"Come on. You know he's going to yell at me. He'd never yell at the two of you."

"Chickenheart."

"What a wuss."

I smiled. "I thought that's what you tough guys were for. To do the dirty work."

"I'll tackle him," Stacey said. "He won't pick on a guy as sick as me."

Dolan said, "Wait a minute, Stace. Don't pull rank. You said you were well. I'm the sick one. Lookit where I am."

"So you can ask him. Who cares? Point is, we ought to see if we can find out where the tarp came from."

"How're you going to do that? Damn thing doesn't even have a tag with the manufacturer's name. Besides which, I don't see the relevance."

I said, "The killer might have been a long-distance hauler. They sometimes use tarps to secure a load." I stopped.

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh, what?"

"I just had a flash."

"Of what?"

"If the victim turns out to be Charisse and the body was transported in the Mustang, then your theory about Frankie Miracle is really screwed."

Dolan frowned. "How you figure that?"

"We know Frankie stole Cathy Lee's Chevy. So how could he have driven two cars, one from Quorum and one from Venice, and have both arrive in Lompoc at the same time?"

I could see him calculate. "He could have made two trips."

"Oh, please. What's he do – he kills Charisse, drives the Mustang to Lompoc, dumps the body, abandons the car, and then hitchhikes to Venice so he can stab someone else?"

"So he had an accomplice," Dolan said.

"To do what? There's no link between the two murders, unless I missed a beat somewhere."

Stacey said, "Dolan hates the idea Frankie's innocent."

"I don't hate the idea, it's Frankie I hate," Dolan said, irritably. "But what you say makes sense. How'd you come up with that?"

"I don't know. It's like one of those thought problems in high school math. The minute I'd see that sentence about the two trains, one leaving Chicago at sixty miles an hour, and the other blah, blah, blah, I'd start blacking out. I abandoned math the minute I was allowed."

"You didn't believe 'em when they said math would be useful later in your life?"

"Not even a little bit."

In the doorway, Chris Kovach cleared her throat and pointed to her watch.

"We're just going," Stacey said, rising from his chair.

"You can come back tomorrow, but only one at a time."

Stacey followed me to the motel in his rental car and we parked in adjoining slots. I walked with him to Dolan's room and gave him the key.

He unlocked the door and put his duffel on a chair. The room had been made up and the furniture was back in place. It was 9:25 and I was ready to say good-night, assuming he was tired and wanted to hit the sack. "If you like, we can have breakfast together. What time do you get up?"