Seated across his desk from him sixty-six minutes later, I began to pick up a few hints. Lance had breezed in at 9:30. The receptionist indicated who I was. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He said he had a quick phone call to make and then he'd be right with me. I said "Fine" and that was the last I saw of him until 10:06. By then, he'd shed his suit coat and loosened his tie along with the top button of his dress shirt. He was sitting with his feet up on the desk, his face oily-looking under the fluorescent lights. He must have been in his late thirties, but he wasn't aging well. Some combination of temper and discontent had etched lines near his mouth and spoiled the clear brown of his eyes, leaving an impression of a man beleaguered by the Fates. His hair was light brown, thinning on top, and combed straight back from his face. I thought the business about the phone call was bullshit. He struck me as the sort of man who pumped up his own sense of importance by making people wait. His smile was self-satisfied, and the energy he radiated was charged with tension.

"Sorry for the delay," he said, "What can I do for you?" He was tipped back in his swivel chair, his thighs splayed.

"I understand you filed a claim for a recent fire loss."

"That's right, and I hope you're not going to give me any static over that. Believe me, I'm not asking for any-thing I'm not entitled to."

I made a noncommittal murmur of some sort, hoping to conceal the fact that I'd gone on "fraud alert." Every insurance piker I'd ever met said just that, right down to the pious little toss of the head. I took out my tape re-corder, flicked it on, and set it on the desk. "The company requires that I tape the interview," I said.

"That's fine."

I directed my next few remarks to the recorder, estab-lishing my name, the fact that I worked for California Fidelity, the date and time of the interview, and the fact that I was speaking to Lance Wood in his capacity as president and CEO of Wood/Warren, the address of the com-pany, and the nature of the loss.

"Mr. Wood, you do understand that this is being taped," I said for the benefit of the record.

"Yes."

"And do I have your permission to make this record-ing of the conversation we're about to have?"

"Yes, yes," he said, making that little rolling hand ges-ture that means "Let's get on with it."

I glanced down at the file. "Can you tell me the cir-cumstances of the fire that occurred at the Wood/Warren warehouse at 606 Fairweather on December nineteenth of this year?"

He shifted impatiently. "Actually, I was out of town, but from what I'm told…" The telephone intercom buzzed and he snatched up the receiver, barking at it like a dog. "Yes?"

There was a pause. "Well, goddamn it, put her through." He gave me a quick look. "No, wait a minute, I'll take it out there." He put the phone down, excused him-self brusquely, and left the room. I clicked off the recorder, mentally assessing the brief impression I'd had of him as he passed. He was getting heavy in the waist and his gabar-dine pants rode up unbecomingly, his shirt sticking to the center of his back. He smelled harshly of sweat-not that clean animal scent that comes from a hard workout, but the pungent, faintly repellant odor of stress. His complex-ion was sallow and he looked vaguely unhealthy.

I waited for fifteen minutes and then tiptoed to the door. The reception area was deserted. No sign of Lance Wood. No sign of Heather. I moved over to the door lead-ing into the inner office. I caught a glimpse of someone passing into the rear of the building who looked very much like Ebony, but I couldn't be sure. A woman looked up at me. The name plate on her desk indicated that she was Ava Daugherty, the office manager. She was in her late forties, with a small, dusky face and a nose that looked as if it had been surgically tampered with. Her hair was short and black, with the glossy patina of hair spray. She was un-happy about something, possibly the fact that she'd just cracked one of her bright-red acrylic fingernails.

"I'm supposed to be meeting with Lance Wood, but he's disappeared. Do you know where he went?"

"He left the plant." She was licking the cracked nail experimentally, as if the chemistry of her saliva might serve as adhesive.

"He left?"

"That's what I said."

"Did he say how soon he'd be back?"

"Mr. Wood doesn't consult with me," she said snap-pishly. "If you'd like to leave your name, I'm sure he'll get back to you."

A voice cut in. "Something wrong?"

We both looked up to find a dark-haired man standing in the doorway behind me. Ava Daugherty's manner be-came somewhat less antagonistic. "This is the company vice-president," she said to me. And to him, "She's sup-posed to be in a meeting with Lance, but he left the plant."

"Terry Kohler," he said to me, holding out his hand. "I'm Lance Wood's brother-in-law."

"Kinsey Millhone, from California Fidelity," I said, shaking hands with him. "Nice to meet you." His grip was hard and hot. He was wiry, with a dark moustache and large, dark eyes that were full of intelligence. He must have been in his early forties. I wondered which sister he was married to.

"What's the problem? Something I can help you with?"

I told him briefly what I was doing there and the fact that Lance Wood had abandoned me without a word of explanation.

"Why don't I show you the warehouse?" he said. "At least you can go ahead and inspect the fire scene, which I'm assuming is one of your responsibilities."

"I'd appreciate that. Is anybody else out here autho-rized to give me the information I need?"

Terry Kohler and Ava Daugherty exchanged a look I couldn't decipher.

"You better wait for Lance," he said. "Hold on and I'll see if I can find out where he went." He moved toward the outer office.

Ava and I avoided small talk. She opened her top right-hand drawer and took out a tube of Krazy Glue, ignoring me pointedly as she snipped off the tip and squeezed one clear drop on the cracked fingernail. She frowned. A long dark hair was caught in the glue and I watched her struggle to extract it.

Idly I tuned into the conversation behind me, three engineers in a languid discussion about the problem before them.

"Now maybe the calculation is off, but I don't think so," one was saying,

"We'll find out," someone interjected. All three men laughed.

"The question came up… oh, this has occurred to me many times… What would it take to convert this to a pulse power supply for the main hot cell?"

"Depends on what your pulsing frequency is."

"About ten hertz."

"Whoa."

"Anything that would allow you to modulate a signal away that was being influenced by the juice going through the susceptors. You know, power on for nine-tenths of a second, off for a tenth. Take measurements…"

"Urn-hum. On for a half a second, off for a tenth of a second. You can't really do it easily, can you?"

"The PID controller could send the output that fast. I'm not sure what that would do to the NCRs. To the VRT setup itself, whether that would follow it…"

I tuned them out again. They could have been plot-ting the end of the world for all I knew.

It was another ten minutes before Terry Kohler reap-peared. He was shaking his head in apparent exasperation.

"I don't know what's going on around here," he said. "Lance had to go out on some emergency and Heather's still away from her desk." He held up a key ring. "I'll take you over to the warehouse. Tell Heather I've got these if she shows up."

"I should get my camera," I said. "It's with my handbag."-

He tagged along patiently while I moved back to Lance Wood's office, where I retrieved the camera, tucked my wallet in my tote, and left my handbag where it was.

Together we retraced a path through the reception room and the offices beyond. Nobody actually looked up as we passed, but curious gazes followed us in silence, like those portraits where the eyes seem to move.