Jennifer Sheridan made up her mind and stepped past me into the office. She walked quickly and went to one of the two director’s chairs across from my desk. There’s a couch, but she didn’t even consider it. Jennifer Sheridan had sounded young on the phone, but in person she looked younger, with a fresh-scrubbed face and clear healthy skin and dark auburn hair. Pretty. The kind of happy, innocent pretty they call girl-next-door. The kind of pretty that dimples when it smiles and wins your heart, and deserves to. That kind of pretty. The kind that starts deep inside and doesn’t stop on the way out.

I made her for twenty-three but she looked eighteen and she’d still be carded in bars when she was thirty. I wondered if I looked old to her. Nah. Thirty-eight isn’t old.

I closed the door, went to my desk, sat, and smiled at her. “What time do you have to be back?”

“One. I’ll have to leave here by twelve forty-five.”

“All right. What do you do?”

“I’m a secretary for the law firm of Watkins, Okum & Beale. We’re in Beverly Hills.”

“Is that how you found me?” I work for Marty Beale, time to time. A little skip tracing, a little missing persons. That kind of thing.

“I peeked in Mr. Beale’s reference file. Mr. Beale thinks highly of you.”

“You don’t say.”

“They don’t know that I’m here and I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything …”

“Sure.”

We smiled at each other some more and sat. The people who come to me are sometimes talkative, chattering nervously without conveying information, or sometimes reserved, sitting quietly until they realize that they’ll have to say something if they want me to help them. The talkers, you have to let run themselves out. The quiet ones, you have to motivate. Not easy to do when your stomach is growling. I took the Groucho Marx nose out of my desk, put it on, and looked at her. “Guess who?”

She blushed and said, “I don’t really know how to begin, Mr. Cole.” The nose gets them every time.

“On the phone you said something about your boyfriend.”

“My fiancé. I think that he’s mixed up in some kind of criminal thing and I’m sure that it’s dangerous and I’m scared.” Her eyes filled when she said it and she clutched the purse to her breasts. It was big enough to hide behind.

“Okay. What kind of crime are we talking here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he stealing cars?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he embezzling?”

“No. It wouldn’t be that.”

“How about fraud?”

She shook her head. “That couldn’t be it.”

“We’re running out of choices, Ms. Sheridan.”