I am wondering: did I have lunch with a murderer?

One summer—it must have been in 2007—I began getting emails from a man named “Clark Rockefeller.” At the time I was the editor and publisher of The Beacon Hill Times.

He asked us to run a picture of his daughter who was learning the periodic tables. It was a cute picture, they lived in the neighborhood, and she was drawing the periodic tables on the Common. So we did.

After a couple more emails he asked me to lunch. He said he had a business idea he wanted to run by me.

So far none of this was unusual. Readers often contacted us about their kids, and we liked to oblige. We liked emphasizing that lots of kids lived in the neighborhood.

And readers often called to ask questions, seek advice, or test an idea.

But lunch was a problem. I didn’t like taking time out of my day except for a few special occasions. But then again, it seemed like a small price to pay if people really wanted to talk, and he was persistent.

So I met “Clark Rockefeller” at the Beacon Hill Hotel and Bistro. Small talk first. I asked him how long he’d lived on the Hill and rummaged around trying to find people we both might know. When I mentioned a couple of Rockefeller descendants that I knew in Cambridge but hadn’t seen in a while, he was noncommittal. Fine. Relatives don’t always see one another frequently. He named a couple of friends he had made in the neighborhood, told me he was getting a divorce, and that he lived on Pinckney Street. He showed me more pictures of his little girl. It was clear that he was crazy about her.

Then he described his business idea—something about publishing content that involved the Internet and newspapers. I couldn’t figure out how it was a business. I didn’t understand how he would make money from it. I didn’t get it.

Now I’m not always as swift as I might be, but my uncle, a crusty old newspaper editor, or maybe not so crusty, always told me that, if I didn’t understand something, it was probably because someone wasn’t telling me the truth or the whole truth, but was keeping back some important piece of information. So I decided it would be better not to get involved.

“Clark” didn’t press me. I thought he was a bit strange, but it didn’t occur to me that he could be dangerous. We finished our lunch. He paid.

And I walked back to my office, where I told the staff that if “Clark Rockefeller” called or tried to take up more of our time, we should be polite but evasive. One thing I had learned was that it was best to keep an appropriate distance between one’s self and people who might be difficult to deal with, or who would suck up time, or make life difficult.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I decided “Clark” might be one of those people.

I heard from him several more times by email, a method of communication for which I was grateful. It’s easier to keep a distance with email than it is by phone.

In one email he included an attachment—a short story he had written. He asked me to read it and give him some feedback.

I emailed him back that I was pretty pressed for time at the moment, because we were closing the office for a couple of weeks at the end of August, as we used to do, but I’d look at it later.

But I trashed the email and the short story attachment, figuring that if later he pressed me I’d deal with it then. He didn’t press. Later I was sorry I had erased the story from my computer. Would it have given police a clue?

That fall we heard from him a couple of times, but then nothing. The next summer I was in the car when I heard on the radio that a man had kidnapped his daughter in the Back Bay. Before I heard his name, I thought of “Clark Rockefeller.”

Then the stuff started to come out. And I had more questions than ever. How did he support himself? Where did he get the money to pay for our lunch? Had he been after my money? How is it that his wife, a Harvard Business School graduate who gives advice to other people, wasn’t smart enough to figure out that a guy who doesn’t have a job and probably needed her to support him might not be playing with a full deck? How will the little girl grow up, learning her father is a fraud?

“Clark” has now been indicted in California for the murder of the couple whose back yard cottage he lived in. A jury will decide. I know it doesn’t have to be me. But I’m still wondering. How can you tell if you’re having lunch with a murderer?