“Off the record?”

Nicholas nodded agreement.

“You’re partly right,” I said. “John didn’t know about the video when he hit Ingram. He just knew that Ingram had done something that hurt Eileen badly. I’m sure John’s put it together now because he knows what Hatch got the search warrant for, and that SID found my fingerprint on Ingram’s back window.”

“O’Hara stuck around while I left. He really does know you better than I do.”

I smiled at him. “In one particular way he doesn’t know me at all. Now, I’m trusting you, that you’re not going to write about this.”

“Not unless somebody else in the media gets the story, or parts of it. If that happens I’ll have to report it, but I’ll keep you and Eileen out of it as much as I possibly can.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“I noticed O’Hara’s car is gone.”

“He was called away on a double homicide in Hollywood. Shouldn’t you be covering that?”

“Ted Jaffe is. I wanted to see you.” Nicholas looked around at the disaster in the living room. “Is the rest of the house as bad as this?”

“It was even worse, but we started in the back and have been working our way forward. We just have Eileen’s room and the living room yet to do.”

“I’ll help,” he said.

“After we eat.”

I turned and began to walk toward the kitchen, but Nicholas caught my hand. Gently, he pulled me into his arms. We kissed until I felt all the tension of the day drain out of my body.

After eating lunch, the three of us finally managed to restore the house to the way it had looked before Hatch and his invaders tore it apart. Miraculously, they hadn’t broken anything, but cleaning up took most of the rest of the afternoon.

Liddy went home to take a bath and to make dinner for Bill.

I gave Tuffy and Emma their dinners, and made a fresh pot of coffee for Nicholas and me. When it was ready, and I’d poured mugs for us, I took out a pen and one of the pads of paper I kept in a kitchen drawer, and joined Nicholas at the table.

“What are you doing?” Nicholas asked.

“I’m going to try to make some sense out of what’s happened,” I said. “I think better when I write things down. Let’s make an investigation plan.”

Nicholas smiled.

“Don’t laugh at me,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to. That was a smile of recognition. When I’m working on a complicated story I make lists, too. I start with what I already know.”

“Here’s what I know.” I talked as I began to write. “One: Ingram had a hidden video camera in his bedroom and taped women with whom he was having sex.”

“Some of them might have been all right with that,” Nicholas said. “Exhibitionists.”

“Eileen didn’t know about it, and I’m guessing some of the others didn’t either. One of those women might have been angry enough, or frightened enough, to have killed him.”

“Did the tapes have names on them?” Nicholas asked.

I shook my head. “Only initials. As soon as I found Eileen’s-and I made sure there was only the one tape of her-I grabbed it and left the house.”

“Can you remember any of the other initials?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall what I’d seen in the collection of DVDs, but no images came into my head. I opened my eyes. “Nothing. I was so nervous about being in his house the only label that registered with me was Eileen’s. The police have those other DVDs. They’ve probably figured out who at least some of the women are.” I made a note. “I’ll ask John to find out from Hugh Weaver.”

“What makes me doubt that one of those women killed Ingram is that the attempted murder of Roland Gray was done by a sniper.”

“There have been female snipers.” I said it a touch defensively, as though I was trying to stand up for the equality of female killers.

“But a female sniper in Beverly Hills? I think we’ll find that all of Ingram’s sex conquests were wealthy, either married to or divorced with a big settlement from rich men.”

“Eileen isn’t wealthy.”

“She’s young and beautiful. That’s its own kind of wealth. I’m sure Ingram went after her out of lust. She must have been a nice change from targeting women whose most attractive qualities were their fat checkbooks. You told me that when he connected with Tina Long, the only child of a billionaire, he dropped Eileen, but was still trying to force her to be available for booty calls.”

“If Ingram had married Tina Long, her father would have been smart to hire a food taster.” I felt my eyes widen. “Hey, I thought I was making a joke, but I just realized that if Eugene Long figured out exactly what kind of an unscrupulous opportunist had captivated his daughter…”

“It could be a powerful motive for murder,” Nicholas said. “He wouldn’t have had to do it himself. He can afford to hire a thousand hit men.”

That was an exciting thought, until I fell back down to earth with a thud.

“But then why would he, or his hit man, try to kill Roland?” I said. “I have to find out what the connection is between Long and Roland.”

“We have to find out a lot of things,” Nicholas said. “I’ll use my sources to see what I can dig up.”

“Most of us were watching Wolf Wheeler’s juggling act when the smoke bomb went off. It might have been coincidence, or-”

“Or part of a plan.” Nicholas nodded and made a note of Wolf Wheeler’s name.

“Next: I want to get the guest list for the gala. Maybe one of the people attending had something against either Ingram or Roland, or both.”

“I can get the list from the Chronicle’s entertainment editor. And I’ll get copies of the pictures our photographer took.”

“Perfect. I’ll ask our publicity man, Phil Logan, to get a guest list, too. Double-check of who was there.” I made another note. “Yvette Dupree. I want to talk to her. She seems to know Long, very well, and she’s close to daughter Tina. About Tina: I’ll have to figure out how to do it without Hatch going crazy, but I want to talk to Tina.”

“I’ll check our files to see what we have on Dupree and the Longs.”

“Ah!” I stood up. “I’ve got an idea. Don’t move.”

I hurried to the bookcase in my bedroom and found the copy of Roland Gray’s new thriller, Terror Master.

Back in the kitchen, I showed it to Nicholas. “Roland gave this to me when he came to the studio Thursday night.”

“So?”

I opened the book to the Acknowledgments and scooted my chair around so that Nicholas could see it, too.

“There’s a lot of information in these author ‘thank you’ pages.”

We studied the names, but I let out a sigh of disappointment when we didn’t find any we recognized.

“Most of these people gave him information about nuclear weapons,” I said. “It’s not likely we’ll find any of them on the gala list.”

“Let’s see who he dedicated the book to.” Nicholas turned a page. “Hey. What do you make of this?”

I read the dedication aloud: “ ‘To the one who got away…’ ”

“Jeez-novelists! They think they’re so clever. Do you have any idea who that ‘who’ is?”

“No, but I’ll see him tomorrow. Right now I’ll call Phil Logan and ask him for the list of people who attended the charity cook-off.”

Nicholas got up from the table. “I’m going to the paper to get our entertainment editor’s list, and copies of the file pictures. I’ll e-mail them to you. Then I’m going home to sleep.”

“You’re welcome to stay here.”

“That’s not called ‘sleeping.’ ”

Inside the front door, we kissed. For quite a while. Finally, Nicholas stepped back. “I want us to make a rule.”

“What rule?”

“We don’t have sex every time we’re alone together,” he said.

“All right. Do you play gin? Poker? Scrabble? Do cross-word puzzles?”

He smiled, but his tone was serious. “What I’m saying is that I want to live to be a very old man, and have you there to wipe the drool from my chin.”