"Alcoholism and how it affects reaction time."

"Anything earth-shattering?"

"Not to me." I summarized the studies. "Actually, it was pretty mundane."

"Could be she came to a realization: she'd been a good little girl, doing what was expected of her since grad school. She got tired of hacking it out. Wanted to actually help someone."

"She didn't pick a very easy group to help."

"So it was the challenge that motivated her. That, and tackling something new."

"The men at Starkweather don't get cured."

"Then I don't know. All out of guesses."

"I'm not trying to be contentious," I said. "She just really puzzles me. And I think there's a good deal of truth in what you're saying. She got divorced within the last year or so. Maybe she was trying to cut free on several levels. Maybe for someone who'd been grinding out studies year after year, Starkweather seemed novel."

She smiled and stroked my face. "If knitted brows are any kind of measure, Milo's getting his money's worth out of you."

"The other thing I wonder about is the first case-Richard Dada, the would-be actor. On the surface, he and Claire have little in common. But what they do seem to share is negative space-an absence of friends, enemies, quirks. Both of them were very neat. No entanglements. Maybe we're talking about loneliness and an attempt to fill the void. Some sort of lonely-hearts hookup with the wrong person."

"A man and a woman?" she said. "A bisexual killer?"

"That would make Dada gay, and Milo never found any indication of that. Or maybe it had nothing to do with sex-just companionship, some kind of common-interest club. On the other hand, the cases could be unrelated."

I raised her hand to my lips, kissed the fingertips one by one. "Mr. Romantic. I'd better switch gears before I drive you into isolation."

She grinned, waved languidly, kissed air, put on her Bette Davis voice. "Pass me the spinach, dahling. Then you can pay the check and sweep me off my feet to the nearest Baskin

Robbins for some jamoca almond fudge. After that, hi-ho all the way home, where you ah cawjully invited to add some entanglement to my life."

Chapter 8

At Eight P.M. Milo called. "Am I interrupting anything?"

He'd missed interrupting by an hour. Robin was reading in bed and I'd taken Spike for a short walk up the canyon. When the phone rang, I was sitting out on the terrace, trying to rid my mind of question marks, struggling to concentrate on the sound of the waterfall that fed the fishpond. Grateful because I couldn't hear the freeway.

"Not at all. What's up?"

"Got the info on Claire and Stargill. Married two years, divorced nearly two, no kids. I reached Stargill. He says the split was amicable. He's a partner in a ten-lawyer firm, remarried three months ago. He just learned about Claire. San Diego papers didn't carry it, but one of his partners was up here, read about it."