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anymore.  Josie looked back at the place that was now her hometown. Hermosa meant beautiful beach. The place used to be a sweep of hills dotted with sheep and barley fields that stretched all the way to the Pacific. Now it was 1.3 miles of small hotels, houses, restaurants, and people who believed in letting everyone be.  When it came to crime, Billie Zuni was as bad a dude as the place could come up with. In December there was a sand snowman contest, in August the Surf Festival. In the sixties, the city declared itself a wild bird sanctuary. Little did the founding fathers know, wild birds weren’t the only ones who would find sanctuary in this place. 
    Josie kicked at the sand and gave Max’s ancient leash a tug. Hot pink, worn to shreds, it was still clipped to his collar when she found him half starved under the pier. Josie wouldn’t buy a new one. That leash might mean something to Max, the same way her mother’s hula-girl plates meant something to Josie. She tugged again.  It was time to go, just not time to go home.  Linda had kicked up a lot of dust, and Josie needed someone to help her clear it. There was only one person she knew who had twenty/twenty vision when it came to navigating the storms of indecision.
    She headed to Archer’s place.
     
     
    It took Linda Rayburn forty-seven minutes to get to the Malibu house. She parked the car, retrieved her shoes and purse from the passenger side floor, didn’t bother to lock the doors, and didn’t care if the hems of her very expensive slacks got dirty.
    She walked through the gate, ignoring the impressive entrance.  It had grown ordinary like so many things Linda once found intimidating and fascinating about the Rayburn’s world. Not that she would trade it. Not that she disliked it. All this stuff was like air: essential and expected, missed only when taken away.  She let herself in to the house. Every light was on and the damn thing was quiet as a mausoleum. The shoes and purse were left on the floor for the housekeeper to pick up in the morning.
    Linda looked in the kitchen, though she doubted that’s where Kip would be. She checked the living room. The glare of the lights made her feel like a walking corpse. She slipped the belt from her hips and tugged her blouse out of her slacks as she went.
    The pool lights were on; the floods, too. The dining room with its long glass table and twelve high backed stainless steel and silk chairs shivered with reflected light.
    Having searched downstairs there was nowhere to go but up. Resisting the desire to get in bed, close her eyes, and make everything go away, Linda climbed the stairs and walked down the long hall. The gigantic unframed oils that Fritz had been so fond of now looked crass and ridiculous. So much black cut by random slashes of red that looked like open wounds on the dark skin of the canvas. Fritz may have been smart about the law, but his taste in art sucked. What was he thinking hanging those things on the smooth white walls of the Malibu house? Hannah’s paintings would have been better. At least she used more than two colors. In fact, right now, Linda would burn all of Fritz’s big, ugly, high brow stuff herself, just to have a little bit of Hannah around. 
    Linda was at the end of the hall just outside the room .  That’s what they called it. Not Fritz’s room, not the library, just the room . It was where the chronicles of Fritz’s life were kept: pictures of Fritz with governors, senators, and even a president or two. Fritz with celebrity lawyers.  Fritz with foster children. Fritz, Fritz. Fritz. Pens and plaques, embossed portfolios. Fritz, Fritz, Fritz’s place. Little sculptures of judges made of bronze and wood. Gavels sprouted off polished wood surfaces. He hadn’t used the room in years and yet it remained untouched. It was a shrine while he lived; God knew what it was suppose to be now that he was dead, now that Kip was in there. 
    Linda composed herself.  There was no