Detective Vasquez smiled. “If the pilot doesn’t go well then he could turn up again, maybe with amnesia, lost in Africa?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Lou Lou said.

Detective Vasquez saw that Mary Lisa suddenly didn’t look too good. She was paler than she’d been a moment before, her eyes not quite focused. He rose and gently took her hand. “You need rest and a pain pill. I’ll be getting back to you.” He smiled at Lou Lou; again, Mary Lisa thought, definitely a guy smile.

After Detective Vasquez left with an autographed photo in his pocket for Detective Elena Farber, Mary Lisa called Bernie Barlow, listened to him shriek for five minutes, assured him a dozen times that she would be fine, that the cops were on top of things, then managed to lie prone on her sofa, an afghan over her, a pillow against her bruised hip, and another blessed pain pill swimming happily in her bloodstream.

Lou Lou called out as she stirred chicken noodle soup on the stove, “This has been quite a rough Saturday for you, Mary Lisa. I’m really thinking Paulie could have snapped, tried to drive you down. He simply can’t let evil Sunday sleep with poor little Susan’s husband.”

“Paulie’s not crazy, Lou Lou. He’s pathetic more than anything. Can we talk about something else? My brain’s starting to float on the ceiling. It’s nice. Let me leave it up there. Would you like me to sing you a song?”

Lou Lou was treated to a full-bodied treatment of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” before she came back into the living room, carrying a tray.

“I can’t believe you know all the words to that old song. Here, sit up a bit.”

While Mary Lisa spooned the soup into her mouth, Lou Lou flopped down beside her, steepled her fingers. “Hey, sweetie, you’re looking kind of vague. I’m going to stay with you tonight. Bernie will be all calmed down by Monday.” Lou Lou took away the cell phone that was lying on Mary Lisa’s chest. “You don’t have to call Clyde, Bernie will do it. In fact, we should be hearing from Clyde any minute now.”

Clyde called half an hour later. He nearly hyperventilated before she finally got him off the phone.

Lou Lou said, “Why didn’t he call you sooner?”

Mary Lisa flopped back down. “He said he was afraid to, said Bernie finally managed to convince him that I was okay. You know Clyde ’s got spies everywhere. I’ll lay you a five he’s even got spies in the women’s room at Taco Bell. I had to swear to him on the head of my father that I’d be okay to shoot on Monday. That gives me a day and a half to get myself back together.”

“Yeah, you lucked out, it being a Saturday and all.”

“That was sarcasm I heard, but I guess I am lucky. I don’t have a day off until Thursday, but then it’ll be a long weekend for me.”

“Elizabeth and I will stick to you like gumballs until Thursday. Then why don’t you get out of here? Like maybe home to Goddard Bay? You haven’t seen your folks for a while, and maybe it’s time, don’t you think?”

“I miss my dad. Okay, I’ll think about it.”

At nine o’clock that evening, Elizabeth Fargas burst through the front door, a bottle of champagne under her arm, still wearing TV makeup, and a gorgeous pale yellow suit, and the three-inch heels she always wore even though she was seated behind the TV news desk. “Oh my, look at you, smiling and okay, right? I’ve been worried out of my mind. Goodness, do I ever need a drink!”

Goddard Bay , Oregon

No way I can do this. No way. I’m an idiot.

There, good, he finally had a functioning brain again. He’d finally admitted it to himself. He didn’t love her. Actually, now that he examined it, he really didn’t like her all that much either.

He smiled as the crushing weight toppled right off his head. He was ready to yell with relief when, in the next instant, the weight jumped back on.

Wonderful, just wonderful. I’ve got to tell her before her mother books the Methodist church and it’s all over town. He pulled the velvet box out of his inside jacket pocket, flipped it open, and looked with fear and loathing at the three-carat diamond winking up at him. It was the direct result of an early morning towering inferno of sex, a shake-the-rafters event that had cannonballed him onto his back when it was over, grinning like a loon, his brain waltzing in the ether. Surely, he thought, sex like that could get a man to do more than torture ever could. He’d have been willing to say anything, do anything for her after that brain-deadening, camel-humping sex, state secrets be damned.

And to prove it, by the time he’d finally talked his brain into crawling back inside his skull, he’d already bought the ring.

Thank God he had to focus on the mayor’s daughter this morning-she’d been arrested for drunk driving the night before-so he hadn’t been able to run right over to her house, a marriage proposal ready to pop out of his mouth.

But she was expecting him to propose, probably tonight when he took her to dinner at Le Fleur de Beijing. It was a new Asian/French restaurant in town that had the word fusion on every page of the menu, which meant, his father had told him, that you could get snails with sweet and sour sauce. It was expensive, though, and to quite a few folks in Goddard Bay and the environs, that meant it had class.

He’d been sleeping with her for close to four months now, at least four times a week. What had made that last time different? Didn’t matter. He’d presented himself that morning at the jewelry store when the doors opened.

He happened to glance at himself in the mirror. He could still see the residue of wild fear in his eyes. He looked down again at the engagement ring, and thought he’d be better off without sex like that ever again in his life. It was too dangerous.

John McInnis Goddard, the great-great-great-grandson of Joshua Barrington Goddard, founder of Goddard Bay nearly a century and a half before, and a tough-as-nails district attorney referred to by local defense lawyers as a major shitkicker, was thinking he’d prefer a long winter’s stay in a Siberian gulag or a campout in the Galápagos to a fusion dinner with Kelly Beverly.

John pulled out his cell phone. He had to talk Goon Leader into helping him.

But before he could punch in the numbers and grovel for the favor, his cell rang and Jack, the man himself, told him to get his butt over to the Jason Maynard house on Westview. His wife, Marci, had just found his body in the garage, lying in a pool of dried blood.

Before he was Spock, Leonard Nimoy played Bernie the Pill Pusher on General Hospital in 1963.

BORN TO BE WILD

Adolphus Club, Founder’s Day dance

Sunday Cavendish is slow dancing with Damian Sterling, her half sister, Susan’s, husband. She’s wearing a long black fitted gown with sheer black netting that begins above her breasts all the way up to an inch-wide jet bead collar around her neck. The net sleeves fit close to her wrists. A slit in the netting gapes to show a very full cleavage. The back of the gown is cut nearly to the waist. Her red hair is swept up on top of her head. Sparkling jet earrings dangle from her ears, winking in and out of the long curls that fall nearly to her shoulders. Her mouth is crimson, her blue eyes brilliant with makeup. She knows she’s beautiful and the arrogance of that knowledge is clear in her eyes, in her body language. She’s the main attraction, power and wealth in one beautiful, ruthless package, and everyone in the big room knows it and accepts it.

Damian is in his late thirties, with light hair and contacts to give him pale green eyes. He looks elegant and comfortable in a tux, like the smooth operator he is. He’s only a bit taller than Sunday, who’s nearly six foot in her stiletto heels. He looks about surreptitiously to make sure neither his wife nor her mother is around, then pulls Sunday very close, his mouth only an inch from her ear.