Set up on the tiny pine coffee table were the photos I'd borrowed from Chef Reynoso.

Who are you, Albert Nbutu? I studied his image, trying to guess his age. Forty, maybe? Or fifty? He was in excellent shape, his arms sinewy, his stomach flat and hard. Perhaps he was thirty. But, no. Something around his eyes showed a sadness, or a weariness, or maybe it was more like a wariness. Older, I figured, and a hard life.

I thought back. The few words we'd exchanged the night before had been tinged with an accent. Not exactly Caribbean. But...something. Didn't Freddie Fox say Albert was from Ethiopia? Then I spent a few more minutes trying to decipher the word tattooed across his shoulder.

I logged onto the Internet and began searching on the word SANDMAN. Oh, brother. 73,000 matches. Dandy.

It was almost ten o'clock before I'd exhausted myself tracking down the top 200 websites that had popped up as a match. Trust me. What I couldn't now tell you about the Sandman project to study sleep biorhythms, or the dark hero of Neil Gaiman's cult classic comic books, or, for that matter, some professor of psychiatry named Carl Sandman at the University of California at Irvine, you truly do not want to know. I had even found a site that offered the original lyrics to the golden oldie "Mr. Sandman." I was getting nowhere. Slowly.

I raised a fresh strawberry to my lips and typed into the search field the word SANDAMAMA. The search engine chugged on the odd word. This time I would not be spending two hours following strange, fruitless leads. This time there were no matches. I brightened up and stretched.

It was getting late. And no, I wasn't thinking about Honnett. Or how disappointing it was that he had to leave. Or what a turn-on it is when a man is dedicated to his work, even creepy cop work. Or that he was trying to make like he wasn't controlled by his feelings. Like Honnett as Spock. But, come on! I'll bet...

SANDAWAMA drew a blank, too, so I typed in a few more words.

Where was I? Oh, yeah...I'll bet I can get him to care about someone...

Whoa! I stopped myself cold. Now that is a truly healthy reason to be attracted to a man. Why was it I always had my finger over the self-destruct button, ready for action?

Back to Nbutu, I studied the tattoo in the photo once more. I'd been coming up blank with several unheard of words, but kept at it. Next I tried the equally unlikely SANDAWANA.

To my surprise, 71 matches appeared. Who'd have thunk?

Using the fingerpad, I quickly pressed the first entry. This website displayed the recent winners of the Sandawana Cup, a prize for championship Staffordshire Bull Terriers. CH. Magliam True Grit of Fonna, CH. Tenacious Juno Bedford Blossom of Millenium, KUSA National Dog 1989, CH. The Brown Bomber of Westmax. I found my eyes blurring at the list of pedigree names.

And what could all these cute little bulldogs have to do with Nbutu?

"Madeline!"

I jumped and then realized it was Wesley's voice I heard calling from downstairs.

"Anybody here?"

He'd let himself in, as he often did, probably to pick up work he needed from his office.

"Hey, Wes! Come up," I called back down. "Save me."

"We thought you would be out on your big date with Chuck Honnett."

Ah, Wes was not alone. Holly's voice grew louder as she mounted the stairs and came into my little upstairs living room. Her purple top was cropped high above the hip-hugging black Capri pants, showing off a tiny tattoo of a holly berry just below her navel.

"We came bearing food," Wes said, entering right behind Holly.

His olive cargo pants were perfectly pressed. Naturally. But I was more impressed by the ample bag he held up. That looked promising. Doggie bag alert.

"Where'd you two have dinner?"

"Miyagi," Holly said. "That place is so hot! Everybody was there tonight. And we sat on the third level, which was rockin'."

Miyagi was a relatively new sushi club on Sunset built in three stories. Each level of loud, sushi bar madness was hipper than the next.

"Wow. You scored." I looked hopefully at the bag and gave a brilliant impression of a doggie whimper.

"Down, Spot. I'll just clear off this table for you." Wes moved a few magazines.

I smiled as I put down my notebook computer and gathered up the notes from my all-night project.

Inside the white bag was a container filled with an assortment of my favorites: spicy tuna roll, yellowtail, and Miyagi's specialty-caterpillar roll. It was kind of like a macho California roll with freshwater eel wrapped in rice and covered with avocado. I was in heaven.

Holly flopped down on her favorite chair, rubbing her long fingers in the soft sage-colored chenille fabric, but Wes seemed uneasy.

"What's up?" I looked at Wes with concern.

"It's Vivian's dog," he said, glancing out my window toward the back of the house. "I left her down in the courtyard with a bowl of water, but...She's really a dear."

"Wesley! Bring that poor gal up here."

Wes brightened and left.

"So it's you and me," I said to Holly, waiting for her to question the whereabouts of my date. Instead she was focused inward.

"I'm supposed to meet Donald after midnight. Man, he's been so busy lately, I've hardly seen the guy. We only have time for a quick jump and he's gotta go back to his place and work on his screenplay."

"Well, that's probably natural for writers, Hol."

"I mean, I told him to keep the lights on while we do it, or I won't even remember what he looks like anymore, you know?"

"Hol? Too much information."

"You wimp." She laughed. "So what happened to Honnett? You look like you never even went out."

"He was here. He showed up. Don't worry. He had to go back to work."

"Oh. So what is it with us? Why are we involved with these work geeks, anyway? What we need are some unemployed actors! Now, they have got time to boogie." She looked at me with dancing eyes. "Let's get us a whole stable of unemployed actors and it would be sex, sex, sex-morning, noon, and night! We would not be two chicks sitting alone getting way too excited over some lousy take-out sushi on a Monday night, mama!"

I cracked up. So pathetic and so nailed.

I heard the jingling of a dog collar accompanied by Wes's soothing voice coming up the stairs. And into the room walked one very odd-looking dog.

"Hi there, girl," I said, patting her proud but almost hairless nose. She was tall and quite thin, and she had an extremely short-haired golden brown coat, with a strange cowlick thingie along the top of her spine. I also noticed her dog collar had a hanging pendant with a very large square-shaped green stone, like a simulated emerald.

"She's Vivian's dog, all right. Check out those accessories." Holly reached over to scratch the calm dog's head. "I mean, who'd I have to hump for a choker like that?"

Wesley grimaced. "Ah, ah, ah...she heard that. I'd watch your leg, honey."

See, Holly and I have rather similar observations on life, only expressed a shade differently.

"Boy, she certainly is one calm, cool dog," I said. "So what is she? She looks very...uh..."

"Wacky," Holly suggested.

"Well, I can tell you for sure she's not a Staffordshire Bull Terrier," I said, with the superior attitude of a woman who has just looked at eight dozen photos of same.

"She's a Rhodesian Ridgeback, I believe," said the man who knew everything. "See this fur?" Wesley drew his hand across the dog's back, feeling the stubby fur cowlick that ran down the center. Imagine a shaved dog with a mini-Mohawk. "This is her ridge."

"Ah."

"Cool."

We all took turns feeling her ridge. It actually felt quite good. And the dog didn't mind a bit.

"Esmeralda, down." Wesley gave her a friendly command and the sweet-tempered dog behaved brilliantly, resting down on her haunches next to the sofa.

Wes sat down next to me and noticed the photos I'd been studying all night.

"Wow. You scored. How'd you get this picture of Albert Nbutu?"

"Long story. I decided to visit Verdugo Woodlands. Funny how this picture of Nbutu was on Reynoso's desk, eh? I had to make up a whole song and dance, but the chef was actually a lamb. Now, I wonder what was going on? Why did he pretend he didn't know this guy when you called, Wes?"

"Beats me. Maybe you showed him more leg than I did."

"To be fair, he didn't see your leg, Wes. I'm sure he would have appreciated it, given half a chance."

"Thanks, sweetie. So how'd you get him to talk?"

"I didn't want to spook Reynoso so I didn't mention Nbutu at all. He got the impression I was from some ice sculpture magazine."

"Good one." Wes was amused.

"Boy, people can get interested in some pretty weird stuff," opined the queen of weird herself, with a straight face.

"He let me borrow some photos and the great part was, he didn't look very closely at the ones I took. It was masterful, if I do say so myself. Only I've hit a major snag. I thought I would find some brilliant clue in this photo that would help me track Albert down in thirty minutes."

"And?"

"That was five hours ago."

Curious, Holly moved over to squeeze in on the sofa. "That's your ice sculptor guy? What a body." She traced his image over the glass with one long purple fingernail. "Cool tattoo."

"Can you read what it says?" I asked.

Holly took the frame and squinted close to the picture. "I think it says Sandman, maybe."

Wesley took the picture from her and studied it.

"Isn't that a jewel?"

"Yes. Like an outline of a diamond, I think."

"No," Wes said, still studying the photo. "It's square. Like an emerald."

Of course it was.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Wes asked us.

"Uh..." Holly didn't get it.

"There's an emerald on Albert Nbutu's shoulder, and there's a fake emerald on Miss Esmeralda's collar," I said, thinking.

"And, of course, Esmeralda is the Spanish word for emerald," Wes finished up.

Holly giggled. "You guys know too much."

"Wait a minute. Holy shit." I pulled my PC back into my lap. The screensaver, the floating words EAT DRINK SEX that Wes had long ago programmed into my computer, disappeared and the Champion Bull Terriers website blinked back on. I hit the back button and came, once again, upon the list of 71 matches for the word Sandawana. Scrolling down almost to the bottom of the page, I came back to a listing I'd just barely glanced at earlier. Sandawana showed a match on a website for something called the Mining News.

A few seconds later I was at the opening page that described various mining operations in several developing nations. I used the FIND function to get to the word I was looking for. It brought me directly down to the word Sandawana, as in the Sandawana Mine, as in a location in the interior of the country of Zimbabwe.

"This is a little freaky," I said, clicking on a few more buttons. Wes and Holly watched the screen flash through its silent progression of images. "Wasn't Zimbabwe formerly called Rhodesia?"

"Yes it was," Wes said. "Rhodesia became two countries-Zimbabwe and Zambia-back in the seventies."

All three of us pondered the fact that Vivian owned a dog whose country of origin contained a mine whose name, Sandawana, was tattooed on the shoulder of an African who was present at the occasion of her demise. Of course, it made absolutely no sense.

Wes looked at me and asked, "What exactly gets mined at Sandawana?"

"Wait! Don't tell me. Don't tell me," Holly said, excited.

I pushed a button and in a few seconds we would have our answer...

Holly jumped up, like a Jeopardy! contestant on uppers, and excitedly blurted out, "What are emeralds?"...just before the image appeared on the screen.

Chapter 17.

The robber barons who run the parking structure at Cedars-Sinai Hospital engage in legalized extortion. Seriously. They charge an arm and a leg for every twenty minutes, and you're crazy to pay it. Better to park at the Beverly Center and walk. That way, either coming or going, you get to cruise the mall if you want. I usually want. But this morning, I was in a hurry.

I checked in at the visitors' desk and was directed to the proper bank of elevators. Up to the South Tower, fifth floor. Walking along the linoleum, smelling hospital smells, I began to feel some compassion for Whisper Pettibone. While maybe I had not formed the best impression of him, and maybe his manner was decidedly waspish, he certainly didn't deserve to end up in a hospital bed. I resolved to tread gently in our interview, to be my most nurturing self. Nurse Cherry Bean-kind, caring, sweet-tempered. A goddamn angel of mercy.

At the door to room 599 I stopped. What to do? For some reason-and really, I blame the HMOs-the hospital fails to provide doormen to announce you. And yet, what an intimate space is a sickroom-a bedroom, really-in which to have a casual stranger, such as myself, barge. I faltered, standing in the hallway. I would hardly have looked forward to visiting the acidic Mr. Pettibone when he was full of his usual vinegar, dressed to the teeth. To approach him while he was in bed, loosely wrapped in some hospital-issue gown complete with breezeway bottom, was a thrill I could have happily lived without.

Just then, a middle-aged nurse opened the door, startling me. She gave an exasperated "tsk-tsk-tsk" and walked off. Apparently, Whisper Pettibone was a charming patient this morning. Wonderful.