“His name is Jimmy Zilowicz, but everybody calls him Jimmy Zee,” Drue said, relenting.

“Don’t worry. I’m very discreet about my sources,” Vera assured her. “That name vaguely rings a bell. And he was a detective at the time?”

“Not when Colleen first disappeared. I think he was promoted later. At the time, he and my father were patrol officers, and partners.”

Vera closed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You know,” she said slowly. “Earlier that year, in March, Colleen insisted we have lunch at this seedy bar downtown. Mastry’s.”

“Mastry’s Bar? I’ve been there,” Drue said.

“It was not at all the kind of place we usually went to back then,” Vera said primly. “I think we were the only women in there that day. A very blue-collar kind of place, and maybe it was a cop hangout too. I remember, Colleen got up to go to the bathroom, and she stopped to talk to these two young officers who were sitting at the end of the bar. I remember asking her why she didn’t introduce me to them. After all, I was single at the time.”

“Did she say who they were?”

“I think she said they were just making idle conversation. Sort of hitting on her,” Vera said. “It was so long ago. And it was just that one time.”

She reached for the yearbook and paged back to the senior class pictures. She tapped a fingertip on Brice Campbell’s photo, then looked up at Drue. “I can’t swear it was him that day, but I can’t swear that it wasn’t, either. You don’t happen to have a photo of this Jimmy Zee, do you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“No problem.” Vera rolled the tray with her laptop over to the lounge chair. “How do you spell that last name?”

“Z-I-L-O-W-I-C-Z,” Drue said.

Vera opened the cover and began typing at an impressive clip.

“Ah,” she said, a moment later. She swiveled the screen so that Drue could see. It was a photo of a smiling Jimmy Zee, dressed in his characteristic black polo shirt, shaking hands with a white-haired man in a dress shirt.

VETERAN POLICE DETECTIVE RECEIVES AWARD was the caption under the photo.

“That must have been taken when he retired a few years ago,” Drue said.

Vera clicked her cursor until she came to a 1978 photo of a much younger version of Jimmy Zee. The black-and-white photo showed him as a stern-faced man, wearing a coat and tie in which he looked supremely uncomfortable. His hair was thick, and his jowls were nonexistent.

“Very Jack Webb,” Vera murmured.

“Who?”

Vera smiled. “Dragnet. I suppose you weren’t even born then.”

“Do you think he was one of the cops Colleen talked to that day at Mastry’s?” Drue asked.