On a Monday morning that dawned cold and blustery in the coastal redwoods, Nick Oliver sat in the warmth of the village bakery. He was on his second cup of coffee when she appeared at his table. "Mr. Oliver?"

"That's me," he said, looking up into the green-flecked hazel eyes of a stranger. Her windblown hair framed an open, freckled face, her cheeks pink from the crisp morning chill.

"May I join you?"

He gestured toward a chair. "Please do."

"Thanks." She set her cup on the table and slid into the chair across from his.

Seeing her eye the scone on his plate, he said, "Tear off a piece."

She reached for the edge of the scone, deftly pulled away a small piece, took a bite and ran her tongue over her lips. "Didn't have time for breakfast this morning." She extended her hand. "I'm Erin Archer."

Her grip was firm. "Good morning, Erin. So you know who I am. Have we met?"

She shook her head. "No, but my father, Dan Archer..." She gazed at him, her eyes locking on his, expectantly, as if the name should register.

He thought a long moment, then shook his head. "Sorry. I can't place the name."

"But you're a PI too."

"I'm what?" He grinned. "Sorry. Any snooping I do would be sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen. My investigating is limited to stock market research for the Timely Information Plan." He decided against mentioning that was when he still had a job.

"Don't know what that is. It doesn't sound like Dad's kind of work. No computer."

"Ahh ... a man of action then?"

"Uh-huh. Definitely."

He studied her over the rim of his cup. "So what made you think I'm a private investigator?"

"From something Dad said. When I visited him one weekend, I looked for a blank page in his desk calendar to write a shopping list. Dad used that calendar for his case notes, and he'd penciled in your name and address on one of the pages. I didn't expect to see a Wonderland address."

Nick pictured the cluster of quirky, family vacation cabins where he was staying. "No, I wouldn't think Wonderland would be fertile ground for PI work. Fact is, I wanted to get away for a while. A cabin in the redwoods seemed a good idea, but at this time of year, the only available cabin was here at Wonderland ... and only because of a cancellation. Lots of kids around, but it's still quiet enough for me."

"Well, your Wonderland address surprised me. But when I mentioned it to Dad, he just mumbled something about you and he being of the same persuasion."

"He said persuasion?"

"Uh-huh. It sounded odd to me, too. But I was in a hurry and just took it to mean you were a PI, too."

"I'm not a PI, and I don't know your father. So anyway, how did you recognize me this morning?"

She flushed and stared into her cup. "As Dad would say, I staked out your place. This morning I saw you drive off in your little car and take the road up here to the village. I came up the trail and saw it parked at the curb outside."

"So you might say you're following me--doing a little PI work of your own. Maybe you'd better ask your father how my name got into his calendar."

She looked up quickly. "Can't," she said, her voice barely audible, her eyes pooled. "He died a week ago."

"Sorry ... sorry for your loss."

Erin set her empty cup down. "Look, are you finished with your coffee? If you would come with me, there's something I'd like you to see."

He nodded and pushed his cup aside. They rose together. She was a head shorter than him, and even in the pale light that filtered through the window, her hair shone copper bright. She offered a tight smile, turned, and strode toward the door. Nick followed, confused but curious.

He shivered when they stepped into the biting cold that penetrated his fleece pullover and eyed her enviously as she zipped up her windbreaker. Why hadn't he thought to grab the parka in his roadster? No time to stop and think about it now. Erin had set off at a brisk clip. Quickening his stride to catch up, their pace rapidly took them out of the village and onto a path that led to a panoramic overlook. Below them, in the crisp early morning grayness, the expanse of old growth redwoods stretched out to the edge of the continent; beyond lay the blue-gray waters of the Pacific.

She turned to him. "This is where Dad would have emerged from his climb had he not..." Her agonized eyes gazed down the embankment. "It's the way he always came to the village."

He edged forward and peered down a massive rock face, his eyes riveted on the intimidating steepness.

Following his gaze to its base, she said, "That's where they found Dad."

"I remember hearing talk in the village about a climbing accident."

She shook her head. "It was no accident!"

The force of her words surprised him. "The police investigated?"

"Oh, yeah, the Sheriff's Department did their thing. Everyone knew Dad always took the shortcut to the village by climbing the rock. It's a lot shorter than the winding road. Anyway, it had been drizzling on and off that day, so they figured he must have slipped." Her tone startled him.

"If the cops called it an accident, it was probably just that."

"No way. Dad was a highly rated climber. Compared to bouldering in the Sierras and the climbs he made in Yosemite, this rock was as easy as a set of stairs to him."

"People sometimes fall down stairs."

"Really, anyone can climb that rock. Dad did it free-solo."

"Meaning?"

"You know, no gear, climbing with nothing but your skill."

"I guess you know about climbing." With her athletic yet shapely build revealed under the windbreaker and jeans, he had no problem envisioning her effortlessly scaling a fitness center climbing wall.

"Sure, I climb, but I'm not at Dad's level." Her gaze held him, her eyes locking on his. "I don't believe for one second that Dad's fall was an accident. I'm going to find out what really happened."

His surprise must have shown, because she added, "Look, I can't afford to wait. Truth be told, I'd rather drown myself in a bottle of Dad's Jack Daniel's just so the hurt goes away. But the cops have written this off as an accident. If I wait, whoever did this will have time to cover his tracks."

"I understand that."

"So if Dad made notes in his calendar, it meant that he was working a case. I believe it had something to do with you," she added with emphasis and rising inflection in her voice.

"Okay, I get it. Did he have a case book--something like that?"

"I can't find his notebook. All I have is his work calendar."

"And all he wrote was my name and that I'm staying at Wonderland. He didn't write anything else?"

"Just one other thing. After his funeral, I flipped back through the pages in the calendar and found another note about you Dad wrote on May thirtieth."

Nick frowned. "What?"

"Just your name again followed by the word, 'gossip'."

He stiffened. The date struck a chord, taking him back to the words spoken to him that Tuesday meeting three weeks ago. But he shrugged and said, "Well, it doesn't make any sense to me. Why don't you ask the people in his office if they know anything about the case?"

"Dad operated a one-man agency and worked out of his home. At the funeral, I asked his PI friends if they knew anything about what he'd been working on. They only knew he had a case, but he didn't talk about it, not even to Manny Gova. He and Dad worked together a lot. But Manny had no idea. So the only connection I have with his last case is you."

"I understand how you feel, but I can't help you."

"You can't or you won't? I know there's a connection."

He took a deep breath. The woman was exasperating. "I'm sorry, but your father's name doesn't ring a bell with me, so how can there be a connection?"

"Connect the dots, Mr. Oliver. I read your name in Dad's work calendar. That means you're involved in his case. I don't know how you make a living as an analyst."

"Uh ... well, I don't anymore."

"Really? Why doesn't that surprise me?"

It was all he could do to keep his voice calm, he started to turn. "Good morning, Ms. Archer."

"Wait!" She sighed and reached into her windbreaker. "If your memory returns, here's Dad's business card. It has the phone number at his cabin."

Through the gaps in the trees he glimpsed a weathered, single-story log cabin about fifty yards from the base of the rock. A tall tree overhung its steep, mossy roof.

"It's Dad place. I'm staying there now."

He pocketed the card and started back toward the village. After a few paces, he stopped and looked back. She remained where he'd left her. What does the woman expect me to do?

Wondering about Erin Archer, he turned away and with shoulders hunched continued on to the village. If nothing else, the morning's encounter had been a welcome diversion from rehashing his own situation. Reaching a storefront, he glanced in the shop's window, which advertised passport photos and offered to change watch batteries. He had yet to enter the place but had ventured into the bookstore next to it, a converted two-story frame house.

The bookstore specialized in local history, and he'd spent hours browsing through the rows of freestanding shelves on both floors jammed with old books. In one corner, he'd come across an account of converting the nearby Crystal Springs Lake into a reservoir for the dam at Hetch Hetchy in the High Sierras. The account had piqued Nick's interest because of his assignment at the Timely Information Plan. He had never actually seen the dam or the reservoir until he'd paged through the account in the bookstore. The black and white photographs that detailed the system's construction fascinated him. He knew the reservoir was near and reminded himself to visit it the next time he was in the vicinity. The two-hundred mile aqueduct system was nearly a century old and had fallen into disrepair.

His last assignment at TIP dealt with the consultant companies bidding on a major contract to study the feasibility of refurbishing the aqueduct system. Nick's job was to analyze one company's chances of winning the contract. It was as he told Erin, his work mostly involved sitting in front of a computer screen. He did his snooping with a computer mouse clicking on Internet web pages and pouring over market and financial publications.

Still feeling the chill in his bones, he went into the bakery, ordered a takeout cup of French Roast, and thumbed the crust of a loaf of sourdough bread. Crisp and warm, it would go with the mortadella and salami at the cabin. He bought the loaf, drove out of the village, and followed the winding road that descended to the forested valley and led to the entrance to Wonderland. Pulling around a sea of SUVs, he parked in a remote edge of the parking area. With luck, the car would be safe from families hauling baggage and boxes back and forth between their vehicles and the cabins.

He started toward his cabin down a foot path bordered with stump carvings of animal figures he recognized. Illustrations of them appeared in the complementary copy of the Lewis Carroll's stories provided in his cabin. Smiling, he picked out the Cheshire cat, a puppy, and a caterpillar before he neared a swarm of shrieking children huddled around a stump beating on it. He laughed when he recognized the hapless stump as a carving of the Queen of Hearts and recalled the Queen's penchant for shouting, 'off with someone's head'. He made a mental note to read more about the Queen that warranted the children's ire. But first he would check his PDA's Contact Manager program to see if he had ever come across Dan Archer in his work. If he had any contact with the man, it would be in there.

Inside his cabin, he went to the cardboard storage box he'd brought with him. His PDA was somewhere inside, along with CDs, his DVD player, and books he had yet to read. While he sorted through the clutter, he considered what Erin Archer had told him about her father. The Timely Information Plan could have hired Dan Archer. TIP regularly contracted with private investigative agencies to ferret out information on companies.

He fished out his PDA, turned it on and with the stylus clicked on the icon for the Contact Manager program. A quick search of the database verified it was as he expected--there was no record of anyone by the name of Archer. Just to make sure, he pulled out the business card Erin had given him and punched in the phone number from the PI's card. The query revealed no record of that number. And nothing came up on a search of Archer's address. He set the PDA aside. Whomever you are Dan Archer, I don't know you.