I looked at the hair. Looked at the elbow. Looked at the person who had set this in motion.

"That story Billy had about running into Jason in the restaurant in Ensenada, it wasn't true?"

"I don't know. I just know that if you asked about Jason Stockover, he was to tell you he was in Tamarindo."

Six people have a party of sorts. Four of them Gregorys. Something goes terribly wrong. First bury it, then deny it, then, if somebody has to be thrown under the bus, pick one of the non-Gregorys. Send me to Tamarindo. Where Jason is.

Except Jason's not there. Jason has been tipped off. Run, Jason. Run, and he'll think it's you. Except we won't tell you that part. Because you're not one of us and you're not even a friend from childhood. Like McFetridge. You're only a friend from college. Which puts you in an outer circle, Jason.

First the family. Then lifelong friends. Then other friends. Then all those who want to be friends. Like George.

Oh, and by the way, do you need anything while you're running away? A new sailboat, perhaps?

Barbara was speaking. She was telling me she was sorry she didn't have every detail right as to what little Billy said and did. "But I didn't stop there," she said.

I looked up, shifting my attention to her again.

"I went to Tamarindo myself."

Another piece that didn't fit. If she was part of the scheme to get me to go there-Barbara to Ty to Peter to Billy-why would she go after I left?

Barbara was waiting. She clearly had expected a different reaction from me. I did the minimum. I murmured, "You've got to be kidding."

And then she, nearly six feet of long-limbed powerful female with big yellow-brown eyes and just possibly the disposition of a s.a.d.i.s.t, said she wasn't.

"You went to California, then continued right on to Costa Rica." I was thinking that meant she had brought her pa.s.sport, which meant she had been planning to do that all along.

"I had my mom's ATM card."

"Your mom financed this whole trip?"

"My parents," she corrected. Then she unwound her legs. Then she rewound them, switching the one that had been on top. "Remember, they thought I was going to California to have it out with Tyler once and for all."

Still, she needed a pa.s.sport.

"I get to Tamarindo," she said, her tone telling me I was going to hear this whether I liked it or not, "and it's a strange little place. It's kind of like being at the far end of the universe."

She paused, perhaps to see if I would say no, no, no, it's perfectly normal. Like Orlando or Las Vegas.

"The other thing is, and I don't know if this happened to you, but it rained most every day. I mean, what are you supposed to do in a beach town when it rains? I end up going from one bar, one shop, one restaurant, to another, and whenever I see anybody who looks like an American living there, I try to strike up a conversation."

"Hi. How are you? You know Jason Stockover?"

Her eyes flicked, rolled; her mouth grimaced. "Pretty much. Until I get to this one man, owns a restaurant on the beach."

"Wouldn't be the place with coconut pies, would it?"

"You've been there, I see."

"That's supposed to be the place Jason owns."

"Well, the real owner's name is J. T. Bauer. Balding guy, pretty muscular, about forty-five. He comes from Key West."

"Doesn't sound like Jason." I remembered what Howard Landry had said. I had a flash of Howard flapping his hand under his chin.

"Nope. What's more, he claimed never to have known any Jason in Tamarindo. What he admitted, and this is what I've been trying to get to, George, is that he did know Leanne."

She clearly thought this was going to detonate, bring me flying out of my chair. She was disappointed when it didn't.

"Leanne couldn't have been there by herself."

"J.T. said she came into town, met him, hooked up with him, as the kids say these days. Stayed a couple of weeks, even helped him run the restaurant. Then she moved on."

It was possible. If someone had told Peter what I was doing enough time before I got to California, he could have called Leanne, gotten her to go down to Tamarindo knowing I would be coming.

I swallowed.

"What is it, George?"

"How do you know it was the real Leanne?"

"Well," she said, the word coming out slowly, lingering, "that's kind of hard for me to say, never having met or seen Leanne."

I had to agree and was about to tell her that when she added, "But this much I do know. The girl moved in with J. T. Bauer. He paid her in cash, never saw anything with her name on it, came home one day and she was gone."

"No note? No message, no forwarding address?"

"Nothing. And J.T. didn't seem all that upset about it, tell you the truth. He says that kind of thing happens down there sometimes. He said same thing used to happen in Key West. People come in, shack up, move on."

Barbara's legs crossed again. The upper one began to bob up and down expectantly. The woven sandal dangled from her foot. I had the feeling she was remembering something that I didn't. I tried to think what it could be.

"Key West is kind of a big sailing town, isn't it?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah."

"This J.T., he didn't happen to know Peter, did he?"

One eyebrow went up. Barbara looked at me approvingly. "Bingo, George. You win the prize. What he didn't know, what he couldn't tell me, was whether the Leanne who worked for him, moved in with him, had any connection with Peter."

"Except they were both from Ma.s.sachusetts."

Barbara shrugged. "I'm not even sure about that. J.T. seemed to think the Leanne who was there was from Rhode Island. And that at some point she had been a cop."

It was making perfect sense. Go to another country, look for a man who isn't there. Get threatened by a woman who isn't who you think she is. Heck of an effort, George. Keep up the good work. Want a new office?

I WAS BEING PLAYED BY PEOPLE WITH A LOT MORE RESOURCES THAN I had. I asked myself if that was the message Barbara had come to deliver. Barbara Blueblood Belbonnet. The game was between the Gregorys and Josh David Powell, and you're just getting batted back and forth across the net, George.

Except Barbara had cried, hadn't she? And what was in it for her, protecting Peter, running around the country, two countries, like she was? If, of course, she actually had been doing that. I had no proof that she had. No proof that anything she said was true.

I called Buzzy. It had been a long time since we had spoken and he seemed to jump when he recognized my voice.

I told him I needed a favor.

"Anything for you, buddy."

I had to choke back my first reaction.

"Georgie? You all right?"

"What can you tell me about Barbara Belbonnet?"

"Your dungeon-mate? Used to be Barbara Etheridge?"

"She told me she grew up with you."

"Well, she did, sorta. I mean ..." Buzzy wanted to be helpful; he was looking for ways to do that. "I mean, she was one of the rich kids. Into sailing and all that s.h.i.t, and I wasn't. She was like Hyannisport Yacht Club and I was, like, the public golf course. She was also, I'll tell you, about the best-looking girl around, so I knew who she was and everything. But as far as us hanging out together, no."

He stopped then, thinking he had answered my question.

"But you did go to school with her, right?"

"Up to about, I don't know, age fourteen, maybe. Then she went away to boarding school and, like, next time I saw her, she was married to Tyler Belbonnet. Or at least living with him."

"Did that surprise you? Her and Tyler?"

"Okay, I gotta back up. When we were little, Tyler was, like, legendary. Like I said, I wasn't into sailing, but everyone knew who he was. His picture was always in the paper, winning this or that race, and he was most definitely not a yacht-club kid. His father was a sailor, and Ty had his own boat and he only competed in the open races, but you'd hear people asking each other all the time, 'How did you do compared to Ty?'-that sort of thing. And then you'd see him at parties and it was always a big deal for him just to be there. Of course, all of us watching him, admiring him, wanting to be like him, weren't thinking so much about the fact that he didn't seem to have any plans beyond sailing and partying. What we were thinking, back then, was that he was the one who had all the girls."

"Including Barbara?"

"Oh, yeah. Early, early on. In fact, I think that was why they sent her away. It was pretty much common knowledge she was banging him."

"Sent her away to prep school, you mean?"

"Yeah, Tabor, I think. Then four years to Sarah Lawrence or someplace like that. I'd see her around in the summers and we'd say hi and stuff, but that was all. And then, what I heard was that she was going to law school at B.U. and she ran into Ty again. By this time he'd been all over the world, and once he starts telling her about Saint Bart's and the Greek islands and Tahiti, and it was like-f.u.c.k law school. That's, I guess, when it happened."

"When what happened?"

"She got knocked up. Preggers."

"But Ty did marry her." It was a question, really. I was trying to find out if anything she said was true.

"I don't know if it was that time or the next. What I can tell you is he signed on to a crew that was competing for the America's Cup and he was gone to Australia for a year while she was here by herself. Then he returns and everything starts up all over again. I think she and Ty were living in some dump down in Harwich while he was working in a marine supply store, and she was back trying to go to law school at night and you just knew that wasn't going to last. She has the second kid and the kid turns out to have Down syndrome and Ty sails off to the Azores."

"Before or after they had Malcolm?"

"I don't know, George. From what I understand, the syndrome is something you can find out about during pregnancy, so they must have known. Or at least she must have."

"You think it's possible she didn't tell him because she wanted to keep her hold on him?"

"Jeez, I don't know, George. I'd like to think she's not that stupid. I mean, I know she's not stupid, but sometimes people do things ... you know?"

"I know, Buz."

"Look, I was shocked as h.e.l.l when you told me she was working in your office. She was, like, one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. My lifetime-what am I talking about? Of the Cape ... of ... of ... I don't know, of all time. Here was this beautiful girl, rich family, has everything going for her, and she lets her life get all f.u.c.ked up by the local cool guy who doesn't give a rat's a.s.s about anything but himself."

"I've heard about people like that."

"I don't know if I've talked to Tyler Belbonnet in twenty years, but I could sort of understand his appeal back then. He had this romantic pirate image, but, Jesus, you can't let some guy like that ruin your life. Especially when he keeps going, doing whatever he wants, and you're left behind to pay the consequences. You know what I'm saying?"

I told him I did.

"So I'm just sorry about the number he did on Barbara because she really could have been somebody." Buzzy caught himself. "Not that being in the D.A.'s office isn't being somebody. I mean, I'm obviously trying to do it myself ... so to speak."

"Yeah."

"You still with me on that, Georgie?"

"Yeah, Buz, just as much as I ever was."

A MESSED-UP LIFE. A LIFE AS MESSED UP AS MINE. MORE SO, because she had responsibilities beyond herself. Were those responsibilities enough for her to sacrifice me? Why not? If they led to a better job, better security, better daycare.

Still, it made no sense. Fly to California, fly to Costa Rica. What for? I had already been to those places. Why would she retrace my steps? Why would she go before I had a chance to go back?

I decided I would call her. Ask her to come in again. Meet me someplace else if she wanted.

SHE WAS WEARING A DARK blue belted sheath top that dipped very slightly at the neck and slacks that were more or less the color of oatmeal. Her purse, which was big enough to carry a notebook, a change of clothes, and a frying pan, was in her lap. She had been glad to come in. She had something to tell me and wanted to get through the preliminaries as quickly as possible.

From my seat of power on the other side of the desk I waved her into whatever she wanted to say.

"Tell me, George, of the people who were at the Gregorys' that night, how many have you actually interviewed?"

I held up two fingers. "Not counting the woman who may or may not have been Leanne, only McFetridge and Cory." Then I remembered and held up a third. "Patty the pickup."