"So now this older man comes into her life and… what?"

"He all but takes over, that's what."

"How does a guy in his mid-thirties take over an eighteen-year-old's life?"

She looked away. "I think they're having sex. In fact I'm positive they're having sex."

"Lots of eighteen-year-olds are having sex. Probably most of them."

"Not with men twice their age."

Yeah, Jack could see how the thought of your teenage daughter in bed with a guy her father's age could upset you. But since the girl was past the age of consent, you couldn't use the system to pull them apart. You had to go outside the system.

Where Jack operated.

"What's her dad think of this?"

"He's not in the picture," she said, her tone matter of fact. "Never was, never will be."

He drained his Yuengling. "Okay. Give me the Reader's Digest version. She's working at this diner and he's what—a regular?"

Christy nodded. "His name is Jerry Bethlehem and he began showing up sometime in January. After a while he started asking to be seated at one of Dawn's tables. I remember her telling me about this really interesting guy with the cool job who was a great tipper."

"What sort of cool job?"

"A freelance video game designer."

Jack nodded. That did sound pretty cool.

"Dawn's never been into video games, for which I'm glad—nothing but time wasters—but that's just what allowed him to set his hook into her."

"I don't get it."

"Neither did I at first. He's clever. He told her she was just the person he needed to talk to because she was an untapped market for games. If he could design a game that appealed to non-playing girls and young women like her, he'd have every video game company in the world pounding on his door."

"And if she helps him design it, he'll cut her in."

"Full partnership—fifty-fifty. She'll be queen of the video game industry. Or so he says."

Money and fame… quite a siren call.

"So he lures her over to his apartment—"

"Oh, no. He's too smooth for anything so obvious. A move like that would have set off Dawnie's alarm bells right away. And he has a townhouse, by the way. What he does is suggest they sit down and brainstorm the project at her house so he can meet her folks and assure them that he's not some nut case with bad intentions."

"Which you believe he's had all along."

"I don't believe. I know."

"How?"

"I…" Suddenly she looked unsure of herself—the first time since she'd walked in. "I just do."

Jack's skepticism must have shown.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "A mother knows. This man is a seducer."

"So you've met him?"

"Right in my own living room. Bold as day. 'How do you do, Mrs. Pickering.' 'You have a wonderful-brilliant-beautiful daughter, Mrs. Pickering.' But Mrs. Pickering wasn't born yesterday."

Jack now knew what the P in Christy P. stood for. Something familiar about "Pickering"… from a long time ago.

Anyway… a single mother with a guy her own age making a play for her daughter. Sure, the protective instinct comes out, but Christy Pickering seemed to be protesting a tad too much. Maybe more than a tad. Envy, maybe? Jealousy? A little hey-what's-wrong-with-me? thing going down here?

"Is this Jerry Bethlehem good looking?"

She shrugged. "He's no Matthew McConaughey, if that's what you mean, but he's not bad looking. Mostly it's his eyes. He's got these piercing blue eyes that seem to look into your soul and let you feel you're looking into his."

"And what do you see there?"

"If you're naive, you see truth."

"And if you're not?"

"Ice."

Whoa. "That so?"

"You're giving me that look again. His eyes can convince people who haven't been around the block that everything he's saying is the truth, but I've read Charles Manson has eyes like that."

Jack had read that too.

"Has he got some sort of cult thing going? Preaching revolution?"

"No… he's not even promising the moon with this video game scheme, but he's a bent wire. I feel it in my bones. He plays at being this charming, folksy Southerner but deep down he's a redneck hick and I can't believe he designs video games."

"But if they're hanging out in your living room, how—?"

"If only! That's where they started, but then they began meeting at his place because he has a better computer. Now Dawn's talking about moving in with him."

"But she'll be going off to Colgate—"

She threw up her hands. "College? Who needs college when you're going to conquer the video game world?" Her voice rose in pitch. "'It's a twenty-seven-billion-dollar-a-year industry, Mom, and Jerry and I will be its king and queen.'" She returned to normal. "So what's college going to do for her?"

Her lips quivered as she blinked back tears. She pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed her eyes.

"Sorry. It's just that our life has been kind of a Hallmark card until now. And okay, maybe I've been living vicariously through Dawn, giving her all the opportunities I never had, giving her every possible chance to be everything she could be. And so, yes, seeing her throwing it all away on some video game pipe dream with a guy twice her age is killing me. But it's more than that. There's something wrong with Jerry Bethlehem. He's hiding something. I want to know what it is—I want Dawn to know before it's too late. Before he… hurts her."

"Hurts her how?"

She dabbed her eyes again. "I don't know. But he's got something bad planned for her. I just know it."

Jack didn't know the truth of that in the real world, but sensed it was very real to Christy.

"So you hired this PI to get something on him."

"Right. Michael Gerhard. His specialty is divorce work—getting the goods on cheating spouses."

A million of those guys around the city. A lot of them ex-cops.

"And he found…?"

"Nothing. At least nothing I know of. He's not returning my calls. He came to my house, seemed very organized and professional. I wrote him a retainer check—which he cashed the next day—and haven't heard from him since."

"When was that?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Not so long—"

"He said he'd contact me in a few days with a preliminary report. He called four days later and told me that since Mister Bethlehem—he was very formal about the creep—was a freelancer without a nine-to-five job, it was taking a little longer to build a database on him. When I didn't hear from him after that, I gave him a call. No answer, no call back." She flashed Jack a defiant look. "I paid him good money and I want results—I want them before Dawn moves out."

"Is she headed that way?"

"Not yet, but she's been fiddling with the suitcases in the basement. Time's running out."

"Because you feel it will be easier to keep her from going than to get her back?"

She nodded. "But Gerhard hasn't returned one of my calls."

"He have an office?"

"No." She chewed her lip. "The address I thought was his office turns out to be a Mailboxes R Us or something like that. His phone is a cell."

"Might just mean he's keeping his overhead down."

Not every PI had a wisecracking receptionist and kept a .38 in the top drawer and a bottle of scotch in the bottom.

But they should.

"Do you think…?" She paused, then, "Do you think he could have found out something about Bethlehem and be blackmailing him?"

Possible, but…

"Well, if he's that much of a crook, he'd be calling back and stringing you along for a few extra payments."

"What if Bethlehem bought him off? Or…" She leaned forward. "What if he found something and Bethlehem killed him?"

"That's a helluva what-ifT

Though not an impossibility.

"Find out for me, will you? Find Gerhard, see what he knows about Bethlehem."

"And get your money back?"