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ago?”
    â€œHope so, but I gotta do the drill before I talk to her. The team’s gonna meet in the A.M. , eyeball the file, then vote on whether to take on the case. Only a formality. Everybody’s hot to go.”
    â€œWhat about Sunny, she still local?”
    â€œYeah, made a coupla calls. Lives over on the beach now. I’ll look her up tomorrow after the meeting. Meanwhile, if you put Coney’s name in the paper, don’t mention a connection to this case.”
    â€œRight. Think Sunny will talk to me too?”
    â€œIt’s up to her,” he said. “Just don’t jump the gun on me. Sit on it until I show her some pictures. I’m digging up Coney’s old mug shots from back then.”
    Â 
    Biscayne Bay glinted like broken glass beneath the slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun, as I drove home. No tourist would suspect that beneath its postcard-perfect surface, the bay had become a toilet that couldn’t be flushed. Underwater sewer lines had ruptured and water-use restrictions had complicated matters. Power cleaning, car washing, and bubbling fountains had been outlawed. Police were enforcing the bans and Miamians had been warned to limit washing clothes and dishes and to flush only when necessary.
    The future seemed grim and increasingly brown. What has happened to the world, to this city, and to me? I wondered, trying unsuccessfully to block out Kendall McDonald, who lingered in my heart and mind like a melancholy refrain. Uneasy and restless, shadowed by a vague foreboding, I yearned to flee, to roam uncharted shores and unspoiled beaches. This Hot Topics story, I thought, would finance my brief escape.
    There were other benefits as well. Having time to polish a magazine piece is a luxury to those of us who pound out daily news stories. My work wouldn’t be mindlessly slashed by an uncaring editor under deadline pressure or forced out of the paper by late-breaking news. This project was something to look forward to in an uncertain world.
    Mrs. Goldstein, my landlady, was in her garden, lugging a plastic water bucket that sloshed with each step.
    â€œI’m watering,” she explained, “with gray water.”
    Gray is the term for water discarded after bathing or washing dishes.
    â€œBathwater,” she panted, wisps of gray hair clinging to her neck, her cotton housedress damp with perspiration.
    â€œYou can’t do this,” I protested. The woman is eighty-two years old.
    â€œBut look.” She gestured, a smile lighting up her face.
    The Brunfelsia’s pale lavender flowers exuded a heady fragrance. The same delicate blooms were deep purple yesterday. Tomorrow they would fade to white, then fall, like young lives cut short. The wistful beauty of the fragrant flowering shrub, common name Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, was worth any effort.
    I fetched my own pail. Bitsy, my police-trained tiny mop of a dog, scampered around us as we launched a bucket brigade from the Goldstein bathtub to her garden, pausing only to curse state water managers. Our sea-level city drowned last fall. Homes and cars flooded, sewers backed up, and hapless motorists drowned, their cars submerged after they mistook overflowing canals for flooded streets. State officials reacted by reducing the water levels in Lake Okeechobee—the Native American word for Big Water—far too much. The huge freshwater lake, second largest in the lower forty-eight states, supplies South Florida’s drinking water. Now this lake, the planet’s most recognizable feature when viewed from outer space, was nearly dry and we faced another water crisis. This time, too little.
    I fed Bitsy and Billy Boots the cat, surveyed the unappealing prospects in my refrigerator, and checked my messages. Only one.
    I called her back. “You’re running with the Cold Case Squad assignment, aren’t you?”
    â€œSure thang,” Lottie said. “Any of them bad boys