True-Life Adventure

to its publics. Your corporate identity is the actual impression it’s making. You follow that?”
    I nodded.
    “So the extent to which the two things are disparate is the extent to which you need me. Or would, if a small time detective agency had any publics to impress.”
    For a while there, I was pretty bored and busy with my crab salad. But that last sentence got my attention. I was so surprised, I blurted the first thing that came into my head: “I’m not a detective.”
    “You aren’t?” She blushed, seeing several hundred thousand Pandorf dollars go down the tube.
    I shook my head.
    “There was just a story in the Examiner about a guy with your name… for some reason I thought…” She was stammering. She’d been damned sure I was the Paul Mcdonald in Ben McGonagil’s story, which meant she’d taken careful note of the name. It also meant she’d been leading me down the garden path for the last half hour— she knew as well as I did that I wasn’t going to buy any high-priced C.I. But what the hell? The whole point of this lunch was to get some questions answered, and now I was spared the trouble of exposing my own fraud.
    I gave her a break: “I am that guy. But I’m a writer, not a detective. In fact, at the moment I’m a reporter. I’m working on a story about Birnbaum’s death.”
    I filled her in on the ghosting and my current job at the Chronicle. She was understandably confused.
    “But what do you want from me?”
    I told her about the Koehler case. Or I started to, anyway. She got big tears in her eyes almost as soon as I mentioned Lindsay’s name, and they started running down her face when I said she was missing.
    “That’s what Jacob meant. This morning.”
    “Jacob?”
    “Jacob Koehler. He came into Steve’s office, looking all wild-haired, and said something about how he had to have her back.”
    “I think I heard it. Was it just as you were leaving?” She nodded. “As I recall, he said, ‘I’ve got to get another one.’”
    “Another private eye he must have meant.”
    “He sounded pretty distraught.”
    “Jacob’s crazy. Always has been.” She dabbed at her eyes.
    “Still, he must have recommended you for the job. The C.I. for Kogene, I mean.”
    “He did. I’ve been working on it for months. And this morning he acted like he never saw me before in his life. Cuckoo.”
    “The original absentminded genius.”
    She nodded. “I don’t know what Lindsay saw in him, except looks, maybe. Glamour.” She’d stopped crying now and she put away her hankie. It dawned on her that we were off the subject as she knew it. “Wait a minute. I thought you wanted to talk about Birnbaum.”
    “Did you know him?”
    “No. When I got back from vacation, there was a message that he’d called a few times. That’s how I knew the name.”
    “He was contacting all of Lindsay’s friends.”
    She didn’t speak, but she looked inquisitive as hell.
    “Sardis, I’m afraid Lindsay’s disappearance and Birnbaum’s murder are connected.” I told her about the burglaries.
    “I see,” she said. “But what can I do for you?”
    “I want to know what you can tell me about Lindsay. How do you know her?”
    “We were best friends in college. Still are, I guess. Except…” The tears started again. “Oh, God, I feel awful. She’s had problems and I…”
    I waited.
    “…I guess I wasn’t there for her. I was too busy with my own problems.”
    “What sort of problems? Lindsay’s, I mean?”
    “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. That’s why I feel so awful. All I know is that she’s been terribly depressed the last— oh, three months or so. Maybe more. I mean, she was depressed the last time I saw her, and that was two months ago.”
    “How often did you see her?”
    “Once a week, usually. Once every two weeks at the least. I just… didn’t call her for a while. I didn’t realize it was such a long while.”
    “She didn’t call you, either.”
    “She probably didn’t feel like it. I wasn’t very good company at the time. She probably couldn’t stand to be around me. All I ever talked about was my own problems.”
    “Did she say what she was depressed about?”
    “No. She wouldn’t talk about it. But I probably didn’t give her a chance.”
    “What sort of person is she, Sardis?”
    “The sort who always knows where she’s going. When we were at Sophie Newcomb, even. She was editing the school paper and doing a campus radio show while