“She’s not here,” Crissy said before I got to the back door. “I took her to the train station about an hour ago. She said she wanted to go back to LA.”

I couldn’t say I was surprised. Angry women don’t usually lock themselves in guesthouse bathrooms without also formulating escape plans. I recognized that my ex-wife had every right to be mad at me: I’d crashed my airplane and lacked the grace to let her know afterward that I wasn’t dead. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I probably would’ve been just as angry. I wondered whether we would ever get back together, or whether it was even worth endeavoring to try. Staring down at the glossy, terra-cotta tiles of the Walkers’ kitchen floor, I felt at that moment like a sailboat bereft of wind.

“Sure you don’t want a smoothie?” Crissy said, cutting strawberries. “You look like you could definitely use a pick-me-up.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“I bet you are.”

When I looked up, she was smiling at me. I may be a few transistors short of a circuit board when it comes to picking up on the nuances of female communications, but I knew exactly the message Crissy Walker was broadcasting.

“Ryder’s at a playdate until after dinner,” she said, glancing at the digital clock on the microwave. “That gives us two hours.”

“I have nothing but respect for your husband, Crissy.”

“My husband is not here right now.” She glided around the kitchen’s center island biting her lip, her breasts swaying seductively behind her T-shirt, and stood in front of me, closer than was prudent. “No one ever has to know.”

Her fragrance reminded me of scented massage oil. This is what the Playboy Mansion must smell like. She smoothed my collar, then reached up and stroked the side of my face.

“I never properly thanked you for saving our lives, Cordell.”

I gently grabbed her hand and stopped her. “I’m flattered, but…”

Her lips spread slowly into a puzzled half-smile that conveyed something between surprise and self-doubt. “No man has ever said no to me before.”

“I’m not trying to offend you, Crissy. I’m just down here to do a job, that’s all.”

She covered her mouth, embarrassed. “I must need my head examined. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I knew exactly what I was thinking as I watched her hurry out of the kitchen. That a million other red-blooded American guys would’ve killed for the same opportunity I’d just passed up. The Buddha might’ve argued that I had followed a moral path, and that I was a better man for it. But turning down the chance to spend two hours alone with a former Playmate of the Year, no strings attached? Maybe I was the one who needed my head examined.

As far as I was concerned, my work in San Diego was done. All Hub Walker had to do was convince Greg Castle to make public the results of his paternity test, and I could collect on the five large Walker still owed me. I could use the dough to cover the cost of trucking the Ruptured Duck back up to Rancho Bonita. Whatever was left would go directly to Larry to pay down some of the back rent I owed him, along with seed money to begin rebuilding my plane ahead of whatever damages the insurance company was willing to cover.

I was toweling off from a shower in the Walker’s guesthouse when my insurance broker, Vincent Moretti, returned my call. I’ve never met the guy face-to-face, but I’ve always envisioned him as Vito Corleone because that’s exactly who he sounds like over the phone. He’d reviewed my policy, he said, run some numbers, and scheduled a claims adjuster to tally up the damage. Assuming the Ruptured Duck was totaled, he said, which is what it sounded like to him, I was looking at about $20,000.

“That’s laughable, Vinnie, and you know it. My plane’s easily worth twice that much. I just got the engine overhauled.”

“You’re a serious pilot, Cordell, to be treated with respect,” Vinnie said, like his mouth was crammed with Sicilian olives, “but your aircraft is old. It’s tired. Trust me on this, my friend, when I say that I would be doing you a service, cashing you out at twenty large.”

“I owe more than twenty large on that plane, Vinnie. I’ve got two notes against it. I settle with you for $20,000, I’m done flying. That means no more annual premium checks from me to you. This is the first claim I’ve ever filed. Ever. You’re telling me that doesn’t count for something?”

Vinnie heaved a Godfather-size sigh and said he would see what he could do, like he was doing me a huge favor.

After I got dressed, I settled back on the bed and tried to relax. I thought about checking in with Detective Rosario to find out whether Bunny the Human Doberman had been picked up by the authorities in Arizona, but I figured Rosario would’ve called if she had any news. I yawned, suddenly realizing that I was tired, and closed my eyes to catch a short nap. When I awoke, four hours had come and gone. The guesthouse was dark. I walked outside.

Ryder was in the pool, floating on an air mattress, wearing a Little Mermaid bikini. Crissy was reclined on a padded chaise lounge in a white, one-piece tank suit, sipping what looked like a Bloody Mary, and perusing a copy of Millionaire magazine. Hub still wasn’t home, she said. He and Castle had gone to cocktails and dinner after golf. “Boys’ night out,” Crissy said with an irritated smirk.

“I’m a girl,” Ryder said.

“Yes, you are, Ryder,” Crissy said. “And you know what? You’re lucky, because you’ll be a woman someday, but men will always be boys. Silly little boys who have no idea what they’re doing half the time. Isn’t that right, Cordell?”

There was an edge to her words, a definite bitterness, as if in the interim between her having made a pass at me and my having rejecting it, she’d concluded I was a ball-less jerk.

“That’s right, Ryder,” I said. “All men are boys. And the trick for us boys is to always remember to think with our big heads, not our little ones.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means Mr. Logan thinks he’s being funny, but he’s not.”

I gazed up at the night sky and tried to change the subject.

“See the Big Dipper up there, Ryder?”

Ryder floated on her back with her twig-like arms outstretched and said nothing, rotating her wrists and making circular splashing movements as if her hands were pectoral fins.

“Well, anyway, if you follow those two stars,” I said, pointing, “they’ll take you straight to Polaris, the North Star. That way, you’ll always know which direction to go.”

“Ryder has eye problems,” Crissy said curtly. “Congenital stationary night blindness. She was born with it. Everything looks blurry to her in low light.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it. Must be a rare condition.”

“Only one out of every two hundred thousand people gets it.”

Many of life’s greatest gifts can only be enjoyed in the dark. The aurora borealis. The lights of Paris. The saliva-inducing way roasted pig looks in the glow of Hawaiian tiki torches. I felt sorry for Hub Walker’s granddaughter, all she would miss in her life.

“One more reason Ryder’s so special,” I said.

Ryder said nothing.

My stomach was making noises. I checked my watch: half-past suppertime. Crissy seemed in no mood to offer me dinner, and even I am not so presumptuous as to go foraging through other people’s refrigerators without an invitation. I told her I was heading out to grab some chow, and would be back afterward. Hopefully Hub would be home by then.

She sullenly sipped her drink, read her magazine, and said nothing.

The village of La Jolla at night is no cheap eats central. Unless your hankering is for coq au vin or wild mushroom raviolis in port wine sauce with a sautéed side of pomposity, you’re pretty much out of luck.