“Yeah.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

She shook her head. “And they say not to worry about the future.” Mrs. Dinsmore sighed and straightened out some papers. “Okay, pretend you got me all hot and bothered. What do you want?”

I tried to shake away the hot-and-bothered image. It wasn’t easy. “I need to get ahold of a student file.”

“Do you have the student’s permission?”

“No.”

“Ergo the charming smile.”

“Right.”

“Is this one of your current students?”

I reloaded the smile. “No. He was never a student of mine.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“In fact, he graduated twenty years ago.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“Actually, with that smile, you look kind of constipated. What’s the student’s name?”

“Todd Sanderson.”

She sat back and crossed her arms. “Didn’t I just read his obituary on the alumni page?”

“You did.”

Mrs. Dinsmore studied my face. My smile was gone. A few seconds later, she slipped her reading glasses back on and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.”

I headed into my office and closed the door. No more excuses. It was nearly 10:00 A.M. now. I took out the piece of paper and looked at the number I’d jotted down last night. I picked up the phone, hit the button for an outside line, and dialed.

I had rehearsed what I would say, but nothing had sounded sane, so I figured that I would play it by ear. The phone rang two times, then three. Julie probably wouldn’t answer. No one answered home phones anymore, especially when they came from an unfamiliar number. The caller ID would show Lanford College. I didn’t know if that would encourage or discourage answering.

On the fourth ring, the phone was picked up. I gripped the receiver tighter and waited. A woman said a tentative “Hello?”

“Julie?”

“Who is this please?”

“It’s Jake Fisher.”

Nothing.

“I dated your sister.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Jake Fisher.”

“Have we met?”

“Sort of. I mean, we were both at Natalie’s wedding—”

“I don’t understand. Who are you exactly?”

“Before Natalie married Todd, she and I were, uh, seeing each other.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I said.

“Is this a joke?”

“What? No. In Vermont. Your sister and I—”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“You used to talk to your sister on the phone a lot. I even heard you two talking about me, in fact. After the wedding, you put your hand on my arm and asked me if I was okay.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I was gripping the receiver so tight I feared it might shatter. “Like I said, Natalie and I dated—”

“What do you want? Why are you calling me?”

Wow, that was a good question. “I wanted to talk to Natalie.”

“What?”

“I just wanted to make sure that she was okay. I saw an obituary for Todd, and I thought that maybe I should reach out and just, I don’t know, offer my condolences.”

More silence. I let it last as long as I could.

“Julie?”

“I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about, but never call here again. Do you understand? Never.”

She hung up the phone.

Chapter 6

I tried calling back, but Julie didn’t answer.

I didn’t understand. Had she really forgotten who I was? That seemed doubtful. Had I scared her with my call-out-of-the-blue? I didn’t know. The whole conversation had been surreal and spooky. It would have been one thing to tell me that Natalie didn’t want to hear from me or that I was wrong, Todd was still alive. Whatever. But she didn’t even know who I was.

How was that possible?

So now what? Calm down, for one. Deep breaths. I needed to continue my two-prong attack: Figure out what the deal was with the late Todd Sanderson, and find Natalie. The second would, of course, negate the first. Once I found Natalie, I would know all. I wondered how to do that exactly. I had looked her up online and found nothing. Her sister, too, seemed to be a dead end. So where to go? I didn’t know, but in this day and age, how hard would it be to get an address on her?

An idea came to me. I signed on to the campus website and checked the teaching schedules. Professor Shanta Newlin had a class in an hour.

I buzzed Mrs. Dinsmore.

“What, you expect me to have the file that fast?”

“No, it isn’t that. I’m wondering if you know where Professor Newlin is.”

“Well, well. This day gets more and more interesting. You know she’s engaged, right?”

I should have known better. “Mrs. Dinsmore . . .”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. She’s having breakfast with her thesis students in Valentine.”

Valentine was the campus cafeteria. I hurried across the quad toward it. It was an odd thing. A college professor always has to be on. You have to keep your head up. You have to smile or wave at every student. You have to remember every name. There was a strange sort of celebrity to walking around campus. I would claim that it didn’t matter to me, but I confess that I liked the attention and took it pretty seriously. So even now, rushed and anxious and distracted as I was, I made sure that no student felt blown off.

I avoided the two main dining rooms. These were for students. The professors who sometimes chose to join them once again felt a little desperate to me. There were lines, and I admit that they are sometimes fuzzy and flimsy and arbitrary, but I still drew them and kept on my side of them. Professor Newlin, a class act all the way, would do likewise, which was why I was confident she’d be tucked away in one of the back private dining halls, reserved for such faculty-student interaction.

She was in Bradbeer dining hall. On campus, every building, room, chair, table, shelf, and tile is named after someone who gave money. Some people bristle at this. I like it. This ivy-covered institution is isolated enough, as it should be. There is no harm in letting a little real-world, cold-cash reality in every once in a while.

I peeked in through the window. Shanta Newlin caught my eye and held up a finger signaling one minute. I nodded and waited. Five minutes later the door opened and the students streamed out. Shanta stood in the doorway. When the students were gone, she said, “Walk with me. I have to be somewhere.”

I did. Shanta Newlin had one of the most impressive résumés I’d ever seen. She graduated Stanford as a Rhodes Scholar and attended Columbia Law School. She then worked for both the CIA and FBI before serving in the last administration as an undersecretary of state.

“So what’s up?”

Her manner was, as always, brusque. When she first came to campus we had dinner. It wasn’t a date. It was a “let’s see if we want to” date. There is a subtle difference. After that date, she chose not to pursue it, and I was okay with that.

“I need a favor,” I said.

Shanta nodded, inviting me to make my request.

“I’m looking for someone. An old friend. I’ve tried all the usual methods—Google, calling the family, whatever. I can’t get an address.”

“And you figured that with my old contacts, I’d be able to help.”

“Something like that,” I said. “Well, yes, exactly like that.”

“Her name?”

“I didn’t say it was a she.”

Shanta frowned. “Name?”

“Natalie Avery.”

“When was the last time you saw her or had an address?”

“Six years ago.”

Shanta kept walking, military style, ramrod back, very fast. “Was she the one, Jake?”

“Pardon?”

A small smile came to her lips. “Do you know why I never followed up on our first date?”

“It wasn’t really a date,” I said. “It was more a ‘let’s see if we want to’ date.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I figured that you didn’t follow up because you had no interest.”

“Uh, that would be a no. Here is what I saw that night: You’re a great guy, you’re funny, you’re smart, you have a full-time job, and you have blue eyes to die for. Do you know how many single straight guys I’d met with that criteria?”