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résumé, financials and an activities report."
     
     
"You mean he tailed you?"
     
     
Jack scowled at her apparent amusement. "If I hadn't been working a domestic, I'd have spotted his crap-mobile—" he snapped his fingers "—like that. "
     
     
"Uh-huh." A fingernail clicked a riff on the tabletop. "You think he's stalking you."
     
     
"Not really." Saying it didn't make it true, but Jack liked the sound of it. "Trust me. He's about as built for covert surveillance as Sasquatch."
     
     
Belle pondered a moment. "Then you're afraid he'll use info from the dossier on you to stalk me." It wasn't a question. And there wasn't a molecule of fear in her tone.
     
     
"It occurred to me." Jack stood and held the back of her chair to steady it. The scenery below provoked a mental wolf whistle. Belle McPhee deHaven had an unquestionably fine set of legs, but it was the peek at her cleavage that brought back many a fond memory.
     
     
She and Jack epitomized a couple who should never have parlayed friendship into matrimony. He was damn lucky he'd escaped the latter without destroying the former.
     
     
He walked her out, saying, "Okay, I'll admit, this dude gave me the heebie-jeebies. You know the type. A schlump, except the eye contact's too long and a touch too intense."
     
     
"Does this schlump have a name?"
     
     
"Brett Dean Blankenship." Taking Belle's keys, he pressed the fob's remote button to unlock the Mercedes's door. "About six-three and four hundred pounds of solid flab. How he packs it into a Chevy Cavalier defies physics."
     
     
Belle scanned the parking lot, as if daring Moby Dick to surface. "Thanks for the warning."
     
     
"At most, it's a heads-up." He kissed her lightly on the lips. "Sorry I have to run."
     
     
"I'm used to it." She flashed a no-insult-intended smile.
     
     
Jack couldn't tell through her sunglasses, but bet it didn't reach her eyes. Something was bothering her. He could feel it. "How about meeting me for a drink later? If Abramson's retainer is over a couple of grand, I'll even buy."
     
     
"I wish I could." Belle sighed as though she meant it. "Carleton and I are meeting some people for dinner at the club."
     
     
Bars kicked off happy hour at four, but Jack gave her a rain check. "If you, uh, want to shoot the breeze some more, you know the numbers."
     
     
She nodded and pulled the car door shut.
     
     
By the time Jack reached the Taurus, he decided his imagination was working double overtime. An occupational hazard for a semi-underemployed snoop. Belle's admitted boredom wasn't a crisis, even if the rival for your husband's affections was a trophy dog. And he hadn't seen Blankenship as much as sensed him.
     
     
He dawdled a moment beside his car to let the blast-furnace heat escape the open door. Belle was right about his being a lousy husband and provider, he thought. But for all the things she'd ripped him for, boredom had never been one of them.
     
     
    * * *
The National Federated Insurers' office was housed in a remodeled Asian restaurant. The mud-brown exterior and pagoda roof reclad in cedar shakes evoked Jackie Chan Does Sante Fe, but the parking area was large enough for employees, visitors and a bank's repossessed-vehicles sales lot.
     
     
Jack perused a sweet electric-blue speedboat marooned on its trailer. Babe magnet. Babe-in-a- bikini magnet. He could be the Captain and she, his Tennille. The fantasy shimmied and vanished, like a cartoon genie into a bottle. Babes young enough to wear bikinis probably wouldn't know the Captain and Tennille from Captain Kangaroo.
     
     
On that depressing note, Jack entered the insurance agency's reception area and gave his name to the blonde behind the counter. Without missing a beat of her cell phone conversation, she pointed over her shoulder at Gerry Abramson's private office.
     
     
A double row of desks resided where buffet steam tables had fed the all-you-can-eat multitudes until a health department inspector