But he was in luck. The small white Triumph convertible came out from behind the building and turned west, moving quickly into the traffic flow. Hook followed just as quickly, squealing his tires as he pulled out. She turned left at the next corner and drove toward the oceanfront. Past 101 she turned onto Cliff Drive and went on for another mile or so, finally pulling into a shopping center near the city limit. Hook followed her in and parked, but stayed in his car as she got out and went into a supermarket. While he waited for her to come out again he could not shake a feeling of vague embarrassment, for he was not sure what he was doing except acting like some kind of silly amateur private eye—first sitting in his car watching an office door for almost an hour and now following a woman home from work, stopping where she stopped—to buy groceries! What did he expect, that she would lead him to some sort of hideout where the guilty parties would all loudly discuss their guilt, so he could move in and make a citizen’s arrest? No, the truth was he did not know what to expect, and in fact had no real plan of action, for he was still counting on Sergeant Rider. He believed that once the burly law officer confronted the women with Chris’s letter and Icarus’s testimony their lying statements would undergo a rapid transformation. And if that did not happen—well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. Meanwhile he would have to settle for playing this game of private eye. He would stay close to his pair of liars and learn what he could.

The shopping center was jammed. In the parking lot the light standards were draped with Christmas lights and decorations, and Muzak carols were booming out from some place or other. And Hook felt almost at home, for this was the garish and vulgar twentieth-century America he had come to know and loathe—in Alton and other Saint Louis suburbs—with none of those expensive little touches with which downtown Santa Barbara groped for an elegant if imaginary past.

After ten or fifteen minutes she came out carrying a bag of groceries and a six-pack of Schweppes quinine water, which she sat down while she unlocked her car door. Hook, who was parked in the row facing hers but about three cars down, continued to sit behind the wheel watching her, even though all she had to do was look his way and she would have seen him. But her attention had locked elsewhere—on a longhaired willowy girl hanging out of the open door of a pickup and smiling, laughing, at someone inside it. Despite the cold, the girl was wearing only jeans and a tank top with no bra underneath, and none needed, and what Hook saw in Mrs. Rubin’s face could have been lust, but if it was, then it was the most hate-filled lust he had seen in all his life. Now, conscious of what she was doing, Mrs. Rubin looked casually around herself, about to slip back into the Triumph—and then she saw him.