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I CALLED DONNIE ON the way back down to my office. He answered the phone after one ring, even though it was the height of the lunch rush.
“Donnie, I do want to go to the Business Boosters volunteer dinner with you. If the ticket’s still available.” I hoped I didn’t sound desperate.
After a pause, he said, “Okay. I didn’t get back to Jennifer yet.”
“Tell her you’re going with me, and she can’t have the ticket. I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“No. No. Of course I don’t mind. Want to meet at my house around five-thirty? We can drive together from there.”
“Sounds great. See you then.”
I hung up feeling greatly cheered.
Emma and Pat were in my office when I returned. Emma was not cheery at all.
“Just lost another paddler,” she snarled.
“Did someone else get murdered?” I asked.
“Not this time,” Pat said. “Amazingly.”
“Oh, shut up, both of you.”
“You have to admit, your crew has had some bad luck,” I said.
“It’s Sherry. She decided to get married and move back to the mainland.”
“Oh, great. I mean, for Sherry. Who’s she marrying?”
“Who else? Mad Dog, of course.”
“Mad Dog.”
“Yeah. Is there an echo in here?”
“That’s why the name sounded familiar. You guys are not going to believe this. I was just up at the pizza place having lunch with Atticus—”
“Oh, who cares about your hipster boyfriend?” Emma groused.
“He’s not my hipster boyfriend, Emma. He’s Sherry’s hipster fiancé. Atticus Marx is the notorious hacker who goes by the name Mad Dog.”
“That little schmendrick is Mad Dog?” Emma was incredulous. “The love of Sherry’s life? The one she dumped her husband and kid for? The dangerous outlaw she moved to Mahina to get away from?”
“Did you say schmendrick?” Pat asked.
“Emma went to Cornell, don’t forget.”
“It’s in New York,” Emma explained.
Pat looked confused.
“So wait a second. Wasn’t Sherry just doing the Jocasta thing with her stepson?”
“I was thinking Diane de Poitiers,” I said, “but Jocasta works too.”
“Well, she was screwing him. If that’s what you two are trying to say.”
“It’s what we were trying not to say, Emma.” Pat rolled his eyes.
“That’s the beauty of a liberal arts education,” I added. “You can discuss the most appalling topics in broad daylight using only opaque historical references and allusions to classical mythology.”
“So Sherry was with Mad Dog,” Pat said. “Then she dumped him, came here, got mixed up with the stepson, Mad Dog followed her out here, was briefly distracted by Molly, but now Sherry’s back with Mad Dog. Did I get it right?”
“Pretty much,” Emma said.
“And here I thought I had bewitched Atticus with my personality and charm. But he probably just liked me because I reminded him of Sherry.”
“Well you just liked him because things weren’t working out with Donnie, and you were bored,” Pat said.
I tried to think of a snappy rejoinder, but I gave up. Pat was right.
“I can’t believe how selfish Sherry is being,” Emma said. “The long distance season’s already started, and I only have five in my crew. What am I gonna do, huh?”
A soft rap on my door frame alerted us to Nicole Nixon standing in my doorway.
“Hi, Molly. Oh, hi Pat. Hey, Emma. So Molly, my dean wants someone else on the search committee for the opening in our department, and he asked me if I could ask you. You’d be really good, cause your degree’s in literature and—”
“Hey Nicole,” Emma interrupted. “You ever thought about canoe paddling?”
“What?” Nicole looked nonplussed.
“I have to decline the search committee, Nicole,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I have so many research commitments this summer. There’s this conference paper I’m working on with Betty Jackson from psychology, and I’m trying to learn all of these statistical methods from scratch. Can’t you guys just go ahead with a smaller committee?”
Nicole folded her arms, leaned on the door frame, and sighed. “I was hoping you’d say yes. I thought it would be nice to have a friend on the committee. Pat can’t do it, because he’s just a part-timer like me.”
“Alas,” Pat said. “Otherwise I’d jump at the chance to spend all summer serving on a search committee for no compensation.”
“How about this?” I said. “Why don’t I write you a recommendation letter?”
Nicole brightened. “Really? It would really help to have a letter from someone at Mahina State. And I obviously can’t ask my husband, that cheating sack of—”
“Pat didn’t write you a letter?” I interrupted.
“A recommendation letter from a part-timer won’t count for anything. I’ll email you my CV right now, Molly. Thanks.”
“Nicole,” I called, “wait.”
She reappeared in my doorway.
“Any news on Scott?” I asked, at the same time Emma said,
“How’s your upper body strength?”
Nicole made a face, shook her head and disappeared again.
“Was that about canoe paddling or her husband?” I asked. Emma shrugged.
“Hey Pat,” Emma said, “Maybe you should do a story about Scott Nixon’s disappearance.”
“Oh, good idea, Pat. You’ve found people before.”
I thought about the investigator fees I would save if Pat were to track down Scott Nixon for free.
“You haven’t had anything interesting in Island Confidential for weeks,” Emma said. “It’s all county council meetings and stolen ukuleles.”
“This career book’s taking up a lot more time than I thought it would,” Pat said. “I owed my publisher a rewrite like two weeks ago.”
“You have a publisher?” I said. “I thought you were self-publishing.”
“No, I have a real publisher. Signed a contract and everything.”
“Do you have a title?” Emma asked.
“I wanted to call it The Death of the American Dream. But they’re insisting on some horrible name like Winning at Work.”
“I agree with your publisher,” Emma said. “Who’s gonna buy a career advice book called Death of the American Dream?”
“I told them I’d compromise and go with Abandon All Hope. I mean, I’m not completely inflexible.”
“Pat,” I said, “they’re the professionals. They know what works. What, are you worried a title like Winning at Work might harm your reputation as a world-class pessimist?”
“I don’t think I’m going to publish under my real name, anyway.”
“What name are you going to use?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I have to come up with something plausible.”
“How about Professor Plausible?” Emma said.
“I’ll think about it. Okay, you convinced me.”
“About using the pen name Professor Plausible?” I asked.
“No. About tracking down my prodigal department chair.”
“Maybe he’s really in trouble,” I said. “You might save his life.”
“If you do, don’t tell Nicole,” Emma said. “She’ll never forgive you.”