Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

“If I tell you to quit,” he growled, “you might later have to testify that the investigation of Shannon Fargo, which I had ordered, was canceled when it looked as though awkward information might be developed, and that therefore no proper search of her background was made. So obviously you can’t quit, can you?”

“I guess not.”

“There’s no awkward information to develop.”

You hope. “Okay.”

Tom hung up.

The area code for San Bernardino was 909. Surely nearby Yucaipa was the same. Tom dialed 909 Directory Assistance and was asked what city. He said Yucaipa, the Palmer Clinic. It wasn’t listed. And in San Bernardino? Nothing there either.

But Eileen Scott Farr was listed in San Pedro. Armed with her address and phone number, he got back onto the freeway.

8

Etienne’s was a quietly busy restaurant in Toluca Lake, not quite formal enough to question Shannon’s attire. A hostess in a white gown, who obviously knew Katherine, showed them to a table where glass and silverware winked with quiet exclusivity and the linen was crisp and snowy. She murmured with a small, nonintrusive smile, “One would almost think you two were related!”

Shannon stiffened. Katherine smiled brilliantly.

“Wouldn’t you, though? But actually we’re not.” For a moment the hostess looked blank. Then her smile became rueful. She said, “Oops! — sorry!” and then cranked the smile back up, a co-conspirator, and said their waitress would be with them in a moment.

When she had gone, Katherine said quietly, picking up her menu, “But we almost have to be, don’t we?”

“I don’t see how we can be.”

“We might start by asking my mother, but I’ve no idea where she is, or even if she’s still alive. My parents were divorced when I was a baby and my father got full custody. Of course I don’t remember my mother, there are no pictures of her, and Daddy never talks about her.”

The cocktail waitress arrived. Shannon, who didn’t want to get carded in a place like Etienne’s, said, “Nothing for me, thanks.” Katherine thought a moment, then said she’d just have a glass of the house red wine. The waitress went away.

Shannon said, “You do that like you were thirty years old.”

“When I’m ordering a drink I am thirty years old, casual and thinking about something else entirely. Never been carded. Maturity is a matter of attitude.”

Their regular waitress arrived and took their orders. Katherine turned the conversation around to Shannon, learned where she worked, that making things grow in pots and planters and flowerbeds had been a big preoccupation since she was ten. She was learning to play the mandolin, and to throw and fire pottery. Where all this would lead was a question that didn’t bother her. And what about Katherine’s future? A law degree?

“Not a chance,” Katherine said firmly, “though I may be prejudiced against the law because it’s Tom’s field.”

“Don’t you like him?”

“Not really. He’s too determined to prove he hasn’t sold out to McCauley money. In a way he’s too like my grandfather, who founded the family business. The bigger it got, the more he had to prove he was the same scrappy undisciplined character he was when he was twenty years old and flat broke. He enjoyed the amenities of money but no longer the company of those still engaged in earning it. Antagonized a lot of people. He said my dad was just a bean counter, but the business grew quite a bit after my father took over. Old Mac resented that.”

Her wine arrived.

“Weren’t you jealous,” Shannon asked, “of the attention your granddad gave Tom?”

Wrong question. She sensed Katherine’s chilled withdrawal. Maybe she had assumed that her growing ease in Katherine’s presence meant a growing friendliness on Katherine’s part. Dumb assumption.

But Katherine’s eyes slid sideways thoughtfully.

“I suppose I must have been. Mac brought Tom into the house when he was fourteen and I was six. I was already a pretty good rider, but my grandfather was soon taking Tom to the club for skeet shooting. D’you suppose that’s why last year I made it into the state finals in the junior women’s division?”

“Skeet shooting?”

“Tom wasn’t really interested and soon quit. I was determined to show him up. But riding’s what I like best.”

“You could open a riding academy.”

“It’s just a recreation, I’m afraid. My father says the family business is a responsibility we’re born to. I’m sure he would rather I’d been a boy.”

“Just so he doesn’t want you to go out for football.”

Katherine laughed. “And what will you be doing ten years from now? Playing mandolin in coffeehouses around college campuses?”

“Raising kids and roses in a tract house in Burbank? I dunno. I’m still finding out who I am.”

“When you do,” Katherine said delicately, “be sure to let me know, will you?”

Shannon almost snapped, “I should’ve said ‘what I am.’ I already know who. And at least I know for sure I’m not a girl who wants to be a boy.”

Katherine murmured, “Temper, temper,” and drank some wine.

9