I said, “You can’t give me a bit of a lead-in?”

I didn’t want any more surprises. I’d had enough of that over the past few days.

She said, “I’ll tell you.”

That wasn’t exactly answering my question.

“When?” I asked her.

That wasn’t even my style. I was usually easygoing and very trusting with Kim, but my inner alarm was going off. I had to investigate.

She said, “I’ll call you back on your cell phone later on with it. I should have just…Well, never mind.”

She was making me nervous with all of that. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it while still at the office. Then I started thinking about Andrea again. Kim and Andrea knew each other. I almost forgot about that. Andrea actually knew a lot of my old friends. I could ask Kim how to get back in touch with my old flame.

I said, “You don’t have any bad news to tell me about Andrea, do you? I dun’ heard plenty of that over the last couple of days. Seems like everybody got a story to tell.”

I was putting it all out on the table.

Kim said, “Andrea? No. I haven’t spoken to her in years. She didn’t really talk to me like that. Seems like she was jealous about everything we were doing for you. I’ve seen her around though.”

I forgot about the jealous thing. I guess it wasn’t a lot that I remembered correctly.

Anyway, I said, “So what is it?” I was trying to make my asking sound bland.

Kim answered as cool as designer sunshades. “We’ll talk.”

Seems like the more I pushed for inside information, the more insecure I sounded. So I backed off.

“Okay, well, I’ll talk to you later then. But ah, you don’t know how to get in touch with Andrea either?”

I figured I had to at least ask.

“Terrance, I don’t really know or talk to her like that. I only knew her through you.”

It was a fair assessment, and I needed to move on from it.

“Okay, my bad. I’ll just talk to you later on then.”

I hung up the phone with Kim and felt a little more at ease with myself. The world wasn’t out to get me after all, so there was no need in me getting involved in a witch hunt. Andrea had her own life to live now, and I wasn’t a part of it. Her life was so private I couldn’t even find her.

I SAT BACK DOWN in my La-Z-Boy chair and relaxed again. Before I realized it, I had fallen asleep for a few hours. I surely needed a good rest after Miami. The cell phone rang against my hip and woke me back up after seven o’clock that evening.

I looked down at the cell phone and didn’t recognize the number. It was a 443 area code.

“Baltimore,” I mumbled. “Who do I know in Baltimore?”

The number didn’t click right away, but I did know people from B-more. How else would I know the area code? So I took a chance on answering.