I could hear Lucy open the refrigerator and the stove and the pantry. A serious inspection was taking place, and it was coming from somewhere very female. Something was happening between Lucy and Teresa and, in a way I didn't quite understand, I was no longer a part of it. 'What do you and your brother and sister eat, Teresa?'

'I cook for us.'

Winona said, 'I cook, too.'

Lucy came back and smiled at Winona. 'I'll bet you're a good cook, honey.'

'We make spaghetti.'

'My favorite. Did you have spaghetti for breakfast?'

Winona laughed. 'We had Cheerios.'

Lucy smiled at Winona again, then glanced at me and nodded. I said, 'Is there food?'

'Yes.'

Teresa said, 'I shop and cook for us even when Daddy's home. It's no big thing.' She seemed affronted that anyone would think otherwise.

I said, 'We just wondered, that's all. It looks like you're in good shape.'

Teresa looked hopeful. 'Then you aren't going to turn us in to Children's Services?'

I frowned at her. 'You're underage. You can't live here alone.'

Lucy hooked her arm through mine, and squeezed. Tight. She smiled warmly at Teresa. 'He won't call them just yet, dear, but we'll have to consider that as we go.'

Now I frowned at Lucy. 'What's this 'we' business?'

Lucy squeezed tighter. 'But don't you worry about that for now, Teri. Right now, he's going to find your father.'

I said, 'I am?'

Lucy turned the warm smile my way. 'Of course you are. If you know what's good for you.'

I said, 'Mm.'

Lucy turned back to Teresa. 'Have you eaten dinner yet?'

'I was about to cook.'

Lucy beamed. 'We were just on our way to a very nice restaurant. Why don't you join us?' She gave my arm a little shake. 'Wouldn't that be fun?'

I said, 'Mm.'

Winona said, 'I want spaghetti.'

I phoned Border Grill and asked if they could make the reservation for a party of five. They could.

The five of us went to dinner – me, Lucy, Teresa, Winona, and Charles. We had to take the Saturn. Winona sat between Lucy and me; Charles threw a sautéed shrimp at the waitress, tried to steal a pepper mill, and ate two desserts. The bill came to a hundred eighty-two fifty.

Mm.

CHAPTER 3

I took Lucy to LAX early the next morning and waited with her at the gate. When it was time to board we held each other, and then she disappeared into the jetway. I went to the observation window, stared at her plane, and tried not to look depressed.

An older gentleman with a walking stick appeared at the glass next to me and shook his head, glum. 'Another visit, another parting.' He shook his head some more. 'Me, I never say good-bye.'

'Good-byes are tough, all right.'

'They're permanent. You say good-bye, you're inviting disaster.'

I looked at him. 'What do you mean, permanent?'

'The big birds come in, the big birds go out, and you never know what's going to happen.' He sighed. 'I hope nobody put a bomb.'

I looked at him harder. 'Do I know you?'

He made a shrug.

'I think I've seen you here before.' He was stooped and balding with baggy, old-man pants.

He shrugged again. 'God knows, it's possible. I spend my whole life in this place, picking people up, sending people off. All without a good-bye.'

'I'm pretty certain.'

He patted my arm and smiled. It was a kindly smile, and wise. 'That's where you're wrong, young man. The only thing certain is death.' He patted my arm again and leaned close. 'I hope you didn't say good-bye. For her sake.'

Great.

I left him at the window, walked out to the car, and took Sepulveda Boulevard north through the city, the footloose and fancy-free detective reentering the workaday world. I was missing Lucy already and feeling grumpy because of it, but I was also excited and hopeful. She felt that the job with KROK was going to work out, and, if it did, she and her son, Ben, would move here and then I could see her all the time. Thinking about that made me smile, and the grumpiness faded. The sun had climbed nicely, the air had warmed, and a slight orange haze was building in the east past Baldwin Hills. Perfect convertible weather even with the coming smog.

I followed Sepulveda north to Washington Boulevard, then turned east past the old MGM Studios to La Cienega when I spotted a gray Chrysler LeBaron edging across the white line three cars behind me. He stayed on the line a few seconds without changing lanes, the way you do when you want to see something ahead of you, and then he disappeared. I thought that maybe it was the same LeBaron I had seen outside Teri Haines's home, but then I said, 'Nah.' I was probably watching too many episodes of Cops.

Fifteen minutes later I parked behind Teri Haines's Saturn and went to the door. I kind of expected to find the house in smoking ruins, but I guess Charles had passed out from overeating. Lighten up, Cole. He's only a kid. Sure. They probably said that when Attila was a kid, too.

Teresa answered the door in jeans and pink Keds and an oversized white T-shirt. I said, 'Where are Charles and Winona?'

'I took them to school.' I guess she could read my surprise. 'Charles is in sixth grade and Winona is in third. You don't think I'd let them grow up stupid, do you?'

'I guess not.' Put in my place by a fifteen-year-old.

The house was as neat and clean as it had been yesterday, only now it was quiet. A washing machine chunked somewhere beyond the kitchen and street sounds sifted in through the windows. Teresa let me in, and stood well to the side as she showed me into the living room. Watchful. 'Would you like coffee? I always make coffee before I take them to school.' A blue mug sat steaming on the coffee table atop an issue of Seventeen.

'What about you?'

'I have a cup.'

'I meant about school.'

She sat at the edge of the couch and laced her fingers over a knee. She was so close to the edge that I thought she might slip off. 'We move around a lot, and I got tired of always being the new kid, so I took the GED exam last year when we moved to Arizona.' GED. General Equivalency diploma. 'I don't go to school.'

'Ah.'

She pursed her lips. 'I'm sorry, but is talking about me going to help you find my father?'

'Maybe. You just told me that you used to live in Arizona, which is something I didn't know. Maybe he went there.'

She flushed a hard red behind the glasses. I guess she didn't like being shown up either.

'If I'm going to find your dad, I'm going to need what we in the trade call a lead. That means I'll ask you a lot of questions, you'll tell me what you know, and maybe we'll get somewhere. You see?'

She nodded, but she wasn't happy about it.

I took out my pen and prepared to make notes. 'Tell me about him.'

Her father's name was Clark Rudy Haines. He was thirty-nine years old, five feet ten inches tall, one hundred fifty-two pounds. He had light brown hair, though he had lost most of it years ago, and brown eyes. He wore glasses. She told me about the glasses, then she had some of the coffee, and then she stared at me.

I said, 'Okay.'

'Okay, what?'

'I need more than that.'

She looked uncomfortable, as if she couldn't imagine more than that. As if she was suddenly thinking that having me here was a bad idea, and she was wishing that she'd never come to my office.

I tapped my pen on the pad. 'You said he was a printer. Tell me about that.'

'Okay.' She said that her father was a commercial offset operator, and that they had left Tucson for Los Angeles because he had been offered a job with Enright Quality Printing in Culver City. She told me that he had been laid off, and that he had been concerned about finding another job. Then she shut up and watched me some more.