“Oh, no, dear. I’ve hoped all these years, I still hope, and I’ll continue to hope until the day I die that she’ll walk in one morning with an amazing story. I’ll never put flowers on her grave until I know beyond doubt that I can’t put the bouquet in her arms.”

| 22 |

When David got home, he checked his emails and found one from Isaac Eisenstein.

According to the private investigator, nobody named Marcus Sutton worked as an executive at Microsoft. The Seattle district attorney’s office employed no prosecutor named Claire Sutton.

If Maddison Sutton had been born in Seattle, no record of the event existed, no birth certificate.

No property in either Goleta or adjacent Santa Barbara was owned by Maddison Sutton, but she might be a renter.

The email concluded with: Call me on my personal cell.

Attached was a photo of Patrick Michael Lynam Corley, who had died seven years earlier and to whom the vintage Mercedes 450 SL was registered. He had been a fresh-faced stocky man with thick white hair and a winning smile.

Although it was midnight in New York, Isaac seldom went to bed before one in the morning. He got by on five hours of sleep a night and sometimes seemed on a sugar high without benefit of sugar.

After pouring brandy into a snifter and settling behind his desk in the study, David placed the call.

Isaac answered on the third ring. “My second-favorite writer.”

“Who’s number one?”

“Privileged info, boychik. Rest assured, it’s not his literary excellence that ranks him above you. He routinely gets himself in the most imaginative kinds of trouble, so he’s one of my top twenty billings just about every year. Have you shtupped that stunning girl yet?”

“Privileged info.”

“Yeah, so you struck out. Maybe it’s just as well.”

“How so?”

“Something’s not kosher about this cutie. A valued source of mine says he’s ninety-five percent sure her driver’s license and the registration for that 450 SL are phantom inserts in the DMV files.”

“Which means?”

“They’re forgeries that were backdoored into the state system. They’ll stand up to any police check, but she never took a driver’s test or paid a registration fee for the Mercedes. It was all done with digital finesse.”

“Even if he’s right, there’s still a five percent chance she’s on the up-and-up.”

“Actually, my guy’s ninety-nine percent sure they’re phantom inserts. I just wanted to give you a little more room to see if you’d leap to defend her. Listen to me, pal. Be careful with this. Think with your head, not your dick.”

David swirled the brandy in the snifter. “What if I’m thinking with my heart?”

“Armageddon. Thinking with your dick, pretty much the worst you can get is a curable disease.”

David sipped his drink.