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which Henry's done without a murmur for the past six years. Now slyly, she said, "You gonna help I hope. He shouldn't do by himself. Is not fair."
    "Why can't William pitch in?"
    "Klotilde preferred Henry."
    "But she's deceased," I said.
    "Before she deceased herself, she preferred," she said, smiling coyly, as though that cinched it.
    I dropped the argument. It was really up to Henry, though it irritated me intensely that she'd take advantage of him. The Klotilde in question was Rosie's cranky older sister. I'd never been able to pronounce her Hungarian surname, which abounded in consonants and strange punctuation marks. She'd suffered for years from an unspecified degenerative disease. She'd used a wheelchair since she was in her fifties, plagued by a variety of other ailments that necessitated copious medications and numerous hospital stays. Finally, in her seventies, she'd been advised to undergo hip-replacement surgery. This was in April, some seven months back. Though the surgery had been successful, Klotilde had been outraged by the rigors of convalescence. She'd resisted all attempts to get her on her feet, balked at nourishment, refused to use a bedpan, pulled out catheters and feeding tubes, flung her pills at the nurses, and sabotaged her physical therapy. After the customary five days in the hospital, she was moved to a nursing home where, over the course of the next several weeks, she began to decline. She'd finally succumbed to pneumonia, dysphagia, malnutrition, and kidney failure. Rosie had not been exactly stricken when she "passed."
    "She should have passed along time ago," said she. "She's a pain in the patooty. That's what happens when you don't behave. She should have done what doctor say. She shouldn't never resist help when he know best. Now I got this and I don't know what to do with. Here you take."
    Judging from the weight and heft of the bag, she'd gotten into some resistance of her own, letting all the paperwork pile up. It'd take Henry weeks to get everything sorted out. He emerged from the backdoor and crossed the patio to us. He'd changed out of his tank top and shorts into a flannel shirt and long pants.
    "I gotta scoot," I said, and set the bag on the ground. Henry peered in. "Is this trash?"
    By the time I let myself into my apartment, he was already hauling the bag toward his kitchen door, nodding sympathetically while Rosie lurched through an tortured explanation of her plight.
    I dropped my shoulder bag on a kitchen stool while I circled the apartment, closing windows and locking them. I turned on lamps as I went so the place would look cheerful when I got home. Upstairs, pulled on a clean white turtleneck, which I wore with my jeans. I shrugged back into my gray tweed blazer, traded my Sauconys for black boots, and studied myself in the bathroom mirror. The effect was just what you'd expect: a tweed blazer with jeans. Works for me, I thought.
    Paloma Lane is a shady two-lane road that runs between Highway 101 land the Pacific Ocean, sharing the irregular strip of land with the Southern Pacific Railroad. Despite the proximity to the freight and passenger trains thundering past twice daily, many houses along Paloma sell in the millions, depending on the number of linear feet of beachfront a property claims. The houses vary in style from |Pseudo-Cape Cod to Mock Tudor to Faux Mediterranean to Contemporary. All are situated as far away from the railroad tracks as possible and as close to the sand as county setbacks permit. Crystal Purcell's lot was one of the few without electronic gates. The house next door, to the left of hers, bore a discreet For Sale sign with a PRICE REDUCED banner across the center.
    Crystal's house filled the narrow lot. The glass-and-cedar structure was probably forty feet wide and three stories high, each floor angled strategically to keep the neighboring houses out of sight. To the left, an open carport sheltered a silver Audi convertible and a new white Volvo, with