There was no way to conceal the break-in. Denise would report that someone was there earlier looking for Security South, and she would remember that the someone had talked with her about her alarm system. They'd assume that someone to be the burglar, and they would, of course, be right. She'd probably remember that the someone had said he was a private detective, from Boston, which wouldn't help the Atlanta cops much, at least until they contacted Delroy, and even if that led them to me, and Denise ID'd me, there was no way to tie me to the crime. So there was no reason not to steal the file. And there was some reason not to sit in the burgled office and read it by flashlight.

I put the flat bar and the duct tape in my toolbox, put the folder in flat on top of the tools, and closed the box. I went out, closed the broken door behind me, put the toolbox in my car, got in and drove away. No one paid any attention to me. I went up Peachtree Road, to the Phipps Plaza Mall, and parked in their garage across from the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, took the file folder out of the back of my car, went up to the first level, and sat on a bench to read it.

It wasn't much of a file. It contained a collection of invoices that indicated that Three Fillies Stables had paid Security South an annual amount of $250,000. The slips went back five years. Each invoice was marked paid, with a check number and date entered in a nice hand. There was a deposit slip stapled to each receipt that told me that the amount had been deposited to an account in the Central Georgia Savings and Loan branch in Buckhead. There were also some Visa credit card receipts, each neatly annotated in the same nice female hand, "Paid, PC" and a date. As far as I could tell, Delroy had put the whole Security South operation on his credit card. Uniforms, guns, flashlights, ammunition, walkie-talkies. And as far as I could figure, somebody else had paid the bills. Penny Clive?

I found a place with a coin-operated copier and made copies of everything, put the originals back in their folder, drove back through the lively Buckhead traffic to the strip mall on East Paces Ferry, parked in back again, put on gloves again, went into Bella's Business Services again, and put the file folder back where it belonged. Then I departed. Scot-free. Again.

THIRTY-SIX

I GOT UP early, before the heat clamped down, and ran five miles through Lamarr under the wide-leaved trees. Back at the motel, showered, shaved, and happy with my breakfast, I got a cup of coffee to go and went to my room and sat on the bed and began to work the phones.

My first call was to the homicide commander of the Boston Police, my longtime friend and admirer, Martin Quirk.

"What the fuck do you want now?" Quirk said when they put me through to him.

"I've been away," I said. "I wanted to call and say hi."

"Oh Christ," Quirk said. "The best thing we ever did was fire you."

"You didn't fire me," I said. "I got fired from the Middlesex County DA's Office."

"We in the larger sense," Quirk said. "We in law enforcement."

"Jeez, since you made captain, you've lost a lot of that fun-loving warmth."

"Whaddya want?" Quirk sounded tired.

"I'd like any information you can get me on a former FBI agent named Jon Delroy. He spells it J-o-n. Before he was with the Bureau he was in the Marine Corps. Currently he runs an outfit in Atlanta called Security South."

"And why should I do this?"

"Because if I do it they won't tell me anything."

"Like they'll tell me," Quirk said.

"You're a captain. They'll pay attention to you."

"Sure they will-city police captains really matter to the Feds."

"Well, they matter to me," I said.

"Where you calling from?"

"Lamarr, Georgia."

"Good for you," Quirk said.

I gave him the phone number and he hung up. It was Tuesday. Susan gave a seminar on Tuesdays from nineA.M. to elevenA.M. It was nine-fifteenA.M. I drank my coffee and read the Atlanta paper until ten after ten. Then I lay back on the bed and tried to empty my mind-see if an idea popped up into the void. Mostly I thought about Susan with her clothes off. This would solve nearly any problem I had, but it didn't do much for the case. At eleven-fifteen, I called her.

"I've been trying to empty my mind," I said.

"I thought you'd already done that," Susan said.

"And just when I think I've done it-there you are with your clothes off."

"How do I look?"

"Like you do," I said.

"I'll take that to mean stunning," Susan said. "Are you doing anything else down there besides thinking of me with my clothes off?"

"Sometimes I sleuth a little."

"And?"

"And I'm compiling the results."

"Does that mean you're getting nowhere?"

"It's not exactly nowhere. I'm learning things. But generally I don't know what the stuff that I'm learning means."

"Let me help you," she said.

"Thank you, Doctor. Are you dressed?"

"To the nines. What do you have?"

"You remember the names of all the players?" I said.

"Of course I do," Susan said.

"How could I forget. Penny Clive and her sisters won't talk to me. I'm not allowed in the house or the stables or anywhere they own anything. The ban is enforced by employees of Security South."

"Are they still guarding the horse too?"

"I assume so. I can't get close enough to the horse or anybody else to find out. Both Clive husbands, Pud and Cord, have been tossed. They are now living together in Pud's former love nest in the heart of downtown Lamarr."

"Isn't Cord the apparent pedophile?"

"Yeah. Out on his own he's like a lost lamb, and Pud, amazingly, has taken him under his wing."

"Didn't you just mix a metaphor?" Susan said.

"Badly. Both men feel that Penny is the one who gave them the boot. They feel that she's in charge and they also speculate that she has an intimate relationship with Jon Delroy, who runs Security South."

"He runs it? Isn't that new information?"

"Yeah. Apparently he is Security South. And apparently his only client is the Clive family. Even some of Jon Delroy's credit card charges were paid by someone designated PC."

"Penny Clive?"

"Could be. The charges appeared to be Security South-related."

"How did you find that out?"

"Burglary."

"Always effective," Susan said. "Are you looking into Mr. Delroy?"

"Quirk's checking with the FBI for me."

"What about the sheriff person, Becker?"

"Sheriff's deputy," I said. "I think he's a good cop, and I think he's honest. But the Clives have a lot of clout, and I don't think he can go anywhere with this on his own."

"Is he still using you to do it for him?"

"As best he can," I said.

"They have that kind of clout even with the father dead?"

"I think it was the father's money that gave him the clout," I said. "Now they've got it."

"The three girls?"

"Yes, equally. I talked with the lawyer for the estate."

There was silence on the phone line. I knew she was thinking. She'd have a very slight wrinkle between her eyebrows. And she would seem to disappear into the thought process, so that if you spoke she might not hear you. It was amazing to watch and the result was often lovely. I imagined her thinking. Dressed to the nines.