“Oh, good Lord, Heather, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Her daughter shrugged and smiled maddeningly at her.

“Are you going to be in for dinner?” Eleanor’s mother asked. “I should tell Mrs. Flaherty if you are.”

“I don’t know. I think I might be going out again.” Now why did I say that? she wondered. “Anyway, I’m going up to change. I’ll see you in a minute. Heather, get out of your uniform. And have you done your homework yet?” Without waiting for replies or excuses, she fled from the scene, feeling slightly more as if her maternal conscience had been eased.

The phone started ringing as she opened the door to the third-floor apartment. She dashed up the stairs and grabbed it in a slide that would have done a first baseman proud. Her hello was so breathless as to be incoherent, but it elicited the right sort of response.

“Hello. Sorry I didn’t call before, but things have been going crazy around here.” Sanders’ tone became tentative. “I know it’s early, but how about dinner? Everything I was working on has suddenly collapsed. I might as well knock off.”

Eleanor hesitated, searching for the right reaction. “Why not?” she answered casually. “We all have to eat. Shall I meet you somewhere? Or are you going to swoop up here in a police car and convince my neighbours I’ve been arrested?”

“I think I’d better come and get you. You don’t drive very well as the evening progresses, I seem to remember. And I have a responsibility about these things,” he answered coolly. “Is 6:30 too early?”

“No—I’m starving already. Should I get dressed up?”

“I thought we’d go to the Pallas—if you like—and that’s hardly dinner-jacket country.”

That was a low blow. The Pallas had tender associations from her first encounters with him; his comment jolted her out of her cool breeziness. “That sounds—lovely,” she said. “I’ll meet you downstairs at 6:30.”

She showered and dressed in a casual pair of pants and a large shirt. It wasn’t quite the track suit she usually wandered around in when she wasn’t in working dress, but at least it was comfortable enough to enable her to deal with John Sanders. She certainly didn’t want to be struggling along all evening in a tight skirt and hobbling high heels. She bade farewell once again to her daughter, thinking she could have tried to look a little crushed that her mummy was going out, and went out to wait for John in the late April sun. She shivered in the chill wind. Life seemed a little too perfect this evening; something was bound to go wrong. She waved over the shaggy hedge of bridal wreath at Kate Abbott, who was just coming home, and slowly walked down the long drive to the street.

The restaurant was as warm, the food as comforting as she remembered. Eleanor took a sip of her Retsina and smiled. Then she complained, “You haven’t asked me about all my earth-shattering discoveries of Saturday night. What’s the use of having an informant if she doesn’t inform?”

“Sorry about that,” he said, in his most offhand way. “Did you find out anything earth-shattering? I spent quite a bit of time with Mr. Keswick myself over the weekend, and he didn’t strike me at the time as a very useful source of information. And we seem to be chasing another rabbit right now.”

“Who’s that?”

“Her old boyfriend from home. As soon as the story broke in the newspapers, he ran. And we haven’t found a trace of him—he’s not at home, at her uncle’s farm, at any of his friends’, or on the highways in between. The O.P.P. have been looking for his car all day. If he’d been driving around, they’d probably have spotted him. I wasn’t around on Sunday when the report came in, and none of those bleeding idiots thought he was that important, so they left him for me this morning.” He glared at Eleanor as if she had been personally responsible for letting him get away and then laughed and poured some more Retsina in her glass. “So what did you find out about Mr. Keswick? Am I grinding my molars over the wrong man?”

“Not very much, actually. He was deep in conversation with some politician for a long time, but before I could creep over and hear what they were talking about, Stephen—remember Susan’s creepy boyfriend, Stephen?—jumped me and it took me forever to get rid of him.”

“Did you catch the politician’s name?”

“Paul Wilcox. I didn’t recognize him, although the name sounds familiar. Grant said that they were discussing Arts Council grants.”

“Could be. He’s an up-and-coming type in government these days. Every time you look around he’s on some commission or other.” He reached for her hand. “Thank you. You did your best and they probably weren’t discussing anything important. Do you remember the last time we did this?” Eleanor nodded, making an indeterminate noise in her throat. “I went back to your place and got hit on the head.”

“I remember that,” said Eleanor, grinning in spite of herself.

“Perhaps we should go back to my place then,” he said lightly. “And just to prove how honourable my intentions were, you’ll discover that I made no attempt to clean up this morning. At that point I had no plans to try to lure you back there.”

“And just when did your plans become dishonourable?”

“I think when I saw you walk through the garden in the sunshine. I always seem to connect you with gardens. They suit you.” He looked at her for a moment longer. “Why don’t we forget dessert and coffee. I’ll make you coffee at my place. It’s one of my secret domestic skills.”

Eleanor stood by the window in the darkened apartment and looked over the magnificence of the city by night, and the thick blackness of the lake in the distance. “This is spectacular, John. How did you find it?”

“Luck, really. I got the tag-end of someone’s lease. The place does have certain disadvantages. Because of its location, I have to share it with the upper-income-bracket pimp-and-hooker population. That sort of makes me feel at home—like my days on Vice. All those familiar faces.” He moved over behind her and put his hands very lightly on her shoulders. “Eleanor, do come here,” he said softly. She turned quickly and found herself clinging tightly to him, astonished at the ease with which her emotions could betray her. She had intended—if she had had any intentions—to keep this evening light and chatty, giving herself time to sort out her annoyance at having been dumped unceremoniously last year and then picked up again like an old half-read novel. Now, between the trembling of her knees and the uncertainty in her voice she couldn’t have formed a coherent sentence to save her life. And she was clutching him with the intensity and determination not to let go you might find in a large, hungry dog with a very juicy bone. They sank in a tangle on the somewhat crowded couch.

“You know,” John remarked some time later, looking down at her tousled head and remnants of clothing, “there is a bed. Over there in the bedroom. It has a view of the lake, too. Come on.” He heaved himself off the couch, removed his arm from the one sleeve of his shirt that he still had on, and dragged her to her feet and into the apartment’s other tiny room.

“I would like you,” said Eleanor, stretching luxuriously on the unmade bed a few minutes later, “to admire my belly muscles. They have cost me a great deal of sweat and agony—and I feel I deserve some sort of reward for the effort.”

“Impressive,” he murmured, as he lit a candle. “Now, can I get you some coffee—or beer, maybe, or there may be wine, and since Dubinsky was here, there’s something left in a bottle of rye. And take off that shirt. You look much better without it; besides, partially dressed women are beginning to make me nervous.”

“Sure.” Eleanor shrugged herself out of her shirt. “And I’ll have a beer, I think. We’ll leave Dubinsky the rest of his rye.” Sanders retreated to the tiny kitchen and returned with bottles, glasses, and opener. “Speaking of Dubinsky, which we really weren’t, I suppose, what makes you so un-Dubinsky-like?”