"I can't think of anyone." He paused. "Maybe . . .

God, I wonder if Blake Howard is a member of the Metro Club. It would be just like him to belong to an exclusive men's club where he could network with the rich and powerful. If that's true, and he knows Erica-"

"Then he's another connecting link between Erica and all the players we've named so far," Catherine said, with a rush of new excitement. "That would certainly point away from your father. How do we find out if Blake is a member?"

"I'll call his assistant, Rita. She'll know. Even if he is a member, it's a long shot he's behind this. Blake doesn't have that much of a reason to hate me; nor, as I said before, is he that smart."

"Sometimes people play dumb on purpose. It lets them slide under the radar."

"Possibly. I know he's ambitious, and he's also rich. He has some family money backing him. I can't recall him reacting in any particular way to my story on Ravino, although I never asked for his opinion. If he is a Metro Club member, then he probably knew the senator, too, or hoped to." Dylan paused. "You have a good sense of direction. My grandmother's house is on the next block."

"I know. I paid attention when we left."

"You'd make a good reporter, Catherine."

She let out a small laugh. "No way. I could never objectively report the news. I'd get too involved and probably be really depressed most of the time."

"You build up a thick skin over the years. Well, maybe not you," he admitted.

"Thanks."

"It's not an insult."

"Really? I can't imagine that you like emotional women."

"I don't like women who are drama, drama, drama. But that's not you. You're just . . . complicated."

"I'll give you that," she said, as she parked the car in front of his grandmother's house. "And I'll take complicated over crazy any day of the week."

As she stepped out of the car Catherine realized that the neighborhood had come to life since they'd left earlier that morning. Down the street a man watered plants in front of his house. Across the block two kids were playing catch. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, the fog lingering on the edge of the horizon but still several hours away from blowing in off the ocean and covering the city.

She followed Dylan up to the house, keeping an eye out for anything unusual, but everything appeared normal. It was doubtful anyone knew where they were, but sooner or later the news about Erica would come out. And certainly Dylan would be a person of interest, if not an outright suspect.

"Do you think you should call your lawyer again?" she asked as they entered the house.

"Mark said he'd e-mail me with news, so I'll check my computer in a minute."

Catherine set the bags of food on the kitchen counter and began unpacking the deli sandwiches she'd picked up. She'd also gotten a rotisserie chicken and some salad makings for dinner. The fewer times they had to leave the house the better.

"Wow," Dylan said as she handed him his turkey-and-ham combo with all the fixings. "I was expecting eggplant with tomatoes on some type of whole-grain bread."

"That's mine," she said with a smile. "How did you guess?"

"I must be picking up on some of your psychic powers."

"That must be it. Speaking of which . . ." She sat down at the table, not sure she wanted to bring up her latest vision, but then again, it could be important, and she might not be able to understand the significance without Dylan.

He set down his sandwich and gave her a wary look. "Why do I get the feeling I'm about to lose my appetite?"

"I was standing in line at the supermarket and there was this mom and her kid in front of me, and the little boy had a Band-Aid on his forehead. I suddenly flashed on another scene. I think it was you and your mother. You had fallen and scraped your knee. She said, 'Don't worry, Dylan. Mommy will make it better.' "

Dylan didn't blink for a long moment, and then he sat back in his chair with a definite shake of his head. "That couldn't have been my mother. She didn't do anything to make my life better."

"You were small, maybe five or six," Catherine said, seeing the echo of pain in his eyes. "I think you were on a deck. It was summer. There was a breeze."

"God." He breathed out. He rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands.

She didn't say anything, giving him a moment to regroup. Finally he lifted his head and gazed back at her. "I fell on the pier near our beach house. She put a Band-Aid on my knee. I can't believe I remember that now." He took a breath. "Why would you see that? It doesn't have anything to do with Erica or her killer."

"It has to do with you. Maybe I saw it because we were just in your father's house. Perhaps I was picking up on the vibes there, the lingering ties to your mother, your desire to find out what happened to her."

"My mother hasn't been in that house in twenty-three years."

"But she lived there once, and she's tied to you and to your father. She's also tied to this house. Her photo is upstairs."

"How is your vision supposed to help me?" he challenged. "And you know, it's not like you couldn't have made it up. Every kid skins his knee. Every mother puts on Band-Aids."

She didn't waver in the face of his accusation. He was rattled by his memory, and he'd rather attack her than face what her vision might mean to him. "You remember the incident I described," she said quietly. "And you know somewhere in that thick, stubborn brain of yours that I didn't make it up. We are way past that."

He looked away from her gaze, staring down at his sandwich. After a moment he said, "Even if it was true, so what? Even if she was kind to me back then, even if she cared for a minute, it means nothing to me now. So why should I care about that one moment in time?"

"There had to be other moments, Dylan."

"A few," he conceded. "I got sick after we came back from the beach. I remember being in the hospital for a long time. But eventually I got better, and the next thing I knew she was gone."

"You were in the hospital?" Catherine queried. "You never mentioned that before."

"It's not important. I survived."

"What was wrong with you?"

"I don't remember, some kind of virus or infection. It never came back. I still don't see how your vision is supposed to help me."

"I didn't say it would help you. I just wanted to be up front about it." She knew that Dylan wanted a specific reason for why she'd gotten that brief glimpse into his childhood, but she couldn't give him that. She didn't know herself. "For some reason it's important that you remember her."

"I don't want to remember her," he said, jerking to his feet. "Don't you get it, Catherine? I've spent most of my life trying to forget her. The last thing I want to do is bring her back." He strode toward the door.

"Where are you going? Don't you want to eat?"

"I'm not hungry anymore. I'm going to check my e-mail and review the Metro Club video on my computer." He paused in the doorway. "The past isn't what's important, Catherine. It's the present and the fu-ture-the future I do not want to spend in jail. Why don't you concentrate on that for a while and stop trying to piece together my broken family?"

She didn't bother to argue, even though she knew that he was dead wrong. He wouldn't be able to figure out his present or his future until he'd come to terms with his past.

Dylan took the materials he'd gathered at his office into his grandmother's den and set up shop. As his computer booted up on the desk, he paced around the room, restless and angry. He was tired of being the last person to know anything. Even Catherine, with her damn cryptic visions, was a step ahead of him. He needed to find a way to get out in front, to turn the tables. But how could he do that when he had no idea who was pulling the strings in this puppet show?

Was it his father? Was it Ravino? Was it Blake Howard?

He sat down in the desk chair and loaded the video. He played it over and over, scanning every blurry face in the background in search of clues. When he got to the man with his hand on Erica's waist, the ring on the man's finger tugged at his brain. He knew he'd seen that ring before. It was probably Blake's. He wore one of those Ivy League school rings on his left hand, a sign of his importance.

Taking out a piece of paper, he jotted down some names, leaving space under each one. He put Ravino at the top, then his father, then Blake. Who else? He tapped his pencil on the desktop. Then he wrote down Erica. She had an obvious tie to Ravino, a link to his father through the club and possibly Blake. That was one connection he could check out right away. Setting down his pencil, he typed out a quick e-mail to Blake's assistant, Rita Herriman, asking if Blake was a member of the Metro Club. He made it appear as if he were also interested in joining the club and wanted a sponsor. That might get him a direct answer to at least one question. He wanted to ask Rita if Blake had received any phone calls from Erica, but he had to consider how she would view the question when she found out Erica was dead and he was the prime suspect.

How could it hurt? He typed in the question and hit the send button before he could change his mind. Like most newspeople, Rita would no doubt check her messages before the end of the day.

Clicking out of his mail program, he pulled out the tapes of his interviews with Erica, slipped them into his minicassette player, and pushed play. Erica's nervous voice gave him a jolt. It was eerie to hear her speaking and know that she was now dead.

Turning off the tape, he got to his feet and returned to the kitchen. Catherine was reading the newspaper.

"I'm going down to the corner," he told her. "There's a pay phone there. I didn't have any e-mails from Mark, but I want to check in with him."

"Do you want me to come?"

"I'll just be a couple of minutes."

"Be careful," she said, concern in her eyes. "I'm almost afraid to let you out of my sight. It's strange, because I've been living on my own for years, but I'm getting kind of used to having you around."

To his surprise, he felt much the same way. "Don't worry; I'll be back."

Mark answered on the third ring. "What's up?" Dylan asked.

"I was just about to e-mail you. The woman in the park has been positively identified as Erica Layton. The Lake Tahoe Sheriff's Department is now working with the San Francisco Police Department. They've officially turned over their information to our guys here, including the circumstantial evidence that they have against you."

"That evidence shouldn't mean anything, since Erica didn't die in Tahoe."

"Unfortunately we're going to have to wait for the coroner's report to establish time and date of death, and that she wasn't killed elsewhere and then left in the park. There's more. The drug screen you had done yesterday came back negative."

Dylan couldn't believe what he was hearing. "That's impossible. Erica put something in my drink."

"There are certain drugs that leave the system fairly quickly without a trace. Fortunately DNA will take some time to get back, so if your blood was planted in Erica's Tahoe cabin or here in Golden Gate Park, it will be a few weeks before anyone figures that out. But I have to warn you, Dylan, that the SFPD has requested a search warrant for your house, which means they think they have enough evidence to show probable cause. Once they analyze your phone records, it will be clear that you were here in San Francisco at least near the time of Erica's death."

Dylan's stomach began to churn. He'd been expecting the other shoe to drop, and now it had. He was going to be an official suspect in a murder investigation.

"I talked to a friend of mine in the SFPD," Mark continued. "He told me you should turn yourself in as soon as possible so that they can clear your name."

"They're not going to clear my name; they're going to clear out a cell with my name on it."

"Dylan, Erica is dead. The police may be the least of your worries. Whoever killed her could be coming after you next."

"They want to frame me, not kill me."

"Are you sure about that?"

He wasn't at all sure. He had no real idea what the next move in this game would be. But Erica's murder had certainly upped the ante. Someone was playing for keeps, and depending on who was calling the shots, it wasn't impossible that they also wanted him dead.

"Do you know anything about the way Erica was killed?" he asked.

"She was shot-that's all I know."

"Any evidence at the crime scene?"

"Not that anyone wanted to share with me, but if her murder was part of your setup, then I'm betting something was there to tie you to the crime. I don't think you have a choice, Dylan. You have to turn yourself in."

"Not yet. I need a little more time. But listen, next time you talk to your cop buddy, tell him that there's another person who has a good reason for wanting Erica dead, and that's Joseph Ravino. She helped the police put him in prison. He could easily want revenge, not to mention the fact that it would probably weaken the case against him if she weren't alive to testify about their affair or her conversation with Ravino's wife. Instead of focusing solely on me, they should work that angle."

"I'll pass it along. Unfortunately, Ravino's being in jail means he couldn't have personally committed the crime."

"He didn't personally kill his wife either. He just made sure the Botox she injected into her face would kill her."

"Allegedly," Mark said.

"Well, the one thing I know for sure is that I didn't kill Erica. That means someone else did."

"Aside from the senator, do you have any other ideas?"

Dylan hesitated. "I recently uncovered a link between my father and Ravino. They both socialized at the Metro Club."

"What are you saying? You think your father is involved?" Mark asked, amazed. "I know you two don't have a good relationship, but a frame for murder? Your father is an upstanding citizen."

"On the outside he is, but you don't know the real man," Dylan said heavily.

"But murder? Is he capable of that?"

Dylan didn't even hesitate. "Absolutely. I'll be in touch, Mark, and I'll have my computer, so if you need to get hold of me send me a message."

Dylan hung up the phone. He couldn't believe the drug test had come back negative. The noose around his neck was drawing tighter. He didn't know how much longer he'd be free; he had to make use of every second.

"That's it," Dylan said as he finished updating Catherine on his conversation.

"That's a lot," she replied, worry in her eyes.

He tipped his head. "Which means I need to find a way out fast. I'll be in the den."

"Do you want my help?"

"No, there's nothing you can do."

Catherine wasn't surprised he declined her offer. Since she'd shared her vision about his mother, Dylan had cooled toward her. He didn't like that she'd seen that tender moment between him and his mother. It went against the grain. He saw his mother as an evil woman who'd abandoned him, and her vision had poked a hole in his picture. He didn't want to change his attitude. And he didn't want her reading his mind. She should have kept her mouth shut.

Every boyfriend she'd ever had she'd eventually scared away. She'd tried to keep her visions to herself. She'd tried to act normal, like everyone else, but then came the moment when she inadvertently revealed something that was uncomfortable or disturbing. Dylan probably wanted to send her packing. In fact, she wouldn't be surprised if he made the suggestion-but she wasn't going to leave. Whether he believed she could help him or not, she knew she was supposed to be here. And she wasn't going to run from the fear, not anymore. If Dylan could face his problems head-on, then so could she.

With Dylan holed up in the den, she decided to explore his grandmother's house. If she could find any clues to the relationship between Dylan's parents, it might help her understand the family dynamics.

Starting in the kitchen she went through every drawer, trying to open her heart and her brain to the vibrations and the memories. Dylan's grandmother's spirit was still within these walls, a woman who had ties to everyone in the family. Even though she'd never admitted to Dylan that she'd known of her son's abusive attitude toward his grandson, perhaps she had. Perhaps somewhere in this house that knowledge would be evident.