Published in Southwest Mystery Writers Anthology in 2004

My Rhonda, when she was alive, used to say of Tucson’s weather, "Just another perfect day in paradise." Of course, nothing was ever that simple, but she’d caught the essence of southwest Arizona weather. She was a sun person. I wasn’t. A lot of past tense, right? Rhonda’s past tense, and sometimes I return there, just for the past tense of her. But this story isn’t about her, it’s about the weather. Sort of.

To wit, is there anything more useless than a live weatherman? Especially in Tucson where eighty percent of the days are just like the day before, plus or minus five percent. I mean, it doesn’t exactly require a living breathing human being to read the weather.

So, where better to test virtual weathermen, computer animations that take the numbers directly from the weather services, then mix in pre-canned routines and some local lore and temperatures, and wah-lah! And they have access to an amost unlimited supply of readers, from a lisping Jar-Jar Binks to a paired up Flash Gordon and Wonder Woman, all in a lifelike 3-D glory.

So, the question of the day was: Is it murder when the weatherman is killed? The answer: It all depends. But then, suddenly I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is CB Green. I was in Tucson closing on the sale of my townhouse. Tucson has always been one of my favorite towns in the world, maybe because it’s almost the same in black and white as in color, or so I’m told. Even to my color-challenged eyes, the sunsets are spectacular, but probably less so than what any normal person sees. Anyway, when I bought the place, I was planning on staying three months a year. Then Rhonda died, and I’ve only been back once in the last six years, that time recovering from a gunshot wound. My relatives use it more than I do, but still not enough to justify the expense, even though it’s only a blip on my financial spreadsheet.

So I was doing the rounds of my friends, saying a lot of goodbyes. That afternoon, I had lunch with the Gannons and their two young sons, and unbeknownst to me, a blind date. People worry about me, especially the ones who knew Rhonda. They don’t have to.

Still, Christy Davos was easy on the eyes, and pleasant enough to talk to. She stood five-eight, thin, dark hair, light eyes, healthy skin. She was the producer of one of the local news programs. I’d been in town only two days, and had already had my fill of the local news, but that’s a continuing story. It’s all a little too tabloid for me, and her station was the worst, but I kept that gem to myself. Well, the upshot was that Christy invited me to the station after my closing the next day, to see the news being staged, then a late supper. I said okay, despite the fact that I was leaving the following night. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right to turn a girl down in front of her friends. But she was eighteen years younger than my forty-six, and I had no plans for her body. I need someone with more mileage.

Christy showed me all the normal stuff, the offices, stages, cameras, introduced me to a couple of anchor people. We watched the show prep, but it didn’t raise my opinion of the news any. In fact, just the opposite, because now I knew why it was so bad. When the ‘on air’ light flashed, we left the stage. We walked by a room of computers and screens, all faced away from the windows. There was no door to the outside hallway. Hey, I’m a detective, so I asked, "What’s that?"

She looked both ways first. "It’s my secret project," she whispered.

As she pulled me into her office, I repeated, "Secret project?"

"Yes." She pointed at the door with its ‘No Admittance’ sign. It had one of those coded keypads. She turned on a monitor behind her desk.

"You ever work with weathermen?" she asked.

I thought on that, shook my head. "No, never met one either."

"Yes, well, they’re not real people."

I shrugged my question.

"We pay them to do nothing but read and pose."

I couldn’t resist it, "Like most of your other talking heads."

She parted with a Cheshire cat smile. "One at a time, CB. One at a time."

She had me confused, but I waited through it.

Christy hit a button on her remote as she said, "I can’t believe we pay these guys money." One of her three weather people was on the screen, the date on the bottom of the screen said it was from that morning. She hit the pause button. "And now the three of them have banded together. They’re holding me up for a salary increase." She pointed a black polished short nail at me. "I won’t stand for it."

It was time for one of my insightful one word questions, "And?"

"Meet my new weatherman ..." She hit another button.

I hadn’t seen George Carlin in twenty years, but his Al Sleet, the hippy dippy weatherman, was mothballed somewhere in the back reaches of my mind. Only it wasn’t George Carlin, just a computer animated version of him picking up right where the real human being had left off. I’ve got to say, when it came to animation, the human kind, the Carlin guy won hands down, and he was a lot more fun to watch. It wasn’t like a cartoon, either, it was more like a real guy with cartoon features standing in front of a blue screen doing the bit. Unlike the weather babe, the ‘fake’ was more active and knowledgeable, and not the least bit tongue-tied, ever.

Christy hit another button and Rick from Casablanca picked up the spiel while Sam played softly in the corner to an alluring Ilsa. She did it again, and the screen segued into Roger Rabbit and the girl with the big curves, whatever her name was. The animation was better than the movies, with shadows and everything, and they looked like real characters. One more hit on the button, and the rabbit handed off seamlessly to Bela Lugosi describing the storms in the northeast corner of the state.

It was pretty impressive. "Wow," was all I could say.

"Yeah, well tomorrow on the morning show we’re going with the Carlin character. Noontime it’ll be Roger Rabbit, and at four-thirty Bela will handle the expected nasty little storm system coming in. Add in the royalty cost, and it’s still a tenth what I pay these bozos. So, tomorrow it’ll be like they’re interviewing for the job."

"You mean, like real people." I was talking about what happens before a new weather or news or traffic guy or girl is hired.

She flicked back to the real weather person. "Hey, you’ve seen some of these guys. Talk about real people," she pointed at the screen, "Bela’s got it all over her." She lowered her voice though I was the only one there. "We’re not even advertising it. I’m going to see if the buzz gets us a big crowd by the ten o’clock show."

Like they were real people, "Who’s doing that one?"

She lisped, "Jar-Jar Binks," moving her head in the same bird-like way as the character.

There aren’t many things in the real world I’d change my plans for, but this was one of them. I extended my hotel room for another couple nights. After the six o’clock show, she met me up for supper. She didn’t put the moves on me. I like that in a girl. I liked her guts too. She left early for what she said would be the "longest day of her career." After, I set my alarm for five a.m.

The pretty news reader, her name was Donna, looked a little confused as she read the cue screen, "And now, with the weather, Al Sweet," a long pause as she held her hands in front of her, palms up, and raised her thin shoulders, "the hippy dippy weatherman."

Al went through his routine, and he was good. The talking head then said, "And so much for the weather," then turned her eyes to the sky. The screen cut back to Al who said, "You be careful how you act, little lady. I can do the news too."

By nightfall there wasn’t anyone else in southwest Arizona getting an audience, especially after the other stations covered it as a news story on their five o’clock shows. They played it up as stupid and unprofessional. It wasn’t one of their more enlightened business decisions. Then the next morning the paper ran a piece, and a nasty editorial wondering what the station was thinking. You want to talk about cartoon equivalents of the real thing, well, don’t get me started on Tucson’s newspapers.

By lunch the next day, the new weather toons had made fifteen showings, and the other stations were scrambling to find some way to get back their audience. When Christy’s station did a ‘hard news’ interview of Al Sleet by the talking head, well, I couldn’t stop laughing. And talk about ratings plunges for the competitors, they were precipitous. Now everyone knew it would settle out some time soon, but how soon is soon enough when your advertisers won’t pay to go unseen?

It was the morning of the third day, and I was checking the airline schedule for the best flight to Portland. I put it down when my breakfast arrived.

Christy slid into the seat across from me with barely a whisper of sound. Like we were in the middle of a conversion, "So what do you think, CB?"

I wasn’t the least bit confused. "I think I haven’t had this much fun in years." I meant it. Talking heads being scared of replacement by cartoon characters just seemed too much like poetic justice. I mean, could they replace Dan Rather with a cartoon version of Walter Cronkite. Maybe not, what with Cronkite already being a cartoon version of himself, and Rather’s just a cartoon. Still, I’m a guy who believes in justice, poetic or otherwise. Maybe if I’d have thought about it a little more, I would have seen the danger in that much justice. I mean, you scare enough people, and ...

Christy’s project had scared a lot of people, and not just news types. You could see it in the editorializing. Not the labeled overt kind, but in the order of words, the sneer behind the voice, the condescending looks. Yes, it scared them that maybe they were seeing the stars of the future, characters unlimited by real life, common sense, emotion, pain, even gravity. In a way, I’m sure it is the future. Not that it’s a good idea, but it’s about time our heros were worthy of their celebrity ...

The top weather guy, the slow talking, verbal mangling Michael Moore – yes, the same name as that left wing moron who makes movies – was found dead that afternoon. Once again, the wrong Michael Moore. And Christy Davos was in jail.

I know a homicide cop who owes me, Jesse Wallace, a pretty Hispanic with an Irish firefighter for a husband. She wasn’t working the case, but she directed me to Christy’s lawyer. He got me a face-to-face with her at seven-thirty that night.

"So, how are you doing?" I asked.

The girl wasn’t up for small talk. "How’s it look like I’m doing." And she didn’t look so hot in the dark gray canvas jumpsuit. I figured it was orange, because that’s the color du jour, but that wouldn’t mean a thing to me.

I waved my hand. "I talked to your attorney. He said you found the dead man in you office. He was stabbed by a knife you use as a letter opener. There were no prints on the knife."

She raised her shoulders. A tear worked it way down her cheek. "He was so dead. It broke my heart." She sucked down the sob.

Like it was important, "Your lawyer thinks you did it." I don’t think much of criminal lawyers, but that’s a book of its own. Suffice it to say he might find her ‘not guilty’, but he didn’t much care about whether she was innocent. Justice, well, he wouldn’t know justice if she beat him to death with her scales.

Matter of fact, "I didn’t."

For a lot of reasons I can’t quite put a finger on, I knew she was telling the truth. "Okay then, let’s start with who you think did it."

She shook her head, and a tear flew from her chin. "I don’t know. It’s too horrible."

I changed directions. "Who doesn’t like you at the station?"

She let out some breath, like a secret laugh. "They all hate me, CB. The news director, Mort Masters, has been there forever, and he doesn’t want me butting in on the decision making process. The talking heads are a bunch of losers who can’t get a job anywhere else, so they toady up to him. It’s like they auditioned with us, got the jobs, and they’ll be damned if anyone’s going to move them out."

It begged the question, "And, you were going to move them out?"

The smile was a little sad. "Just like on ‘Rawhide’. The owner agreed to dump them all in the next year."

I went with the obvious, "Did they know this?"

"No." She shook her head. "Maybe. It’s hard to tell. They knew he wasn’t so happy with the tabloid quality of the news, and lately the viewing public has been making the same decision."

"And this Michael Moore?"

She laced her fingers and put her chin on her thumbs. "The station tried to can Moore six years ago, and lost an age discrimination suit. We knew the only way to get rid of him was to get rid of the weather job. When the three of them got together, like they were indispensable, we moved up the plans on this animated weatherman program."

In all the times we’d talked about the animated characters, we’d never discussed the how of it. My voice carried my surprise, "You developed the technology?"

Christy laughed at me. "No, you dummy. But I saw a demonstration a couple years ago and suggested they could use it in a news environment. The head guy didn’t think the audience would find it appropriate, but I said it might be fine for the weather and traffic. Then when I got this job, I talked the station into a joint venture. The owner liked the idea. So we worked out a deal to be the first station. I could see the future, it was beautiful, like a battle between great ideas and small people. I think the great ideas will win out."

Yes, Christy was going to scare a few people. And she was right, about the future, that is. A murder wasn’t going to stop the avalanche she’d started.

We talked about the people, the real kind. The news director, Mort Masters, was meeting with his three anchors when the murder happened, the regular editorial review. The cops said Moore was killed between one and three, while Christy was home for a catnap before the five o’clock news. And he’d been seen alive at one, by Christy and others. Alive, she said. The Masters meeting started at twelve thirty, after the midday broadcast, and lasted until three. So they had alibis, unlike Christy who’d interrupted the meeting with her announcement of Moore’s death.

Per Christy, Masters was outwardly confident and smooth talking, but in actuality a self-doubting worrier. She said it was known to everyone, so it wasn’t just her opinion. He enjoyed being the big shot in a little city. In fact, being news director was what he was all about, but, according to her, it wasn’t like he could get the same job anywhere else. She didn’t understand how he’d gotten the job in the first place, but the people who’d hired him were long gone. Still, she was young, and twenty years before was like ancient history to her.

The three lead anchors were all women. One, Lupina Lopez, was a chubby Hispanic woman who’d been there twenty years, three less than Masters. Her previous job had been as an actress in a local repertory company. She wasn’t about to take those reportorial credentials anywhere else. The second, Donna Doughty, had moved to Tucson with her husband, a top executive with one of the mining service companies, ten years earlier. She was dark haired and thin, with bad skin she had planed every six months or so. She was downright paranoid, about the skin, that is. The third, Candy Allen, was a good looking bleached blond, light gray to me, who’d been with the station for five years. She was married, but rumor had it she had a penchant for visiting newsmen, especially if they were with the network. The things you learn.

Michael Moore was the lone male among the weather staff. The other two, Diane Kimber and Mary Caster, were relatively new, but cut from the same verbal mangling mold, like they were related to him.

I made a prejudicial comment, "Too many women."

Christy seconded it, "Like you wouldn’t believe. It’s like managing cats."

We finished up when the matron said we were out of time.

I patted her shoulder. "I’ll get him."

She smiled her confidence, albeit weakly. "I know. I trust you." It felt good.

When I got out of the meeting room, Jesse Wallace was sitting on a couch, reading the newspaper. She’s a very pretty Hispanic girl, about five-two, one-ten. She’s all hair, which was gathered behind in a thick pony tail. She looked up. "Learn anything good, Green?"

I sat down and used my hip to move her over. "Just got some starting points. What’s up with the investigation?"

She moved to the edge of the couch so she could look me in the eyes. "You know this case is getting a lot of attention, right?"

I steepled my fingers and talked through them. "How could it not?"

"Yeah, well the lead homicide dick, Bob Morgan, figures it’s Christy Davos, so he’s not going to look any further."

It was revisiting an old conversation for us. "That’s just too stereotypical cop, Detective Jesse."

"Hey, don’t call me that." It was another part of our history.

We both laughed.

"Okay."

She forgave me. "It’s just bad cop work. It’s too early to be committing all our resources to one solution."

"Is it that obvious, Davos, I mean?"

She pressed her index finger to my knee. She’s that kind of girl. It didn’t mean a thing. "Let’s put it this way, it’s so obvious, I’ve got to be doubting the why of it. I mean, she’s not a dumb girl, but she created a crime scene with the dead man in her office, killed by her knife with the prints wiped off. Then too, she’s the only person with a current motive."

"Motive?"

"Yeah, she was getting ready to put Morgan’s ass on the street." Like I didn’t know, she explained about the last time. "So this morning, Morgan filed a suit against her based on the Americans with Disabilities Act." To herself she mumbled, "Like being stupid is a disability." Back to me, "He was planning on tying up her hands so she couldn’t ever remove him."

She’s a woman with good instincts. "So what do you think, detective, that Davos killed him?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Don’t know, but I think the whole place was scared of your client, that’s what I think. I think they did it."

I’m not a conspiracy kind of guy. "All of them?"

"That’s where I’d start."

"But Moore was one of their own?"

She shook her head. "No, not so. Masters was the one who tried to fire him the first time. As bad as the others might be, Moore wore his incompetence like a homeless mans’ proudly wrinkled suit. As far as they all were concerned, he was dragging them down. Davos’s animated weatherman was like a final proof of that. Add to that the fact there was no love lost with Davos." She shrugged. "No, I figure they got rid of two problems at once."

"What about the other two news girls?"

"They’re both new, six months, tops, and ..." she smiled at the thought before she voiced the words, "they haven’t had a thought between them in years." She blinked her eyes at me, then said, "One of them, Diane Kimber, the morning weatherette, is an alcoholic. She’s in her early thirties, already on her fourth marriage. She says she drinks because of her lost loves. She’s got it backwards. You can find her in the same bar every night, at the Cove Inn."

I should have asked how she knew, but I’m a guy, so it didn’t seem important. "So why not get your captain to assign you?"

She laughed out loud. "Gee, CB, the things you don’t know. His last name is Masters." She was still laughing as she the door closed behind her.

I knew the girl well. She was making sure I knew up front what I might find out too late otherwise. In my profession I need this kind of friend. It was also a warning, to not get in the face of Masters, and tip the cops off. She knew me though, so she didn’t expect me to listen.

Being a private cop, I can’t just walk in and make people talk to me. It’s a weakness of the job. Still, it’s why I don’t make the same mistakes the police make as they move uninhibited, sort of, down the stream of evidence and witnesses, too often mistaking coincidence and reality as they fitted the facts to the crime. So, it’s all back door for me. I pressed a little and got a few more minutes with Christy. We talked some more about the people, the things I should know to find the right back door.

I sat at the bar, about six feet from a table she occupied with a changing group of eight or ten as the night wore on. I see real good in the dark. It’s an eyes thing. My eyes only, I think. Anyway, there’s not much I miss as the lights go down.

Diane Kimber was pretty good looking, light gray hair, thin, leggy, outgoing. She was thinner in real life. And she wasn’t such a heavy drinker, but steady, one sip per cigarette. After an hour, she flicked her lighter, but got no flame.

When she made her way to the bar for a pack of matches, I opened a space for her. It’s not that I’m so good looking, but I appeal to maybe half the women half the time, and to a couple women all the time. I’m six-four and Kimber came up to my armpit.

It was an old line, "Hey, don’t I know you?"

A slow, "Maybe," while she checked me out without any embarrassment. "Sure, I think maybe you do."

"You’re the girl on the weather. Let me see." I clicked my fingers. "Diane Kimber, right?"

"You got it." She had cigarettes on her breath, but it wasn’t so bad.

I pulled up an empty stool and said, "Maybe I can buy you a drink?"

She looked over to her table like she was deciding, then got up on the stool. She ordered a rum collins. She told the bartender to make it light. She put one elbow on the bar, and her eyes on mine. She made small talk. "So what’re you doing in town?"

I held up my hands, palms out. "Hey, slow down, good looking. My name’s CB Green."

She giggled, sipped her drink, then gripped my elbow. "So, what’re you doing in town, sailor, Mr. CB Green." She laughed at herself. It was nice to see.

We talked about her. TV people, movie people, actors and performers, they talk about themselves. It’s what they’re all about, a celebrity thing. Once they start talking, it’s tough to get a word in edgewise, and anyway, bring up anything else and they’re not really listening. I directed the conversation with well placed questions like, "And?" "Who?" or "What?" but I needed to be more direct.

"Didn’t I hear your main weather guy got murdered?"

"You heard right," she slurred.

"I guess that means you’ll be moving up in the world?"

"Not a sh-shance. The news director thinks I’m a bimbo." She laughed. It was a little sad. I think she believed it herself.

I didn’t go there. "Well, it must be pretty tough on Masters losing a key member of the staff."

"Yeah, right. Like Michael was anything to him. They all hated him."

"Who?"

She made a face. "Mort and the three anchors. They didn’t let him in on their meetings. Said it was for news people, not guys who couldn’t read weather reports."

"Did that make him mad?"

She laughed at me. "You got to be kidding. He had them by the short hairs and he wasn’t letting go." Then she explained again those things I already knew. "Still, he used to wonder what went on in those meetings."

I got an itchy feeling, like I knew what she was going to say. "And?"

"He bugged it once."

"And?"

It was her turn. "Hey, not so fast. I should tell you how come he told me?"

I left the air empty and she filled it. "He was in here one night," she pointed at the tables on the far wall, "in his cups. Seems his wife had left him. Maybe she just caught on," she laughed, "after thirty years. Yeah, right."

"And?"

"So he buys me a drink and starts putting the moves on, but he runs out of steam. Might have just wanted to see if he still had it in him. Me, I don’t mind doing a favor for an old guy, but ..." She left the rest of the sentence unsaid as she raised a hand, palm up in front of her face. She continued, "So he starts talking about his wife, how he’d bugged his own house, and learned what she really thought of him. Then he said it was like when he bugged the news staff meeting, a couple years ago."

I could barely contain myself. No, not really. "And?"

"He said they were having a little contest, how to kill him and get away with it. They called it a marketing plan, to get the ratings up. He said they had some pretty good ideas, but no guts. He was bragging." The bartender slipped her another drink and took a dollar out of my change. I figured it was just a coke. "He said it was a big deal being hated that much."

The man I remembered appeared to be a well meaning, grandfatherly bumbler. "He was that kind of guy?"

"He was a prick. He’d make nice to you if there was an audience, but then he’d be his old jerk-off self."

"What about the woman they’ve got in jail?"

"Christy." She furrowed her brow. "She’s all right. The talent doesn’t much care for her, but she’s a nice person, and she knows the business. They don’t much like that, if you know what I mean." I must have made the right motions, because she continued. "She’s going to dump us, for those computer generated broadcasts. Did you see them?"

I nodded. "Yes, they were entertaining."

She laughed heartily, and I liked her all the more for it. "Yeah, that they are, and better than we’ll ever be. Me, I’m going to collect my unemployment and learn a new trade. I’m not really cut out for this business."

We talked a little longer, but there wasn’t anything else I needed. I said I’m a guy, and that’s what guys do. I asked her if she needed a ride home, but she said she was walking. I thanked her. Unexpectedly, she kissed my cheek.

"What was that for?"

"For not hustling my ass." She winked at me and I liked her all the more.

So maybe it was a conspiracy, with a little serendipity mixed in. We could call it an impulse conspiracy. What I mean is, the news staff plays this game, ‘what if we offed Michael Moore?’ and it stays a game, but it’s built on the solid ground of their hate, so it’s got legs, but they’re afraid, so it doesn’t happen. They don’t tell each other that, they just continue to play the game, after a while forgetting there’s a reason for it. Then something happened ...

Christy Davos happened. Then the cartoon weather people happened. Then Moore’s lawsuit happened. It was an unplanned confluence of motive, means and opportunity. And just like that, they did it! It’s twelve-thirty and one of them asks what they think about the lawsuit. Then someone says maybe automated newsmen are next, and that Christy has this new pig sticker on her desk. And before the courage fails them, or common sense takes control, they do it.

I know. I know. It all seems like I’m jumping to a conclusion. But I knew one thing the cops didn’t know, that Christy didn’t do it. It wasn’t from the evidence, because I didn’t have any. I’d call it intuition, but that’s really only the eureka moment as facts both known and suspected collide in the brain.

Okay, so now I know, sort of. What good does that do Christy? Well, the fact of the matter is that cases like this only succeed when no one figures it out. I mean, these weren’t hardened career criminals, and they didn’t have the cahones to be in the game. They’d break down at the first interview with the cops. So how to get the cops interested.

It was just too easy, but then so are a lot of things I do. I left four voice messages, at their listed home numbers. "Hi, you don’t know me, but I know what you did. I have one of your little planning sessions on tape, you know, about killing Moore and getting away with it. You better go to the cops. Just say your conscience was bothering you, that you didn’t really know they would do it. The last one to go to the cops is going to be up the creek without a paddle."

I was sorry for them. If they’d been allowed to fire the man, they’d never have killed him. Ain’t life great? It’s like, if it wasn’t so hard to fire a minority, it’d be a lot easier to hire one. It’s one of life’s truths, despite the political incorrectness. If I thought politicians were stupid, I’d think it had something to do with unintended consequences, like good intentions gone awry. Well, Moore would be alive if he’s lost his job the first time. But the law left them one solution. Obviously, if they were better at what they did, they’d have left for greener pastures, gotten away from him, but that wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t risk takers, so it was all the more unbelievable the path they took.

And they showed more guts than I gave them credit for. They called each other first, sat down, talked it over, then went to the police station and each one confessed to a cop they personally knew. The story they told went like this:

The news team had been discussing for years how to get Michael Moore off the air. After a while they realized it wasn’t going to happen while he was alive, so they had themselves a little game called ‘killing Michael Moore’. It was only a game, until that afternoon, when, much as I described it, they were presented with an opportunity. Given a day to think about it, they wouldn’t have done it. That part I believed. So they cut up four pieces of paper, one with ‘you do it’ written on it. Each pulled a piece from a hat, read the scrap of paper, and then ate it. Then, like clockwork, one of them left the meeting for five minutes. This was done three times, so no one would know who did it, and none of them could prove it wasn’t them. The person who got the piece of paper also had the guts to do the deed. That had to be sheer luck. Bad luck.

What the cops had were four potentially guilty people, but if the real killer didn’t squeal on himself or herself, they were all protected, at least from a charge of murder. And three of them could rightly say it was only a game, they never thought the other one would kill Moore. I figured the judicial system would have to sort it out. I’m not so sure there was enough justice to go around.

Christy took me out to supper. She’d be busy auditioning new staff for the month, with the backup anchors in the lead chair. She even made a short run at a come-on, but her heart wasn’t in it. Neither was mine. We parted friends.

I went down to the Cove Inn, took Diane Kimber out of the joint while she was still steady. We went to the Denny’s next door.

She said, "You took advantage of me, Mr. Green."

I pointed a finger at her. "I’m not that stupid, Ms. Kimber. If I hadn’t found you, you’d have found me."

She shrugged pretty shoulders. "I didn’t like any of them, except Christy. They got what they deserved, justice."

The sixty-four thousand dollar question, "How did you know about me?"

"My cousin, Jesse, she said you were special, that you know where to find justice."

Three hours later I was in the airport soaking up my last perfect day in paradise. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn’t miss it.

- the end -