STEVEN MEACHAM AND HIS WIFE, Sandy, were watching 48 Hours Mystery on TV in their expansive home in Cow Hollow when the doorbell chimed.

  Steve said to Sandy, “Are we expecting someone?”

  “Hell no,” Sandy said, thinking of the door-to-door canvassing that had been going on because of the heated school board elections. She took a sip from her wineglass. “If we ignore them, they’ll go away.”

  “I guess I can always give ’em a couple of shots to the ribs, make ’em take us off the list,” Meacham said, feinting and punching the air, then slipping his bare feet into his loafers.

  He walked to the front door, peered through the fanlight, saw two good-looking boys standing outside, kids about the age of his son, Scott.

  What was this?

  The heavier of the two wore a peachy-colored T-shirt under a camouflage vest, his hair covering his shirt collar, more Banana Republic than Republican, and definitely not a Jehovah’s Witness. The other boy was dressed traditionally in a glen plaid jacket over a lavender polo shirt, hair long in front like a kid from an English boarding school. The boys had unopened liquor bottles in hand.

  Meacham turned off the security alarm, opened the door a crack, said, “May I help you fellows with something?”

  “My name is Hawk, Mr. Meacham,” said the one in the sport jacket. “This is Pidge. Uh, those are our pledge names,” he said apologetically. “We’re friends of Scotty’s, you know, and we’re pledging Alpha Delta Phi?”

  “No kiddin’? Scotty didn’t call . . .”

  “No, sir, he doesn’t know we’re here. We have to do this on the sneak.”

  “Pledges, huh?”

  Meacham fon............