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woman.”
    Zack tore open a bag of chips and didn’t appear to hear me. “My oldest brother studied with Professor Crabtree for a while. They went on a class trip to Alaska, looking for extinct animals in glaciers.”
    “Extinct animals, huh? Now there’s a useful knowledge base for getting a job.”
    Zack popped a chip and grinned a little. “Paleontology. It’s actually very cool. My brother took me to a lecture once, let me sit in the back. It was great. I wanted to take Crabtree’s intro course when I got to college, but I didn’t have the grades to get into that school.”
    Zack slouched back into the sofa, his legs spread comfortably, eating chips with confidence in spite of his bad grades. “Crabtree’s lecture was unbelievable—slide shows and wild stories. That’s why I wanted to take his class. The trips were big adventures, you know? Indiana Jones stuff.”
    “Does he work at the museum?”
    “He was a professor at the university. Maybe he did work for the museum, too. I mean, they’d be crazy to ignore him. I think there’s even some kind of national park named after him—one of those places were dinosaur bones are, like, spread all over the place. The museum has some of the stuff he dug up.”
    I didn’t want to need Zack for anything. The kid had seduced my daughter at least once—hell, they might be doing it regularly now even with another boyfriend in the wings—and I really wanted to shove his sandwich down his throat and stomp on his chest while he choked on it. But somebody was looking to kidnap Clarice Crabtree, and it only seemed right to ask around a little.
    So I said, “You know anything about Clarice Crabtree?”
    “Clarice? That’s really her name?”
    “No kidding.”
    Zack frowned in concentration. “He mentioned something about a daughter, in the class I visited. She used to go on digs with him. She the one you mean?”
    “I don’t know, maybe.”
    I thought about things for a minute. Even though I’d gone to high school with Clarice, I didn’t know anything about her family or where she came from. Marvin had said she worked for the museum now, but that was news to me.
    I said, “Is there anybody in the neighborhood who works for the museum?”
    Zack frowned at the ceiling and finally said, “My cousin’s brother-in-law used to work security at an art museum. Night shift, before he joined the force.”
    That wouldn’t do me any good. “Anybody else?”
    “I’ll have to think about it.”
    Me, too.
    “What are you trying to find out, Mrs. A?”
    Zack was no brain surgeon, but he could probably put two and two together if I let slip too many details. I shrugged. “Nothing special.”
    “You have something going on?”
    “More than you do, Zack. You’re necking with my daughter, but she’s got Mr. Squashy on the phone. You lost your charm?”
    He smiled winningly. “How about you put in a good word for me?”
    I laughed. “Dream on, tiger.”
    My cell phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out and checked the ID. It was Gino Martinelli.
    “Damn,” I said.
    Zack said, “Trouble?”
    I put the phone back in my pocket without answering. “Nothing unusual. Just a man trying to prove his dick is bigger than it really is. Thanks for the sandwich, tiger.”
    “Anytime, Mrs. A.”
    After talking with Zack, I went back to my place that night. But I had trouble getting to sleep. It wasn’t the hot peppers that kept me awake. I was thinking about Marvin’s job offer. I didn’t want any part of it, but knowing that somebody wanted to kidnap Clarice Crabtree—well, maybe I was going a little soft, but I wondered if I ought to look her up and warn her.

5
    In the morning, I got a call from my longtime friend Adasha Washington, another high school pal who’d had nothing to do with hiding cherry bombs in piñatas. Unlike me, Adasha had studied hard and loved school so much that she was now an ER doc at the hospital around the corner from my house.
    After a big yawn