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don’t say sexually forthcoming either,” I said.
    “A course they don’t,” O’Connor said.
    “Part of my disguise,” I said. “So you haven’t seen any sign of a stalker.”
    “No.”
    “Telephone records?”
    “She hadn’t talked to the phone company when we talked with her. They weren’t keeping track.”
    “I suggested she do that,” I said.
    “We did too.”
    “Damn. She acted like I was smarter than Vanna White when I suggested it.”
    “Sure.”
    “So why would she make it up?” I said.
    “You’ve seen broads like her, probably more than I have. Husband dumps them, they’re alone out in the suburbs, and they want men around. They want to be looked after. So they call the cops a lot. Maybe Mrs. Roth just took it a step farther and hired a guy to look after her.”
    “Me,” I said, “after you broke her heart.”
    “Could be.”
    “On the other hand, you look like her, you probably don’t have to hire anyone,” I said.
    “After they get dumped,” O’Connor said, “they’re pretty crazy. Ego’s fucked. Maybe she don’t know she’s good-looking.”
    “She knows,” I said.
    O’Connor thought about it for a minute. “Yeah,” he said. “She does.”
    “And there’s at least two ex-whatevers,” I said.
    “Boyfriend?” O’Connor said.
    “Yep. Way she told me,” I said, “she left her husband for the boyfriend and the boyfriend dumped her.”
    “Fucking her was one thing,” O’Connor said. “Marrying her was another.”
    “I guess,” I said. “You know the other thing that bothers me, her husband’s got the kid.”
    “She got a kid?”
    “Yep.”
    “And the kid’s with the husband.”
    “Yep.”
    “Doesn’t fit with your usual stalker,” O’Connor said.
    “Custody of the kid?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No it doesn’t. But you never know. He could love his kid and still be crazy.”
    “I got seven,” O’Connor said. “The two may go together.”
    “You going to stay on this for a while?” I said.
    “Yep. We’ll keep a car checking her, keep the file open. ‘Bout all we can do.”
    “I’ll talk to the ex-husband, and the ex-boyfriend,” I said. “I learn anything I’ll let you know.”
    “Thanks,” O’Connor said. “You learn who it is you might try dealing with him one to one. We can help her get a restraining order and we can warn him he’s subject to arrest. And sometimes if it’s done right he can get hurt resisting arrest. But it usually works better if you get his attention before we’re involved.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.

CHAPTER TEN
    I got to Lillian Temple’s office in the university English department at two o’clock exactly, hoping to impress her with my punctuality. It proved an ineffective approach, because she wasn’t there and the office was locked. I leaned on the wall outside her office until ten minutes past two when she hurried down the hall carrying a big blue canvas book bag jammed with stuff. She didn’t apologize for being late. She was, after all, a professor, and I was a gumshoe. Apology would have been unbecoming. At first glance I figured that Hawk had called it on her appearance, but when we got seated in her small office and I looked at her a little more, I wasn’t so sure.
    She was plain, and she was plain in the Cambridge way, in that her plainness seemed a deliberate affectation. Had she chosen to treat her appearance differently, she might have been pretty good-looking. She was in the thirty-five to forty range, tallish, maybe 5’8“, brown hair worn long, no makeup, loose-fitting clothes straight from the J. Crew catalog. Large round eyeglasses, quite thick, with undistinguished frames, a mannish white shirt, chino slacks, white ankle socks, and sandals. She wore no jewelry. No nail polish. Her most forceful grooming statement was that she seemed clean.
    “May I see some identification, please,” she said.
    I showed her some. She read it carefully. It was a small office on an interior