I set it up to run and went upstairs to hang out with Lili for a while. I recalled my earlier thoughts, and asked, “How’s your mother doing?”

  “Same old complaints. It hurts when she stands up. It hurts when she sits down. The lady in the condo below her plays her music too loud. There’s a lot of seaweed on the beach and the management office won’t do anything about it because they say it’s the city’s problem.”

  She looked at me. “What brought that up?”

  “Just thinking about the future.” I told her about the online courses in cyber forensics I’d recommended to the kid. “If I got myself certified in something like that I’d be a lot more portable. We could move to Florida if you wanted, if you could get a job there that you’d like. And then you’d be close to your mother.”

  “That’s awfully sweet of you,” she said. “For right now, she’s doing okay, and Fedi and Sara are close enough in case of emergency.” Lili’s younger brother and his wife and kids lived a few miles inland from Senora Weinstock’s oceanfront condo. “But it’s always good to have flexibility.”

  We snuggled together until Rochester came nosing at us, ready for his bedtime walk. I forgot all about the program I’d set up on the hacking laptop to look for information on Wyatt Lisowski, and only noticed the computer was still on when I went to feed Rochester his breakfast the next morning.

  The program had saved a huge text file of data, and I copied it to my flash drive. Then I reset the parameters to “Rita Corcoran,” and let it loose. I took the drive with me to Friar Lake, and after spending another morning reviewing cover letters and resumes for the search committee, I was able to take a look at it after lunch.

  The data was organized by relevance, starting with references that included both “Wyatt” and “Lisowski.” There weren’t that many of them, and at least half of them came from Facebook posts where Wyatt had been added to a list, usually of those attending a biker event.

  Wyatt was either shy or reluctant to have his picture taken, because he only appeared in one of those posts, a group shot of eight Levitt’s Angels with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Wyatt was at one end, with Carl Landsea next to him. Big Diehl was at the far end.

  The other guys in the photo matched several of the names I had gleaned from reviewing Carl’s emails. Then I opened up a spreadsheet and started making notes. When were Wyatt and Carl together? Which posts connected to Wyatt’s job, which to the Angels, and which to Liberty Bell University?

  I was so caught up in that work that I was surprised when Joey stuck his head in my office door and said, “I’m closing up soon. You sticking around?”

  I looked at the clock and realized it was nearly five. “No, I’ll shut down on my end.”

  That was the kind of thing that often happened when I delved into analyzing data. An old boss of mine had called it getting into the zone, and he’d even forbidden the receptionist from using the public address system to page any of us, because he was afraid that would disrupt our work.

  It was scary to recognize I could get so involved in something that I shut the rest of the world out, but I knew I always had Rochester as my tether to reality.

  17 – Passion and Change

  That evening Lili and I sat together over a dinner of fettucine alfredo with grilled chicken strips (a couple of which went to Rochester), garlic bread and a nice Pinot Grigio.

  “I’m looking forward to taking a lot of pictures at the beach,” she said.

  She was wearing another of her strapless sundresses, this one in bright yellow with white polka dots and a swirly skirt. She had teased her hair up into a big bun but a few curls had escaped.

  “We say ‘down the shore,’ you know,” I said. “That’s the real Jersey way.”

  “I keep forgetting you were actually born in New Jersey,” she said. “Did you go ‘down the shore’ a lot when you were a kid?”

  I nodded. “Almost every summer. We stayed in motels by the beach and I was always either in the pool or the ocean. It’s weird—I would make these great friends of kids who were at the same motel, and it was like having the brothers and sisters I didn’t have, and then the week would be over and I’d never see them again. Today, kids probably immediately friend each other and Instagram everything they do.”

  “I might do that myself. It will be great to take pictures for fun. This new Panasonic camera is pretty good, with lots of features I’m still exploring. I’ve been looking at images on line and there’s a boardwalk with all kinds of funky signs, and colorful beach umbrellas and wacky 1950s architecture.”

  “You really do love taking pictures, don’t you?”

  She looked at me like I had two heads. “Well, duh.”

  “I mean, I know photojournalism was your career for years, but now you’re a professor and a department chair. I forget sometimes how much photography means to you.”

  “I can’t imagine what I’d be doing if I hadn’t discovered the power of images,” she said. She tucked one of those stray curls back into her bun, and I imagined what fun I could have taking that complicated hairdo down in bed, seeing the curls come wantonly loose.

  “Taking pictures carried me through the bad times,” she continued. “When I was unhappy in my marriages or after my divorces, when I didn’t know what else I could do. I feel terrible for your friend Peggy because I know what she’s gone through, and how hard it is to keep starting your life over again.”

  “Maybe that’s why she fell into drugs again,” I said. “Because she didn’t have anything left that she felt passionate enough about to use as a life raft.”

  Lili cocked her head. “Do you feel that way about hacking?”

  My immediate reaction was to say no, not at all, but I stopped for a moment and thought. “I’m not sure,” I said eventually. “Like photography for you, hacking carried me through some tough times, after Mary’s miscarriages. But I always knew that it was a bad thing, that it could get me in trouble, so I had to rein in my enthusiasm for it.”

  “Then what makes you feel passionate?”

  “Well, you, of course,” I said, smiling. “And Rochester. I like teaching the occasional course, and I’m intrigued by everything I still have to learn to make Friar Lake a success. But I guess it comes down to the thrill of figuring out puzzles and mysteries.”

  I told her how I’d lost track of time that afternoon while I was analyzing the data I’d collected about Wyatt Lisowski. “I want to help Peggy, and even though I never knew Carl Landsea and I don’t think he was a particularly nice guy, I want to see justice for him.” I paused. “But most of all I want to know how all the pieces fit together.”

  “My puzzle guru in shining armor,” Lili said, smiling. She took my hand and squeezed.

  She cleaned up the dishes while I went into the dining room and collected the results on Rita Corcoran from the social media analyzer. Then I opened a new window and started putting in the names of the other Angels, adding in additional parameters that would search for connections between them.

  As Lili passed me on her way upstairs, she stopped. “You’re not taking that laptop with us down the shore, are you?”

  I looked up at her. “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “Good. Because I want you to have a vacation, too, and I want us to be present for each other. Try and shut off the phones and the social media and enjoy ourselves.”

  “I have to do something when you go off to take pictures,” I protested. “But you’re right, this little baby is too much of a distraction. I promise to leave it behind.”

  She went upstairs, and I worried that I wouldn’t be finished with all my analysis by the time we left for the shore. Could I really stop, knowing that Peggy Doyle’s future could be in the balance? If I had to choose between solving a puzzle and being present for Lili which way would I go? I was afraid of what my answer would be.

  Friday morning when I checked the HR system, there were no new applicants to review, so I spent most of the day reviewing the data the social media analyzer had come up with. I found that a couple of the other Angels had made posts or tweets that mentioned Liberty Bell University, usually in a snarky way. One had written, “Imagine me going to college at my age. Not.”

  Did that mean these guys had registered for courses to scam the government out of financial aid money, the way Carl had? It made sense that if one of them was doing it, the others would have, too.

  Late in the afternoon I checked my hacker support group, curious to see if the kid had responded to my message. He had, and he thanked me for the advice. “I talked to my dad about these courses. He’s a doctor and he always thought I would go to medical school, too, but my grades suck so bad he’s finally accepted I’ll barely get into college. He says he’s happy I’ve found a positive way to channel my enthusiasm, LOL. Of course he hopes I’ll get a degree and become an honest member of society. I guess some dreams never die, right?”

  I wrote back to say that I was glad he and his dad were on the same page, and that I was eager to hear which courses he chose. “I might end up doing the same thing,” I wrote. “I’ve been fighting the urge to hack for ten years by now and it might be time for me to make some changes.”

  After I sent the message I sat back and considered it. I didn’t need to switch careers—things were going well at Friar Lake. But it was always a good idea to have a plan for the future, in case the college had other plans for me, or Lili wanted to move to Florida.

  Saturday morning Lili left for a trip to the salon to get prepared for a double date with Rick and his girlfriend Tamsen. Once again I got lost in the data I’d collected, making tiny connections between the Angels, Rita Corcoran and Liberty Bell University. One random comment on Rita’s Facebook page led me to discover that she worked at LBU, though I couldn’t tell what she did.

  That was frustrating. I couldn’t find her name anywhere on the LBU website, which meant she probably wasn’t a professor there, not even an adjunct. But that left a whole range of staff jobs—she could have been anything from a worker in the college café to the president’s personal assistant.

  I tried using the basic white pages search I’d done for Carl, where I’d learned about his mother, his sister and his ex-wife. In Rita’s case, I discovered that her middle name was Jane and that her ex-husband’s name was Gregory Corcoran. She was related to an Anne D. Henderson and a Catherine Doonan. I assumed that if they were her sisters, their maiden name was Doonan, but I couldn’t find anything online that proved that.

  Her recent addresses weren’t very useful. She had lived in Yardley, in Pittsburgh, and then Newtown. She wasn’t a biker chick, either. I found no record that she owned a motorcycle, and the only clue I found that connected her with the biker group was when she was in the same place as a couple of the Angels, where one of them had checked in at a bar in New Hope and indicated he was with Rita, among others.

  Lili came home from the salon, and I was smart enough to glance up from my research long enough to tell her that she looked terrific—which was true, of course. Then I went back to work, stopping only long enough to feed Rochester and give him his evening meal.

  At six-thirty Lili and I left to meet Rick and Tamsen at Le Canal, a French restaurant in New Hope that was only a couple of blocks from the bar where Rita had been with the Angels. On our way to the restaurant, we passed it, and there was a line of motorcycles angled toward the curb as we passed. I had the car windows open, and heard ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” blasting through the speakers.

  Le Canal was a world away from that bar. It was a low-slung building alongside the Delaware Canal, with a wall of picture windows that looked out at the towpath. During the day, the mule barges went right past, tourists peering in the windows at lunch guests, but in the evening the canal was quiet, moonlight sparkling on the water and only the occasional duck paddling past.

  We met Rick and Tamsen in the parking lot. Tamsen was a few years younger than Rick and me, a tall, slim woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a broad smile. She wore an open-necked shirt in light blue oxford cloth with the sleeves rolled up and secured by buttoned tabs, and a pair of white slacks my mother would have called pedal-pushers or capris, and flat sandals with rhinestones on the straps.

  She looked as casually elegant as Lili, who’d worn a black dress with a low-cut neck and a swirling skirt, with a diamond pendant around her neck. They hugged and kissed while Rick and I shook hands, both of us looking a lot less formal than the women we were with. Rick wore one of his microfiber shirts and a pair of black jeans, and I was in a polo shirt and khakis. We were the opposite of peacocks, allowing our women to shine.

  We were fortunate that our friend Gail Dukowski, who owned the Chocolate Ear pastry shop in the center of Stewart’s Crossing, had worked with the chef at Le Canal during their days in New York, so we were always treated well, given a table by the window and comped with an appetizer platter.

  “Rick says you guys are going down the shore soon,” Tamsen said as we nibbled on grilled mushrooms stuffed manchego cheese and tomato and mushroom flatbreads. “I’m so jealous. I’d love to get away for a while, and Justin loves the ocean.”

  Lili looked at me, and the same thought passed between us, but Lili voiced it. “Come join us,” she said. “I snagged us a two-bedroom cottage on Airbnb, a block from the ocean. Rochester and Rascal would have a blast together. And there’s a pull-out couch in the living room for Justin.”

  Tamsen looked at Rick. “What do you think, coach?”

  Rick said, “I’m in this for the long haul. I want to marry you someday, and I want to be Justin’s stepdad, though I know I’ll never replace Ryan.”

  Ryan Morgan had died a war hero in Afghanistan when his son was only a few years old, and he’d spent the last years idolizing a photo of his dad in full gear.

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t mind?” Tamsen said. “Us horning in on your vacation?”

  “Steve’s already said he’s going to be bored while I’m out taking pictures. This way he’ll have lots of company.”

  “We can teach Justin how to boogie board,” I said to Rick. “Though I’m not sure I remember all that well myself. It’s been a long time.”

  By the end of our meal, we’d made our plans. As long as Rick could get the week off from the police department, and Tamsen could rearrange a couple of meetings with clients of her advertising specialties business, we’d all have a great week together down the shore.

  “You don’t think I was too impulsive in inviting them to join us, do you?” Lili asked, as we took a walk along the towpath after dinner. “When I looked at you it seemed like we were thinking the same thing.”

  Rick and Tamsen had already headed back to Stewart’s Crossing, but we’d decided to take a stroll. The humidity had dropped and there was a light breeze coming off the water, and stars spangled the sky above us.

  “Not at all. Rick’s my best friend, you and Tamsen get along well, and Rochester and Rascal are great pals.”

  “We’ll have a week with Justin, though,” she said. “All five of us crammed into that little bungalow with the two dogs.”

  “Rick and I will take Justin to the beach. You and Tamsen can have some girl time, and I think we’ll all get along. If not, then you and I will sneak off for dinner on our own a couple of times.”

  “Food,” Lili groaned. “We’re going to have to load up a couple of carts to have enough for everyone. A few dozen eggs, bacon, pancake mix... and that’s just for breakfast.”

  I laughed. “Don’t over think it,” I said. “You and Tamsen can make up your grocery list together. Remember lots of treats for the dogs.”

  “It always comes back to Rochester, doesn’t it?” Lili said. She laughed and took my hand.

  “To the three of us,” I said.

  18 – Social Media

  I finally got to talk to Lili about taking a computer forensic course on Sunday morning, over a breakfast of chocolate-chip pancakes. “What do you think?” I asked her. “Should I give it a try? Or would it be too tempting for me?”

  “You won’t be tempted to hack by taking a course in computer security,” she said. “Probably the opposite. I think your instinct is good, that it would satisfy your curiosity without getting you into trouble. And I’m the poster child for career zigzags. I know you’ve done the same thing, too, so it would be useful for you to have some other credentials under your belt. You never know what the future holds.”

  “As long as it holds you in it,” I said, taking her hand.

  “Of course.” She smiled at me. “I loved the way Rick was so earnest with Tamsen last night, that he’s in it for the long haul and wants to marry her eventually.”

  “And us? Are we still on the same page about marriage?”

  “I’m not closing the door to it,” she said. “Right now, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” She looked at me. “And you?”

  “I agree. There might be some time in the future when it will be advantageous for us to be married—benefits or Social Security or something like that. But for now, I agree with you, things are good.”

  She smiled and squeezed my hand. “How’s your search for student life director going?”

  “Lots of candidates but no one stands out so far.” I let go of her hand and fetched Rochester a dental stick from the bag on the counter. I handed it to him and he chewed noisily as I sat back down across from Lili.

  “Some of them have written doctoral dissertations on student engagement,” I said. “I’m glad I never went on for a PhD. I couldn’t imagine getting so involved in something to write a whole manuscript on it.”

  “I loved doing the research for my dissertation,” she said. “Weegee was such a fascinating guy and he conveyed so much in his photographs that I could stare at one for hours and keep coming up with new things to say.”

  “What was the title of your dissertation again? Something about photo-politics?”