Matt turned the lights on, grabbed Elsie by the elbow, and pulled her to her feet.

Lizabeth came flying down the stairs. "What was that crash?"

"Land sakes, there he goes!" Elsie shouted. "Hey, you damn pervert, you're in trouble now! Matt's gonna break every bone in your naked body!"

The flasher ran across the yard, with Matt in pursuit. Matt dove at the man, catching him by the ankle, propelling them both facedown into the dirt. Ferguson bounded from the open kitchen door and pounced on Matt. The swearing was loud and creative while the dog snuffled into Matt's pockets and the flasher squirmed loose.

"Ferguson!" Lizabeth had him by the collar, but she couldn't get the dog off Matt. "Matt, do you have food in your pockets?"

"M amp;M's!" he grunted out.

Lizabeth turned the pockets inside out, spilling the candy onto the ground. She looked up in time to see the flasher jump on the Harley. The engine caught and the Harley roared out of the driveway.

"If that don't beat all," Elsie said. "That slimeball stole your bike. Well, he's not going to get away with this. I got my keys in my pocket. Ill run him down in my Caddy."

Lizabeth ran after her. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"Nonsense!' Elsie said, sliding behind the wheel. "I've been on these high-speed chases before. I know what I'm doing."

Matt jumped into the passenger side just as Elsie gunned the engine. Lizabeth and Ferguson climbed into the back and the Cadillac peeled out of the driveway and barreled down the road after the flasher.

Matt braced his arms against the dash. "Elsie, don't you think you're going a little fast? Maybe you should pull over and let me drive."

"No way," Elsie said. "Well lose him. Besides, I got perfect control over this car." The Cadillac took a corner on a skid and swayed from side to side before finding equilibrium.

"Need new shocks," Elsie shouted over the roar of the V-8 engine. "These ones got mushy on me."

"He's turning down High Street," Matt said.

Elsie grunted and jerked the wheel of the Cadillac. The car jumped the curb and cut across Elmo Nielson's front lawn. "Shortcut," Elsie said. "Won't hurt nothing. Elmo can't grow grass here anyway. Too much shade."

The Cadillac closed in on the flasher, and Lizabeth could see the man's tie flapping over his shoulder and the paper-bag mask rippling with the wind. Flashing lights reflected in the rearview mirror. "Omigod," Lizabeth said, "we've picked up a police cruiser."

The Harley turned into Vinnie Mazerelli's driveway and, without even so much as a backward glance, the flasher cut through Vinnie's yard and disappeared from view.

Elsie stomped on the brake. "Doggone!"

Lizabeth and Ferguson slid off the seat, and the black-and-white cruiser slammed into the back of the Cadillac.

Elsie gave a disgusted sigh. "Wouldn't you think they could teach them cops how to drive?"

Matt rolled his eyes and got out of the car. "Howdy," he said to Officers Dooley and Schmidt.

Dooley nodded. "I don't suppose I have to ask who was driving the Cadillac."

"Don't suppose you do," Matt said.

"And I guess the naked guy slapping leather on the Harley was the flasher?"

"Yup."

Dooley shifted his attention to the squad car. The entire front end was smashed. Both headlights were broken, steam escaped from a cracked radiator, and the bumper was lying on the road. The Cadillac didn't have a scratch.

"You guys got a lot of nerve following so close," Elsie said. "Look here what you've done with the taxpayers' money." She patted the Cadillac's rear fender. "I tell you, they don't make cars like they used to. Next time you get yourselves a car, you get a real car. Like my Caddy here."

Dooley's left eye twitched. He put a finger to it and pressed his lips together. "It would probably be best if you took her home, now. I'd hate to be charged with police brutality," he said to Matt,

By the time they got home, the Harley had already been returned. It was parked in the driveway, key still in the ignition, just as Matt had left it.

"You see," Lizabeth said, "he isn't such a bad guy. He even brought your bike back."

The sun broke over the horizon with barely a whimper as Bob the Cat sat on the back stoop cleaning his front feet, pretending nonchalance while keeping an alert ear for the sound of familiar feet treading across the kitchen floor. It was six-thirty and Lizabeth felt raw-eyed from lack of sleep. She quietly crept down the stairs and smiled at the sight of Matt stretched out on the couch in a tangle of sheets. He was fully dressed and looked mildly uncomfortable. He slept on his back with his arm flung over his head, and even in the dim light of dawn the red stubble on his chin was distinctly visible. Lizabeth stood beside the couch and watched him. His breathing was even, like a child's, she thought. But that was where the similarity stopped. There was nothing childlike about the lean planes of his face or the fierce slash of blond eyebrow. His large frame dwarfed the couch and charged the room with virility and latent energy. She wondered if the latter was real or imagined. Her perspective was hardly impartial. She touched his shoulder. "Matt."

The thick, curly blond lashes fluttered open, and he stared at Lizabeth with unfocused eyes. 'I'm not in my bed," he said. "Am I in yours?"

"No. You're on my couch."

"Oh yeah. Now I remember. I was having this awful nightmare that I was chasing the flasher and Ferguson attacked me. And then the flasher stole my motorcycle because I stupidly left the key in the ignition. Then we went on this bizarre ride with Elsie…"

"It's all true."

He closed his eyes and groaned. "I'm going to kill myself. I'm a failure. I let a potbellied, out-of-shape pervert get away from me. You aren't going to tell the guys at work about this, are you?"

"Speaking of the guys at work… it's after six."

"Oh hell, I have a building inspector coming at seven." He swung his legs over the side of the couch and ran a hand through his hair. "I have a stack of forms to fill out before he arrives."

"Will they take long to fill out?"

"No. It's finding them that's going to be the problem." He shuffled into his shoes and swung an arm around her shoulders. "I'll give you a raise if you'll help me look for the forms."

Three hours later Lizabeth was still sifting through papers on Matt's desk. She'd found a half-eaten salami sub, a red wool sock, notice that the lease on his town house was due to expire, and a month-old unopened letter with the return address of J. Hallahan, Scranton, Pennsylvania, but she hadn't found the appropriate forms for the building Inspector. She pushed her chair back when Matt stomped down the basement stairs. "You need help," she said. "You're in big trouble with this paperwork."

He slouched in a battered oak captain's chair, stretching his long legs in front of him. "I know. Did you find the forms?"

She shook her head. "No. But they're going to evict you from your town house if you don't do something immediately. And I found this letter." She slid the white envelope from J. Hallahan across the top of the desk.

Matt looked at it and slid it back to her. "Throw it away."

"Aren't you going to open it?"

"It's nothing important."

Lizabeth leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. "It's from a relative. Did you read the return address? It's from a J. Hallahan."

"I know who it's from."

"Ah-hah." She tapped her index finger on the envelope. It seemed to her that copulation carried some privileges-such as the right to be nosy. "So, who's this J. Hallahan?"

"He's my father."

Lizabeth's eyebrows shot up in silent question.

"It's a request for money, and I've already sent some. There's no reason to open the envelope. The letters are always the same." He should tell her about it, he thought, but he hated dragging all those skeletons out of the closet. He didn't want to seem pitiable in her eyes. And he didn't want to seem callous. And he knew if he told her he would appear to be both. When he was eighteen he'd literally run away from his past. In some ways he was still running. Always would be. He could see she was concerned about the contents of the letter, so he took it from her, opened it, and glanced over his father's almost unreadable scrawl. His mouth curved into the tight, crooked smile he reserved for those times when he managed to find some wry humor in distasteful situations. "No surprises here," he said, handing the letter to her so she could read it for herself. "Someday well sit down with a bottle of wine and tell each other all our grim family secrets. Fortunately, I haven't got the time to do it right now." He stood with his hands on his hips, his brows drawn together in a scowl. "Damn, I wish we could find those forms." His eyes swept over the desk, the file cabinets, the cases of cola stacked on the floor. A guilty smile spread across his face. "I remember! It was raining when I brought the forms back from the municipal building." He went to the open area behind the stairwell, picked up a pair of rubber boots caked with dried mud, and under the boots he found the forms. "I didn't want to get the floor dirty," he explained, wiping at the brown smudges.

Lizabeth bit her lower lip and considered Matthew Hallahan's husband potential. He was sensitive, sexy, and he had a decent Income, she decided-but he'd be hell to housebreak. She took the forms from him and smoothed them out on the desktop. "Want me to have a go at this?"

"That'd be great." He noticed the neat piles of papers on the desk. She'd cleaned up the dried splotches where he'd spilled coffee and chicken noodle soup, and she'd gotten the smear of roofing tar off the telephone. The salami sub had been removed from his out box, and had been replaced with a batch of stamped, unsealed envelopes.