Nina knocked again. The door opened. Nikki, entirely too relaxed-looking, stood in front of her. “Oh, hello, Nina.” Behind her, Bob loomed, a worried look plastered across his mug.

“Ms. Reilly to you,” she told Nikki. She grabbed Bob’s arm and propelled him through the living room, out the front door, and into the car. Hitchcock jumped into the backseat.

“What’s your problem!” Bob asked as she pulled away.

“Why aren’t you home?”

“You said you’d be late. We wanted to practice-”

“Do not, please, do not give me that. She was high. I could see it in her eyes.”

Silence, then, “It was just really dark in the room. She doesn’t get high, far as I know.”

Really dark in the room. Reassuring words. “Are you?”

“What? Mom, I’m not even fourteen!”

“Are you,” she repeated, her voice steely, her hand on the wheel curled rigid as pipe, “high?”

“No.”

“Bob, we’ve talked about this.”

“About what?”

“Drugs.”

“I don’t do that stuff. I have zero interest. I told you!”

“Daria’s boyfriend was smoking pot in that house while you were there. That’s not only unacceptable, it’s illegal.”

“She told him to quit it and so he put it out. She’s not pushing a drug agenda, Mom.”

“Would you have taken anything if she was? Because my impression is that these people have a hold on you.”

“Nobody’s got a hold on me,” he protested.

Unfortunately, that included her. She decided to use Paul’s frequently stated solution: Nail his feet to the floor. She told him there would be no further practice of any kind, music or otherwise, with Nikki. Bob folded his arms, stared straight ahead, and no doubt hated her all the way home.

After Paul dropped Nina at her cabin, he called Wish, who needed to tell him all about the terrific spinning restaurant he had found at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco before agreeing to meet him in half an hour.

“Hey,” Paul said, pulling up next to him in the parking lot of the Starlake Building.

“Hey.” Wish climbed in beside him. “Where to?”

“Ever heard of this outfit?” He handed Wish a piece of paper Nina had written for him.

“Big Lake Sport Fishing,” he read. “Sure. They’ve got an office at the Keys.”

Turning right onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Paul glanced over at him. “You look sleek.”

“I do?” Wish wore a brown leather jacket over his jeans.

“So you had lunch in the city.”

“Yeah, after walking up to Chinatown and playing around for a couple of hours. I found a couple of Japanese animes I’ve been looking for.”

“Didn’t you drop Nina off this morning at nine? Strikes me as funny, you being in the same vicinity several hours later. So I surmise a special reason for hanging around. Hmm.” He tapped his chin. “Whatever could it be?”

Wish grunted.

“Lunch with a lady.”

“You caught me red-handed, Copper.”

“How was the food?”

“Good, like I told you already.”

“Brandy after?”

“Huh?” said Wish.

“A joke. You had lunch with Brandy Taylor, didn’t you?”

“She asked me.”

Paul turned toward the Keys.

“She just needs a friend.”

Paul turned the radio on.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what we talked about?”

“No.”

“She told me something.”

“She did?”

“Yeah,” Wish said, unaware of the sensation he had caused. “You remember the sex-problem thing with Bruce? She told me what was going on. I guess she told her sister, too, and her mom, and maybe other people, but she just can’t bring herself to tell Bruce.”

Paul sighed and put the car back where it belonged on the road. “Okay, so what did she tell you?”

“It’s a secret. I do have a question, Paul. If you know something about a guy, and if you told him you could maybe help mend a relationship, but it means you’ll ace yourself right out of the love picture, plus it isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to talk to another guy about, especially not a stranger, what do you do?”

“Hmm.”

“Plus there’s this added issue, which is, um, I, um. Aack. I have the same problem.”

Johnny quick draw? Johnny no comeback? Johnny shoot blanks? What in the world had Wish in such a tizzy?

“I like her, but I’d have to love her a whole lot,” Wish went on glumly. “A whole, whole lot.”

“Do the noble thing.” She wanted Bruce, not Wish, that much Paul knew. Poor Wish.

“Is that like, your personal wisdom, how you live your life?”

“What have I ever done to make you think a thing like that?”

Up ahead, lights illuminated the white-lettered sign for the sports-fishing business. They parked and walked up some outside stairs toward a second-story office that overlooked the marina. Paul had been told John Kelly often worked a late shift, doing paperwork and accounts in the office. Sure enough, the windows shone with lamplight. Wish raised his hand to knock.

Paul pulled it back. “Shh.” He looked around the side of the building into the window. “He’s in there, all right.” He led Wish back to the car. “Now we wait.”

Wish settled back against the car seat. “Who is this guy?”

“Cody Stinson’s best friend.”

“And we’re following him, why?”

“I checked with a guy I know at the Tahoe jail. Late this afternoon, Cody gave his old pal John Kelly a call. Nina was hoping he just might lead us straight to Carol Ames, and I think it’s a definite possibility.”

“Cody’s alibi? Why would he lead us to her?”

“Nina thought Cody might call on him to track Carol down tonight. John Kelly knows Carol and Cody both. He used to pal around with them back in the days when they were together.”

“Sounds like a stretch.”

“Well, maybe it is. But you know, Wish, in this business we feed on unsubstantiated rumors, innuendo, and gossip. Why not plain old hope now and then?”

A few minutes later, Kelly came out, locked the door behind him, and hopped on a motorcycle.

“Well, look at that.”

Paul followed at a discreet distance as Kelly wound his way around the parking lot and back out to the boulevard. He rode on for a little more than two miles to Ski Run, turned left again, toward the lake, and parked in a lot by the marina.

Kelly walked out toward one of the docks, stopped at the locked gate, and let himself in. A dozen boats floated in the black water, creaking as they bobbed on the crests. Kelly walked past several large cabin cruisers and stopped at a sailboat on the right side. He looked from side to side. Presumably satisfied no one else was taking an interest, he stepped aboard.

“Is she there?”

“Let’s find out,” Paul said. Moving quietly, they tried the gate, which Kelly had kindly left open, and walked up the dock toward the sailboat. A cold March wind winnowed its way inside Paul’s light windbreaker, and the marina lights danced like fairies over the water under a pale yellow moon.

A window cracked in the sailboat cabin made the two voices intimately accessible to Paul and Wish, who were crouched, as if that position might make them less visible.

“How’d you find me, John?” a woman asked, her voice nervous, but warm and mellow on the cold air.

Kelly said, “I called the apartment all day. Your roommate told me you weren’t expected, but I remembered your dad’s boat. Carol, Cody’s concerned.”

“You talked to him?”

“He called me from San Francisco today. He’s at that hearing about the attorney who’s caused so much trouble. What’s strange is, your name keeps popping up.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of me, Carol. That would hurt my feelings. I just want to pass along the word. Cody wants you to stay hidden, in fact, he’s gonna insist.”

“I have work, you know-”

“I know all about that. Take it with you. This is just for a couple of days, ’til things die down. He’s worried they’ll try to call you and ask you about that night at the campground.”