The Metaphysical Mystical Tour was waiting to take me away!

I swallowed the rest of my cognac and said, “Believe me, this just happened. There is no higher -- or lower -- power at work here.”

“You’re at work here,” Guy said. “Riordan is at work here. Hell, Paul Kane is at work here. You all have and are choosing to exercise your freedom of will, of choice. You’re choosing to get involved in another murder case. And Riordan is choosing to let you. Why do you think that is?”

“I think he wants to keep Paul Kane happy. And I think he wants, needs, for this to be wrapped up quietly and quickly.”

“The only person you’re fooling is yourself,” Guy said with great -- and infuriating -- finality.

This was my fault. I was making Guy insecure. I was making him crazy. My inability to commit was going to bring about the very things I feared. I put my glass aside. “Guy, I’m tired. And this is crazy. Can we just…go to bed, please?”

He stared. “You mean, can we go to sleep, right?”

The surge of anger I felt took me by surprise. With something less than my usual finesse, I returned, “You want to fuck? Fine. Let’s go fuck.”

* * * * *

Easier said than done. And after about a half hour of what felt like manual labor with tongues, Guy dropped back in the sheets and stared up at the ceiling.

“Have you mentioned this to the doctor?” he asked shortly.

I was equally short. “No.”

“Maybe you should.”

After a moment, I got up and went into the living room. I poured another cognac and sat down on the sofa to watch the moonlight travel slowly across the room, limning each item on the bookshelf in pallid light.

* * * * *

Al January lived high on a hillside on the northwest side of Elysian Heights. The house was one of those modern designs: clean, geometric lines and angles.

January met me at the door wearing peacock blue trousers and a gold and blue Hawaiian shirt, two of those wrinkly, Chinese shar-pei dogs at his heels. He led the way into the front room, chatting about the problems he was having keeping the local raccoons out of the house.

“Don’t the dogs scare them off?” I asked.

“You’d think so,” January replied. “They’re good watchdogs, too.”

I didn’t catch the rest of what he said, distracted by the gorgeous view. Who needed artwork with windows that offered the incredible vista of the canyon, the mountains, and the city lights at night? Even so, January did have an impressive collection of South American art -- including two huge mural segments -- adorning the spacious, stark white room with its towering vaulted ceiling.

“We’ll have lunch in a bit. What will you have to drink?” he asked.

I requested fruit juice and got a bottle of noni juice. January poured himself Bushmills.

“So Paul tells me you don’t just write murder mysteries, you also solve them?”

We had settled on the long deck that looked out over about seven thousand square feet of wooded hillside. The air was sweet with the scent of sunwarmed earth and wild mustard. Bees hummed drowsily.

“Well…one way or the other I’ve probably been involved in more than my fair share of homicide investigations,” I admitted.

What I was thinking, though, was that I hadn’t solved those other crimes on my own. I had certainly played a part in helping solve them -- maybe I had even been instrumental -- but Jake had played every bit as vital a role in closing those cases. It had been teamwork all the way -- even if Jake hadn’t wanted me on his team.

If Jake didn’t want Porter Jones’s murder solved, it wouldn’t be solved.

I’m not sure where the thought came from, but once it occurred to me, it was hard to shake.

“Porter wasn’t the kind of person that gets murdered,” January said. I opened my mouth, and he waved me off. “Oh, I know what you’re going to say -- that there is no particular type of person who gets murdered, but Porter was…” He shook his head.

“I got the impression at the funeral that he was well liked,” I agreed. “But murder isn’t always about the victim. Sometimes it’s more about the perpetrator.”

“I see what you mean,” he said. He sipped his whiskey. “Porter was a big old teddy bear, but…if you crossed him…”

“Had anyone crossed him lately?”

January’s eyes were that very pale blue that looks gray in a certain light. He gazed out over the treetops. “I guess he had his share of conflicts,” he commented.

I realized that January, while not hostile, was not going to be hugely helpful at the expense of his old friend’s good name. And I liked that about him. In fact, I liked January, period -- and not just because he was adapting my book for a screenplay and had said nice things about it. Though that didn’t hurt.

I said, “Well, I know he was having some marital problems.”

“Who isn’t?”

The bitterness of that caught my attention. I was pretty sure January was gay. There was no sign of a Mrs. January -- actually, there was no sign of any other person beyond a maid -- in January’s life.

He added, “Ally doesn’t have the brains to kill a fly.”

“Paul Kane seems to think otherwise. He’s pretty sure Ally wanted Porter out of the way.”

“She might have wanted him out of the way, but I don’t buy for one moment the idea that Ally killed Porter.”

We chatted for a bit -- mostly about Ally. While January didn’t seem to bear the hostility toward her that Kane did, I got the impression he thought Ally had the brains and morals of a ground squirrel. He mentioned that Porter met her on the set of some film Ally had a part in; he didn’t go so far as to say she was an actress, and whatever Ally’s career ambitions had been, she seemed content to abandon them in favor of becoming a full-time Hollywood wife. But maybe Hollywood widow was an easier gig. Especially with a studly personal trainer waiting in the wings.

The maid brought out a platter of tortilla wraps: grilled chicken and cheese and avocado wrapped in flour tortillas slathered with herb mayonnaise. January and I helped ourselves.

Swallowing a bite, I said, “Had any of Porter’s recent business deals gone wrong?”

He washed down a mouthful of wrap with whiskey. “As a matter of fact, Porter had withdrawn financing for a project Valarie Rose and I were involved in -- and neither of us was too happy about it.”

“Why did he withdraw financing?”

He smiled. “You’re being very diplomatic. Why don’t you just come out and ask me if I killed Porter?”

“I’m assuming your answer would be no.”

“It would, but in this case it happens to be true.”

“For the record, I don’t think you killed Jones,” I said, “but his wife suggested that there was bad blood between you.”

“Oh, Ally.” He waved another dismissing hand. “What can I say? From the start Ally was jealous of the friendship between Paul, Porter, and me.” He shook his head very definitely. “No. Porter and I bickered over scripts and finances and the usual things, but we’d been friends a long time. A very long time.”

“Did you argue at Paul Kane’s party?”

He wrinkled his forehead like he was trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Maybe there was some good-natured ribbing.”

“No shouting, no gunplay?” I was trying to keep it light. “No songs and switchblades at thirty paces?”

“No shouting,” January said. “Maybe we got a little…pointed with each other, but anyone who knew us knew it wasn’t anything.”

“Was Porter always the money man on Paul’s projects?”

“God, no. Porter financed Paul’s indie projects, but most of Paul’s work is through the studios. The Last Corsair -- his pirate movie -- that was through Paramount. Everyone wanted to do pirate movies after the success of that Johnny Depp thing. Although I think the last one probably killed swashbucklers for the next decade or so.”

I brooded for a moment on the likelihood of that. Even I had been relieved to see the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise shipwreck with At Wits’ End or whatever it had been called.