Programmed for Peril

you.”
    Somehow chastened, Trish spent the rest of the evening cooperating with her mother on wedding details. She spent an hour on the phone with Jill Beestock, her matron of honor. She explained where the bridal boutique was, when she should show up for fittings. More than a month ago she had had her first fitting for the gown she—and Marylou— had chosen. Her mother announced herself pleased with the design, no matter that it cost “a fair portion of your father’s generous estate.” Trish had studied herself in that inspired cloud of pastel. In the pale color she saw symbolized the tangle of her past. Mother Trish hiding an illegitimacy made wearing white a social impossibility. Father Ron Verner, who would surely have made an honest woman of her, was dead in an accident. Master Carson claimed a throne of paternity not his....
    Would she ever escape all that and be allowed to live a new life with Foster? She guessed that wouldn’t happen until Carson was in police hands. The police were in touch with her that evening. Detective Morris phoned. She waited expectantly for news of the hunt for her nemesis. Instead he said, “How would you and your daughter like to join my family’s Fourth of July picnic?”
    “Oh, I... don’t know.” She recalled the cop’s silence in contrast to his colleague Lieutenant Sarkman’s cool officiousness. See him socially? Foster was sailing on the holiday; they had agreed on a brief cooling-off period. She had planned nothing more than a solo bout with the outdoor grill. One day in the company of a law officer would scarcely compromise her engagement. “Can we talk about what the police have done about my problems, Detective Morris?”
    “We can, but I’ll tell you up front I don’t want to spend the whole day talking business with you. You’re too pretty for that. And by the way, you can call me Jerry.”
    The Morris clan was extensive—dozens of adults of all shapes and ages and hordes of children. Every Fourth of July they rented a pavilion in a park not far from the site of the civic fireworks. No sooner did Trish and Jerry arrive than the softball game started. After that came volleyball. By the time Trish sank down on a bench, beer in hand, she wasn’t sure her overworked muscles would allow her to walk to the buffet—even though she was starving. Jerry came to the rescue holding a heaping plate. “You never told me you were a left-handed power hitter,” he said.
    “My pop-ups over second that fell in? That’s not power where I come from, son.”
    Trish was so relaxed from the exercise and sun that it was almost unwillingly that she wheeled their conversation from easy generalities to what the police had accomplished with her problems. She asked Jerry what kind of a job he and Lieutenant Sarkman were doing on her behalf.
    He shuffled sneakered feet. His heavy lashes rose in mild concern. “This is all off the record today, right?”
    She shrugged. “Sure.”
    “Sarkman thinks he’s the department superstar. Solving murders can do that to your head. It’s our society’s most glamorous crime—murder—isn’t it?”
    “Never thought of it that way. You’re saying he’d rather solve murders than help me? Why’d the commissioner give him the case, then?”
    “Politics. Sark the Shark has a good rep. So the Palmers think our best man is on their case.”
    “What’s he done for me so far?”
    “Not much.”
    Trish rose and pulled Jerry up. “Let’s take a walk along the reservoir.” A quarter of the way around she asked him if he could take whatever initiative was needed to find Carson and arrest him.
    “Sark told me we weren’t really going to give your case priority,” he began. When she opened her mouth to protest he hurried on. “But I’ll see if there’s anything I can do alone.” They walked on in silence, the reservoir blue and unblemished to their right. “This guy Carson has you psyched, doesn’t he?”
    “Do I show it that much?”
    “I’ve been told I have excellent intuition,” Jerry said.
    “I ask you to accept what I say as is: He’s far beyond cunning, and now he’s crazy as well. He’s a devil. He’ll never stop until the wedding is canceled or you arrest him. I guarantee it.”
    Jerry stopped and leaned against the wall. “He must be very much in love with you.”
    “Obsession isn’t love.”
    He nodded. “And Foster? Is it love with Foster?”
    “Of course! What kind of question is that? We’re going