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cruising right along.” She gave a small smile. “We’ll be at Carlos’ apartment in the city before you know it.”
    He gave a slow nod of his head and turned toward the window. Once again, Darby felt acute stabs of sympathy.
    She thought back to what she knew about ET’s youngest sibling, Selena Gomez Thompson. What was it ET had always called her? A free spirit, someone who took risks and was unbounded by society’s conventions. Selena had defied her conservative Mexican upbringing and forged an independent life away from her family, even her brothers who loved her dearly but tended toward overprotectiveness. In her late teens she fled the Mexican town of Ensenada and settled in San Francisco, living with a group of cyclists in a rundown old Victorian near the Haight-Ashbury District. When the landlord mentioned he needed to sell the house, Selena borrowed the funds to buy it. “She fixed it up little by little, renting rooms to the other cyclists, and then sold it for a mint,” ET once told Darby. “And then she bought the vineyard.”
    Calling the neglected acreage and ramshackle farmhouse “a vineyard” had been a stretch at first, but once again Selena had employed good old-fashioned elbow grease, ingenuity, and all of her savings to get Carson Creek Estate & Winery up and running. Her brothers offered to help, but their sister was stubborn, insisting she could make it on her own. She’d never borrowed a cent from them—until a month ago.
    Darby recalled the phone conversation with ET in which he’d quietly requested fifty thousand dollars to help a family member i n need. From her friend Helen Near’s home in Florida, Darby had agreed to ET’s appeal immediately and without any questions. She’d transferred money into his account, not knowing any of the details, because he was her most valued employee and friend. It was only a slip of the tongue that had revealed for whom the money was intended, but Darby still did not know why.
    She used her directional and pulled off the highway toward a small gas station with two forlorn looking pumps. “We’re about twenty-five minutes from the city,” she said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I’m going to grab some more gas and a bottle of water. Can I get you something?”
    He turned toward her. “A coffee would be nice.”
    “Sure.” She climbed out of the car and began pumping her gas. A few minutes later she was in a dingy little convenience store, a water and large coffee in hand.
    The woman at the counter’s eyes were ringed with black eyeliner. Blush accented the sagging skin around her cheekbones. She yawned. “Forty-two even,” she said.
    Darby handed her a credit card. She glanced at the stack of newspapers on the counter and scanned the headlines, looking, as always, for the byline of a certain British reporter on assignment in Afghanistan. She flipped the paper over and waited for a receipt.
    “Veronica’s in town,” the saleswoman said, plunking down the credit card slip for Darby to sign. She gestured toward the headline of the Style section. In bold print it trumpeted the sold-out “Angel Tour.”
    “Veronica?”
    “Don’t tell me you don’t know who she is. Geez, I’m over sixty and I know her. Here.” She thrust a brochure at Darby that depicted a tall, leather-clad woman with vibrant red hair sporting large pink feathery wings. “That song ‘Heaven Bent’ is about the only thing the radio plays.”
    “When does Veronica perform?” Darby asked, handing back the brochure.
    “This weekend at the polo grounds. Then she’ll be in the convention center in San Francisco.” The woman sighed. “Wish I had even a tiny bit of her billions. But me? I can’t even carry a tune.”
    Darby picked up the newspaper. Perhaps it would take ET’s mind off his awful journey for a moment or two. She glanced at the price and handed the saleswoman a dollar. Then she grabbed the bottle of water and cup of coffee and turned to leave.
    “Come