“What did you find?” Savannah demanded.

I closed the trunk lid.

“You’ve never told me anything, anyway, so why start now, right?” she said, smoldering.

“I need somewhere to spread this stuff out,” I said.

She huffed a sigh as if to say, “I can’t believe I’m accommodating this jerk,” then led me inside.

The centerpiece of Savannah’s den was a massive walnut desk, ornately hand-carved, of German origin, was my guess. The oak plank floor played host to a room-size, antique Persian rug worth more than my airplane. Above the moss rock fireplace was a stuffed moose head, its mouth curled in a taxidermy grin, its dark, glassy eyes staring down at us dully. I nodded toward it.

“You bag that yourself?”

“Came with the house,” Savannah said, still steamed at me.

Old newspapers were stacked in a brass rack beside the desk. She spread some on the rug. I dumped out both trash bags on them.

“It’s probably pointless to ask what you’re looking for,” she said.

“Probably.”

She snatched up a copy of the Wall Street Journal from a mahogany side table and plopped down in an overstuffed armchair near the window, facing away from me, her naked thighs draped over the arm of the chair. I tried not to stare.

I got down on my knees and sifted through the garbage. Cans. Bottles. Newspapers. Junk mail. Used coffee filters filled with wet grounds. Used tissues filled with who-knows-what. There was nothing to be mined in the way of potential intelligence.

“I need to go see your father again,” I said, tossing trash back in the bags.

Savannah put down her magazine. “This is starting to really piss me off. You tell him, but not me? My father wasn’t married to Arlo, Logan, I was.”

“Thanks for reminding me. I’d completely forgotten.”

She gazed up at Bullwinkle as if for divine guidance. Maybe it was the way the sunlight filtered in through the windows, but she looked different. Sadder. Definitely older.

“I have a right to know who killed my husband.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you, Savannah.”

“You can, but you won’t. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“I need a ride to my plane. You don’t want to take me, I can catch a cab.”

Savannah rubbed the back of her neck and sighed again. More than a little grudgingly, she said, “I’ll get my shoes.”

I called Carlisle’s office in Nevada after she left the room. Lamont Royale answered the phone. I said I had some news for his boss that I needed to deliver in person. I told him I’d be at the North Las Vegas Airport in approximately three hours. Royale put me on hold. A minute later, he was back. He said he’d be waiting for me curbside when I arrived.

“Mr. Carlisle says to tell you he’s looking forward to seeing you again, and asked that you please fly safe.”

“I’ll try not to crash.”

Savannah drove me to the Van Nuys Airport without a word. We pulled in outside the executive terminal. She put the car in park, then turned to face me.

“I resent the fact you’re willing to share information with my father, but not with me.”

“He’s paying for my services. You’re not.”

“How can you be so cruel? We shared a bed once.”

“It’s been a long time since we shared a bed, Savannah.”

I grabbed my flight bag out of the backseat and got out. She looked like she was wiping her eyes as she drove away. I doubted it was the smog.

Even at 9,500 feet, the air above the high desert northeast of Los Angeles was hot and uncomfortably bumpy. The Duck bucked the convective currents like an unbroken appaloosa. I eased the throttle back, readjusted the mixture, and rode out the thermals.

A fly had somehow found its way inside the cockpit. It buzzed around, strafing instruments, ricocheting off the windows. I tried to feel pity for the little bastard — he’d probably been a telemarketer in a previous life — but somewhere over Hesperia, after his twentieth attempted touch-and-go on my face, I rolled up a sectional map from my flight bag and whacked him into his next plane of existence. The Buddha, who values all life, including flies and telemarketers, would not have been pleased.

Just then, a shadow streaked across the windscreen, followed by a tremendous jolt that made the Duck pitch violently down and to the right — wake turbulence from another aircraft. Instinctively, I leveled the wings and raised the nose, my heart hammering in my ears. I should’ve never killed that fly. Forgive me, Buddha.

“Cessna Four Charlie Lima, Joshua Center,” the controller said over my headphones, “traffic, ten o’clock, northwest bound, Predator UAV, 12,600 feet, descending.”

Now you tell me. “Four Charlie Lima has the traffic,” I said, keying the mic.

Ahead and to my left was a drone — an “unmanned aerial vehicle” in Air Force parlance — designed to fire laser-guided missiles at troublemakers like the late Osama bin Laden. It was twice as big as a Cessna 172, painted Air Force gray, with a bulbous nose, thin stubby wings, and an upside-down, V-shaped empennage. At that moment, in some bunker or trailer somewhere, some pilot with his hand on a joystick and his ass planted in a comfortable swivel chair, was watching a monitor and flying the UAV, sipping coffee. He probably never even saw me.

Las Vegas Approach cleared me into the restricted Class B airspace surrounding their city, vectoring me across the airport at Henderson, then over the east end of the main runways at McCarran International, where I watched two jumbo jets on parallel approaches float toward touchdown, 500 feet below me. From there, I banked left on an assigned heading of 280 degrees, flying directly over the casinos on the Strip. Approach handed me off to the tower at North Las Vegas and the controller instructed me to enter the pattern downwind for Runway One-Two right.

“Four Charlie Lima, winds, one-six-zero at seven, cleared to land, Runway One-Two right.”

“Four Charlie Lima, cleared to land, one-two right.”

My touchdown was a thing of beauty, all modesty aside. I painted it on, cleared the active runway, came to a stop on the taxiway and contacted ground control.

“Ground, Four Charlie Lima requests taxi to transit parking.”

“Four Charlie Lima, roger. If you follow that white airport van that’s just rolling up to your two o’clock, he’ll get you where you need to go.”

“Roger.”

On the back of the van was a large sign that said, “Follow me.” Who was I to argue?

The driver was a clean-cut kid of about twenty who said his name was Jeremiah. As we drew near the parking area, he jumped out of the van and guided me with hand signals into an open parking spot. I shut down the engine. Jeremiah quickly tied down the Duck for me, then drove me to the passenger terminal. I tried to tip him a couple of bucks, but he refused them.

“Just doing my job,” Jeremiah said cheerfully.

“You should be cloned,” I said.

A black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows was waiting in the no-parking zone as I emerged from the terminal’s main entrance. Lamont Royale got out from the driver’s side.

“How was your flight?”

“Bumpy.”

“Glad I wasn’t with you. I don’t handle turbulence too well.”

“Turbulence is organic to the human experience. We learn from the bumps to appreciate the smooth.”

“Man, that’s heavy,” Royale said. “You should think about starting your own cult.”

“Only if there are tax exemptions and groupies.”

He grinned, took my bag and deposited it in the trunk. I opened the rear passenger door. Sitting on the other side of the bench seat was Miles Zambelli.

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” he said without looking up from his smartphone.

Royale shut my door, then climbed in behind the wheel. We pulled away from the airport and out onto Rancho Drive.