MILO CAME BACK shaking his head. "Nothing—maybe she kept her pills in her purse."

I said, "Here's something," showed him the inscription, told him about the ad that had run before Shawna Yeager's disappearance.

"Ads probably run all the time."

"Not really," I said. "From what I saw, they tend to come and go."

"Did you find any ads before Lauren went missing?"

"No, but she could've seen it elsewhere." It sounded feeble, and both of us knew it. He was enough of a friend not to dismiss me, but his silence was eloquent.

"I know," I said. "Two girls, a year apart, no striking links. But maybe there were other girls in between."

"Blondes disappearing on the Westside? I'd know if there were. At this point I'm not eliminating anything, but I've got a full plate right now: get hold of Lauren's phone records, find out if she had a computer, look for possible witnesses to a pickup. Maybe find some known associates too. There's got to be someone other than Salander and her mom who knew her. If all that dead-ends, I'll take a closer look at Shawna." He returned the textbook to me. "'Dr. D.' You're sure that's you?"

"Theoretically it could be one of her professors—Gene Dalby or another one named de Maartens. Neither of them remembers her. Big lecture classes."

"Well," he said, "I can't exactly interrogate them because of this—hell if it means anything at all. The main thing's still the money. Her job and the way she was killed—cold, professional, the body left out there, maybe as a warning—smacks to me of her getting in someone's way. That's why I'm not jumping on the Yeager girl's case—Leo Riley felt that one was sexual. If Lauren deposited fifty a year, who knows how much she was taking in. And that makes me wonder if some of her income came from supplemental sources. Like blackmail. Who better than a call girl to hoard nasty secrets and try to profit from them."

"That would also be reason to make off with her computer."

"Precisimoso. Big bucks at stake. College profs don't exactly fit the bill."

"Some college profs are independently wealthy. Actually, Gene Dalby is."

"You keep mentioning him. Something about him bug you?"

"Not at all," I said. "Old classmate, tried to be helpful."

"Okay, then—onward."

"So we just let the intimacy project lie? This might be a current number."

He took the book back, produced his cell phone, muttered, "Probably gonna get ear cancer," and punched in the number. Nothing in his eyes told me he'd connected, but as he listened he groped in his pocket for his pad, wrote something down, hung up.

"'Motivational Associates of Newport Beach,'" he said. "Friendly female voice: 'Our hours are ten A.M. to blah blah blah.' Sounds like one of those marketing outfits."

"Intimacy and marketing," I said.

"Why not? Intimacy sells product. Lauren sure would've known that. So this was a moonlight for her. She liked money, took another part-time gig. Make sense?"

"Perfect sense."

"Look," he said, "feel free to follow up on it. Call the other professor too—de whatever-his-name-is. Something bugs you, let me know. Right now what bugs me is no computer. I need a ride back to the station to pick up my car, see if any messages came in, then I'm packing it in. You up for chauffeur duty, or should I lean on one of the boys in blue?"

"I'll drive you," I said.

"What a guy," he said airily as he strode out of the room. As we left the apartment he said, "I'm really sorry the way this turned out."

Nine o'clock the next morning, I phoned Dr. Simon de Maartens at home, and he picked up, sounding distracted. When I introduced myself his voice chilled.

"I already returned your call."

"Thanks for that, but there are still a few questions—"

"Questions?" he said. "I told you I don't remember the girl."

"So you have no memory of her talking to you about doing some research."

"Research? Of course not. She was an undergrad, only grad students are permitted into my lab. Now—"

"The perception course Lauren took from you," I said. "Did the class subdivide into smaller discussion groups?"

"Yes, yes—that's typical."

"Would it be possible to get a list of the students in Lauren's section?"

"No," he said. "It would not be possible— You claim to be faculty and you are asking for something like that? That is appalling— What is your involvement in all this?"

"I knew Lauren. Her mother's going through hell, and she asked me to be involved."

"Well . . . I'm sorry about that, but it's a confidentiality issue."

"Being enrolled in a study section is confidential?" I said. "Not the last time I checked the APA ethics code."

"Everything about academic freedom is confidential, Dr. Delaware."

"Fine," I said. "Thanks for your time. The police will probably be getting in touch with you."

"Then I will tell them exactly the same thing."

Click.

Something bugs you, let me know.

I called Milo. No answers at home, in the car, or at his desk. I told his voice mail: "De Maartens was not helpful. He bears attention."

A live woman answered at Motivational Associates of Newport Beach, informing me in a bored-to-death singsong that the office was closed.

"Is this the answering service?"

"Yes, sir."

"When does the office open?"

"They're in and out."

"Is there another office?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where?"

"L.A."

"Do you have the number?"

"One moment, I have to take another call."

She put me on hold long enough for me to wonder if the line had gone dead. Finally, she came back on with a 310 phone number. I called it and got her partner in ennui.

"The office is closed."

"When will it be open?"

"I don't know, sir—this is the service."

"What's the office's address, please?"

"One moment, I have to take another call."

I hung up and looked it up in the phone book.

The twelve thousand block of Wilshire Boulevard put Motivational Associates' L.A. branch in Brentwood, just east of Santa Monica. A couple of miles from the U and even closer to the Sepulveda alley where Lauren's body had been found.

But no sense dropping by and confronting a bolted door. I booted up the computer and plugged in "Motivational Associates."

Three hits, the first a four-year-old article from the Chicago Tribune about a South Side shelter for battered women and the services it offered. Residential care, medical consultation, individual counseling, group therapy "provided by Motivational Associates, a private consulting group that offers pro bono services, particularly in the area of human relations." The gist of the article was human-interest coverage of several abused women who'd gained emotional strength, and the firm's participation earned no further mention.

The second reference was a shortened version of the Trib piece, picked up by the wire services and distributed nationally. Number three was an Eastern Psychological Association abstract of a paper presented two years ago at a regional convention in Cambridge. "Buffington, Sandra, Lindquist, Monique, and Dugger, B. J. The Multidimensional Assessment of Intimacy: Factor Analysis of the Personal Space Grid Index (PSGI) and Self-Report Measures of Locus of Control, Trait Anxiety, Personal Attractiveness, Self-Concept and Extroversion."

So much for racy research.

The authors' affiliations were University of Chicago for Buffington and Lindquist and Motivational Associates, Inc. for B. J. Dugger.

Dr. D.

I pulled out my American Psychological Association directory and looked up Dugger, betting on a woman. Barbara Jean, Barbara Jo—

Benjamin John. Not the day for me to play the ponies.

Dugger's birth date made him thirty-seven. He'd earned a B.A. in psychology from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, at the age of twenty-one and a Ph.D. in social psychology from the U of Chicago ten years later. Postdoctoral fellowship at UC, San Diego, then a two-year lapse until his first—and only—job: Director, Motivational Associates of Newport Beach, California. Areas of specialty: quantitative measurement of social distance and applied motivational research. The address he'd listed was on Balboa Boulevard, in Newport, and the number was the 714 I'd just called.

Not a clinician, so no need for a state license. That made checking with the Board of Psychology for disciplinary actions a waste of time. I called anyway. Zero.

I tried a pocketful of area codes for residential listings for Dr. Benjamin J. Dugger. Nothing. Scanning his name on the Internet pulled up only the same abstract of the Cambridge paper, which I reread.

Jargon and numbers and high-powered statistics, the arcane nutrients of tenure. Nothing remotely sexy.

Still, it had been Dugger's number listed in Lauren's book, and as much as I disliked de Maartens, that made Dugger the prime candidate for "Dr. D." And he'd been running his ad during the time Shawna Yea-ger disappeared. Milo was probably right about there being no link between the cases, but still . . .

I thought about it some more. Dugger's bio was about as provocative as the owner's manual for a plow.

Weaker than weak. I reread the bio and something shot out at me.

Two time lapses: ten years between his bachelor's degree and his doctorate, another two between finishing school and taking his first job.

Nice first job. Most new Ph.D.'s enter the job market burdened by debt and are forced to accept temporary lectureships and entry-level slots. Benjamin J. Dugger had disappeared for two years, only to return in an executive position.

Offices in Newport Beach and Brentwood. A company sufficiently capitalized to offer free services. And what did personal-space research have to do with battered women?

It added up to money.

Some college profs are independently wealthy.

Simon de Maartens's hostility made me wonder about his financial situation. Time to learn more about both Dr. D's.

The Ovid files at the U's research library spit out forty-five publications for de Maartens, all on the psychophysics of vision in primates. He was thirty-three, and there were no lapses in his professional life: B.A. at twenty from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Oxford doctorate in experimental psychology at twenty-five, two-year postdoc at Harvard, where he served a three-year lectureship, then assistant professorship at the U and fast-track promotion two years later to associate. The usual society memberships and more than a handful of academic honors, including a grant and a service award from the Braille Institute—perhaps his chimp research offered human possibilities.

Benjamin J. Dugger had been less prolific: five articles, none more recent than two years ago, all in the same dry vein. The last three had been coauthored with Barbara Buffington and Monique Lindquist, the first two had been solos—summaries of Dugger's first-year graduate research study and dissertation: measuring personal space in hooded rats subjected to varying degrees of social deprivation. The dates allowed me to fix his graduate studies as beginning four years prior to receiving his Ph.D. That still left a six-year question mark between Clark University and Chicago.

Having nowhere else to go, I phoned both institutions and verified his degrees with the alumni associations. So far, nothing suspicious. Why should there be? I was groping.

Thinking about Lauren's body tumbling out of the dumpster, I calledChicago again and asked for Professor Buffington or Lindquist. The former was on sabbatical in Hawaii, but a woman answered Lindquist's extension with a high, bright "This is Monique."

"Professor, this is Mr. Lew Holmes from Western News Service. We've come across an article about some work you and your colleagues did on personal space and were wondering if one of you could talk to us about a piece we're putting together on dating in the nineties."

"I don't think so," she said, laughing. "That research was pretty e............