“He was with me that night! Those girls were wrong, saying they saw him there.”

“Yeah, sure. So I heard. So everybody heard. But at this hearing today, he admitted he was there that night. He now says you were asleep and didn’t hear him go.”

“You’re kidding!”

“You’ve been out of the loop.”

“He told me to lay low and not to contact him. Oh, he’s such an idiot. Shit. We had him covered. If he had just stuck to that we could have gotten him off!”

“Oh, well. At least the police believe that you sleep heavy and had no idea what he was up to that night. Cody’s not so sure about these lawyers. He says they’re thinking too hard, digging too deep.”

“Tell me Cody didn’t admit to killing Phoebe.”

“No. He’s an idiot but even he’s not that stupid.”

“Why’d he cave in like that? Those women can identify him in court. He could go to jail for life, John! He had a good alibi. If he had just kept his mouth shut-now these silly girls are going to get up in court and get him put away-”

“Look, that can’t be fixed. But we can prevent them from dragging you into this any further. Now, since it was so easy for me to find your dad’s boat, maybe we can come up with someplace a little harder, at least until this hearing is over. I thought, maybe my sister’s place.”

“I’m fine here.”

John Kelly convinced her otherwise, and since his persuasion involved no physical urging, Paul let him. When Paul and Wish understood the two would be leaving the boat soon, they slipped back up the dock to the car and got in. After a few minutes, Kelly climbed on his bike and Carol Ames, small, dark-haired, and skinny, took the wheel of a Saturn. Kelly followed her as she pulled out, and Paul followed him. Ten minutes later, the bike and the Saturn pulled up to a house off the Kingsbury Grade. Kelly escorted Carol to the door, rang the bell, and saw her inside. After a few more minutes, he left.

“Well, now we know where she is. What are we going to do about it?” Wish asked.

“Wait,” Paul said.

Wish closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the Mustang’s headrest, where a dent that fit perfectly was forming.

By midnight, most of the lights in the houses on the street were dimmed. Even the crickets seemed to be sleeping.

“It’s quiet,” Wish said, startling awake. “Too quiet.”

“Very funny,” Paul said.

Moments later, the door to the house opened. Out came Carol Ames, dressed all in black, thin as a fork. She unlocked her car door quietly, got inside, and released the parking brake, rolling down the street in neutral until she was well past the house.

“Did you know she would leave again?” Wish said. “Who are you really, Mr. Psychic Hotline?”

“I didn’t know.” Paul started up his car and flipped it into gear. “I just didn’t know how we were going to get her alone. I thought we might have to wait until she left for somewhere in the morning.” They drove down the hill, well behind the blue Saturn. “This is good. I like the darkness.”

“Now you’re really scaring me,” Wish said. “Okay, I give up. Where is she going in the middle of the night? Only place I can think of is the casinos, but here we are going the other way, west.”

“I have an idea,” Paul said. He didn’t like the idea, but it was borne out soon enough, when the blue Saturn parked a few doors down from the Guillaume residence.

“Isn’t that where Angel lives?” Wish asked. “But I don’t understand. If she’s going to see Angel and Brandy, she better hit the road for San Francisco, because I happen to know they stayed there tonight.”

She got out of the car and unlocked the trunk, pulling something heavy out. She approached Angel’s house, unscrewing the lid of what appeared to be a fairly large can. At the edge of the house she stopped and listened, then moved closer and peered quite methodically through windows. All windows dark. No car in the carport. Quiet fir trees, a dark Tahoe night. Stopping at the back corner of the house, she wadded a piece of paper around a rock and hurled it through a kitchen windowpane. Then she tipped the can.

Paul and Wish grabbed her. For a small person, she fought big. After landing a light punch to Paul’s sternum, forcing him to stop breathing momentarily, she dropped the can on the ground. Wish sneaked up behind and pinned her while she scrambled for it.

“Out of gas?” Paul asked. “Let us help you with that.” He swooped down and wrenched the can from her grasp. “That’s strange. It’s full.”

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, keeping her voice to a guilty whisper. “I’ll scream for the cops! You can’t do this to me!”

Paul showed her his identification and introduced Wish. He explained who they were. “Want me to make that call for you?” he asked.

She hung her head.

“Seems to me, you owe us an explanation. What was your plan here?” Paul asked. “I have to say, it doesn’t look well conceived.”

“I wasn’t going to burn the house down. I just wanted to show them I meant business. I was only going to burn a little.”

“Well, take your pick,” Paul said. “The police or us for company.” He explained who they were and that they were working for Nina Reilly in a hearing only distantly related to Cody’s case.

“Don’t call the cops, please. It was just insurance,” she said. “Something serious to scare them off so they wouldn’t want to testify in Cody’s case when it comes up!”

“You ought to be ashamed,” Wish said.

“There was nobody home.”

Paul sent Wish through the window to retrieve the rock. “Reach inside to unlock it. It should be easy to open now.”

Wish came out complaining, sucking on a tiny cut on his finger. He handed the uncrumpled note to Paul, and the rock, which Paul stuck into a paper bag under the seat of his car.

“Testify in the Stinson case and you’ll see some real damage done,” the printed note said.

“What is your relationship with Cody Stinson?” Paul asked, pocketing the note.

“Old friends.”

“Nothing more?”

Silence.

“I understand you two were close once but he left you for Phoebe. That must have been a shock.”

Carol said slowly, “Yeah. It was.”

“You’ve been a good friend to him, Carol, considering he dumped you. Giving him that fake alibi.”

“I wish I hadn’t.” She pushed back some loose hair, and Paul saw water forming in her eyes. “Aw, shit! This has been the worst nightmare!”

Paul didn’t ask her any more. Nina had a plan, and he would stick with it, and that involved getting Carol Ames to the California State Bar hearing tomorrow.

So Paul blackmailed her into joining him for the long haul all the way back to San Francisco. No police, just a long midnight ramble.

The night passed in a blur of black trees, moonlight, and splashed puddles. After dropping Wish at home so that he could get to his classes the next day and allowing Carol Ames to pick up her bag from Kelly’s sister’s house, they hit Highway 50 and started the long descent to the flats.

Carol, who asked to be called Carol and “not Ms. Freaking Ames,” asked Paul some questions: Would Cody be there, who else might be there. He told her Cody would be there but Brandy and Angel would not, lies. As for what she would be expected to do, well, Paul told her, she would tell what happened that night. Now that everyone knew Cody had been at the campground and she couldn’t provide her old friend a real alibi, she had to tell that to the court to back him up, further nonsense, but he was tired and couldn’t come up with a better story.

Fortunately, she, too, was tired, apparently too tired to dispute his illogic, and of course she really didn’t want him talking to the police or anyone else about her little excursion through the trees with a gas can in the night. In spite of it being the middle of the night, she couldn’t shut up. “Oh, hell,” she said at intervals, and “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening after all these months. I can’t take it.”