“A piece of cloth.”

“I know that. I’ve got eyes.”

Paul whipped out a Ziploc bag and put the cloth in it. Then he wrote a note in his black notebook. “I wonder why the arson investigator didn’t take it.”

“It’s probably his.” They continued up, Hitchcock close behind. He didn’t seem to want to get out in these woods.

Nina went on, “It’s getting damn steep. Imagine how frightening it must have been, late at night. I wonder how Wish could see to run down.”

Paul tapped his noggin and said, “That’s why you’re a lawyer and not an arson investigator.”

“Huh?”

“The forest was on fire. He had more light than we do.”

“Oh, right. Look, there’s a hawk.” It flew high above them, riding the currents, circling like a news helicopter over the story of devastation.

They walked the entire extent of the fire, all the way to the top of the hill. Nina saw no sign of the spot where Danny’s body had been found. She wouldn’t even have the police reports to look at until after the arraignment. She tried to imagine it, Wish lost in that crackling hell, Danny disappearing, and then the hand with the rock.

What kind of person had done this?

Looking around them from the top of the ridge, they could see several hundred feet below. This fire had been set with no regard for human life, as there were homes directly below-or maybe the homes had been the targets? “We should find out who lives in all the homes that were threatened,” she said.

“We have to prioritize,” Paul told her. “I’ll get on that soon, but right now, I think we better concentrate on the sure thing we do know-that one of the arsonists seems to live on Siesta Court. Look down. See the river we crossed to get onto Southbank? The riverbed, anyway. It’s almost dry. Siesta Court’s hidden in the oaks down there. Let’s go down and take a look at it.”

“I don’t want to blow my cover for tonight,” Nina said. “What if some of the neighbors are out?”

“Well, I’d like to see, since I wasn’t invited to the party. You keep wearing that scarf and the sunglasses. They’ll think you’re Winona Ryder on a shopping spree.”

They walked back down and Hitchcock drank some water, and then wound down Hitchcock Canyon in the Bronco. At the bottom of the Robles hill they came back to the substantial steel bridge over the river, which Nina remembered was called Rosie’s Bridge. Across the bridge, Esquiline Road and the hill sloped up again toward the Village, and halfway up they could see the remains of the model home that had burned down in the first fire. Tractors and forklifts and stacks of materials were parked along Esquiline, indicating that a cleanup had commenced. At the top of the slope, where Carmel Valley Road ran, they could just see the handicapped facility of Robles Vista through what remained of the grasses and trees.

They stopped the car on Esquiline along a fence just before they came to Rosie’s Bridge. Pointing to the narrow lane that ran along the river to their right, a dirty street sign read SIESTA COURT.

“We’ll just put ol’ Hitchcock back on his leash and take him for a sedate walk,” Paul said. “Don’t worry, you are unrecognizable.”

“Oh, why not.” They turned the corner and began walking down Siesta Court, trying not to look conspicuous as they passed the houses.

Nina thought more about the Spanish and Mexican history of the area as they strolled up to the road sign and turned right. Don José Manuel Boronda, Doña Catalina Manzanelli de Munras, and many other figures from the past had lived, loved, and died along the banks of the Carmel River. They built adobe houses, they nurtured pears, grapes, apricots, nectarines, cherries, they raised racehorses… they fought off the wildcats and coyotes, and even, until 1900, the grizzly bears that hunted through these wild lands. Though the grizzlies had gone, the occasional mountain lion still prowled along the riverbanks.

On the river side of Siesta Court a wall of riprap bordered the street, softened by buttercups and shooting stars that managed to root in and beautify the ugly concrete. A path made by owners and their dogs ran along the top, and they walked along it. The riverbed below on their left was at least eighty feet wide, only a streamlet hinting at its winter might. On the far side, a bank overgrown with laurel bushes lay below the scars of the first arson fire.

They reached the shadow of a mighty oak that had been allowed to remain when the riprap was laid down, one of the ubiquitous robles that lent their name to everything around here.

Across the lane, snug under the leaves, a few houses slept in a straggling row. On this hot, still afternoon, the lane was quiet. A couple of golden retrievers came sniffing out from their naps under the trees.

“Imagine what the Green River development will do to this street,” Nina said, looking across the river to the hillside. “These folks will be staring at a hillside of identical roofs instead of greenery. Actually, the people in the condos will be looking down at them. It’ll be like moving from the country to the city without even having to pack.”

Paul pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and studied it. “Let’s start at this corner. That first house, with the chain-link fence around it-that’s owned by a couple named George and Jolene Hill.”

“How do you know that?”

“Went on the Web while you were getting dressed and accessed the county real-estate records. Since we were coming out here.”

“You’re good. I’m impressed.”

“Especially in bed.” He drew a finger down her sleeve. “Ah. I can still make you blush. A hard-nosed legal eagle like you.”

The yard was lush with hollyhocks and roses. A tire swing hung off the tree beside the old white cottage. BEWARE OF DOG, said a metal sign affixed to the fence. Nina saw a dog bowl on the porch. “Gardeners?” she said.

“Let’s see now. George and Jolene have lived here since 1970,” Paul said. “That’s when they bought it, anyway. Paid forty thousand for the property. The house is probably worthless, but they do have a half-acre. The land alone must be worth more than half a million now.”

“That much?”

They were now across from the second house. A bigger contrast could not be imagined. The Hill house on the corner was set modestly back from the road, but this house with its two stories and portico sat right on the street and seemed to fill the whole lot.

“Theodore and Megan Ballard,” Paul said. “Bought six years ago, just before the river flooded. Razed the old house and built this postmodern thing.” A blue BMW convertible sat in the driveway. “Somebody’s a telecommuter,” Paul said. “I can smell the vanilla soy latte from a mile away.”

“No sign of kids,” Nina said. “Big incomes and they collect retro fifties furniture, is my guess.”

“Living the good life. I’m gonna say, a pair of computer analysts.”

“Techies. And the house is all made of ticky-techie.” At a tall laurel that overhung the riprap, they caught up with Hitchcock, who was involved in an investigation of his own.

“Okay. Grass and neat flower beds on Number Three, middle of the block, old house but big and comfortable,” Nina said. “A home-loving woman lives here.”

“You’re such a sexist. Men make better gardeners.”

“Men are good with grass, I agree. But not with these delicate flowers, not with these pretty patterns,” Nina said.

“Well, all I can say is that Sam and Debbie Puglia own this place,” Paul said, consulting his notes.

“Looks like a big new deck out back. I wonder if that is where the party will be.” As Nina spoke, a middle-aged woman in shorts and a halter lumbered out the back door, which they could see at an angle, and disappeared onto a corner of the deck. Paul and Nina turned toward the river and stood together.

“Debbie?”

“The age is right. Sam and Debbie bought the house twenty years ago, and she’s in her mid-forties, I’d guess.”