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Ann, a looker, just a little shorter than him, shoulder length hair, Barbie Doll looks, the original blue-eyed blond, you’d seen her, you’d remember. That’s what everyone says. You know anybody like that?”
    “ Not that I can recall.”
    “ I heard they come in here.”
    “ Many people are certainly coming in here. I cannot be knowing each and every one. Why are you asking?”
    “ My name’s Storm, Sam Storm. I’m a private investigator.”
    “ That is a very private eye kind of name you are having, Mr. Storm.”
    “ Yeah, well I’ve heard that before.”
    “ What has this person been doing to cause your looking?”
    “ He makes bootleg CDs.”
    “ And for this you are coming here? My eleven-year-old son makes them on my computer, is he in trouble too?”
    “ I work for the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America. They represent the music business and they’re mighty unhappy with Mr. Gordon. They’d like him to find a new line of work. As for your boy, if he’s just making them for himself, we don’t care.”
    “ Why would anybody be buying something anybody can be making?”
    “ The bootleggers are making collectable CDs now, with original packaging that’s hard to duplicate. The FBI busted someone in New Orleans last year, five agents, ten local cops and me. Quite a collar, but he wasn’t one of the big guys that started up the biz.”
    “ Five FBI agents, how impressive. I guess the FBI hasn’t heard about what happened on September 11, 2001 or the war on terror. And ten local cops, that’s impressive too. I guess they don’t have murder, robbery or rape in New Orleans.” Jaspinder Singh snorted. “And now you’re thinking we have a dastardly criminal here in Tampico, pumping out these CDs.” Singh shook his head, what a sad excuse for a man this Sam Storm was.
    “ No, I was following up a lead, that’s all. My brother-in-law thought he saw him up here last month. I thought I’d check it out.” That putz Herbie, Storm thought. This was the third time in as many years that he thought he’d sighted Gordon. Maybe he never should have shown him the pictures.
    “ I am certainly sorry that I cannot be helping you. I do not know the man you are looking for,” he lied. Jaspinder Singh had heard enough—as far as he was concerned Rick Gordon had done nothing wrong. He would continue on the prudent course that he had set out for himself very early in life and mind his own business.
    Sam Storm paid for his cigarettes with a twenty, pocketed his change and walked out the door, pausing for a second to check the magazine rack to see if there were any nudies. There weren’t.
     
     
    * * *
    After the sheriff had dismissed them with the warning that he would be coming up the hill later to get full written statements, they stood next to the Jeep, talking around the events that had left a man dead on the beach.
    “ Can we stay and see what happens next?” J.P. asked.
    “ I think we should go home and let the police do their job,” Judy said.
    “ Aw, Mom!”
    “ I think your mother is right, the police have enough to do without us getting in the way,” Ann said.
    “ Can we get some Ding Dongs then?”
    “ J.P. loves frozen Ding Dongs,” Judy explained.
    “ So I’ve learned,” Rick said.
    “ Rick likes ’em, too,” Ann said.
    “ Does Rick like everything you like?” Judy asked.
    “ Pretty much,” Rick answered for the boy.
    “ Rick doesn’t get on with too many people, but he’s really taken to J.P.,” Ann said.
    “ Not fair, I like people.” Rick brushed hair from his eyes.
    “ In great moderation. It’s good this isn’t a big city or we’d have been long gone.”
    “ So I like small towns.”
    “ Is that why you bought the house on the hill?” Judy asked.
    “ It’s always been our dream to settle down in an isolated house in the woods. Quiet and private, with nobody around.”
    “ But you like to be around me, don’tcha?”
    “ J.P., we couldn’t