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handled worse."
    "Why am I not convinced?"
    Milo put his hand flat on the picnic table. He drummed his fingers slowly, one at a time, like he was making sure they all still worked. "I like this job, Navarre. It's not just legal commissions, you know? I'm starting to sell my own dates at fifteen percent. Miranda Daniels gets the Century Records deal, people are going to start knowing my name."
    "I'm still not hearing any answers."
    "Are you willing to keep working for me?"
    "I've worked for a lot of lawyers, Milo. You know what I hate about it? They always have to test you. They give you one small corner of a case and wait to see how you'll handle it. Sometimes that caution works out okay. More often it leaves you operating with a dangerously incomplete picture and somebody winds up hurt. Seeing as we've known each other for fifteen years, seeing as we've been down this road before, I figured we'd be skipping the test stage. I guess I was wrong."
    Milo tapped his fingers. "All right."
    "All right, what?"
    "I made some calls about you over the last week, after you agreed to look at Julie Kearnes."
    "Calls," I repeated. "What kind of calls?"
    "Roger Schumman, for one. He said you did nice work—said you threw a loan shark through his office window extremely well. Manny Forester had good things to say, too.
    Seems you know how to get discreet results with skip traces. He said if all his thugs had Ph.D.s maybe they'd be as reliable as you."
    "You called for references. On me."
    Milo shrugged. "It's been a long time since San Francisco, Navarre. I figured you'd turn out to be good at this kind of work. I was glad to find out I was right."
    "No more tests, Milo. What's going on?"

    Milo started to say something, then stopped. He tapped his fingers. "Les isn't in Nashville. He's been missing for over two weeks."
    I took a plastic knife, reached over, and cut off half of the uneaten cheeseburger in Milo's basket. "And you haven't told the police, even after what happened to Julie Kearnes?"
    "It's not that simple. Les—" Milo searched for the right phrase, something legally neutral. Finally he gave up. "Les screws up a lot. He's eccentric. He drinks, he has some other bad habits. Sometimes he'll go off on a binge for a few days and we'll have to cover by saying he's out of town, like we're doing now. I can't be sure—"
    "Has he ever been gone this long before?"
    Milo shook his head. "But still—" His voice trailed off in disappointment, not buying what he was about to say.
    "You think his disappearance might be connected to the missing demo tape," I said.
    "And the gunshots at John Crea. Now Julie Kearnes' murder. You think it might all be part of a package—somebody pissed off because of this deal you're working on."
    "That's what I'm afraid of."
    "The wife hasn't reported Les missing?"
    The look of distaste on Milo's face told me Mrs. Saint Pierre was not his favourite subject. "Let me tell you about Les SaintPierre and his wife and the police. About six months ago, the last time Les took off, Allison went to Missing Persons. You know what they told her? "
    I ate some cheeseburger. I waited.
    "They told her Les was already missing. For seven years. Seems a former girlfriend had the same problem with him disappearing, reported Les and forgot to let the police know when he'd come home. The Bureau never bothered to follow up, take him off the rolls. Can you believe that?"
    "It's been known to happen. MPB is flooded with domestics that are resolved ninety percent of the time before they're even assigned."
    "Yeah, well. This time Allison isn't in any hurry. Les joked from time to time about running away to Mexico.
    Allison figures maybe he finally did it and she's not crying any tears."
    "We're not talking just Missing Persons this time, Milo. Homicide is going to want to talk to Les. You've got to tell them."
    Milo pulled on the back of his neck. "It's more complicated than that, Navarre. It's one thing for our clients to think Les