Milo scanned the clippings on Cyrus Freeman's murder before slipping them back into the sleeve. "Nothing more than Sandy just told us." Flipped the sleeve onto the backseat and checked his Timex. "Four hours of freeway for the Sister Who Knows Nothing."

"And yet she told us so much," I said.

"Elise might've killed Daddy? Maybe so, Alex, but I'm not curious enough to find out."

"I meant Elise developing her lying skills early, as a survival strategy. Faking illness to avoid getting raped was as good a ploy as any, but there's always collateral damage. That's consistent with chronic depression, drinking, using sex as a means of control, and hooking up with a hustler like Fidella. Same for concocting an extortion scheme involving her sexuality. But what really interests me is her selling tests back in middle school. That kind of thing would come in handy at a place like Prep."

Traffic slowed along the beach. We caught the long stoplight at State. More tourists, easels full of sidewalk art, a few homeless guys lounging on the grass, playing critic.

He said, "She peddles exams, then tries to beef up the take with a little extortion?"

"Picking the wrong sucker could be hazardous to your health."

"Wonderful. Even if I put the rape aside, I can't avoid the damn school."

He closed his eyes, rested his head against the seat. "Best way to find out if she was raking in a lot of extra dough are those goddamn financials."

Another set of calls made him smile. "On their way and her phone records are on my desk. What do you think about Elise two-timing Sal with a young guy, and Sandra leaving her husband for a young guy? Some sort of symbolic distancing themselves from their old man?"

"Could be," I said. "Or they just prefer younger men."

"For that I need a pal with a Ph.D.?"

We were back at his office by three thirty p.m.

To the left of his computer sat a loose stack of paper. He began pawing, crumpling and tossing departmental memos, sheet after sheet of the city and county junk mail taxpayers pay for but never read.

Toward the bottom, eighteen months of Elise Freeman's bank records at Wachovia and her phone history for sixty days.

The financials elicited an immediate "Whoa." Ninety thousand and some change in a passbook account, most of it accounted for by sixteen five-thousand-dollar deposits posted irregularly over the last three years.

"It ain't buried treasure but it's a lot for a teacher making thirty a year," he said. "Wonder what five grand buys you at Prep."

Turning to the phone records, he used two felt-tipped markers to highlight. Yellow, pink, pink, pink, yellow. The end result was a cheery zebra: thirty-two yellow stripes for Sal Fidella's 818 number, seventeen pinks for someone in 626. The rest was uninteresting.