Minding Amy by Saskia Walker

to look at it from a different perspective when I find something to look at." She sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, knotted her fingers and stared down at them, her mouth tense. She was disappointed at the lack of information she had turned up, and she was smarting. He hadn't helped. Perhaps he should have waited before he added his commentary.
    "Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound critical." He took a seat opposite her. He couldn't help smiling, though. She was an attractive hothead. He looked at her hungrily, reliving each exquisite expression that had passed over her face the night before and again, that morning, when she'd been in the throes of orgasm.
    "Anyway," she said. "What can I do differently? I'm working in a logical fashion through the information I've been given."
    He pounced on the window of opportunity. "That's exactly it. You're working with information you've been given."
    "And…your point is?"
    "Why trust the information you've been given? What makes you think you'll find out anything from it?"
    Amy folded her arms across her chest defensively. "You really know nothing about journalism, do you?"
    "A little, I have crossed paths with others in your field before."
    "But you don't know me, and you don't really know what I'm after."
    "Tell me." He opened his hands to her, willing to listen.
    "There's huge readership interest in Quentin right now, I can exploit that in whichever direction I choose. Whatever my hunt for information reveals, I can use."
    "But what you would really like to do is find Quentin and write that up, yes?"
    "Well, yes. That would be ideal, but it's far from necessary for the purposes of writing up several features about the man and his disappearance."
    The wistful look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She did want to find Quentin. That would indeed be a scoop. Sebastian had the urge to hunt down the elusive celebrity and leave her a trail of obvious clues so she could fulfill her ambition. "I got to thinking," he said, as casually as possible, "about possible ways to get results."
    She eyed him warily. "Okay, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. What would you suggest I do instead?"
    "Well, first of all I'd be wary of any unbidden clues I was being given in a case like this. Did you have to pay for the info?"
    She shook her head.
    "Why would anyone want to give you—a reporter—clues? What have they to gain from giving you information? You're falling into a cause and effect pattern. Your soundman drops you bait, you follow. It could be a decoy to steer you away from information that is more useful. He wants you to follow a path, but why? That might be a first line of inquiry, check this bloke out, rather than haplessly following a clue that leads you to an obvious dead-end."
    As soon as he had stated it, he realized he shouldn't have.
    She frowned at him disapprovingly.
    "I didn't put that well, but with missing persons maybe lateral thinking is surely the best way to approach it."
    "Lateral thinking?" She peered at him, a mite more subdued.
    Perhaps he was getting somewhere. "Yeah. Think back from the event. Think about Quentin himself. Have a look at what's been going on in his life at the time of his disappearance and see if we…I mean you, if you can find out some clues in his circumstances at that time."
    She almost looked convinced by his argument, then she shook her head.
    "That's not going to be bring about the results I need quickly enough…look, Sebastian, I'll come clean with you. I only have a few days on this case then I'm back to writing for the Women's Page full time. This might be my big break and I can't afford to lose it sitting around reading Quentin's diary to figure out what might have happened next."
    Sebastian stared at her, silently assessing her words and the situation she was trying to explain. It made sense and it also explained what he had picked up between her and her father at The City News offices. Whatever, he wanted to