“Was he going to divorce Ally?”

“In the end, no.” Her smile was tight. “In the end, she convinced him that she did love him.”

“That must have taken some doing.”

“I always told him she was a better actress than he gave her credit for.”

“But he knew about the affair, right?”

“With the health nut? He knew everything. He hired a private dick to follow her. But she broke off the relationship, and she was willing to k --” She swallowed hard.

“She had an abortion, I know. She got pregnant with Duncan Roe’s child, and then terminated the pregnancy.”

Marla looked at me, and I was dismayed to see the glistening in her eyes. “We didn’t have children,” she said. “I wanted them, but we weren’t able to have them.” Rather hastily, she retrieved her glass and sipped more lemonade. “Ally wanted to stay married. I give her points for resolve.”

I tried my lemonade. Lots of ice and the pink was nice, but it tasted like the regular kind of lemonade as far as I could tell. “You were on the yacht the night Langley Hawthorne died, weren’t you?” I asked.

Her sloe eyes flashed to mine. “Now there’s an interesting leap of subject. Yeah, I was there. We were all there. The old crowd.”

“What did you think about that accident of Hawthorne’s?”

She stared at me for a long moment. “I thought it was very sad. He was a charming man, Langley. A real gentleman. And it was a tragedy for Nina. She was a very troubled young woman.”

“How did it happen?”

She shook her head. “They were playing cards. Langley, Al, Paul, Jonesy. And drinking. We always drank too much when we got together for those weekends. All I know is Langley went on deck to get some air. He didn’t come back, and when they found him, it was too late.”

I’d read a bit about Langley’s accident so I knew that he had apparently hit his head going over the side -- although exactly where and how had never been determined. However, it was the single inconsistency in the case. Langley’s blood alcohol content had been high enough to sink an armada.

“I think I read you were in your cabin asleep?”

“Yes, Nina and I had turned in earlier. It was just the boys being boys. I woke up when I heard the commotion on deck…when they were searching for him.”

A butterfly swooped down to a feeder hanging from one of the silver dollar eucalyptus trees. I watched it for a moment, its fragile wings opening and closing languidly in the dappled sunlight.

I said, “Did you ever wonder whether Langley’s death might not have been an accident?”

After a moment, she said, “That’s another one of those odd leaps. What are you getting at, Mr. English?”

“I have a suspicious mind,” I admitted. “Hawthorne’s death left two people very wealthy. And it was the kind of accident that can be…something else.”

“Those two people loved Hawthorne.”

But the interesting thing was the way she said it -- like it was something she had often puzzled over herself. She didn’t reject the notion of Hawthorne being murdered -- in fact, it was something she had considered.

I said slowly, “Did Porter ever mention anything about writing his memoirs?”

Marla was motionless. Her gaze rested on the glass-smooth surface of the pool. The sunlight through the tree leaves speckled the water with snakeskin shadows.

She said at last, “Jonesy was always saying he was going to write his memoirs.”

“But did he actually ever start them?”

She nodded. “He was working on them. He wanted to finish them before he…” She sipped her lemonade. “You know what you’re suggesting?” she asked when she could.

“Yeah.” I said, “Do you know what happened to those memoirs?”

She shrugged her shoulders -- very Italian in that moment. “At home in Bel Air, I guess. If that little bitch didn’t dump them with everything else of his.”

“You don’t think he would have taken some precaution to keep them safe?”

She stared at me. “It wouldn’t occur to him. Jonesy wouldn’t be thinking along those lines. He wouldn’t consider…” She smiled, and I recognized that smile from many a candlelit cinematic moment. “Jonesy was no Machiavelli,” she said.

We talked a little more, I finished my lemonade, and then I left her in her lush suburban paradise with the sound of the lawn birds and pool generator filling the silence.

* * * * *

When I got back to the bookstore it was after closing and Natalie was sitting inside with the security gate drawn and the lights off. She was crying.

“What happened?” I questioned, grabbing the box of tissues from beneath the counter. “Did something happen to the cat?”

“To the cat? I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. I’m crying because --” I lost the rest of it as she sobbed the words into the Kleenex.

“Sorry?”

She looked up with red, swollen eyes. “I said, I asked Warren if he wanted to move in together and he said no.”

That was the best news I’d heard all day, but I said, “Oh. Well…”

“Well what?”

So many things I could have said, but none of them would be conducive to peace, love, and harmony. I said, groping, “Uh…did he give you a reason?”

“He said he wasn’t ready.”

“Well…that seems…reasonable.”

“After three months?”

She was talking to the wrong person. I asked curiously, “Why do you want to move in with Warren?” I could just imagine what Warren’s pad was like -- what Warren was like in his own lair. What a shame parents couldn’t send their wayward daughters off to the Continent anymore to get them over these disastrous misalliances.

“Why? Because I love him,” she said very clearly. “And because I can’t stand living in that house with Lisa.”

I blinked at her. “Oh.”

Her face crumpled and she sobbed into the tissue some more. Then she said, muffled, “It’s nothing against Lisa. Really. I love her. But…it’s her house now. I don’t belong there anymore. And if Lauren moves home…”

“Why would Lauren move home?”

“She and Beavis are getting divorced.”

Beavis? Oh. The Corporate Clone. When had all this happened? Where had I been?

I said, “Couldn’t you just get a place on your own? Moving in with someone because you’re not happy at home doesn’t seem like the right --”

“I just told you, I love him. Don’t you have any useful guy advice?” She glared at me -- and with those red eyes, it was pretty scary. Medea could have learned a trick or two from my stepsis.

“Right. Okay. Well, here’s my guy advice. Drop it, Natalie. Don’t mention it to Warren again. Let him see that you’re okay with it. I mean, if you want to keep seeing him.” Which I could not for the life of me imagine.

“That’s it?”

I nodded.

“You don’t think we need to talk about it?”

“Me and you?”

“Me and Warren!”

“God no, I don’t think you need to talk about it. Leave it alone.”

She picked up the box of tissues and blew her nose. “I’m supposed to ask you if you’ll be at the house for dinner tonight,” she said in subdued tones.

I’d totally forgotten, of course, but I said, “Yeah, I’m just going upstairs to change. I’ll see you over there?”

She nodded and blew her nose again.

I left her mopping up, went upstairs, showered, and changed -- and left a message on the snooty-sounding answering machine at Hitchcock and Gracen.

* * * * *

“Christmas in London!” Lisa announced.

“Whatever you’d like, my dear,” Bill Dauten replied immediately, patting her hand. I had the impression he’d have said the exact same thing if she’d cried, Off with their heads!

The rest of us were noticeably silent. Even Emma wore a little frown. Maybe she feared Santa wouldn’t be able to locate her across the sea.

“London is lovely for the holidays,” Lisa insisted into that noncommittal silence. “Adrien and I spent the holidays there when he was ten. Do you remember, Adrien?”