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your homework or something?"
    "Or something," Callie said as she stared at the illegible ink-streaked paper in front of her. "Yeah, you might say you wrecked something."
     
    ***
     
    Across town, Joe was suffering a setback of his own.
    It's your own fault, he told himself. You shouldn't have been in such a hurry to get here. Now he wished he'd played it cooler. He was five minutes early for his appointment with Lisa, stuck waiting for her at a table in the Bayport Inn coffee shop. It definitely would have been better to have made her wait. Not long, of course. Just long enough for her to be eager for him to arrive.
    Fifteen minutes later Joe had finished his cup of coffee. He was no longer worried about what kind of impression he would make on Lisa. He was worried if he would get to make any impression at all.
    And ten minutes after that, he decided that the best thing he could do would be to leave. He'd call her up later and tell her he hadn't been able to show up. He'd apologize in a nice way and set up another date. He'd get up and walk straight out of there—in five minutes, he decided.
    Fifteen minutes later—when Lisa was almost forty minutes late for their appointment—Joe finally got up from the table, paid the cashier, and left the coffee shop. He intended to stalk angrily out of the inn, but his feet had ideas of their own.
    He found himself approaching the clerk at the reception desk in the lobby. "Excuse me," he said. "Did Lisa, er, Miss Cantwell leave a message for Mr. Hardy?"
    The clerk checked his message book and shook his head. "No, she didn't."
    "Oh," said Joe and started to turn away. Then he turned back to the clerk. "Is Miss Cantwell in her room? She's late for an appointment with me."
    "Maybe," said the clerk. "She stopped here a couple of hours ago to check for messages, then went up to her room. I haven't seen her go out since then."
    "I'd like to call her room," said Joe. "Maybe she took a nap and overslept."
    "Right," said the clerk. "I'll ring her." He entered Lisa's name into a computer and glanced at the information that flashed up on the monitor. "That's room twenty-two." He picked up a phone, punched in the number, and handed the receiver to Joe.
    Joe listened as the phone rang and rang. No one was answering — Lisa wasn't there. Joe Hardy had been stood up.
    He slammed down the receiver, and the desk clerk looked at him coldly.
    "Miss Cantwell doesn't seem to be in her room, sir. Would you like to leave a message?"
    "No thanks," Joe answered. He left the lobby, his hands buried deep in his pockets. It seemed as though Lisa hadn't wanted to keep their date, and that was that.
    As Joe approached the parking lot where the van was parked, an uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. It just didn't make sense, he thought. Lisa had acted so friendly the night before. Her not showing up seemed completely out of character. Abruptly he turned and headed back toward the van. What if something had happened to her? There was no way he was leaving before he found out what was going on with Lisa.
    He looked around the grounds for a way to get back into the inn and up to Lisa's room. The main entrance was out. The clerk had a clear view of the revolving door.
    The inn was a white-shingled building, five stories high, surrounded by a well-tended lawn and flower beds ablaze with purple, yellow, and orange autumn flowers.
    His eyes rested on a ladder leaning against the side of the building. It had obviously been used by painters, since there were several large cans of paint on the ground.
    Joe noticed that the ladder was extended to reach to the second floor. Near the end of a row of windows, one of them had been left open. Drapes were billowing in the breeze. Joe was in luck — he could duck in there and then out the door to check on room twenty-two.
    After looking to make sure that no one was watching him, Joe dragged the ladder over to the open window and climbed two rungs at a time. He was worried that