“Oh, God,” she said. “We’re talking about fi fteen, twenty years ago.”
I nodded. She looked at me speculatively. Then she picked up the phone and dialed.
“Ruth? Lois . . . I’m fi ne . . . absolutely . . . can you send me a list of the members of my class, when I was here? . . . yes, and maybe the class on either side of me? . . . yes . . . real soon . . . thank you.”
She smiled at me.
“Alumni secretary. She’ll send the names over, maybe jog my memory.”
“And maybe some current addresses,” I said.
“I’m sure,” Lois said.
She was still looking at me, like an appraiser.
“You’re not a regular police detective,” she said.
“Private,” I said.
“So people hire you,” she said.
“If they’re wise,” I said.
“Who hired you to fi nd Brad Turner?”
“It’s sort of the outgrowth,” I said, “of something else I’m working on.”
“And you’re not going to tell me what that something else is,” she said.
“Try not to,” I said.
She got a pad of blue-lined white paper out of her drawer.
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“Thanks.”
She kept looking at me.
“I suppose it’s not like on TV,” she said.
“Actually, it’s just like that,” I said.
She laughed.
“Sure it is,” she said.
She doodled a little smiley face on the pad.
“I have to say, though, you look like a private detective,” she said.
“What do they look like?” I said.
“Big, strong, intrepid, handsome, in a rough way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s accurate.”
“And,” she said, “you’re fun.”
I nodded.
“Bubbly,” I said.
A pale young woman with red-framed eyeglasses came in and handed Lois a thick printout of names and addresses.
“Ms. Carter sent these over,” the young woman said, and hurried out as if she were escaping.
Lois looked at the paper.
“Well,” she said. “Let’s see.”
48.
Ihad bought myself a bottle of Dewar’s scotch and was having some with soda and ice, sitting on the bed in my hotel room, looking at the gray lake, talking to Susan.
“So something happened,” I said, “between the time Lois the assistant dean knew him as Bradley Turner, and the time Red met him as Perry Alderson.”
“Which is what kind of time frame?” Susan said.
“She knew him twenty years ago. Red tells me that Perry straightened him out and he’s been straight for ten years.”
“That’s a pretty big gap to fi ll,” Susan said. “Ten years.”
“I’ll narrow it, I suspect, when I’ve plowed through Lois’s list of names.”
“How many?” Susan said.
“Sixteen,” I said. “All women.”
“Hmmm.”
