Dave grabbed at another excuse to deny, his anger simmering at the surface, ready to boil over. "So you're saying the picture might not even be Todd?"

"No. I'm sure it's him."

"So the cops will have an ID by tomorrow the latest, right?"

"Possibly."

"And then they can go talk to the Manions and get anything they want and leave my mother out it."

"Yeah. They could. If the ID's convincing enough. But by then if the Manions have anything to hide, they'll have been warned. They could just deny that it's a picture of Todd. And if they need a better story, they'll have more time to come up with one. It might have gotten to there already."

"But you're talking the famous Manions. What could they possibly have to hide?"

"If there's any relationship at all between Staci Rosalier and themselves, it's got to be part of the investigation into your father's death. Don't you see that? And right now, it isn't. They are no part of it at all. All we have had so far is Carol Manion's appointment with Andrea Parisi-"

"Wait a minute. What?"

Hunt realized that in his haste, he'd left out a crucial link. Now he forged it in place. "So if there is a relationship-any relationship at all-between themselves and Staci, they've consciously kept that hidden so far. Don't you think they'd have to understand how important it is? Don't you find that pretty persuasive?" Hunt knew that it was, knew that he'd made all the pitch he could. He just didn't know if it would be enough. "Please," he said. "This is critically important. I'll leave Staci out of it entirely. I won't take five minutes of your mother's time."

The gatekeeper wrestled with himself. It wasn't yet dark, but a car with its lights on crawled by on the street out front. The fountain trickled into the pond. Inside the house, behind the closed door, a crest of women's laughter broke over the steady sea of conversation.

"Maybe. I'll ask," said the judge's son.

Nobody was going to leave Hunt alone with Jeannette Palmer.

She was flanked on the couch in the living room by her sister, Vanessa, and the daughter, Kathy, who had originally answered the door. The rest of what appeared to be perhaps twenty or so relatives and apparently a coterie of close friends congregated both here and in the kitchen and dining areas, but Hunt's first question to Mrs. Palmer killed the ambient noise in a rolling blackout throughout the house as though someone had thrown a switch.

"Carol Manion? Of course," Jeannette said. "We've known Ward and Carol for at least fifteen years. They were at the funeral this morning."

"Yes, I know." Hunt had pulled over and sat on an ottoman in front of the coffee table. "I was there, too, Mrs. Palmer. But I didn't notice that they had their son with them."

"Todd, you mean. No, that's right. I imagine he was in school. Funerals are no place for children, anyway."

"He's about eight now, isn't he?"

She paused, considered a moment. "Yes, I think so."

"So he's adopted?"

The question didn't slow her down at all. "Yes. He couldn't very well not be, could he? I think Carol's a year or two older than I am, and I'm sixty-two."

"Mrs. Palmer," Hunt said, "when the Manions adopted Todd, when they first brought him home, do you remember anybody remarking on the fact, the strangeness of it. I mean, Carol was fifty-six or fifty-seven, she already had a sixteen-year-old son. Cameron, right?"

"Yes. Cameron."

"So what on earth did she want with a new baby? She did bring Todd home as a newborn, right?"

"Oh, yes, very much so."

Hunt came forward expectantly. "Mrs. Palmer, did you think then or do you know now if Todd was actually Cameron's baby?"

Jeannette Palmer pursed her lips, then finally relaxed her mouth and nodded. "Cameron went away the summer before to a ski-racing camp. They brought Todd home in late April the next year. Not to be uncharitable, but it was a little bit hard not to draw that conclusion. Although, of course, no one ever said anything to them directly, not to Ward and Carol. And they never treated Todd differently or referred to him as anything but their own son."

Hunt wasn't far from the Little League field at the Presidio, so he swung by there to find that the evening's early games had all concluded almost an hour ago. Juhle and his family were nowhere to be found, probably out having a postgame meal at one of the city's five thousand eateries. But he tried calling Juhle's house first-you never knew, they might have just had their game and gone home for the first time in history.

But no, the streak was still secure.

He then tried Juhle's cell again, got the voice mail again. He left a much more specific message than the earlier one: "Todd Manion isn't Staci's brother. He's her son. You've got to talk to the Manions immediately, Dev. And bring your handcuffs. Call me."

But all pumped up, Hunt wasn't inclined to drive out to Juhle's house and wait until his friend got home with his family from wherever they'd gone out to eat. He had at least enough now to give Juhle leverage to start a meaningful discussion with Carol Manion.

But his problems with proof continued to plague him.

He knew that even if Todd was adopted, and even if Staci was his birth mother and Cameron the father, so what? If there was no record of any phone conversation or other contact between any of the principals-Carol Manion, Palmer, Andrea, and Staci-then the Manions could deny that they'd had anything to do with Staci since her arrival in San Francisco and stonewall Juhle forever. And with the banks of top lawyers they could afford to hire, they would.

At the very least, to make any headway Juhle would need proof that Staci was indeed Todd's mother. Cameron had died last summer at the age of twenty-four. Staci had been twenty-two. They would have been sixteen and fourteen, respectively. And they would have met while he was at ski camp. And the closest Hunt could come to that with Staci was in Pasadena, four years ago.

But at least it was someplace.

Hunt had learned in the people-finding business that quite often you started with the easiest, most obvious solution. Still parked in the lot by the Little League field, he punched up information for the Rose Bowl city and not really even bothering to hope, asked for Rosalier, first name unknown. Not exactly Smith, he was thinking. But then the operator said, "I have one listing," and he pushed his star key to get the number, which he scribbled on his pad while listening to the telephone ringing four hundred-odd miles to the south.

"Hello." A cultured woman's voice.

"Hello. Am I speaking to a Ms. or Mrs. Rosalier?"

"Yes, this is Mrs. Rosalier, but if this is a sales call, the dinner hour on Friday night really isn't-"

"Not a sales call! Promise. My name is Wyatt Hunt and I'm a private investigator working out of San Francisco. I'm trying to locate the relatives of a Staci Rosalier. It's really very urgent."

"Staci Rosalier?" The woman paused, her voice harsh when she spoke again. "Is this some sort of prank call? Some twisted joke? I'm going to hang up now."

"No! Please."

But it was too late. She was gone. Immediately, Hunt hit his redial button, heard a busy signal, hung up, and tried one more time with the same result. When after a couple of minutes he calmed down, he started his car and checked the time on the dashboard, still a few minutes short of eight o'clock. The sky was turning dark overhead. Maybe he should go out to the Royal Thai and check to see if Staci had left any references, pass Juhle's house on the way, see if he was home. Or would it be worthwhile, perhaps, after all, to drop in on the Manions?