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As I passed through the reception area, I did a detour to the right This was the office where the engineers had their drafting tables John Salkowitz glanced up aton "Can I help you?" "Is Ava Daugherty here someplace?"

"She just left She had soht back"

I took out et in touch with ain by 3:00, feeling hot and gri under things I leton the couch A piercing shriek started up and I juer out of the outside compartment and flipped the switch off Jesus Christ, I’d scared myself to death! The silence onderful I stood there, heart pounding, enjoying the air conditioning the sudden sweat had generated I pattedbreath I shookfor a beer The aparterator I didn’t even have a can of Diet Pepsi

And then I paused,slowly toward the rooerator door and er and flipped it on again, sweeping the roolar alar down I hunkered ona hand carefully into the sound hole in Daniel’s guitar The tiny transer than a matchbox, was affixed to the body of the instrument with tape A chill started at the base of my spine and raced up my body Daniel was somehow con-nected to the case

21

It took me nearly two hours to find the voice-activated tape recorder which turned out to be hidden on the sun porch that fore apartotten in Perhaps he’d picked the lock, as I would have in his place The tape was nehichout the old tape, in-serting this one I couldn’t even re on when he had first appeared It was appalling now to think of all the telephone conversations hein onmachine would have been recorded and passed on, not to thy discussion I’d had with him about the case itself He’d been so interested, so astute in the questions he asked I’d felt so gratified by his attention Looking back, I could see that in his oay he’d tried to warn me All that talk about what a liar he was Had every word he said tothe situation over in my mind Who had put Daniel up to it? Lyda Case perhaps, or ht have run into Daniel, the amoral, the promiscuous, bored and at loose ends, restless and sick of life What difference would it make to him who he betrayed? He’d done rand sche to think of all the information thatin, just by asse my end of telephone conversations Maybe that’s how Andy Motycka had figured out Darcy and I were onto hi had caused him to cut and run Olive’s death hadn’t hit the papers until the day after he disap-peared Had he knoas going to happen? I had to find Daniel

I gathered up his guitar, the trans in the back seat of the car, and then I started cruising the neighborhood, looking for his Rent-A-Ruin I live one block froe California bungalows I started at Cabana Boulevard and circled each block, checking the cars at everythe beach There was no sign of hi with everything else

At 5:00, I finally gave up and went home As usual, I was forced to park several doors away The intense heat of day was yielding to balht ahead The sun had begun to drop and the coht and the sue I was turning in at ht So fetid and rotten I looked back at the street, thinking I’d spot some poor flattened crea-ture on the paveht by the vehicle shrouded by the blue cotton car cover right out in front I hesitated for a er Saliva began to collect invol-untarily on the floor ofbriefly, a fear reaction ofit up off the hood so that I could peer in through the windshield