“You know what I mean.” He finished another plate and stacked it neatly atop the pile in the cabinet above. “You know what halibut’s bringing these days.”

“The halibut will still be there when we get back.”

“I know that, but the weather may not be. I explained it to you before.”

“Oh come on, Arri. It’s a long way ’til November.”

“The Gulf has her own seasons,” he countered. “You know how capricious the weather can be.” Capricious was Arriaga’s favorite word of the week. He learned new words from his daughter. Arriaga had missed a lot of schooling in his youth, but he was damned if he was going to appear ignorant in front of his daughter’s friends. So he would nod knowingly whenever Amanda Rae used a word he didn’t recognize and then sneak off at night to look it up in the dictionary. He’d use it until he felt comfortable with it.

Amanda was completely aware of what her father was doing, of course, but she maintained her end of the fiction and he held to his. In that way daughter educated father without any damage to the latter’s ego. It was a little game, full of secret love.

“That still doesn’t help her forget her brother.” Wendy dug at the skillet with the scrubbing pad. What she wouldn’t give for some pots and pans coated with teflon or silverstone. But she was still short on the trading stamps and it seemed like the harder she saved, the faster inflation drove the price of the cookware up. It was a lot better than what her mother had had to cook with, though, she reminded herself. She bore down still harder with the scrubber.

“I miss him, too,” Arriaga confessed. He was equally proud of his son and his daughter. In spite of her handicap they would soon begin making preparations for Amanda to go off to college. There didn’t seem to be any question of her receiving a full scholarship. Martin wasn’t quite as smart, but he’d qualified for work and grant programs and they were managing. None of the other fishermen had a boy in college, much less a daughter preparing to join him.

“We’re going to need the extra money we can make from the halibut, for Amanda.”

“If you catch any halibut,” Wendy pointed out.

“If we do, maybe you won’t have to use the trading stamps for those new dishes you want.”

“The pots and pans can wait a while longer," she said, wincing as her knuckles scraped the pan. “It’s Amanda’s happiness I’m concerned about, not mine.”

“You two are really set on this, aren’t you?”

“Amanda is. And if Amanda is, then I am, Arri.”

“Then I’ll just have to work something out with the Sanchezes and Grissom, won’t I?”

She put down her dishes and put her arms around him. “I guess you will. The halibut will wait.”

“They say all good things are worth waiting for.”

Decidely uninterested in the moans and groans of plebeian domestic bliss, Ruth Somerset sighed and shut off the recorder. These perople were puerile in outlook and boring in conversation, and she was sick of listening to their petty concerns and problems. She rested a long moment, then dialed a certain number.

“Benjamin?”

“Hi, sweetness. What’s happening?”

“It sounds like the grandniece’s family has decided to take the coming weekend off. They’ve got that older kid up at Texas A & M and the grandniece is determined to visit him.”

“Well hell,” Huddy muttered. “Why’d it have to be this weekend? That’s rotten timing.”

“What difference does it make? Didn’t your people pick the old man up last night?”

“No, they did not.”

“What the fuck happened?” This would be over and done with by now if their positions had been reversed from the beginning, she knew. She should have managed the pickup while Huddy squatted in this hole monitoring tapes. But she wasn’t in a position to say that sort of thing… yet.

“I’m not sure.” To his credit her lover sounded just as fed up as she was. “I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of Drew. You remember him, the guy I sent out from L.A. to supervise things.

“All he can tell me is that something spooked the two locals he sent in to winkle Pickett out of his motel room and that by the time he got things back under control, the old man had split. They still haven’t found him. They will. It’s a small town. But I don’t like what’s going on down there. Apparently the two who tried to take Pickett are still half incoherent. That’s what Drew tells me, anyway.”

“Did he do another wheel trick?” she asked.

“No. Nothing like that. It all took place in Pickett’s motel room. No cars involved. That’s part of what I don’t understand. I’m going out there myself. This is the second foul-up and I’m sick of excuses. Drew’s a good man, as intelligent as apes go, but I can see that I’m going to have to direct this pickup in person.”

“But if you don’t know where he is …?”

“Like I said, it’s a small town. The refuges available to an old man are finite. At worst we know which way he’s headed.”

“We think we know which way he’s headed, you mean.”

“That’s why you’re holding down the fort at the end of the hypothetical line, sweet thing. Take this sudden desire on the part of the grandniece to go visiting. From what you’ve told me that doesn’t make any sense, even to her parents. You’re positive the grandniece hasn’t had a call from the old man?”

“No way, lover. We’ve got every phone and room in that house bugged. Everything comes through loud and clear. I suppose it’s possible for her to have talked to him on a friend’s telephone. The grandniece rolls around the neighborhood visiting girlfriends. I just don’t see that as a valid likelihood. Pickett wouldn’t know which friend to call and there’s no way for the grandniece to know how or where to call him.”

“I agree. Look, I want that family kept there until we pick him up. I don’t want them floating around some crowded university town. I know it’s far-fetched, but if the grandniece has talked to Pickett they may be trying to set up a rendezvous outside her home town. Just keep them at home for another week.”

“You’re still concerned that he might make it all the way down here?” She made no effort to conceal her surprise.

“The way things have gone so far, nothing would surprise me. I’m just covering all the bases, sweet thing. You know me.”

“Yes, I know you, Benjamin. Very well. I’ll see to it that they spend this weekend at home. How far do you want me to go to insure that?”

“Whatever’s necessary. Just don’t overdo it. Use local people. Houston should be able to help you out.”

Somerset replied somewhat testily, “I think I know how to handle it.”

“I never doubted that you did. See you, lover.”

“Good-bye, Benjy.” She hung up absently, her thoughts elsewhere.

Wendy Ramirez rolled over in bed and frowned at the darkness. Strange hammering sounds had awakened her, and they weren’t caused by the waters of the bay slapping at the seawall back of the house. They came from somewhere out front.

She sat there, supporting herself on one elbow, and listened. It might be a neighborhood dog at the garbage cans again, except tomorrow wasn’t garbage collection day and everybody’s containers would be locked away in garages. Some kids fooling around, probably, but… she nudged her husband.

“Arri?”

“Hmmm? What?”

“Arri,” she whispered, “I hear somebody out in front of the house.”

“You always hear somebody out front,” he mumbled.

“No, not this time. I really hear something this time.” She shook him so he wouldn’t go back to sleep. “Please, Arri. See what it is.”

He groaned as he turned onto his back, blinking at her in the near blackness. “Alright. What is it with women and noises in the night?”