alone as it is, since my husband died." She gave me an anxious half-smile as if in apology for mentioning her loss. "Do you live alone?"

"I'm afraid I do. My wife and I were divorced some years ago."

"That's too bad."

"I thought so. But she didn't."

Mrs. Brighton became absorbed in her macaroni and cheese. Then she added milk and sugar to her tea. She stirred it and raised it to her lips.

"Have you known Betty long?"

"I met her at a party the night before last. She was covering it for the paper."

"She was supposed to be. But if you're talking about the Chantry party she never did submit any usable copy. She got wound up in a murder case, and she hasn't thought about anything else in two days. She's a terribly ambitious young woman, you know."

Mrs. Brighton gave me one of her large-eyed impervious looks. I wondered if she was offering me a warning or simply making conversation with a stranger.

"Are you involved in that murder case?" she said.

"Yes. I'm a private detective."

"May I ask who has employed you?"

"You may ask. But I better not answer."

"Come on." She gave me a roguish smile that wrinkled up her face yet somehow improved it. "I'm not a reporter any more. You're not talking for print."

"Jack Biemeyer."

Her penciled eyebrows rose. "Mr. Bigshot's involved with a murder?"

"Not directly. He bought a picture which was later stolen. He hired me to get it back."

"And did you?"

"No. I'm working on it, though. This is the third day."

"And no progress?"

"Some progress. The case keeps growing. There's been a second murder-Jacob Whitmore."

Mrs. Brighton leaned toward me suddenly. Her elbow spilled the rest of her tea. "Jake was drowned three days ago, accidentally drowned in the ocean."

"He was drowned in fresh water," I said, "and put into the ocean afterwards."

"But that's terrible. I knew Jake. I've known him since he was in high school. He was one of our delivery boys. He was the most harmless soul I ever knew."

"It's often the harmless ones that get killed."

As I said that, I thought of Betty. Her face was in my mind, and her firm harmless body. My chest felt hot and tight, and I took a deep breath and let it out, without intending to, in a barely audible sigh.

"What's the matter?" Mrs. Brighton said.

"I hate to see people die."

"Then you picked a strange profession."

"I know I did. But every now and then I have a chance to prevent a killing."

And every now and then I precipitated one. I tried to keep that thought and the thought of Betty from coming together, but the two thoughts nudged each other like conspirators.

"Eat your vegetables," Mrs. Brighton said. "A man needs all the vitamins he can get." She added in the same matter-of-fact tone: "You're worried about Betty Jo Siddon, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

"So am I. Particularly since you told me Jake Whitmore was murdered. Somebody I've known half my life-that's striking close to home. And if something happened to Betty-" Her voice broke off and started again in a lower register: "I'm fond of that girl, and if anything happened to her-well, there's nothing I wouldn't do."

"What do you think happened?"

She looked around the room as if for a portent or a prophet. There was no one there but a few old people eating.

"Betty's hooked on the Chantry case," she said. "She hasn't been talking about it much lately but I know the signs. I had it myself at one time, over twenty years ago. I was going to track Chantry down and bring him back alive and become the foremost lady journalist of my time. I even wangled my way to Tahiti on a tip. Gauguin was one of Chantry's big influences, you know. But he wasn't in Tahiti. Neither was Gauguin."

"But you think Chantry's alive?"

"I did then. Now I don't know. It's funny how you change your views of things as you get older. You're old enough to know what I mean. When I was a young woman, I imagined that Chantry had done what I would have liked to do. He thumbed his nose at this poky little town and walked away from it. He was under thirty, you know, when he dropped out of sight. He had all the time in the world ahead of him-time for a second life. Now that my own time is running short, I don't know. I think it's possible that he was murdered all those years ago."

"Who had reason to kill him?"

"I don't know. His wife, perhaps. Wives often do have reason. Don't quote me, but I wouldn't put it past her."

"Do you know her?"

"I know her quite well, at least I did. She's very publicity-conscious. When I stopped being a reporter, she lost all interest in me."

"Did you know Chantry himself?"

"I never did. He was a recluse, you know. He lived in this town for seven or eight years, and you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew him to speak to."