They reached the bottom of the cliff. To their right the beach curved in a long sickle toward Isla Vista five or six miles away. But Liz Madera headed in the other direction, in which there was only about a mile of beach visible, a tan strip wide as a four-lane highway curving under the cliffs toward a distant spit, in front of which the surf foamed against a reef of black rock. All along the beach, at high-tide mark, great twining heaps of kelp lay strung out like the ocean’s entrails, rotting in the sun.

As they walked along, Miss Madera commented on the way Hook had gone after Douglas. “It interests me,” she said. “Just how do you have it figured? That I’m his mistress, and that he found out your son was staying with me overnight, and promptly came out here in a blind rage and threw him off the cliff?”

“Something like that,” he admitted. “I figure it might have been an accident.”

She looked over at him pityingly. “I’m afraid you don’t know Jack Douglas very well. Now, if I could deliver ten thousand votes at election time and someone came along and threatened to take that away from him—well, then maybe he just might lose his cool. Unfortunately, I have just one vote, Mr. Hook. And one body—which, believe me, he will share with total unconcern.” Picking up a shell, she smiled ruefully. “For instance, I remember a party in Montecito this past summer. It was—well, like most of the parties you go to around here, everybody smashed and vulgar and desperate, holding onto hearth and home with one hand while they sneak in a few extramarital feels with the other—you know, groping each other in the corners, a little soul kissing, so they can all feel at least a little bit wild and free and modern. But still safe, of course. So I usually do some unforgettable little thing to show everyone my uniqueness of spirit. I have to let them know I’m not one of them, you see. And that night—that night what I did was try to lay the host. In the back seat of his Rolls-Royce, in the garage. Well, Jack found out what was going on and got some of his cronies together and they all crawled into the garage and peeked in at us through the whole sad performance—sad because the host was too drunk to get anything up, including me. Finally, Jack turned on the garage lights—just as I’m about to fall asleep. Big laugh, of course. Lots of fun all around. Good clean civilized fun.” She looked over at Hook now. “All of which I imagine sounds pretty disgusting to you.”

Hook stared straight ahead, trying to keep her from seeing that it not only disgusted him but made him deeply, unreasonably, angry. “Yes,” he admitted. “It does.”

“They don’t do things like that in Banner Hill,” she ventured.

Hook did not miss it that she remembered the town’s name. “I guess it goes on,” he said. “Though not in a Rolls-Royce.”