"Charlie," Maggie said, leaning forward to take his hand. "How's tricks? You seen anything interesting I should know about?"

"Yes," he said, his voice all scratchy and thin as old drapes. "But it can wait. Is this the young feller from Washington?"

Maggie introduced us. He was Charlie Duck, a local who'd been here fifteen years. He nodded, never taking my hand, just twirling that Oakland A's baseball cap around and around in his hands. "You're all tied up now, Mac, but later, when you've got some time, I wouldn't mind having a talk with you."

"Sure," I said, and wondered what kind of tall tales I'd be hearing.

He nodded, all solemn, and sauntered back to a booth where he sat down, alone.

"You see, not everybody doesn't like me."

"Charlie's a real neat old guy. You'll enjoy him if you two get together."

I said again, "What did you want to talk to Paul about?"

Maggie picked up her fork and began to weave it through her fingers, just like the old man had done with that baseball cap. She'd pulled off her driving gloves. She had elegant white hands, short nails, calluses on her thumb pads. "Just talk," she said. "I still can't believe how lucky Jilly was. Rob Morrison, the highway patrolman who saved her life, came in third in the Iron Man Triathlon over in Kona last year. That means a two-mile swim, a hundred miles on a bike, then twenty-six point two miles of running. He's in awesome shape. Anyone else, and they'd probably still be trying to get her out of the Porsche. The luck involved, it still boggles the mind." I felt both grateful and envious. "The Iron Man. I had a friend who tried that. He made it to Kona, but he got cramps in the marathon leg. I want to meet this guy. I wish I had something more to give him than just my heartfelt thanks."

"After lunch." She picked up her glass of iced tea, just delivered by Mr. Pete, now wearing a bright red apron and chewing on a toothpick. He called her Ms. Sheriff. "Rob is working nights right now, sleeping during the day. He should be awake soon. I want to hear him go through what happened again so I'll take you with me. You very slickly asked me why I wanted to talk to Paul." She shrugged a bit. "I want to know who or what sent Jilly over that cliff. If anyone should know, it's Paul." I couldn't face that, not just yet. "They've only been here about five and a half months. Paul grew up here, you know."

"Yes, but he has no more relatives here. His parents died about three years ago in a private plane crash over the Sierras near Tahoe. They were big-time skiers. Their bodies were never recovered, which is odd since most of the time planes that go down are found pretty quick. But not this time.

"Paul's uncle died of cancer about two years ago, and his cousins are all scattered across the country.

"Why'd he come back here? No offense, but it's the middle of nowhere and there isn't, frankly, much of anything here to interest two big-time researchers, which Jilly told me they both were."

My salad was delivered, a huge bowl filled with lettuce, red peppers, boiled potato chunks, and green beans, all topped with a heap of ranch dressing. I thought it looked wonderful. "Go ahead, get started," she said, and I forked down a big bite. "It isn't bad," I said, closed my eyes, and shoveled down six more bites. "Much better. When Jilly called me six months or so ago, she told me that VioTech--the pharmaceutical company where both of them worked--didn't want Paul to continue with the project he was involved in. Jilly said he was pissed and wanted to come back here and continue his work."

"What about Jilly? What were her plans?"

"She said her clock was running out. She wanted to have a kid."

"Jilly said that?" Maggie Sheffield was just swiping butter on a dinner roll. She stopped cold and stared at me, shaking her head even as she said, "Oh, no, that's impossible."

"Why?"

"If she told me once, she told me half a dozen times,

that neither she nor Paul had ever wanted rugrats. She said they were too selfish for too long a time now to think about changing to accommodate a child."

Well then, she'd obviously changed her mind since she'd spoken to me about it.

"Meatloaf s all gone," Mr. Pete announced, as if he was pleased as punch about it. "Pierre didn't make enough. It got eaten mostly by the breakfast crowd. How about some nice fish 'n' chips smothered in onion rings?"

All that fat swimming around in my arteries didn't sound like such a bad thing at that moment.