"He wanted a place you didn't know about. He might've already been thinking about getting away someday, leaving himself an exit route."

She made a small, incredulous laugh. "What's this billing address in Austin? A girlfriend?"

"Probably a mail drop. A girlfriend would be too risky."

"Bastard. You think you can find this place?"

I shook my head. "Don't know."

We had the exact address for the cabin but that didn't mean much at the lake. Most people had their address registered as a mailbox along the main highway, and there would be hundreds of those, all plain silver, many of them with incomplete or weathereddown numbers. Even if we found the right box it wouldn't necessarily be near the cabin. Most likely that would be a mile or two down some unnamed gravel road, the turnoff marked only by wooden boards displaying the last names of some of the families that lived that way. Often there was no sign at all, no way to find someone out here unless you had wordofmouth instructions. If you could avoid the notice of the locals, Medina Lake wasn't a bad place for a missing person to hide out.

We passed Woman Hollow Creek, wended our way through some more hills, down Highway 16. The ratio of RVs to cars began to climb.

Allison examined my mother's medicine pouch on the rearview mirror, letting the beads and feathers slip through her fingers. "So how do you know Milo anyway? You two don't seem—I don't know, you're like the Odd Couple or something."

"You know that scar on my chest?"

Allison hesitated. "You're kidding."

"Milo didn't do it. He had this idea. He thought I'd make a good private detective."

The road was too twisty for me to look at Allison's face, but she stayed quiet for another mile or so, the purple sunglasses turned toward me. I missed the noise and the wind and rattling of the VW. In my mother's Audi, the quiet spaces were way too quiet.

Finally Allison laced her fingers together and stretched her arms. "Okay. So what happened?"

"Milo was assistant counsel for defence on this homicide case. His first big job with Terrence 8c Goldman in San Francisco. He wanted someone who could track down a witness—a drug dealer who'd seen the murder. Milo thought I could do it. He thought he'd really impress his boss that way."

"And you found the guy."

"Oh, yeah, I found him. I spent a few days in San Francisco General afterward."

"Milo's boss was impressed?"

"With Milo, no. With me, yes. Once I got out of intensive care."

Allison laughed. "He gave you a job?"

"She. She offered to train me, yes. She fired Milo."

"That's even better. And a woman, too."

"Most definitely a woman."

Allison opened her mouth, then began to nod. "Ah ha. Milo wanted to impress—"

"It wasn't just professional."

"But you and her—"

"Yeah."

Allison grinned. She nudged my arm. "I do believe the P.I. is blushing."

"Nonsense."

She laughed, then uncapped the thermos and poured herself another cup of Peet's.

"This stuff is beginning to taste better."

We skirted the lake for over a mile before we actually saw it. The hills and the cedars obscured the view most of the way around. The waterline was so far down that the clay and limestone shore looked like a beige bathtub ring between the water and the trees.

Medina wasn't a lake you could get your bearings on very easily. The water snaked around, following the course of the original river that was dammed to make the lake, etching out coves and dead ends, each outlet and inlet looking pretty much like all the others. We might've been searching for Les' cabin the rest of the week if an old friend hadn't helped us out.

37

About a mile past the Highwaycutoff, a black Ford Festiva was pulled off on the right side of the road, opposite the lake. The driver's side window was open and a redheaded orangutanlooking guy was behind the wheel, reading a newspaper.

I drove a quarter mile up the road and then Ued around. I waited for a semi to rumble by and then pulled in behind it, following close.

"What are we doing?" Allison asked.

"Keep looking straight ahead."

On my second pass the redhead in the Festiva still didn't pay me any attention, but it was definitely Elgin. He had his head firmly buried in the sports page. Advanced surveillance methods. He'd probably figure out to poke eyeholes in the paper pretty soon.

I quickly scanned the area he was staking out. There were no side roads in view.

There were no mailboxes. It was just a curve of highway around a hill. On the lake side the road fell away in a steep, heavily wooded slope, so you couldn't really see what was down toward the water, but there were some power lines angling in. That meant at least one cabin and only one way to get down there—past Elgin.

"Elgin without Frank," I said. "Not smart."

Allison looked behind us. "What are you talking about?"

I told her about my encounter the night before with Elgin and Frank on the side of the highway, how they'd introduced my face to the asphalt and offered me a very nice throwdown gun. I told her they were probably sheriff deputies, buddies of Tilden Sheckly.

"What shits," she said. "And they're watching Les' place?"

"One of them at least."

"So we're going to go back and whack him on the head or something, right? Tie him up?"

I chanced a look sideways to see if she was kidding. I couldn't tell. "Whack him on the head?"

"Hey, I've got Mace, too. Let's go."

After her performance with Sheckly the previous evening I thought it prudent not to deride her abilities as a headwhacker. I said, "Let's keep that as a backup plan. Get a fifty out of my backpack."

We kept driving, going back as far as Turk's Ice House.

After five minutes of chitchat with Eustice, the blue haired store clerk in the flashy satin shirt, we came to an agreement that the cove we wanted was Maple End and no, Eustice didn't recognize Les from his picture and no, Allison hadn't gone to high school with Eustice's daughter. Despite the last disappointment, Eustice agreed to introduce us to Bip, who agreed to loan us his outboard fishing boat for fifty dollars. Bip and his boat were both large grayish wedges, dented up and grungy, and both smelled like live bait. Bip kept grinning at Allison and saying "whuh!" every time he looked away from her.

I tried to give him warning looks, to let him know he was putting himself in mortal peril, but Bip paid no attention.

We started the outboard with some effort and pulled away from the dock at Turk's.

The cove widened into the main spine of the lake. A half mile away, on the far shore, the hills were dotted with cabins and radio towers. Occasionally a motorboat would zip by a few hundred yards away; a minute or so afterward we'd find ourselves bobbing up and down as we cut through the wake. By the time we'd turned the boat toward the mouth of Maple End Cove we had lake water up to our ankles and I'd had to move my backpack off the floor and into my lap. Bip had assured us those little holes in the boat would be no problem.

Allison took off her shoes and was about to dangle her footsies over the side when I said, "I wouldn't do that."

She frowned. In the afternoon sun, the purple glasses cast long red reflections down her cheeks. "What? They're already wet."

"It's not the water. It's the moccasins."