“Eddie Bonilla,” he’d said, peering past her into the apartment. Then his hand shot out, and she shook it. “I make it a point to know who’s movin’ in.”

“Nice to meet you,” she’d said.

“I already practically know you—you work down at Slough, Hawley, right? You’re the one they call Scout.”

This had surprised her. “How do you know that?”

“I know everything,” he told her, with a corny wink, and a heh-heh cackle. Then he explained who he was and what he did. “I’m one of your ‘resources.’”

“Why do they call you ‘Scout,’?” Mrs. Spears asked.

Adrienne was embarrassed. “I don’t know. It’s just a nickname.”

Bonilla scoffed. “She’s being modest,” he said. “See, this law firm where Adrienne works, it’s stuffed with Georgetown grads. And the way I hear it, there was this big shot professor—”

Adrienne blushed. “I don’t think Mrs. Spears—”

But Bonilla held up a hand and gave her a look. “There was this big shot professor who teaches—what? torts or something, right?”

Adrienne sighed. “Right.”

“So one day he’s not happy with the class, and he’s giving them a lot of grief. ‘Cause they didn’t do dick—you’ll pardon my French. Like they weren’t prepared. Except for Scout here, who’s always prepared!”

Mrs. Spears blinked, uncertain if that was the end of the anecdote.

“Get it?” Bonilla asked. “‘Always prepared.’ Like a Boy Scout, except—”

Mrs. Spears lit up with a smile. “Oh!” she said.

“So naturally, the name sticks.” He gave Adrienne a fond look. “Scout,” he said.

Adrienne shook her head. “You really do know everything.”

He shot a finger toward her and pulled the trigger. “Better believe it.”

After she’d participated in a couple of his neighborhood patrols, they’d become—well, friendly. Eddie helped Mrs. Spears with minor repairs from time to time, and he’d even helped Adrienne fix the windshield wipers on her ancient Subaru (or, as he called it: “the Japmobile”).

She called up her address book on the computer, found the number, and left a message on Bonilla’s answering machine. He had a pager and a mobile phone as well—Eddie had every gadget in the book—but she didn’t bother. He was famous for checking his messages.

Forty-five minutes later, he called back.

“What’s up?” he asked, as if he were her only phone call of the day.

“I was just wondering,” she said, abandoning a textbook on civil engineering.

“Yeh?”

“Yes. I was wondering if… if you could do some work for me.”

A short silence. And then: “Like what?”

“Well, it’s about my sister—”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that—that was a helluva thing. I meant to tell you how sorry I was, but… What do you have in mind? Is it the will, or—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s—well, there are a couple of things.”

“Such as what?”

In the ten days since Nikki had died, Adrienne had used what little spare time she had, or could steal, to put her sister’s affairs in order. And very quickly, it had become apparent that rather a lot of money was missing.

“You do asset searches, right?”

“Yeah,” Bonilla said. “You lose something?”

“Actually? About half a million dollars.”

“Ouch.”

“My sister had an accident. (A few years ago—in Germany.) And there was a settlement.”

“And you can’t find it?”

“I haven’t had a lot of time to look—I’ve been so busy. But… no.”

“What about her bankbooks?”

“She had a checking account with about two thousand dollars in it, and a savings account with… I think there’s fifteen K—but that’s it. Maybe she had another account—she must have had another account—but I don’t know where to look.”

“So how do you know she had this money? I mean, half a mil… ?”

“She told me about it. It’s what she lived on. She didn’t have a job. And I was thinking, maybe she had it in stocks, or life insurance—an annuity. Could you find that out, if she did?”

Bonilla clicked the tip of his tongue against his palate, making a sort of clicking sound. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I could do that. No sweat.”

“Oh, that’s great—”

“You said there were two things…”

Adrienne hesitated for a moment, and then plunged in. “The other thing is: I’m thinking of bringing suit against her therapist.”

Bonilla’s grunt had a skeptical tone.

“There are malpractice issues—” Adrienne began, but Bonilla cut her off.

“I gotta be honest with ya, Scout. Sometimes, people get caught up in what they call ‘the grief process,’ y’know? And they go looking to blame somebody—”

“I’m not looking to blame anyone, Eddie. Her fucking therapist killed her.”

“Well, ‘killed her’—”

“The ‘memories’ Nikki ‘recovered’? There wasn’t anything to them. It was all a fantasy. I know, because I was there.”

Another grunt. “What kinda memories?” Bonilla asked.

Adrienne wasn’t sure how to put it. “Crazy stuff.”

“Like what?”

She took a deep breath. “Nikki thought she’d been abused.”

Adrienne could hear Bonilla thinking about it. Finally, he said, “So? It happens. Even in the best of families.”

“By Satanists.”

“Oh.” When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “You mean, with hoods and stuff?”

“Yeah. Hoods and candles and I don’t know what—goats’ heads.”

“Jeez…”

“It was supposed to have happened to me, too, but—believe me, you’d remember this stuff.”

“And you don’t.”

“No,” Adrienne replied. “I don’t.”

“And you think her therapist—”

“—invented it all.”

“Hunh! And why do you suppose he’d do that?”

“I don’t know. But it happens.”

“Yeah. That’s what I hear,” Bonilla said. And then: “I could see how maybe you wouldn’t want to tell, I mean if it was your old man or something—you’d probably get pretty bent out of shape, on account of the perversion and all. But not remembering—I got trouble with that. The way I see it, something like that happens, you got trouble forgetting it, not the other way around.”

“Exactly, and—”

“The thing is: what’s in it for this guy?” Bonilla asked. “The therapist, I mean. What’s he get out of it?”

“Two things. First, Nikki left him money in her will. For helping her, right? Second, I did some searches on the Web. There’s actually a false memory group—parents, mostly, and family members—who say the accusations against them are nonsense, that therapists want clients to believe this kind of junk—”

“Why?”

“Because—it means more therapy. I want to take this guy to court—make an example of him.”

“And I’m gonna help you… how?”

“I want you to investigate him, find out if there are any complaints on file—that kinda thing.”

“So, we’re talkin’… what? Basic stuff. Credentials, credit rating? Like that?”

“Exactly.”

Bonilla was silent for a moment, and then said. “I can do that. But—”

“Nikki left me a little money. I can tap into it.”

“That’s not the point.”

“But it is! Of course I’ll pay!”

“Yeah, but—”

“Really, Eddie, I insist!”

He waited a few seconds, and then he said, “What I was gonna ask was: do you have a budget?”

“Oh.” She thought about it, suddenly embarrassed. “Would a thousand dollars—”

Bonilla laughed. “I’m pullin’ your leg! I’ll do it for expenses.” Once again, Adrienne began to protest, but he cut her off. “So whatta you have on the guy?”

She told him. Name and address. Telephone number.

“You got a Social?”

“No,” she replied, “but—I saw his diplomas.”

“You what?”

“I saw his diplomas.”

“You went there?”

“… uh-huh.”

A sad sigh on the other end of the line. “What’d you do that for? So you could scream at him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” Bonilla replied. “So where’d this turkey go to school?”