As MINDY RETURNED to her office the corridor filled with people.

Milo said, "That Chinese food made me thirsty."

We rode a crowded elevator down to the med school cafeteria. Amid the clatter of trays and the odors of mass fodder, we bought Cokes and settled at a rear table. Behind us was a cloudy glass wall looking out to an atrium.

"So," he said. "Mindy."

"Not a terrific liar," I said. "Her complexion wouldn't cooperate, and she was squeezing that pen hard enough to break it. Especially when she talked about the photos. Adam Green said they were loose black-and-whites, not magazine pages. Mindy tried to make him out as some nut, but he seemed pretty credible to me. And Mindy's explanation makes no sense. Why would her boyfriend keep skin mags in her room? Green wondered if both Shawna and Mindy had followed up on a solicitation to pose. That would explain Mindy's nervousness."

He nodded. "Especially now that she's an old married woman."

"You didn't press her on it."

"I felt I'd gone as far with her as I could. For the time being. Even if Shawna did pose for nudies, there's no proof it was really a Duke gig, and not some con man with a business card. Fact is, I can't see Duke using some psycho photographer—too much at stake. And I can't exactly march into Tony's corporate headquarters and demand access to the photo archives."

His beeper went off. He read the number, cell-phoned, couldn't get a connection, and stepped outside the cafeteria. When he returned he said, "Guess who that was? Lyle Teague. Mommy doesn't call me, but Daddy does."

"What did he want?"

"Have I gotten anywhere, was there anything he could do? Forcing himself to be polite—you could just about see his hands clench through the phone lines. Then he slips in a question about Lauren's estate. Who's in charge, what's going to happen to her stuff, do I know who's handling her finances?"

"Oh, man."

He shook his head. "The vulture circles. When I told him I had no idea about any of that, he started to get testy. Poor Lauren, growing up with that. Sometimes I think your job's worse than mine."

He bought another Coke, emptied the can.

I said, "The one thing Mindy did confirm was Shawna's attraction to older men. That and a Duke angle—real or not—does provide a possible link between her and Lauren."

"Dugger," he said.

"Older man, rich, smart. A psychologist, no less. He fits Shawna's list. And talk about business cards—he's got paternity to back it up. For all we know he uses the magazine as a lure. Same for the intimacy study."

"Double life, huh? Mr. Clean by day, God knows what after hours?"

"Even by day he's strange," I said. "He has no current clients but keeps that lab going. Putting people in a strange little room and measuring how close they get to each other. Sounds more like voyeurism than science to me. And he was running ads prior to both Shawna's and Lauren's disappearances."

"His staff said Shawna had never been to Newport."

"So he destroyed records. Or met Shawna another way. Taking glam pictures, or he used some other premise. Mindy said Shawna got all dressed up for that weekend thing back home. She didn't buy the story, assumed the obvious: a date. Shawna was eighteen years old, hungry for the finer things, talked openly about digging older guys. It wouldn't take a genius to seize upon that and exploit it. And here's something else to think about: A year has passed between Shawna's disappearance and Lauren's death, but that doesn't mean there've been no victims in the interim."

"I checked for that," he said. "Right after you told me about Shawna. No obvious similars."

"Things happen," I said. "Stuff no one knows about. Especially when there's money involved."

He didn't answer. But he didn't argue.

We left the Med Center and walked to the no parking zone in front, where he'd left the unmarked. A parking ticket flapped under the windshield wipers. He crumpled it and tossed it in the car's backseat.

I said, "At the very least, it would be worth talking to Shawna's mother. She might be able to confirm or deny the weekend event in Santo Leon. Maybe she's still working at the Hilton."

"Someone else to make miserable," he said. "Yeah, yeah, let's blow by. After that, I'm heading out to Sherman Oaks to see Jane Abbot. Happy Mother's Day."

The Beverly Hilton sits at the western edge of Beverly Hills, just east of where the L.A. Country Club begins its dominance of Wilshire. The drive from Westwood was five minutes. The hotel's personnel office was cooperative but careful, and it took a while to find out that Agnes Yeager had left the Hilton's employ nine months ago.

"She didn't stay long," said Milo. "Problems?"

"No problems at all," said the assistant personnel manager, Esai Valparaiso, a small, friendly man in a tight brown suit. "We didn't dismiss her, she just left." Valparaiso's thumb flicked the edge of the folder. "Without notice, it says here."

"Any idea where she went?"

"No, sir, we don't follow them."

"And her job was to clean rooms."

"Yes, sir—she was a Housekeeper One."

"Could I have her most recent address?"

Valparaiso's hands spread atop his desk. "I hope she hasn't done anything that reflects upon the hotel."

"Not unless grief's bad for your image."

"Twelve hundred Cochran," Milo said, reading the slip as we headed for the car. "The place Mindy told us about." He plugged Agnes Yeager's name into DMV. "No wants, warrants, violations, but the address is back in Santo Leon."

"Maybe she gave up, moved back."

He got the area code for the farm town, called Information. "Not listed— Okay, let's have a look at Cochran."

The apartment was a six-unit dingbat just south of Olympic, on the east side of the street. White-stucco box faced with blue diamonds, remnants of sparkle paint glinting at the points, an open carport packed with older sedans, and a spotless concrete yard where there should've been lawn. No Yeager on the mailbox in front, and we were about to leave when an old black man leaning on a skinny chromium cane limped out of the front unit and waved.

His skin was the color of fresh eggplant, shaded to pitch where a wide-brimmed straw hat blocked the sun. He wore a faded blue work shirt buttoned to the neck, heavy brown twill trousers, and bubble-toed black work shoes with mirror-polished tips.

"Sir," said Milo.

Tip of the hat. "So who did what to who, Officers?" The cane slanted forward as he limped toward us. We met him midway to the carport.

Milo said, "We're looking for Agnes Yeager, sir."

Cracked gray lips canted downward. "Agnes? Is this about her daughter? Something finally happen with that?"

"You know about her daughter."

"Agnes talked about it," said the man. "To anyone who'd listen. I'm around all the time, so I ended up doing lots of listening." Bracing himself on the cane, he held out a horned hand, which Milo grasped. "William Perdue. I pay the mortgage on this place."

"Detective Sturgis, Mr. Perdue. Nice to meet you. You're talking about Mrs. Yeager in the past tense. When did she leave?"

Perdue worked his jaws and placed both hands on the cane. The straw of his hat brim had come loose near the band, and the sunlight poking through cre............