“Sure.”

Friday morning Angie called to say Diandra had picked up Jason and left for New Hampshire. I’d watched him all through Thursday evening and nothing had happened. No threats, no suspicious characters lurking outside his dorm, no liaison with the guy with the goatee.

We’d worked our asses off trying to identify the guy with the goatee, but it was as if he’d come from mist and to mist he’d returned. He wasn’t a student or teacher at Bryce. He didn’t work at any of the establishments in a mile radius of campus. We’d even had a cop friend of Angie’s run his face through a computer for a felon match, and come up empty. Since he’d met Jason in the open and their meeting had been more than cordial, there was no reason to consider him a threat, so we decided to keep our eyes open until he popped back up again. Maybe he was from out of state. Maybe he was a mirage.

“So we got the weekend off,” Angie said. “What’re you going to do?”

“Spend as much of it as possible with Grace.”

“You’re whipped.”

“I am. How about yourself?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“Be good.”

“No,” she said.

“Be safe.”

“Okay.”

I cleaned my house and it was short work because I’m rarely there long enough to mess it up. When I came across the “HI!” note and bumper stickers again, I felt a warm prickle begin to knot under the skin at the base of my brain, but I shrugged it off, tossed everything in a cabinet of my entertainment center.

I called Richie Colgan again, got his voice mail, left a message, and then there was nothing left to do but shower and shave and go meet Grace at her place. Oh happy day.

As I went down the stairs, I could hear two people breathing heavily in the foyer. I turned the last corner and there were Stanis and Liva, squaring off for round one million or so.

Stanis was wearing about a half gallon of oatmeal for a hat and his wife’s blowsy housecoat was covered with ketchup and scrambled eggs so fresh they steamed. They stared at each other, the veins in his neck protruding, her left eyelid twitching madly as she kneaded an orange in her right hand.

I knew better than to ask.

I tiptoed past and opened the first door, closed it behind me as I entered the small hallway and stepped on a white envelope on the floor. The black rubber strip underneath the front door clamps so tightly over the threshold you’d have an easier time squeezing a hippo through a clarinet than you would sliding a piece of paper under the front door.

I looked at the envelope. No scuff marks or wrinkles.

The words “patrick kenzie” were typed in the center.

I opened the door into the foyer again and Stanis and Liva were still frozen as I’d left them, food on their bodies steaming, Liva’s hand wrapped around the orange.