“Okay. Keep at it.” She disconnected and called TJ. “Where are you?”

“The emphasis tells me I’m the second choice.”

“But the answer is?”

“Near downtown. Monterey.”

“Good.” She gave him the address of Eve Brock’s company and told him to meet her on the street in ten minutes. She’d give him a picture of Susan Pemberton and have him canvass all the bars and restaurants within walking distance, as well as the shopping center and Fisherman’s Wharf. Cannery Row too.

“You love me best, boss. Bars and restaurants. My kind of assignment.”

She also asked him to check with the phone company and find out about incoming calls to Susan’s phones. She didn’t think the client was Pell; he was ballsy, but he wouldn’t come to downtown Monterey in broad daylight. But the prospective client might have valuable information about, say, where Susan was going after their meeting.

Dance got the numbers from Eve and recited them to TJ.

After they disconnected, she asked, “What would be in the files that were stolen?”

“Oh, everything about our business. Clients, hotels, suppliers, churches, bakeries, caterers, restaurants, liquor stores, florists, photographers, corporate PR departments who’d hired us…just everything….” The recitation seemed to exhaust her.

What had worried Pell so much he had to destroy the files?

“Did you ever work for William Croyton, his family or his company?”

“For…oh, the man he killed…No, we never did.”

“Maybe a subsidiary of his company, or one of his suppliers?”

“I suppose we could have. We do a lot of corporate functions.”

“Do you have backups of the material?”

“Some are in the archives…tax records, cancelled checks. Things like that. Probably copies of the invoices. But a lot of things I don’t bother with. It never occurred to me that somebody would steal them. The copies would be at my accountant’s. He’s in San Jose.”

“Could you get as many of them as possible?”

“There’s so much….” Her mind was stalled.

“Limit it to eight years ago, up to May of ’ninety-nine.”

It was then that Dance’s mind did another of its clicks. Could Pell be interested in something that the woman was planning in the future?

“All your upcoming jobs too.”

“I’ll do what I can, sure.”

The woman seemed crushed by the tragedy, paralyzed.

Thinking of Morton Nagle’s book The Sleeping Doll, Dance realized that she was looking at yet one more victim of Daniel Pell.

I see violent crime like dropping a stone into a pond. The ripples of consequence can spread almost forever….

Dance got a picture of Susan to give to TJ and walked downstairs to the street to meet him. Her phone rang.

O’Neil’s mobile on caller ID.

“Hi,” she said, glad to see the number.

“I have to tell you something.”

“Go ahead.”