“Are you arresting me?” he asked.

Gillian sighed in exasperation. “Gimme the damn phone.”

Eugenie Fonda didn’t complain about flying coach, although she let it slip to Boyd Shreave that her book publisher had always sent her first-class.

“Book publisher?” he said.

“Didn’t I mention?” Eugenie thinking: Damn those Valiums.

“That you wrote a book? No, I definitely would’ve remembered,” said Shreave. “What was it, like a cookbook?”

“Not exactly, sugar.”

The plane was sitting on the runway at DFW, eleventh in line for takeoff. Eugenie would have killed for a pre-flight vodka tonic, but there was no prayer. Not in fucking coach.

“It was a few years back,” she said. “I was involved with a man who turned out to be a seriously bad guy. Later they asked me to do a book-wasn’t my idea.”

“What was it called? Maybe I read it,” he said.

Eugenie Fonda would not have been shocked to learn that Boyd Shreave hadn’t cracked a book since twelfth grade.

She said, “Storm Ghoul. How’s that for a title? Sounds like a Halloween movie.”

“You make some bread off it?”

“I did okay. It was on the best-seller list for a while.”

“Oh, really.” Shreave sagged into a pout. “I thought you and me weren’t going to have any secrets.”

“I don’t recall such an agreement, Boyd.”

“You wrote a best-seller! That’s huge, Genie. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it was a long time ago and the money’s all gone.”

“Fine. Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, there is,” she said. “I don’t date nine-year-olds, or guys who act like them. So sit up straight, paste a smile on your face and show everyone on the plane that you’re proud to be flying with a hot-looking lady like me.”

They didn’t speak again until they were somewhere over Louisiana, where Boyd Shreave screwed up the nerve to ask about the other man.

“Well, he turned out to be a killer,” Eugenie said, emptying the last droplet from the vodka miniature into her cup. “Bonneville was his name. The story was all over the media.”

“And you were married to this lunatic?”

“No, I was his girlfriend. He drowned his wife and blamed it on a hurricane.”

“Holy Christ. I do remember that one,” Shreave murmured. “It was on Court TV, right?”

Eugenie said, “Let’s talk about a happier subject-like famine, or polio.” She signaled a flight attendant for another drink.

They were passing over Panama City when Boyd leaned closer and whispered, “So, besides being totally beautiful and sexy, you’re also a famous writer. That’s pretty flippin’ cool.”

Out the window Eugenie could see the gleaming crescent shoreline of the Florida Panhandle. For one fine moment she was able to imagine that she was traveling alone.

She said, “I’m not a famous writer, Boyd, I’m a famous mistress. Big difference.”

He placed a hand on one of her legs. “But think about it, Genie. A man killed for you. How many girls can say that?”

“Somehow it didn’t seem all that flattering at the time.” She was irritated that he’d gotten aroused by the thought of her consorting with a homicidal nutball.

“It wasn’t exactly the high point of my life,” she added, thinking: But what if it was?

Boyd smooched her neck and simultaneously sent his fingers reconnoitering beneath her skirt. Eugenie Fonda clamped her knees so emphatically that he yipped and jerked away, drawing an amused glance from a young cowboy across the aisle.

“You behave,” Eugenie said to Boyd, who decamped into another slouch.

As she drained what she vowed would be her final cocktail of the flight, she observed through the clear bottom of the plastic cup that the young cowboy was smiling at her. She did not smile back, although her outlook vastly improved.

Five miles below, the green Gulf of Mexico licked at the coastline. Somewhere toward the east, nuzzled by the Suwannee River, was Gilchrist County, which in scraggly ten-acre parcels Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave had hawked over the phone to all those innocent saps. From high up in the clouds it didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Eugenie closed her eyes and sucked on the last ice cube, which clacked lightly against the pearl in her tongue.

Dealey was seated in first class, an expense he would fondly tack on to Lily Shreave’s invoice after the job was done. His camera gear was stowed in waterproof Halliburtons; his targets were sixteen rows back, in steerage.

He could have booked a different flight to Tampa but there was no point, since the lovebirds had no idea who he was or what he was doing. To them he would have looked like just another weary middle-aged suit, skimming the sports section of the Star-Telegram while the other passengers filed to their seats.

Penetration.

Lily Shreave was one twisted bird but she was right about one thing: If Dealey got what she wanted, he’d be a legend on the PI circuit.

Dutifully he had devoted an afternoon to surfing the voyeurcam porn sites, but he’d found nothing instructive. There was a tedious emphasis on up-skirt shots and toilet surveillance, neither of which required a particularly advanced level of cinematography. As for the couples videos, the sex scenes were plainly staged, the participants fully aware they were being taped. There was no other explanation for why, in the throes of lust, they unfailingly paused to reposition themselves at auspicious camera angles. It was practically comical.

Unfortunately, no one would be directing Boyd Shreave and Eugenie Fonda in bed, or lighting their crotches for sweaty closeups. Even if Dealey devised a way to conceal the taping equipment, he might end up with nothing more explicit than two grainy lumps heaving and moaning beneath the sheets.

If I live a hundred fucking years, he thought wistfully, I’ll never top that delicatessen blow job.

It was golden. A classic.

Dealey had blurred out the faces on the photograph and E-mailed it to an on-line trade magazine, which had posted it the next day. Kudos (and reprint requests) continued to pour in from all over the country. A few other PIs had sent surveillance pictures of husbands being fellated by girlfriends-but none in broad daylight at a bustling lunch joint.

Some wives would’ve paid a ten-grand bonus just for the deli shot, Dealey thought, but my client happens to be a total kink. She wants penetration.

For a closer look at his targets, Dealey waited until the rest room in first class was occupied. Then he stood up and made his way to the back of the plane. Eugenie Fonda and Boyd Shreave were sitting in one of the emergency-exit rows. She was staring out the window; he was thumbing through the in-flight magazine.

They don’t even look like a couple, Dealey noted with concern. They look like two total strangers.

Poised before the toilet in one of the aft rest rooms, the investigator pondered the dispiriting possibility that Boyd Shreave’s illicit romance was already cooling. If true, the sex in Florida would be infrequent, brief and subdued.

Which would make even more improbable Dealey’s quest for the coital grail.

Oh well, he thought, there are worse places to waste a few days in the wintertime. Hell, I could be flying to Little Rock instead of Tampa.

At that moment the plane hit turbulence, rocking the private investigator sideways and disrupting his otherwise-flawless trajectory.

“Goddammit,” Dealey muttered, snatching a handful of paper towels to mop the piss from his right pants leg. The stain, he observed bitterly, was the shape of Arkansas.

Stalking back to his seat, Dealey didn’t bother to look at Lily Shreave’s husband and Eugenie Fonda.

Who were now holding hands.

The island was quiet after the small plane passed.