‘Is he still home, do you know?’

‘Yes. He’ll be here until the end of January.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘Forty-eight Pinewood Lane, Fairfax.’

‘You mentioned talking to another of your fiancé’s friends,’ I said. ‘Who would that be?’

‘Doug Rosmond.’

‘Was he one of the men who got a wire from Oregon?’

She nodded. ‘He’s home on leave also, staying with his sister Cheryl here in San Francisco. Would you want his address too?’

‘Please.’

She opened her bag and took out a thin address book and read me a location well out in the Parkside District, on Vicente near Ocean Beach. I wrote it down on the pad.

‘You said money was wired to three friends, Miss Kavanaugh. Can you tell me the name of the third?’

‘A man named Gilmartin, I think.’

‘Gil Martin?’

‘No, Gilmartin-one word. I can’t recall his first name.’

‘You didn’t talk with him, then?’

‘No, but Chuck did. He didn’t know anything that would help, either.’

I rubbed the pencil eraser across the bridge of my nose. ‘Did you check with the authorities in Eugene?’

‘No. The Missing Persons people here told me they would do that.’

‘They apparently learned nothing, or you would have been notified by now.’

‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Is there anything further you can tell me, anything at all?’

‘I’ve thought and thought, and there’s just nothing.’ She met my eyes directly now, and hers seemed huge and imploring behind her glasses. ‘You do believe me that Roy hasn’t just… run off somewhere, don’t you? I mean, you agree that the circumstances are very strange surrounding his disappearance?’

‘They would seem to be, yes,’ I said carefully.

‘Then you’ll investigate for me?’

‘As long as you understand that the odds of one man locating another, when the law enforcement agencies haven’t been able to do it, are not the best in the world.’