"I can find them, maybe," I said. "It's hard to hide in the age of computers. But I can't force her to come back. If she doesn't want to come back, I can tell you where she is. It might be a good idea for you to let a lawyer know what's going on while I'm looking."

"I'll do that," he said.

"Did you bring the note she left?"

He went into an inside jacket pocket and came out with an envelope. He handed it to me. It had "Ken" written neatly on the front in blue ink.

I opened the envelope and unfolded the piece of unlined paper inside. The note was handwritten, neat, blue ink. It read: "Ken, the children and I are going. Please don't try to find us. I'll write to you when we are settled. I think a divorce would be for the best." It was signed "Janice."

"Show this to your lawyer and start thinking about whether you want custody of your kids," I said, returning the note and envelope to him. "That note is the start of a good case. And if she's in a hotel room with Stark and your son and daughter, and I see them spend the night together, I can testify if it comes to that."

I waited to see if this was sinking in.

"Ask my lawyer," he said.

"That's what I would do."

"I want my kids," he insisted. "I may want my wife, but if I can't have her, I want Kenny and Syd."

"I told you what I can do," I said.

He thought about that for about a minute.

"Okay," he said.

We worked out the payment and he gave me a five-hundred-dollar cash advance, all in fifties. I told him I'd check in with him and if it started to take a lot of time he could rea.s.sess the situation, especially if I had to go out of town or out of the state. He agreed.

"Find them," he said, placing a business card in front of me. "Please find them."

And he was gone. His office number was on the front of the card along with his home number. I pocketed the card as my phone rang. I picked it up and said, "Fonesca."

"Colleen Davenport," Warren Murphy's secretary said.

She worked for one of the partners at Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz, where I was on a retainer. In exchange for that retainer, I got paid a fixed sum each time I served papers and I got the reasonable use of the services of Harvey the Hacker, who had an office in the back of the law firm.

"Two jobs," she said. "One has to be done today. The other by Friday."

"I'll be right over," I said. "Can I talk to Harvey?"

Colleen said Harvey was out of town, which could mean that Harvey was out of town or Harvey had fallen off the wagon. I hung up and went to my backup, Dixie Cruise, no relation to the actor.

Dixie was slim, trim, with very black hair in a short style. She was no more than twenty-five, pretty face, and big round gla.s.ses. Dixie worked behind the counter at a coffee bar in Gulf Gate Plaza. About six months back, I had sought her out to answer a summons about a reported a.s.sault she had witnessed in the coffee bar and found that Dixie, who had as down-home an accent as any Billy Bob, was a computer whiz.

I called her at the coffee bar and she agreed to meet me when she got off of work at her apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building near the main post office. She had a small living room with a sofa bed, a large kitchen, and a bedroom devoted to her two computers, two large speakers, and all kinds of gray metal pieces with lights.

When I got to Dixie's apartment and she got in front of her computers, it took her ten minutes and cost me fifty bucks, which I would bill to Kenneth Severtson. Andrew Stark belonged to AAA. Three days earlier he had purchased two adult and two children's tickets to Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Theme Park. Dixie got a list of hotels in Orlando. Andrew Stark had Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express cards. He had used the Visa to check into an Orlando hotel yesterday.

"Emba.s.sy Suites on International Drive," Dixie said, pointing at the screen as if her right hand were a handgun. "Checkout Thursday. Want to know what he ordered from room service?"

"Should I?"

Dixie shook her head and said, "A lot of burgers, fries, and c.o.kes, both diet and the new vanilla one,"

In the old days, prehacker, I would have gone to AAA, told a sad story, and hoped for the best. Then I would have tried airlines, travel agencies, and friends of Janice Severtson and Andrew Stark. Sarasota isn't huge but it might have taken me days, which means that without Dixie, Stark and Janice would have checked out before I found them.

I went to the law offices of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz on Palm Avenue. Colleen Davenport gave me two sets of papers to serve: one was urgent, the other had a few days.

"How's Harvey?" I asked her.

She was young and inexperienced and trying to look a little older and filled with understanding of the world. She did a fair job.

"Truth?" she said softly as I stood next to her in her cubicle outside of Murphy's office. "He's had a relapse."

"Bad?"

"He's been at this place in Mississippi for two weeks," she said. "Firm is paying the bill. Harvey's too valuable to lose."

I went back to the Nissan with the papers. I put one aside for a Mickey Donophin and read the one for Georgia Heinz. There was an address on a street behind Gulf Gate Mall. I drove there. It was a small house, white, one bedroom, maybe two. No car in the driveway.

Paper in my pocket, I went up to the door and knocked. No answer. I found an almost hidden bell b.u.t.ton. I pushed it. No sound.

"She's not home," a woman's voice came from my left.

The woman came from behind a tangelo tree, holding a green hose. Water was spraying weakly from the nozzle. A little rainbow ran through the spray.

"At work," the woman said.

She was about seventy, maybe more, dry, wearing a flowery gardening dress and a big green floppy hat that shaded her face.

"You happen to know where she works?" I asked.

"I happen to know. Yes I do. Who is asking? I'm not sending her no bill collectors. Poor thing got enough trouble."

"Trouble?"

"Lost her job at the bank, leg infection, even her old dog died. Then she had to see what happened."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Swear you're not a bill collector."

"I swear," I said. "I just want to give her something."

It didn't really matter what I told the woman. I could have said I was a hit man out to get Georgia Heinz. This was a lady determined to tell a story.

"Happened right out there," she said, pointing her hose at the street just behind my car. "Night, around ten maybe. Victor and I were watching a Nero Wolfe when we heard the scream. I said, *Victor, somebody screamed.' And he acknowledged the fact. Victor has a hearing aid, you know."

"No, I didn't," I said.

"Of course you didn't," she said with faint exasperation. "You don't know Victor. I was just using a phrase. Victor's a retired detail man. Thirty years with Pfizer."

"Impressive," I said.

"Minneapolis," she said. "Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas, all his."

"A scream. You were watching Nero Wolfe," I reminded her.

"Yes, right. Well, Victor and I came running out and there she was standing on the sidewalk and there was the boy on the street, and there was the pickup truck and there was this young man leaning out of the pickup truck window and he looked at her and he looked at us and he got back in that truck and drove away. I guess it's not a hit-and-run exactly because he did stop after he hit the boy."

"Leaving the scene of an accident," I said. "What happened to the boy?"

"Hurt bad. The Krelwitzes' son, goes to Manatee Community College. He'll live, though. I'm the one who got the license number of the pickup truck. Victor can't see worth diddly-squat, but I've got twenty-twenty, laser corrected, two thousand dollars but Medicare covered most of it."

"That's good," I said. "But you said you know where Georgia Heinz is."

"Of course I do," she said.

"Would you mind telling me? I have something to give her."

"Give it to me," she said, holding out her hand and aiming the hose in the general direction of the tangelo tree.

"I have to give it to Georgia Heinz," I said.

"I'm Georgia Heinz. You just knocked at Vivian Polter's door."

I checked the address on the summons. There had been no number on the door I had gone to, but the house on the other side of it had been one even number lower than the one I was looking for. The summons had been wrong.

I started across the lawn with Georgia Heinz keeping her eyes on me.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Court order," I said. "For you to testify about what you saw, the license number you took down. The lawyer I work for has a client who's been arrested for what happened. His pickup truck's license number doesn't match the one you gave."

"Than whose pickup truck was it?" she demanded, holding the summons in her hand.

"I don't know," I said, starting back toward my car.

"It was a trick all the time," she shouted. "You tricked me."

I was going to turn and rea.s.sure her that I hadn't tricked her when I felt the blast of water on my back. She had turned the hose on me.

I hurried out of range and got in my car. She was advancing across the lawn with her hose aimed in my direction. She had adjusted the stream on the nozzle so that the rainbow was gone and a long thin snake of water spat toward me.

I pulled away from the curb, being careful not to hit anybody who might be walking in the street.

My pants weren't too bad, but my shirt was drenched. I pulled into the Gulf Gate parking lot and went into Old Navy, where I bought a blue pullover shirt that went with my pants.

I had one more set of papers to serve. I'd worry about them later.

4.

NOW, AS I PULLED into the driveway of the Traskers' house, I was thinking about the kids in the photograph Severtson had shown me.

The house was big, new, Spanish-looking, with turrets and narrow windows. It was on the water at Indian Beach Drive, not far from the Ringling Museum of Art and the Asolo Performing Arts Center. I've seen the outside of both, never felt the urge to go in the first and look at paintings in the second.

I rang the doorbell and waited. In about a minute, the door opened and I found myself facing Roberta Trasker.

Flo could have done a better job of describing her, but Flo was a woman and saw her through a woman's eyes. I was looking at her through my eyes, which might be even less reliable.

Roberta Trasker was probably well into her sixties and maybe she looked it, but she was the best-looking sixty-plus grandmother I had ever seen. She was model slender, wearing tight black jeans and a silky white short-sleeved blouse. Her face was unlined and beautiful. She reminded me a little of Linda Darnell, except Roberta Trasker had short, straight, gleaming white hair. Plastic surgery was possible but I couldn't detect it.

"Who're you?" she asked.

"Lew Fonesca," I said. "Flo Zink called a little while ago."

"What do you want?"

"To come in and talk," I said.

"About what?"

"Your husband," I said.

"I recognize your voice," she said. "You called a few hours ago."

"I did."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Fonseca..."

"Fonesca," I said. "Lots of people make that mistake."

"That must be annoying," she said, now playing with a simple silver band around a slender wrist.

"Depends on who makes the mistake."

"Did I annoy you?"

"Yes," I said. "Not because you got my name wrong but because you did it intentionally. But I'm used to that, too."

She looked at me with her head c.o.c.ked to one side. I was being examined to see how much if any of her precious time I was worth.