He stopped and turned around. “Whaa?”

She gave him a sweet smile. “Do you think people won’t believe me?” she said. “See you in Boston.”

She turned and walked down the hall, leaving Stevie standing there wishing he had never heard the name Doyle.

STEVIE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING about what had happened downstairs until everyone had written and filed their stories and they were on their way home in Kelleher’s car.

“So, now they’re resorting to blackmail,” Tamara said when Stevie had finished.

“But it can’t work,” Susan Carol said. “No one will believe a story like that.”

“As a matter of fact, there are people who will believe it,” Kelleher said. “But being accused of getting a little forward on a date isn’t that big a deal on today’s gossip meter. Stevie, you’re going to have to suck it up and just tell your side if it comes to that and not worry about what people think.”

“Great,” Stevie said. “My parents will be so proud.”

“Mine too, if it comes to that,” Susan Carol said.

Tamara’s cell phone rang. She looked at the number for a second and then answered.

“What’s up, Chico?” she said.

Stevie knew that Chico Harlan was the Post’s Nationals beat writer. Tamara listened for a minute, rolled her eyes, and said, “Hang on a sec.”

Holding her hand over the phone, she said, “According to Chico, several people went to talk to Doyle after the clubhouse incident. He said he had been telling you to stay away from his daughter, to stop calling her all the time.”

“That didn’t take long,” Stevie said.

“They can’t not write it,” Tamara said. “It’ll just be a note, but he wants to know if Stevie has any comment.”

Stevie looked at Kelleher, who looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Tell him that Stevie says, ‘This isn’t worthy of comment.’”

Tamara put the phone back to her ear and said, “ Chico, Stevie says, ‘This isn’t worthy of comment-for the moment.’”

After she hung up, Kelleher said, “That’s a better answer. Lets people know there will be some kind of response coming.”

Stevie felt a little bit better, but not much.

He called his parents the next day and filled them in. His dad had read a note in the Philadelphia Inquirer similar to Harlan’s except that it said he couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Maybe you should come home instead of going to Boston,” Bill Thomas said to his son. “It wouldn’t be awful if you got back to school a couple days sooner, you know.”

About the only thing Stevie was dreading more than Boston was going back to school. “No thanks, Dad, I’m going to go to Boston,” he said.

His dad didn’t argue. “Tell Bobby I expect him to keep an eye on you around the clock the rest of the way,” he said.

“I’ll tell him,” Stevie said, intending to do nothing of the sort.

The flight back to Boston went smoothly, but when Stevie turned his phone back on in the airport, there were thirty-four messages for him. People had gotten his number and were looking for a follow-up on his brief no-comment to Harlan. Kelleher rolled his eyes when Stevie told him.

“You can answer all of them at once when we get to the ballpark tomorrow,” he said. “Nothing before that. The clubhouses will be closed when we get there, and they’ll all probably come at you when you walk onto the field. You’ll deal with it then.”

“What am I going to say?” Stevie asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” Kelleher admitted.

The four of them were sitting in Tamara and Bobby’s room back at the Marriott Long Wharf, which had a wonderful view of Boston Harbor. Stevie found it hard to believe it was only six days ago that they had sat in this same hotel getting ready for the series to begin.

“The bigger question is, how do we nail down this story?” Susan Carol said. “We can’t write it without talking to Doyle, can we?”

“No, we can’t,” Kelleher said. “In fact, until we talk to Doyle, I’m not even sure there is a story.”

“What do you mean?” Stevie asked.

Kelleher shrugged. “I can understand why the cops didn’t go after him, and I’m not sure we should go after him either. His wife died-he has to live with that forever. If he admits he was drinking and tells us that the movie of his life isn’t going to make up a second car or make him out to be innocent…”

“If there’s a movie,” Tamara put in.

“Right,” Kelleher said. “If he admits it, I’m not sure we write it.”

“What if he keeps lying?”

“Then we have two cops on the record saying he was drinking that night. Maybe then we have to write it, I don’t know. But first we have to talk to him.”

Tamara said, “May be easier said than done. Doyle may have wanted to confront Stevie last night, but I’m sure Felkoff will advise him not to talk to us about the night of the accident. Too much to lose, not a lot to gain. Felkoff-jerk that he is-should be smart enough to know there’s no story unless we talk to him again.”

“Felkoff may be talking to Norbert about all this, but he’s probably not talking to David and Morra much,” Susan Carol said. “What if I talked to David again?”

“Have you two still been talking?” Tamara asked, an instant before Stevie could ask the same question.

“No,” she said. “Not since Saturday. He sent me a text yesterday saying he knew I had gone with Stevie to Lynchburg and that he was very disappointed in me. I wrote back that I had not broken my word to him. That’s the last I’ve heard from him.”

“So, what do you propose?” Bobby said.

“I could ask for a meeting. Just the two of us. Try to make him understand we aren’t out to get his dad or him or Morra, but we need to talk, we need to know the truth.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Bobby said. “With all due respect to your ability to charm people, Susan Carol, even if he thinks it’s a good idea, Felkoff won’t.”

“So, what do we do then?” Susan Carol asked.

Stevie had been quiet throughout the conversation. Now he sat up straight. “How about if we bluff them?” he said.

“What do you mean?” Bobby said.

“What if we sit down and write the story-everything we know. Then Susan Carol calls David and asks for a meeting with him and Morra. We present the story to them and say it’s going in the paper on Thursday and that his dad has until Wednesday to tell us his side.”

Stevie looked at Tamara.

“It might work,” she said.

“We still have to try to call Doyle first,” Kelleher said. “Just straight-out say we need to talk to him.”

“What if he says no or doesn’t respond?” Stevie asked.

“Then maybe we go with your plan,” Kelleher said.

“Do you think Doyle and Felkoff would know it’s a bluff?” Stevie said.

“I don’t think they can afford to take the chance, do you?” Tamara said.

Kelleher nodded. “You might be right.”

He picked up the phone, called the Ritz-Carlton, and left a message for Doyle. He looked at Susan Carol. “In the meantime,” he said, “why don’t you give David a call.”

She took out her phone and began punching buttons. Even though he completely believed her when she said nothing had happened that day on the Freedom Trail, Stevie was very relieved to see that David Doyle was not on Susan Carol’s speed dial.

Not surprisingly, Susan Carol got his voice mail. She left a message telling David, “It’s very important that you call me about the story Stevie and I are writing right now.”

“That should get a response,” she said.

Only it didn’t. The afternoon passed with no answer from either Norbert Doyle or David Doyle. Kelleher called John Dever to ask him to please pass a message to Doyle. An hour later Dever called him back. “Norbert says he’s got no interest in talking to you guys,” Dever said. “I’m sorry, I did try.”

Shortly before they left for dinner, Susan Carol sent David a text saying the same thing as the phone message. They ate at a very crowded, very loud-but very good-restaurant called Grill 23.