Dating Is Murder

“No, it’s just-” Kevin glanced at Lyle, then looked down. “No.”

Joey said, “If you had to guess, what do you think happened to Rico?”

“He had some business deal going,” Lyle said. “Like a stock market thing.”

“What kind of stock market thing?”

“Well, I don’t know that’s what it was, but there’s this old movie Wall Street. It was on TV. Then Rico bought the DVD and studied it, and now he’s all portfolios this and that, reading the paper, the business section. I’m like, Dude, to have a portfolio you gotta have something to put in the portfolio, but he said he had it handled.”

“So he did have money or he didn’t?” I asked, confused.

“Okay, gargantuan allowance, but one time we were watching TV, I’m going, What would you do for a million dollars, would you eat a live rodent? and Rico goes, A million’s pocket change. By the time I’m twenty-five I’m go

“That was a career goal?” I said. “To buy and sell his dad?”

“You ever meet his dad?” Lyle looked at us, then shook his head. “Hard-core.”

Kevin stood. “Hey, I gotta get to Union Station, catch a train.”

“Yeah, I gotta pack too,” Lyle said, not moving from the sofa. “Driving up to Lake Arrowhead for Thanksgiving.”

Joey asked to use the bathroom, and on impulse, I asked to see Rico’s room. Kevin led me down the narrow hallway. “Cops took his computer and his mom and dad took things, but there’s still stuff left.”

If the room was picked over, it was hard to imagine what it had looked like before. Bunk beds, desks, and chairs overflowed with sheets, blankets, clothes, ru

Ceiling.

“Was Rico the top bunk?” I asked.

“Yeah. Check it out if you want.”

I eased out of my slingback pumps and climbed the ladder. The male-animal smell intensified up here. I moved aside a pillow, soft and doughy in its red fla

But the wall was information central. Phone numbers doodled in blue and black ink. Appointment times. Address-book graffiti. I pictured Rico, a kid in his treehouse, talking on his phone, drawing on the wall. “Kevin, did the cops look up here?”

“Maybe. They were in here a while. Hey, um…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you-is A

I leaned over the bed to look at him. He sat on the floor, selecting dirty clothes to throw into the duffel. I said, “I’m pretty worried about her, actually.”

“I met her on the beach.” He didn’t look up. “She was reading this book, The Naked and the Dead, about World War II. She wanted to know what Americans thought about Germany. I thought that was so cool. I told her, Don’t worry about it, nobody our age hates Germans, that’s like a century ago. You finding anything up there?”

There were names on the wall and the ceiling. Boys’ names. Girls. Nikki. Jillian. Heather. Courtney. Emily. Initials: L.B., R.A., J.B. “Maybe.”

“I heard them one time. Up there.”

“Rico and A

“No, not-I mean, they were arguing. They probably thought I was asleep. They were whispering.”

“Yeah?”

“She said something like ‘It’s not a problem for you; if we get caught, you’ll get out of it.’ She said for her it was a big deal, because she’s German, the rules are different for foreigners. Stuff like that. Okay, it wasn’t as clear as I just said it, but I was thinking, He’s pressuring her into something.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. Rico was like, C’mon, no big deal. That’s how he was. Nothing was a big deal for him. I think when you have a dad like his, and money, you don’t think about how it is for other people.”

I leaned down again, watching him pack. “What about drugs?”

“You mean, did he do them?” Kevin looked up at me. “No more than anybody. Why would he? If you’re into drugs, you don’t go to Pepperdine. It’s not the biggest party school on the planet.”

“Ever hear of something called Euphoria?” I asked, but he shook his head. “And A

He looked at me steadily. “Not with me…”

“But?”

“She was-you know how she was. But he’d walk in and she’d turn into…”

“What?” I was leaning down now, straining to catch his words.

Kevin sighed. “Like Lyle said. A loser. Sort of. So I don’t know what she’d do to be with him. We call it the Rico Effect.”

Glenda Nacy, the au pair volunteer, had called it “boy crazy.” I leaned back against the wall. I wanted to think A

As if to confirm this, her number appeared on Rico’s wall, the 818 area code and Encino prefix I’d dialed so often in the last ten days it was committed to memory.

How much evidence did I need? A

“Britta, yeah. She’s been over here a couple times. I never really talked to her. And who’s the guy you just said?”

“Richard Feynman?”

“Sounds familiar. Is he an astronaut or something?”

I tried to imagine A

“No,” Kevin said. “They didn’t ask.”

He gave me a pen and paper and went on talking, about the girls who’d show up at Lovernich at all hours, girls Rico had invited over and forgotten about. I listened with half an ear, then no ear at all, because I found something on the wall, something I knew. Something I’d seen before. A squiggle. It was the logo on the pill that had been under A