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be passed down through families. In the past few years, the Bureau of Genealogy had put the contents of its extensive collection of dusty tomes containing the family trees of generations of members into a computer database.
    “I don’t believe this,” Luther said. “You want to pair me with some gray-haired little old lady from Genealogy? Is this your idea of a joke?”
    “Now do you see my problem? I can’t send a sweet, innocent elderly librarian into a situation like this alone. She wouldn’t have a clue. With my luck she’d give herself away to Eubanks, who would bop her on the back of her bun and dump her body. Next thing you know, I’d have Old Beak yelling at me for getting one of his people killed on the job.”
    Harley Beakman was the notoriously obsessive and powerful head of the Bureau of Genealogy. The name Old Beak had been bestowed on him decades earlier because of a certain unmistakable aspect of his profile. The moniker had stuck because he possessed the personality of a bad-tempered rooster.
    “You can skip the high drama,” Luther said wearily. “I get the point.”
    “I depend on Genealogy for a lot of my research. I need the cooperation of Old Beak and his staff. If I let anything happen to one of his people, I’ll be screwed.”
    “I admire the way you’re always thinking of others, Fallon.”
    “Listen, this is just a fast in-and-out job. Two days max. You and Miss Renquist go to the resort on Maui. You hang out awhile until she makes the ID, and then you put her on a plane home before she can muck up my investigation. How complicated is that?”
    “Let me guess, I’m going to pose as a dutiful son escorting his elderly mom on a Hawaiian vacation, right? Please tell me I’m not going to be one of those guys going on forty who’s still living with his mother.”
    “I’m having the documents related to your covers couriered to Renquist tonight,” Fallon said a little too smoothly. “She’ll have them with her when she meets you in Honolulu tomorrow.”
    “You’re sure you don’t mean this morning?”
    “I don’t make mistakes like that. She’s booked on a flight from Portland, Oregon, tomorrow morning that leaves at eight. Got a pen?”
    Luther went back inside the apartment. He found a pen and a pad on the kitchen counter.
    “Go,” he said.
    Fallon rattled off the flight number and repeated the date. “She lands in Honolulu at eleven thirty-five. The two of you will travel on to Maui under your new IDs and check into the hotel.”
    “She lives in Portland?” Luther asked.
    Not that it mattered where Renquist lived.
    “No, a little town on the Oregon coast,” Fallon said. “Place called Eclipse Bay.”
    “Never heard of it.”
    “Yeah, well, I get the impression that’s why Miss Renquist likes it there.”
    “A lot of senior citizens get off the planes here,” Luther said. “How will I recognize her?”
    “She’ll probably be wearing gloves.”
    “Gloves? In Hawaii? It’ll be eighty-one degrees here tomorrow.”
    “Miss Renquist likes to wear gloves,” Fallon said. “She’s a little eccentric that way.”
    “She’ll stand out in the crowd, all right. Tell her I’ll be in khakis and a dark brown shirt.”
    “Is the shirt with or without flowers?”
    “Without.”
    “I’m sure the two of you will find each other without too much trouble.”
    Fallon ended the sentence with a couple of odd snorts and cut the connection.
    Luther left the piece of paper with Grace Renquist’s flight information on the counter and went back out onto the balcony. He would get a few hours’ sleep and then he would call Petra and Wayne and tell them he had taken the Maui job. At least they’d be pleased.
    He finished the whiskey and thought about the strange vocalizations Fallon had made just before ending the call.
    If it had been anyone other than Fallon Jones, he would have sworn that the odd snorts were laughter.

FOUR
    Eclipse Bay, Oregon . . .

    She would get a dog