“Doesn’t look like there’s anything else for us here,” I said. “In the morning I think I’ll try another approach-drive up to Eugene, see if I can identify Rob. His family or friends may know something.”

  “All right,” she said, “whatever you think best. But call me tomorrow, midday? Please? Even if you don’t have anything to tell me. I need…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

  We said quick hushed goodbyes, like furtive lovers, and I rang off feeling depressed. In my mind was an image of her-early forties, blonde like her daughter, on the heavy side-sitting tensed by the phone, waiting, alone. She was several years divorced, not seeing anyone right now, and by her own admission a private person who had few friends… all alone with her pain and her dread.

  I got Bartholomew’s wife on the line again and gave her Kerry’s number. I hadn’t told Kerry I was going away from the city, and talking to her always cheered me-two good reasons to call. But not as good as the third reason, which is that I am so hooked on Kerry Wade I need to see her or at least hear her voice as often as a heroin addict needs to ride the white horse.

  She was surprised when I told her where I was, and a little wistful when I said I might be away for three or four days. But the timing, she said, was probably right because she expected to be pretty busy herself the rest of the week.

  “How come?” I asked.

  “New account.” She was a senior copywriter at Bates and Carpenter, San Francisco’s best (to hear her tell it) small ad agency. “Luau Fashions, of Honolulu, owned by an idiot named Arthur Dykstra.”

  “Why an idiot?”

  “He’s one of those people who become successful in spite of themselves. Started on a shoestring five years ago and now he’s the biggest manufacturer of men’s and women’s Hawaiian shirts in the islands. Not the cheap variety; the fancy art deco aloha shirt made out of silk crepe de chine that costs a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. Now he’s expanding his operations to the mainland-that’s why he hired us.”

  “Sounds like a relatively easy sell to me,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “The slogan he’s come up with for his ad campaign. I can’t talk him out of it, and if I have to use it it’s going to drive me crazy. And him out of business inside a year.”

  “What is it?”

  “ ‘Shirt Happens,’ ” she said.

  I burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny. My God, can you believe the man is serious? A pun based on an obscenity to sell fancy Hawaiian shirts to families? Dykstra thinks people will find it ‘charming.’ I’ve told him over and over he’s wrong, Doug Bates has told him over and over, but he just won’t listen. The man is an idiot…”

  I let her rant. She seemed to need a sympathetic ear tonight and I did not feel much like talking about the Allison Shay disappearance or my experiences in Creekside. And just listening to her lifted my spirits-the old tonic working its usual miracle cure.

  Lord, I love that woman. Would have married her by now if she weren’t so dead-set against the concept. Not of a union with me-of the institution itself. She’d had one bad marriage and it had soured her forever, or so she claimed. I had quit proposing to her, but I hadn’t quit on the idea of making her my wife; my campaign these days was much more subtle and clever, and I kept telling myself it was having an effect. She was weakening; it was just a matter of time.

  The irony of this wasn’t lost on me: sex-role reversal, the tough male the one doing the frantic scheming to snare a mate. But it didn’t matter. I was shameless when it came to Kerry Wade. Hell, I’d have had her child if I wasn’t already past the age of male menopause…

  CHAPTER 7

  Andrea, the day-shift waitress at the Modoc Cafe, had the same inner core of cynicism and quiet desperation as Lena, but none of the pleasant veneer. She said, sourly, that she had never laid eyes on Allison Shay or her boyfriend-and when she set my coffee down she did it hard enough to slosh some over into the saucer. No surprise, I thought, that the missing kids hadn’t stopped for breakfast on Saturday morning. They had probably wanted out of Creekside as badly as I did.

  I showed Allison’s photo to some of the other early-morning customers, without results. It was just seven-thirty when I left the cafe. The town had a more friendly aspect at this hour, with few citizens to clutter up its natural beauty. Mist lay among the trees at the higher elevations, had put a sheen of wetness on the streets and sidewalks. It was going to be a nice day, at least so far as the weather went.

  So-north to Oregon and Eugene? The other option was to take Highway 395 south, canvass the four or five other little towns between here and Susanville, and then do the same in Susanville itself; but the Lassen County Sheriff’s Department would already have done that, or be in the process of doing it, and the odds-against were long in any case. I liked the idea of going to Eugene better, even though it meant another long drive. Once I knew who Rob was, it might give me a more definite direction to explore, instead of having to run around scattergun as I was.

  Except for an occasional logging truck, I had the northbound side of the highway pretty much to myself. I was in Alturas, the Modoc County seat, before nine o’clock. I stopped at the sheriff’s office there and spoke to a deputy named Collins. He had nothing to tell me. He’d been in contact with the Lassen sheriff’s department earlier this morning, he said, and so far they hadn’t turned up any leads either.

  “Those kids could have disappeared anywhere between Creekside and the Bay Area,” Collins said. “Doesn’t have to be in one of our counties.”

  “I know it.”

  “Could even be they made it to within a few miles of home before something happened. Down there in your own backyard.”

  I knew that, too. Too well. If that was the case, the chances of my finding Allison and Rob would be a lot slimmer. The Bay Area is a much bigger haystack.

  ***

  From Alturas I took Highway 299 east to Canby and then 139 North into Oregon. I stopped in Klamath Falls for gas, and from a public phone I called Marian Shay. Painful two minutes: we had nothing to tell each other, nothing to trade except more entreaties for more empty reassurances.

  The drive from Klamath Falls to Eugene took a little better than three hours. The weather up here wasn’t half as good as it had been in California. Oregon is a wet state-the University of Oregon’s sports teams are not known as the Ducks for frivolous reasons-and wet was what I encountered: drizzles above Roseburg, steadily increasing rain as I rolled northward. By the time I reached Eugene I was in the midst of a downpour.

  Like a lot of Oregon, Eugene is a green place. That’s your first impression and the one that lingers after you’ve gone away. It lies between the foothills of the Cascade and Coast mountain ranges, and along the Willamette River-the center of a rich agricultural and lumbering region. I’d spent some time there on a case years ago; it had struck me then as a pleasant town to live in despite the weather. I had the same feeling now.

  The house Allison Shay shared with four other female U of O students was on Hilyard just off 22nd, within walking distance of the campus. Neighborhood of older homes, built in the twenties and thirties, many of them now converted into off-campus student housing. Wraparound front porch on Allison’s, gingerbread still clinging tenaciously to its facade. There were no cars in front or in the driveway-nobody home to answer the bell.

  It was a short drive from Hilyard to the city center. The Unicorn Bookstore, where Allison worked part-time, was on Willamette. I had to park a block away and I was damp and dripping when I walked in. Big place, new and used stock of both textbooks and general trade books, packed with students and fussy-looking, untidily dressed older people who might have been teachers or welfare clients. (These days, I thought, is there much economic difference between the two?) The store’s manager was in his early twenties, bespectacled and so chinless it looked as though a bite had been taken out of the lower half of his face. His name was Peverell.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said. “Allison is such a responsible person.” He sounded fussy and much older than his years, like one of his senior customers in training. “Something must have happened to her, don’t you think?”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to speculate.”

  “Neither would I. Did Allison tell you she was going home for a few days?”

  “Yes. She works Saturdays and she asked for last Saturday off. It was short notice but we try to be flexible.”

  “Uh-huh. She give a reason for the sudden trip home?”

  “No,” Peverell said. “But it seemed important to her. She was… excited, I guess you could say.”

  “Did you know she was making the trip with a male friend?”

  “Not until her mother told me.”

  “His name is Rob. You know anyone by that name?”

  “Rob? No, I don’t think so.”

  “You’re sure she never mentioned him?”

  “She’s not one to talk about her private life.”

  “So you don’t know any of her male friends?”

  “Just Gary Oster.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A guy she was dating.”

  “Dating when?”

  “Until recently. I don’t know for how long.”

  “How recently?”

  “I’m not sure. He used to pick her up after work sometimes. I hadn’t seen him in a while and I mentioned it to Allison a couple of weeks ago and she said she wasn’t seeing him anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “It wasn’t any of my business.”

  “What about this Gary Oster? Student at the university?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I barely know him.”

  “Know anybody who does know him?”

  Peverell shook his head. “Just Allison,” he said.

  ***

  Down the block from the Unicorn was a coffee shop. I went in there and drank two cups of decaf and read through today’s issue of the Eugene Register-Guard. There was nothing in it about the disappearance. At five o’clock I loaded myself into the car again and drove back through the steady rain to Hilyard Street.

  A car was now parked in the driveway alongside the big old house, a lemon-yellow Volkswagen bug. The young woman it belonged to turned out to be Karyn Standish (“that’s Karyn with a ‘y’,” she informed me), one of Allison’s roommates. Short and compact in Levi’s and a bulky knit sweater, she led me into an empty front room where a stereo system was giving out with classical music, something moderately dour in keeping with the weather outside. She sat in a loose-hipped sprawl in one of several narrow chairs; I squeezed my hams into another one facing her.

  “It’s really weird, you know?” she said. “I mean, you read about things like this, people just disappearing without a trace, but when it happens to one of your friends…” She hugged herself. “Weird and scary.”

  I nodded. “Ms. Standish, you know that Allison went to California with a male friend-”

  “Actually, I didn’t. Not until her mom told Jeanne-that’s another roommate-on the phone Sunday night.”

  “She must have mentioned she was going away.”

  “The trip, sure. Not that she was going with somebody.”

  “His name is Rob.”

  “Really?” She sat up straighter. “Rob what?”

  “No last name yet. I thought you might be able to supply one.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I don’t know any guy named Rob. Are you sure that’s his name?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Not Bob? I know a couple of Bobs.”

  “I was told it’s Rob. Allison is close-mouthed about her male friends, is she? Even with her roommates?”

  “Oh, she talks about her love life sometimes, when she’s in the right mood. Who doesn’t?”

  I don’t, I thought. “But not about Rob.”

  “No.”

  “How about Gary Oster?”

  “Gary? Sure. They were close for a while.”

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “They broke up.”

  “When?”

  “Six or seven weeks ago.”

  “Why, do you know?”

  “Al wouldn’t say. But I think she’s the one who ended it.”

  “Because she’d met Rob, maybe?”

  “Well, it must be. She’s been going out a lot the past month. We all thought it was just casual stuff, you know, to get over Gary, but it could have been just one guy, somebody new and special.”

  “So new and special she wasn’t ready to talk about him yet.”

  “Right. I guess she wanted to keep him all to herself for a while.”

  “How well do you know Gary Oster?” I asked her.

  Karyn Standish showed me small, sharp teeth in a smile that was half ingenuous and half wicked. “Not as well as I’d like to. He’s a hunk. I still think Al was nuts for letting him go.”

  “How did he take the breakup? Hard?”

  “I think so. He seemed pretty bitter.”

  “Bitter enough to hold a grudge, do something foolish?”

  “… You mean to Al?”

  “Or to Rob. Or to both of them.”

  “Uh-uh, no way. Not Gary.”

  “He bother Allison in any way after the breakup?”

  “What do you mean, bother her?”

  “Keep calling her, keep hanging around.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Would she have told you if he was giving her a hard time?”

  “Probably. Anyhow, we’d have known even if she hadn’t. There’s only one phone here, and one of us would have seen him if he’d been hanging around.”

  “Can you tell me where Oster lives?”

  “One of the frat houses, I think. I’m not sure.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “I don’t think so. His dad’s a doctor. He’s not in pre-med, though. Business major.”

  “Is there any place I might find him, somewhere he goes regularly in the evening?”

  “Well, there’s Porky’s.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pizza parlor over on Pearl. It’s a Ducks hangout… you know, U of O students. I don’t go much myself-I can’t do pizza and beer very often with my figure-but when I do, Gary’s usually there.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Porky’s was big, noisy, garishly lit, and crowded. Half the customers looked to be college students; the other half, at this early hour, were a mix of adults and pre-teens, most of whom seemed to be regulars who were trying their damnedest to live up to the name of the place. There was enough excess body tallow distributed throughout to start a candle factory.

  Gary Oster wasn’t in attendance, not yet. One of the half-dozen college kids manning the pizza ovens and beer spigots knew Oster and said he came in most nights after seven-thirty. I considered having my dinner there while I waited and rejected the idea immediately. Last night’s chicken-fried disaster was enough high-cholesterol food for the week.

  I drove along Pearl until I found a quiet-looking restaurant with only a few cars in its parking lot. Roast chicken and a dinner salad gave the digestive juices something to work on, and allowed me to use up an hour in relative peace. It was a few minutes past eight when I reentered Porky’s.

  The parlor was even noisier and more crowded now, though most of the excess tallow had been replaced by college students who were slimmer and more energetic, if no less hungry and thirsty. Gary Oster was one of them; the employee who knew him pointed him out. He was sitting alone at a two-person table in the rear, a half-full pitcher of dark beer at one elbow, brooding into a mug that he had clenched in both hands. He was a broad-shouldered kid, chunky without being fat, dark-complected, with dark shaggy hair. He didn’t know I was there until I slid into the chair across from him; then his head came up, jerkily. His eyes were dark, too, under rat’s-nest brows, and bright with a combination of hurt and smoldering anger.

  “Gary Oster?” I said.

  “Who the hell’re you?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about-”

  “Go away. I don’t want to talk.”

  “Not even about Allison Shay?”

  He made another jerky movement, this one bowing his body forward so that his chin was almost resting on the pitcher of beer. He narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you know about Al?”

  “I know she’s missing.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You a cop?”

  “Private investigator, working for Allison’s mother.” I told him my name. I tried to show my license at the same time but he didn’t want to look at it.

  “What happened to her?” he asked grimly. “You find out anything yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  He took a long swallow from his mug, refilled it from the pitcher with hands that were not quite steady. He wasn’t drunk, at least not yet. The shaking was a product of something else-fear, self-pity, a scattershot anger that had no real focus.

  “Five days,” he said. “She’s been missing five days and I just heard about it this morning.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Angie Walters. One of her roommates.”

  “Did you know she’d gone to California?”

  “How would I know? I haven’t talked to her in weeks, not since she…” He broke off into a short brooding silence. Ended that by banging the flat of his hand on the table, hard enough to swivel heads in our direction. “Shit,” he said. “Why’d she have to take up with him? Why him?”

  “Who? Rob?”

  “If he’s responsible,” Oster said, “if he did anything to hurt Al, I’ll kill him. I swear to God I’ll kill him.”

  “Rob?” I said again. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “Who the hell else?”