I dropped him off at his place again at 7:30 or so and went home. I was tired of worrying about Elaine Boldt so I sat on the couch and cleaned my gun, taking in the smell of oil, finding it restful to dismantle and wipe and put it all back together again. After that, I stripped my clothes off and wrapped up in my quilt, reading a book about fingerprint mechanics until I fell asleep.

Monday morning, I stopped by Santa Teresa Travel on my way into the office and talked to an agent named Lupe who looked like an interesting mix of Chicano and black, slim as a cat. She was in her twenties, with tawny skin and dark frizzy hair with a faint golden cast, cut close to the shape of her head. She wore small rectangular glasses and a smart navy blue pantsuit with a striped tie. I showed her the ticket carbon and told her what I was looking for. My guess was correct. Elaine had been a regular client of theirs for the past several years, though Lupe seemed puzzled by the carbon. She pulled the glasses down low on her nose and looked at me. Her eyes were a flat gold, like a lemur's, and it gave her face an exotic quality. Puffy mouth, small straight nose. She had fingernails that were long and curved and looked as tough as horn. Maybe she had been some kind of burrowing creature in another life. She pushed the glasses back into place again thoughtfully.

"Well, I don't know what to think," she said. "She always bought her tickets through us, but this one was purchased at the airport." She touched at one corner of the carbon, turning the ticket around so I could see the face of it. It reminded me of those teachers in grade school who somehow managed to read a picture book while holding it forward and to one side. "These numbers indicate that it was generated by the airline and paid for by credit card."

"What kind of credit card?"

"American Express. She usually uses that for travel, but I tell you what's odd. She'd made reservations for... wait a minute. Let me check." Lupe typed some numbers into her computer terminal, nails tap-dancing across the keys. The computer fired out line after line of green print-like tracers. She studied the screen.

"She was scheduled to fly out of LAX, first class, on February third, with a return 3 August and those tickets were paid for."

"I hear she left on the spur of the moment," I said. "If she set up the reservations over the weekend, she'd have had to go through the airlines, wouldn't she?"

"Sure, but she wouldn't just forget about the tickets she had. Hold on a sec and I'll see if she ever picked 'em up. She could have traded 'em in."