“Mrs. Crier,” I said, smiling. “It’s good to see you.”

She laughed quietly, waving a perfectly manicured hand in my direction. “Noah. I think it’s okay if you call me Marilyn now. You’re not in high school anymore.”

I shrugged. Old habits. You should always be polite to the parents of the girl you desperately want to have sex with in high school.

The girl behind the bar came over, and Marilyn ordered a glass of white wine. The girl didn’t laugh, but I figured she might be gone awhile trying to find a bottle.

Marilyn eyed the inhabitants at the bar for a moment and then looked at me, clearing her throat. “Are you living down here?”

I recognized the condescension in her voice, but ignored it. “Couple blocks down, on Jamaica.”

“You were a surfer, weren’t you?”

“Still am.”

She nodded, again taking in my appearance. “I guess you are.”

The waitress came back with the glass of wine. I wondered where she found the glass. Marilyn tasted the wine, didn’t spit it out, and placed her purse in her lap, settling in. “I’ll try not to waste your time, Noah,” she said, folding her hands on the table. “Kate is missing.”

Hearing Kate’s name did something to my stomach. I hadn’t seen her since she’d left for college. She’d headed off to Princeton; I’d stayed around to go to San Diego State. In the eleven years since I’d last seen her, I hadn’t forgotten Kate Crier.

“Kate’s missing,” I repeated, turning the beer glass slowly on the table.

Marilyn nodded tersely. “For about a week. She came down for the Fourth. We went to Catalina, did some shopping, things seemed normal.”

Kate and I had gone to the Crier family’s Catalina Island condo on prom night. And she broke my heart there two months later.

“She was supposed to catch a plane to go home to San Francisco on the eighth,” Marilyn continued, the lines at the corners of her mouth tightening. “But she didn’t.”

A dull roar went up from the bar, and I glanced up at the television. Padres had scored. First time in July.

“She didn’t get on the plane?” I asked, looking back to Marilyn.

She shook her head, the pearls in her earlobes jiggling. “No. Randall called when she didn’t arrive in San Francisco.”

“Randall?”

Marilyn took another micro sip from the glass and fixed her eyes on mine. “Kate’s husband.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ah.”

“He’s a doctor in the Bay area,” she said.

She didn’t need to add “and you’re not.” Her tone implied it.

I tried to be mature. “But she didn’t get on the plane?”

Marilyn nodded. “I checked with the airline. She never checked in.”

The crowd at the bar groaned and I glanced up to see the end of the double play finishing the Padres’ half of the inning. That was more like it.

“I got your name from Jack Meyers,” Marilyn told me, leaning slightly forward. “He said you assisted him a year ago. He said you’re very good.”

I’d found Jack Meyers’s wife screwing his attorney after three nights of tailing her. When I told him, he thanked me profusely, placed her clothes in a cardboard box, and lit the box on fire. We watched the burning mass float in his backyard pool as he wrote me a check.

I wondered if it hurt for Marilyn Crier to admit that I was good at something. I knew it had to hurt to be sitting in a bar with me.

“So you want me to find her,” I said, finishing my beer and setting the mug on the table. “Find Kate.”

She stared at me for a moment, perhaps trying to make me squirm like she had when I was in high school. I resisted the urge.

“Noah, I know you don’t like me,” she said, her eyes even and her voice flat. “But you don’t have to like me to help me. I recognized your name when Jack mentioned it. I need an investigator and I figured it might be helpful to have someone do this who knows Kate. Things may not have worked out with Kate way back when…”

“And that just crushed you, didn’t it, Marilyn?” I said, smiling, but not bothering to warm it up. “I mean, I know you just dreamed of having me for a son-in-law.”

She paused for a moment, then folded her hands on the table. “As I was saying, your relationship with Kate didn’t work out. But I know you cared about Kate. And I was hoping that might still count for something.”

Another groan went up at the bar, but I didn’t look up. I stared at Marilyn Crier, but I saw Kate’s face. The one that had made high school bearable for me. The face that I used to look to for sympathy as I sat on the bench during high school basketball games. The face attached to the first female body that I saw naked. The face that crushed me that night on Catalina. The face that was going to let my past do a little ass kicking.

So against my better judgment, I told Marilyn Crier that my caring for her daughter did, in fact, still count for something.

2

I ordered another beer, waited for it to arrive, and then asked Marilyn, “Why would Kate disappear?”

She hesitated and then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Things with Randall are okay?”

She fiddled with one of the gold buttons that ran down the middle of her suit and glanced around the bar. “Randall is wonderful.”

“Not what I asked.”

Marilyn chuckled and shook her head. “Maybe I made a mistake in coming to you, Noah.”

I nodded, thinking the same thing. “I’ve been wondering if I should put that on my business cards.”

She leaned across the table. “Kate loves Randall. You won’t be able to turn this into a ‘win her back’ contest. She loves him.”

I took a long swallow from the beer and stared at her without saying anything. I tried to recall the name of the cartoon superhero who could shoot lasers out of his eyes because, at that moment, I really would’ve liked to use those lasers on Marilyn Crier.

“I am not interested in a ‘win her back’ contest,” I said, finally, setting the glass down and moving closer to the table to meet her gaze. “I’m an investigator, so in order to do the investigating, I normally ask questions.” I paused, watching her lean back, away from me. “I asked if things with Randall were okay because it’s what you ask when a married person disappears. You investigate—there’s that word again—the missing person’s relationships first.”

I sat back in my chair, exhaling and folding my arms across my chest. I momentarily wished I’d had the guts to speak like that to her in high school.

“I’m sorry,” Marilyn said, nodding tersely in my direction. “I was rude.”

“Yeah. You were.”

“It won’t happen again.” She paused and then refolded her hands on the table. “Their marriage is…a work in progress.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means their marriage is no different than anyone else’s. They have their good times and their bad times.”

I stood up, angry with myself for having entertained the thought that I could work for Marilyn Crier. I had hated her in high school, and the eleven years that had passed hadn’t changed my feelings. So much for maturity.