With Tom Sawyer Island on their left, he paddled past a dock, a small forest, and keelboats on their right. A sign announced FOWLER’S HARBOR and beyond that stood a structure that advertised NEW ORLEANS SQUARE. If they kept paddling to the left on the circular river, they would soon be back at the Mark Twain Steamboat area, which teemed with activity, so Charlie figured New Orleans was a better route. He put some muscle into his stroke to land on the banks in front of him.

“We’re getting off here?” Violet asked.

“Think so,” he said. The canoe skidded onto the muddy shore and Charlie began pulling the boat all the way onto land so Violet could climb out. But suddenly he felt a sharp whack on the back of his head, and everything went black.

The bullet ricocheted off a large rock maybe a foot from Margaret. She ducked, gasped, then turned and ran down the mountain. Her pursuer fired another shot. Margaret heard it whiz by her head; she felt the wind of it. She ducked again and started zigzagging down the hill.

A minute passed. She skidded behind a bush then stole a look uphill. No one was there. It was quiet and still. The Hollywood sign stood indifferent to the drama.

She stood and once again heard the crack of the gun. She turned and ran, straining her eyes to see the path in front of her. Her run down the mountain took on a pattern: hop-jump-skid, hop-jump-skid. Her thoughts drifted to Charlie, wherever he was, then Violet, then she remembered Charlotte. God. Charlotte. She’d put the dead woman out of her mind as she raced to find the hidden trove of evidence, but Margaret couldn’t believe she’d been murdered. What secrets would be worth killing someone to preserve?

Hop-jump-skid…

Lord Almighty, she wanted to see Charlie. She needed his help in rescuing her friend, of course, but it was much more than that, she realized.

She loved Charlie at his best, and when he was at his worst she was mad at him for not being who she knew he could be. She’d been too hard on him, she decided, confronted as she was now with finality, with mortality. Perhaps she too readily compared him to the dashing, brilliant Columbia senior she’d met in the stacks that romantic winter night in 1941. Maybe she’d had a vision of the man he would become and was struggling with the chasm between that man and the reality of Charlie at forty-one, shell-shocked, booze on his breath, still unsure of how to negotiate his finely tuned sense of black and white on a planet of grays.