Margot had a little notepad next to the phone; I took the top sheet off and slipped it in my pocket, just in case I might need to use old-fashioned methods-raising a number by rubbing a pencil over the indentations. No use outsmarting yourself with technology, I thought. I used the next sheet to write down the two numbers from the caller-ID display.

By the time she had come upstairs, I had made a remarkable recovery.

“Gotta go,” I said. “Sitting here reminded me that I’m up way past my bedtime.”

She protested all the way down the stairs. At the front door, a little of my smug satisfaction at tricking her left me, and a sense of what I might have set in motion took its place.

“Margot, listen to me. And I mean listen. Your life may depend upon it. If you’ve called the man who waited for me in the lobby-”

“Called him? At this hour? Of course not!”

“Listen! If you’ve called him, get out of here. Now. Don’t wait for him to come over. He’s dangerous. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I don’t think he’s-”

“Fine!” I said. “If you want to wait around here and have Mr. Goodbar make a house call, fine. Invite him in. When they drag the canal and haul up whatever bits and pieces are left of you, I’ll tell each and every salt-soaked one of them, ”I told you so!“‘

“That’s a horrible thing to say!”

“Yeah? Whatever it takes. In fact, if you insist on staying here tonight, at least let me take your Yorkies with me. I’m not as crazy about them as you are, but I hate to see animals suffer.”

“Get out!”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Margot. Get out.”

She opened the door.

“Please, Margot.”

“Get out,” she said, but it was softer.

I tried to find some measure of hope in that as I drove off in search of a pay phone.

17

Since the nearest pay phones on Rivo Alto were on the single nonresidential street on the small island, I decided to drive a couple of miles farther, to an all-night supermarket on Pacific Coast Highway. The supermarket would be well-lighted and I could phone from indoors; better, for my purposes, than standing out in the open on a street Margot’s new boyfriend would be taking to get to her house. I was fairly certain she had invited him to come over.

The phone was near the front entrance of the market. I took a quick look around; at the checkout stand, there was an old man buying a bag of potato chips and a can of dog food, and one young couple with an infant buying baby formula. Otherwise, everyone I saw was an employee. The aisles of the store were crowded with pallets of shrink-wrapped cardboard boxes. Stocking hours.

I went back to the phone and, playing a hunch, rubbed a pencil over the paper I had taken off the notepad. The results were good enough to reveal a third and different number. I dropped a couple of coins in the phone and tried this number first. After two rings, a recorded voice said, “The subscriber on the LA Cellular System that you have called is unavailable, or has left the coverage area. Please try your call again later.”

So much for hunches. I tried one of the numbers from the caller-ID display.

It rang for a long time, no answer.

I got lucky with the third number.

“You’ve reached the voice mail of Richmond amp; Associates. We’re not in the office right now, but you can leave a message of any length, or enter your phone number and then press the pound key, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

I hung up. The name Richmond seemed familiar, but then again, it wasn’t a rare name.

I had decided to use a pay phone instead of my home phone because my initial plan was to page Margot’s friend from a number he wouldn’t recognize, and which couldn’t be traced back to me. But telling him off over the phone wouldn’t get me anywhere, and now a better plan occurred to me. I dropped another round of change into the phone and called the computer room at the News-Express.

Jerry Chase answered on the sixteenth ring. The newsroom of the Express is usually empty between one and six-thirty in the morning, but those are the hours the computer staff works on repair, maintenance and on freeing up computer memory. Usually there are two computer staffers working those hours, Jerry Chase, who does most of his work in the computer room, and Olivia Sledzik, his recently hired assistant, who is often working in other parts of the building. I had helped Livy get the job, so I had been hoping she’d be the one to answer. Those are the breaks.

Given the time it took Jerry to pick up the phone, I figured I had caught him at one of his three favorite pastimes: going up on the roof for a smoke, talking to his girlfriend on the phone or playing around on the Internet.

“Computer room,” he said, a little breathlessly. Rooftop.

“Jerry? It’s Irene.”

“Oh…” It was a sound of relief. I was sorry not to hear the excuse he would have given one of the bosses about the time it took to answer the phone.

“Nice night out. How was the view?”

He laughed. “Terrific. It’s their own damned fault for making it a smoke-free building. What can I do for you?”

“I need to find out who owns a phone number. Can you look it up for me?”

“Sure. What are you doing up at this time of day?”

“Long story.”

He sighed. “Aren’t they all?”

“Yes. Listen, I just need to have you find out who owns a number for me. Actually, I know who owns it, but I need the address and type of business.”

“Sure. Local?” I could hear him typing on his keyboard, accessing the database program he’d need to use.

“Yes, within our area code.”

“Okay, let me have it.”

I read it off to him.

“I love it,” he said, almost immediately. “An easy one. It’s a business- Richmond and Associates. Licensed private investigators.”

“Investigators?” I repeated blankly.

“Yes. By the way-Olivia is great. Thanks for letting us know about her.”

Of course she’s great, I thought. Livy probably knew more about programming when she was in ninth grade than you did when you got out of college. And she does ten times as much work as you do and… and I reminded myself that he was doing me a favor.

“Glad it worked out, Jer.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’m learning from her. She’s bringing me up to date.”

That made me feel a little better about him. “Livy’s sharp,” I agreed. “You have the address for Richmond and Associates?”

“Yes, in Los Alamitos. Owner is one Harold Richmond.”

Suddenly I remembered where I had heard the name “Richmond”- it was in the articles about Gwendolyn DeMont’s murder. Harold Richmond had worked for the police then; he had been the detective assigned to the case.

“Still there?” Jerry asked.

“Yes-sorry.”

He read the address to me. I wrote it down, then said, “As long as you’re in that program, Jer, could you look up one more number for me? Probably a residence.” Sure.

I read off the second number, and again he got a quick hit. “Not a residence, though,” he said. “The Wharf.”

“Someplace down in the harbor?”

“No, it’s in Los Alamitos, too. The Wharf is just its name. It’s a bar.”

“A bar? You’re sure?”

“Well, I’m not sitting in it, having a drink and a much-needed smoke, but unless the database is wrong, the place is a bar.”

“Sorry, Jerry, I didn’t mean to doubt you-just not what I expected. Thanks again for the help.”

I stood in the store for a moment after I hung up, thinking about the implications of Richmond and Associates being private investigators, and Margot getting late-night calls from a bar in their town.

I hauled the phone book up from beneath the metal shelf at the booth and flipped back to the Yellow Pages. I looked up investigators, and sure enough, there at the bottom-right-hand corner of the page was an ad for Richmond and Associates: