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couldn’t understand it. Lyle was the one who set it up.”
    “Would they know where he went—violin, cello?”
    “I doubt it,” she said. “They didn’t say so. And they hadn’t known him long. Not like I have.”
    “Would he have gone with his father?”
    She made a face. “He was here because he has a very strong sense of responsibility, and he owed his father, or thought he did, for all his father had done for him financially to see that he got a first-class musical education and all that. But he was just being dutiful. He’d lost all respect for his father after his father…” She eyed Dave nearsightedly through the thick lenses. “You know what his father did? You know he went to prison?”
    “I know,” Dave said.
    “I don’t mean Lyle said anything. He wouldn’t. But you could tell how he felt—he never smiled at his father, all he said was yes and no, okay? I guess he felt sorry for him, in a way, but he really didn’t”—she moved those big, square shoulders inside the Mexican pullover—“well, have any use for him. He was in—despair over him, all right?”
    “There has to be love behind that,” Dave said.
    “He was here, wasn’t he?” she said. “But he wouldn’t run away with him—from the man’s honest debts? Nothing like that.”
    “Do you know Howie O’Rourke?” Dave said.
    “That creep,” she said. “He used to hang around in here at night, pretending to listen to us, smoking grass, drinking wine. Red hair, long sideburns, and this dead white skin, you know? Fish-belly white? He thought he was God’s gift to women. He didn’t want to hear us play. He just wanted to have sex. With Jennifer, or Kimberly—even with me.” She smiled wryly. “Can you believe that? He’d sprawl there on the couch with his legs stretched out, feeling himself up and leering at us. Really. Leering. Finally, Lyle told his father to keep him out of here.”
    “They were writing a book together,” Dave said.
    “Mr. Westover was writing it. Howie couldn’t write his own name. He was telling Mr. Westover all his garbage about being a con artist.” She snorted contempt. “Howie couldn’t be a con artist. Howie couldn’t be anything. Oh, maybe a worm—if he practiced a lot.” She lifted music from one of the racks, made a thick roll of it, stuck the roll into the pouch pocket, and picked up the instrument cases from the harpsichord. She started off, then turned back. “If they went together, why are both cars gone?” She shook her head hard, and with certainty. Strands of the straw-color hair fell across her face. “They wouldn’t go together.” She stuck out her lower lip and blew at the fallen hair. “No way would they go together.”
    “Take this.” Dave held out a card. “And if you get any ideas about where Lyle might be, telephone me, will you? Maybe something he said will come back to you, or something Mr. Westover said. I’ll be grateful.”
    She tucked the flute case under her arm, took the card, glanced at it, stashed it away with the music, the wallet. “You know what I never thought? When I telephoned, and rang the doorbell and all that and no one answered? That they could be in trouble. I was the only one I thought about—getting my instruments.” The hair flopped across her face again when she shook her head in disgust at herself. “I wasn’t even worried about them. I should have told the police or someone that something was wrong here.” Her crossed, magnified eyes apologized to Dave. “I’m not much of a human being, am I?”
    “If you weren’t,” Dave said, “you wouldn’t be worried about it. Is Lyle a close friend?”
    “I’ve been in love with him since the first time we met. At Buenos Vientos, right? The music camp? We both had scholarships. It’s for gifted kids, master classes, a good conductor. Summers. He was all alone in this empty practice cabin—they’re just boards and two-by-fours, no glass in the windows. He was playing the