We recognize that free stuff is always eye-catching, and we're not above giving away a teaser. Here are the opening chapters to Hidden Palms, the first Butch Bliss novel. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

"What do you think of the view?" Matesson asked.

I was supposed to look at the waves rolling in, at the infinite distance to the horizon, and the fluffy white clouds towering up into the sky, but closer in, there was a blonde in the pool, wearing a tiny bikini. She was slumped on an inflatable dolphin; her head was back, and her eyes were covered by big sunglasses. Her hair trailed in the pool. The bikini top struggled to contain her, like trying to wrap your hand around an over-inflated balloon.

"Expansive," I offered. "You can see just about everything."

"Some days, when the wind comes in from the west, it's even more spectacular."

I glanced down at the inflatable dolphin again, and gave some thought to what would happen when the wind did come in.

"I appreciate you asking me to drop by," I said. "But it wasn't to see the view. Spectacular as it is."

Matthew Matesson let loose with a loud bray of laughter. In the pool, the blonde jerked slightly at the sudden noise, and there was a precarious moment where she might fall off the dolphin. She wiggled her hips a few times, finding a safe spot on the slick surface. I preferred watching her instead of Matesson anyway.

He had gotten fat in the last decade. His hair had thinned out too, and the greasy ponytail hanging down between his shoulders looked like something a cat might barf up. He wore a chain of gold links that hung farther down his chest than anyone needed to know, with a matching bracelet of the same around his right wrist. His swim trunks were a size too small and a season out of date, but that had always been Matesson's style. Never be the first, he had been fond of saying, but always be the last.

Word was he was out of the adult film business these days. Producing indie films now. I suspected porn had paid for part—if not all—of this view, and I wasn't quite sure how the blonde fit in with earnest stories of heartbreak and emotional growth, but then, I had always been hired help. No one paid for my opinion. Then, or now.

His laugh subsided into a loose chuckle that made his shoulders quiver. "Man," he said, looking down at the blonde, "those hips—"

"Why am I here?" I asked, interrupting his train of thought. I didn't need more details. My imagination worked fine. It didn't need any help from him.

"Why are any of us here?" he asked, and he laughed again at my expression. When I turned to go, he reached for my elbow. "Hang on, Bliss. Don't be such an uptight ass."

Before I could say anything, the large glass door behind us slid open, and a blonde woman came out. She was a twin to the woman in the pool, though she wore a red bikini instead of a blue one. She was carrying a tall glass of murky liquid in either hand. "Here you go, Matty," she said, offering him one of the glasses. It had a straw wide enough for a small-caliber bullet.

"Thanks, doll," he said. He nodded at me. "And thanks for bringing one out for Bliss, too."

Her smooth and pretty face scrunched up for a second as she looked at me. "Bliss, huh," she said, and she made it sound like both a question and an expression of exasperation.

"Yep," I said. Making it sound like both an answer and an apology.

Without breaking eye contact, she lifted the glass in her hand and wrapped her lips around the straw. She sucked, dimpling her cheeks, and the level of goop in the glass dropped a finger's width. She released her hold with a loud pop—a sound I hadn't heard in awhile, not in any context like this one, for sure—and offered me the glass. She flashed Matesson a less-than-friendly glare, and then spun on her heel and marched back into the house. We both watched her go. The glass was cold in my hand, and I considered holding it against my forehead to cool me off.

"It's got ginkgo and spirulina and other shit in it," Matesson said. He sucked heavily on his straw. "Supposed to make you live forever. I don't know about that, but I do know that you're going to have the best shit of your life in about three hours."

I eyed the glass, not quite sure if I needed such an experience.

"It also puts extra lead in your pencil, for when you've got some creative work to do. Know what I mean?"

I took a cautious sip from the straw. The stuff was cold and tasted better than it smelled, which wasn't saying much. I coughed when a familiar burn hit the back of my throat.

"That's your body telling you that you need to drink this stuff more often," Matesson said.

"Is that what's going on?" I said. I took a healthier sip, and it went down easier this time.

"I figured you'd be all into this New Age healthy greens shit," he said, waving a hand in my direction.

The backhanded compliment was the best you could hope for from Matesson. Of course, I was in better shape than he was—always had been, in fact. That's what the talent does. Though, it wasn't that high of a bar to cross.

Besides, LA was a town quick to judge. No one took you seriously unless you looked like you spent most of your day in the gym.

"I stay away from refined sugar," I said. "And I get regular exercise."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Not doing any . . . ?"

I let the question hang there for a minute. Any what, Matty? Porn? Drugs? Both?

"Doing porn in prison isn't the same thing as performing for some direct-to-video compilation," I said, figuring I'd pretend he wasn't talking about drugs.

"No?" He sucked at his drink. "Too bad. I bet there's a market for that stuff. We could get there first. Totally own the space."

"You didn't ask me to come up here to talk about doing a Prison Gangbang series."

"You always have to think about the opportunities, Bliss," he said. "You never know when you're going to hit gold. You always have to keep an open mind."

I looked down at the blonde in the pool, and tried to leave my mind open, which was pretty easy when I was looking at her. "I'm going to finish this drink, and then I'm going to go," I said. I lifted the straw out of the glass, and held it over the edge of the balcony. Green goop dropped from the end and spattered on the white stone running around the edge of the pool. I let go of the straw, and watched it bounce on the stone.

I put my back to the balcony, and chugged half of the remaining contents of my glass. My throat burned, and my eyes watered, but I swallowed all the ginkgo and other shit. "You'd better start talking," I said, showing Matesson how much was left.

Matesson held up a hand. "Okay, okay. Jesus, Bliss. Don't be such a hardass."

I thought about the possible responses to that statement, and figured I should just keep my mouth shut instead. I gulped another mouthful of the green drink, and waited for him to say something interesting.

"Okay, okay," he said again. "Look. I have a little problem. One that requires a bit of delicate handling. Know what I mean?"

I shook my head.

He blew out his cheeks, and looked out over the pool. Like he was actually staring at the ocean and not the stacked blonde in the pool. "Word is you're a guy who can help a guy. You know. A little side work. For cash. No questions asked. That sort of thing."

"You want me to kill someone for you?"

"Fuck! No. Jesus Christ, Bliss. Nothing like that."

"Good," I said. "Because that's really expensive."

He blinked at me, and actually got a little pale. He sucked on his drink for a minute. "Seriously . . . ?" he started, and then stopped. As if he was embarrassed to have been caught asking.

"Let's not go there," I said. Even though there was no there to go.

"Yeah, yeah, okay." He nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's not what I . . . I just—Jesus, man, really?"

I gulped a quarter of the remaining drink in my glass. "Prison changes a man," I said, keeping a deadpan expression on my face. "Makes him think about what's really important. Life. Death. All that shit. Makes him wonder what he's capable of."

"Goddamn," Matesson whispered.

Jerking his chain would have been more entertaining if he hadn't been one of the assholes who had pushed me to make one of the dumber decisions during my young, dumb, and full of—well, those days. I didn't blame him directly. That would be failing to take responsibility for my own actions, and it's important for a self-made man to acknowledge the choices that make him who he is. But still, Matesson had been part of a chorus that had convinced a young and gullible mind to do some stupid shit. Messing with him now—thirteen years on—wasn't payback. That would be petty, and who has time for that shit?

Which made me ask myself why I had even bothered coming up to his house. I had put all that behind me already—shortly after I got out.

I finished the drink and put the glass on the edge of the balcony. "Thanks for the cleansing tonic," I said. "I'll be sure to thank you again in a couple of hours."

"Hang on, Bliss." He started to reach for my arm, and then caught himself. "It's not like that. It's not. Really."

"What isn't?"

"Look, I have a problem. I need someone who can take care of these sorts of things. Discreetly, you know?"

"I'm not sure I do."

"I need you to find someone for me."

"Who?"

"A friend."

"What sort of friend?" I nodded toward the pool. "Like her?"

"Nah." He inclined his head. "Well . . . you remember Gloria Gusto?"

It took me a minute to put a face to the name. "Yeah," I said. "I do."

Gloryhole Gloria. Nicknames were a double-edged sword. They made you recognizable in a field that was constantly crowded with new faces, but they also became the only way you could be remembered. Some managed to rise above the names they got saddled with. Some owned them for all they were worth, knowing such celebrity was fleeting. Bobby had been like that. Once he had claimed his name, he had lived like a king for as long as he'd been able.

I hadn't been one of the smart ones, and it took a couple of years of incarceration before that really sank in.

Two things prison offered in abundance: time to think, and time to read. I had taken advantage of both.

"She could act, and she had a healthy set of lungs. Not surprising, really. Given the rack she had." Matesson nodded at some memory, a smile greasing his lips.

"She came with me," he continued. "When I got that deal with Showtime. It was late-night stuff. Low budget. Rubber suits. Knockoff effects burned in during post. But viewers knew she was going to lose her shirt. And man, not only could she scream like a banshee, but she had this way of wiggling her tits when she let loose. Suits loved it. Had me shooting a picture a month for them. We could have ridden that gravy train for years. But . . ."

He shook his head.

I remembered Gloria. The studio had rented this big house up in the Canyon for a month, and had been shooting there nonstop to save money. There were always at least two crews working in the house. I couldn't recall the name of the film I had been working on that day. Nor the plot. Not that either of those mattered. Who knew what the film would be called by the time it hit the shelves? Anyway, the AD from the other film begged me to come fill a hole. They needed a fifth. I had been tired. Strung out. And I hadn't been at my best.

But Gloria? She was kind and patient and a tireless performer. She made me look a lot better than I deserved that day.

"But what?" I asked Matesson.

"Breast cancer," he said. He grimaced, and sucked heavily at his drink. "They caught it early, but it wasn't the same after that. Not because"—he gestured at his chest—"nothing like that. She just didn't . . . Anyway, the gravy train ran out of gravy. Cable took off, and they wanted smut without anyone taking their clothes off. They wanted viewers to think about people fucking, but they wouldn't hire any of us because we had reputations for actually showing people fucking, and that wasn't what they could show on cable. Dirk got a series—shot a pilot and a few episodes—and then the suits got feedback from focus groups, and word was that the viewers felt ripped off. Those who knew Dirk from Pearlescent were expecting tits and asses, and all they got was push-up bras and lacy panties."

"Uh-huh," I said. The drink was starting to make itself felt in the base of my skull, and not for either of the reasons that Matesson had mentioned earlier. I wondered about the ratio of the ingredients in my glass. My mouth tingled, and I considered leaving Matesson on the balcony—he would probably continue his bitch session just fine without me—and asking the other blonde if she could make me another one of those drinks. I have got to know your recipe. What's the ratio of rum to spirulina?

"Anyway, Gloria's been kidnapped," Matesson said, snapping my attention back to him.

"Kidnapped," I said, somewhat thickly.

"Well, not exactly," he said.

"How inexact are we talking about here?" I asked.

"It's this place. Up north," he said. "Some kind of retreat center."

"An asylum?"

He shook his head. "Not like that. It's some sort of spiritual retreat. But the guy running it is some kind of guru. He encourages his devotees to remain close during their studies."

"But they can leave any time they want to, right?"

"Sure, but they don't want to."

"Ah," I said. "How long?"

"Eight, nine months now, I think."

"And staying at this retreat isn't free, is it?"

Matesson wandered up to the edge of the balcony. He looked down, drumming his fingers on the rail. "I'm not sure it's the best thing for her," he said. "These sorts of crackpots prey on the desperate and lonely. They offer hope. A promise of a better life than what you've got. Freedom from pain and hurt and all that shit. You know what I mean?"

"Sounds like something I heard once upon a time," I said.

His fingers stopped moving. "We were all young and gullible once upon a time," he said.

"And look at us now," I said.

He turned his head and squinted at me. "Go check on her for me, would you?" he asked. "She's at some place called the Hidden Palms Spiritual Center. Up north, somewhere in the San Rafael Mountains. Not far from some speck of a town called Sisquoc. Off the 101, near Santa Maria. Go, and make sure she's okay."

"And if she's not okay?"

His face tightened. "Bring her home."

"Home?"

"Back to LA," he said. "Where she belongs. Not up there, in the woods. With that quack."

"This guy's a duck?"

"You know what I mean."

I digested his request for a moment. "You going to cover my expenses?" I asked.

"Of course."

"What about incidentals?"

"You going to type up an invoice?"

"No."

"Then I'll take your word for it," he said.

I considered that. "I'll need some to start."

His face continued to screw in on itself, making him ugly, and then something inside him unwound, and his features relaxed. "Barbara will get you what you need," he said, nodding toward the house. "Just take care of this for me, would you?" He hesitated, waiting to see if I would say anything, and when I didn't, he pressed on. "You owe me, remember?"

I nodded. I had been wondering if that was going to come up, and now that it had, well, I guess I was going to take the job.

"I'll go talk with her," I said. I nodded toward the pool and the sea and the sky. "Thanks for letting me take a peek at the view," I said.

He tried for a smile, but failed to get it arranged properly on his face.

I left him there, brooding on the balcony above the pool with the blonde and the inflatable dolphin. I was struck by the idea that he hadn't liked recalling the debt between us any more than I had, which made me wonder what I was going to find up north. In the woods. With the quack.

Barbara was in the kitchen, watching a cooking show on a small television. I put the empty glass on the counter, and she looked up from the tiny screen.

"Not quite enough rum," I said.

She smiled at me, the tip of her tongue caught in the corner of her mouth. "There might be some left in the bottle," she said.

"Matesson said you were going to give me some cash," I said.

"And . . . ?"

"I suppose we could check the bottle after that."

Her smile widened, and she crooked a finger at me to follow her.

CHAPTER 2

She was "Barbara" to my "Robert," and she got the order of things mixed up a bit. We found the bottle of rum, and there were a couple of fingers left. We shared it back and forth for a minute, staring into each other's eyes and thinking about different things. I was thinking about what I should pack in my bag for a couple days on the road, and if I should shower before taking the drive. She was thinking about what it would take to get me to put my hands on her hips.

She came up with a plan finally, and lured me into the study where she stretched out on one of the yellow leather couches. The room had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the impressive view, two yellow leather couches that were soft and warm to the touch, a ceiling-mounted projector meant for watching movies on the 4:3 screen mounted on the wall, and a wall of bookcases that were filled with videos. VHS. Laserdisc. DVD.

Babs put her hands over her head and squirmed slightly on the couch, making enough noise to remind me she was there. I watched her for a few moments, rum bottle in hand, and then I wandered over to the bookcases.

"It's quite the collection," I said.

"Uh-huh," she said.

"He make all of these movies?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.

"Just the ones over there," she said.

"Over where?"

She knew I had to look at her, and when I did, she took the finger that had been playing with her lower lip and languidly pointed it to the bookcase closest to the screen. Her other hand was playing with the top of her bikini bottom.

"Right there?" I nodded. Not at the bookcase, but at the lower hand.

"Uh-huh," she said again. The other hand started back toward her mouth, but got distracted by the rounded slope of her breasts. The bikini top was really struggling to keep all of her covered.

"I might have to charge Matty extra for keeping me here this afternoon," I said. "When I should be working for him."

"Oh . . . ?"

"Hazard pay," I explained as I returned my attention to the bookcases and wandered farther away from the squirming woman on the couch.

She let out a noise that was part sigh, part throaty growl, and I almost turned around to check if she was choking on an air bubble or something. I could do the Heimlich, if necessary, and I could manage a chest massage too, especially if that wasn't medically necessary. She would probably prefer the latter to the former, which would lead to other hands-on applications.

I sighed, too. Mostly because I recognized a number of the titles on the VHS tapes. I plucked one of them off the shelf. Lordship and Bondage 3. Still wrapped in plastic. I looked at the cast on the back of the case, and spotted a younger version of myself. Shirtless. That ridiculous hairdo and mustache. A brunette wearing a silk nightie that didn't quite cover her ass had her hands on my chest, but not so you couldn't see her breasts, straining against the fabric of the nightie. We both looked like we were half-asleep instead of going in for a passionate kiss.

Ah, the good old days.

"That's vintage stuff," Babs said. "Matty says it'll be worth something someday."

"Does he?" I put the tape back. "Well, we'll just have to be patient then, won't we?"

She pouted. "I'm not very good at patience."

I wandered back to the couch and sat down. She immediately threw one of her legs across my lap and scooted closer to me. "I can see that," I said.

I could also see her nipples.

I took one final swig from the near-empty rum bottle and then carefully put it next to my leg, between her legs. "Matty said to get money from you," I said. "I have work to do for him."

"Now?" she asked. She pouted. She was pretty good at it.

"Yeah."

Her leg tightened across my lap. "But I'm not ready for you to go. And besides, you've been drinking."

"This is LA," I said. "Everyone's been drinking. And besides, the drive is all downhill from here."

She started to sit up, pulling herself closer to me, but then someone dropped several bundles of bills on her smooth stomach. A female hand snatched the rum bottle away from between her legs, and nearly brained me with it.

"Matty wants a report from you in three days." Babs' twin glared at her sister for a moment and then stomped off, swinging her hips.

I gently extricated myself from Babs' leg. "Looks like I have to go to work," I said. I started to gather the money bundles from the couch.

Babs grabbed one stack of twenties and held it tight.

"One kiss?"

"Okay," I said. "One kiss."

"With tongue."

I plucked the last bundle from her hands. "You must do all his negotiating."

Babs smiled, and when she realized my hands were full, she grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me close.

I got caught in mid-afternoon traffic coming back from Malibu, and the boardwalk along the beach was starting to fill up with the post-work crowd by the time I got off the freeway. My little bungalow was tucked back behind a mid-century rambler which was part of a neighborhood caught in a transitional phase. The throaty growl of the Mustang's engines reverberated between the houses as I slid the car up the driveway and around to the back, and when I shut off the car, I could hear the urgent bark of Mrs. Chow's Pekingese.

The dog didn't like my car. It was the sort of small dog who suffered from being a small dog in a big world, though why it fixated on my car as the source of all its canine frustration, I could never figure out.

Dogs. They make us look smart.

I collected the money-filled duffel and got out of the car.

Mrs. Chow was standing on the back porch of the rambler, smoking a cigarette. Baby Baby—always terrified, always letting everyone know—crouched behind her, growling and letting go with the occasional yip.

I nodded and smiled. Offered some small talk about the weather, which was always the same here—a half-mile from the beach in Venice. She made a face and waved a hand at the sky. I tried not to give her an excuse to regale me with the latest manner in which the sky was trying to poison her. We had enough time during our bi-weekly excursions to her favorite seafood market in Long Beach for her to catch me up on every ache and imaginary pain vexing her.

Of course, the real root cause of all her imagined afflictions was loneliness. The salons ran themselves. Her husband had taken care of the other businesses before he had been incarcerated, and now, her sons were in charge. Her daughter was finishing up a law degree at UCLA, which meant no one saw much of her. And I didn't talk much about how I kept myself busy. That left Mrs. Chow with an empty house and a high-strung dog as her constant companion—two things that are no comfort for a widow.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had mitigated the remainder of Mr. Chow's sentence when he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. The paperwork took awhile, but he had managed to spend the last few months at home, instead of in a cell at the Colony. CMC.

We had met at Tehachapi. CCI.

CDCR was all about the acronyms.

Chow had been doing ten to twenty for money laundering, wire fraud, and tax evasion. I was doing five for possession and intent to distribute, which turned into ten by the time it was all said and done. We were innocent of all the crimes stapled to our sheets, of course, but the State of California was happy to assume there were other crimes it hadn't listed. Chow was an old man on the outs with his friends from across the Pacific, and I was a dumbass kid who had been popped for drugs. We found reasons to trust each other, and figured out a mutually beneficial relationship.

Six months after I got out, he got transferred to the Colony. A year later, he was at home, waiting for the cancer to take him. After he was gone, his son told me that the old man had wanted me to have the bungalow out back. Rent-free, as long as Mrs. Chow owned the rambler, and she was the very definition of stubborn. They were going to need a earthmover to dig her out of the house after she died.

The first night I had stayed at the bungalow, Mrs. Chow had come out and knocked on the door. She was like a fragile bird, a long-limbed heron with her pale neck and wide eyes. She had stood in the doorway of the bungalow, peering inside. "Mr. Chow says you took care of him," she had said.

I hadn't disagreed.

"He says I should take care of you," she had said.

"I'm a grown man," I had protested.

"All grown, huh? Maybe you should take care of me too?" She had laughed at the expression on my face. "No guns. No drugs," she had said.

"No guns. No drugs," I had repeated. That was easy to promise.

"You can take me shopping once in a while," she had said.

"I can do that."

"Keep your hands off my daughter, or I'll have them cut off."

I had nodded. Happy to oblige.

But then I hadn't met Angel yet.

As I walked away from the car, Baby Baby came bounding off the back porch of the house. The small dog reached the midway point in the yard, and lowered himself against the grass. He growled and snapped at the steel leviathan in the driveway, as if his earnest ferocity could somehow frighten my car and make it run away.

I keyed the alarm on the car, which made it beep once, and the noise sent the dog into a barking frenzy. I glanced back at Mrs. Chow and shrugged. What else could you do about a small dog with an inferiority complex?

She exhaled a long plume of cigarette smoke—in that way that only passive-aggressive older women can.

Hey, maybe the dog would bark himself into a heart attack. A man can dream, can't he?

I went into the bungalow and shut the door behind me, and the frenzied sounds from the yard became a distant chirrup of noise. The place was tiny; the square footage wasn't much more than the movie room at Matesson's, and it was divided up into a central living space and kitchen, a tiny bathroom, and an equally tiny bedroom. I kicked off my shoes, dropped the duffel on the couch, and was at the refrigerator in three more steps. Modern efficiency living.

Mrs. Chow opened the door before I managed three sips from the beer I pulled out of the fridge. She was prone to walking in without knocking—social etiquette gleaned from some network comedy. I locked the door at night, when there was no reason for her to be wandering around the yard, but otherwise, I didn't bother. It was like Tehachapi in that sense: during daylight, you had no privacy; at night, you were locked in—for your own protection.

Baby Baby darted in with Mrs. Chow, and bounced up onto the couch. He barked at the duffel bag once, and then grabbed the corner with his teeth and started wrestling with it.

I opened the refrigerator for Mrs. Chow, and she made a noise with her lips as she examined the sad state of affairs inside. "Nothing but beer," she said.

"And condiments," I pointed out.

"You need more leafy greens. And vegetables."

"I ate them all yesterday," I said. "And I haven't had a chance to go to the store today."

She took one of the beers, and held it out for me to twist the top off. Her hands were too delicate. Not made for opening bottles or jars. Or handling tools.

She had been a hand model, once upon a time. For one of the major national chains. She still wore a lot of jewelry, but most of it was gaudy stuff picked up on the cheap from estate sales in the valley.

"This is not very good beer," she said after taking a tiny sip.

"I wasn't planning on entertaining this afternoon," I said.

"You shouldn't cheat yourself," she said, waving the mouth of the bottle at me.

I didn't see any reason to argue with that point.

On the couch, Baby Baby was still wrestling with the duffel. He had managed to pull it closer to the edge of the cushion.

"Making movies again?" Mrs. Chow asked.

The bag had the logo of Matesson's production company on it. She knew it wasn't my bag. For all her hypochondria, very little escaped her notice.

"No," I said. "Just doing someone a favor."

"How much of a favor?" she asked.

When I didn't say anything, she looked me in the eye and sniffed loudly. "He can smell it," she said, nodding toward the fussing dog.

"Smell what?"

"What's in the bag."

"What is in the bag?"

She gave me a look. "How much?" she asked.

I took a long pull from my beer before answering. "It's just a favor," I said.

"How much?" she asked again.

I shrugged. "Ask the dog."

"Baby Baby doesn't know how to count. He's a dog."

"And yet, him being able to smell money doesn't seem like a stretch."

She gave me that stare.

"It's just a favor," I reiterated. "I'll be gone for a few days. That's all. It's nothing."

"Where are you going?"

"North. Not far."

"Into the mountains?"

"Maybe."

"There are mountain lions. You should be careful."

"There aren't any mountain lions."

"There are. I heard about one on Channel 7 this morning. Out in Pasadena. It's eaten four dogs already." She glanced over at the dog on the couch. "My Baby Baby could be next."

"We're an hour and a half from Pasadena. Like, what? Fifty miles? No mountain lion is going to come all the way here—especially through downtown and Central—to eat your dog."

"You can't be sure of that." Her rings clicked against the bottle in her hand. "You can't be sure of anything."

I kept myself from rolling my eyes. I knew where this was going.

"I'm going to pack," I said, pushing away from the kitchen counter and heading for the bedroom.

The drive up north wasn't going to take more than an hour or two, but I figured I should throw an overnight bag together, just in case this favor for Matesson turned into more than a drive up and back. He hadn't told me anything of substance about why Gloria was at the retreat, and the five grand I had gotten from the twins wasn't the sort of money thrown around for retrieving an errant child. Well, for Matesson, maybe it was. But the fact that he had called me—had called in an old debt that wasn't actually a debt owed—said he wanted someone he knew and trusted to step and fetch for him. The fact that I knew Gloria—and her background—suggested he wanted to keep the whole thing hush-hush and private.

I had lots of questions, and I was sure that a reconnoiter of the retreat was going to raise a whole bunch more. I wanted to be better informed before I saw Matesson again.

I heard Mrs. Chow's voice from the other room. "Baby Baby! Bad dog! Naughty dog!"

With a sigh, I wandered back to the main room. Mrs. Chow had gathered up Baby Baby in her arms, and she was halfway out the front door. "Must run," she called over her shoulder when she spotted me. "So much to do. Can't stay. Have a good trip." She waved and hurried out, shutting the door quickly behind her.

The dog hadn't made a noise during their exodus.

Her beer bottle, barely touched, sat on the counter next to the sink. The duffel bag was still on the couch, though it looked like it had been opened. Curious, I wandered closer to the bag, and I smelled what the dog had done before I laid eyes on the wet bills.

The little bastard had peed on my money.