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—Thinking clearly doesn't seem to have been anyone's specialty this week.

She nodded, pointed at the twisting road climbing ahead of us.

—What's in Laurel Canyon?

I took us around one of the hairpins and slid into the left-turn lane for Kirkwood.

—An old man.

…

We were parked, the Apache pulled half onto the sidewalk to keep narrow Weepah Way open to two-way traffic.

—So, was the story as bad as you thought?

I looked at her, looked out at the sky. Here above the Los Angeles Basin floor, a sheet of stars visible.

—No, not quite.

She leaned forward to join me looking out the windshield and up at the stars.

—Not quite. You must have had some pretty fucked-up ideas about what happened.

I tapped the glass, pointing at a constellation.

—Know what that is?

—No. You?

—That's Corvus. The Crow.

—Never heard of it. I thought there were only twelve constellations. Like the zodiac.

—No. There are lots more.

—Where'd you learn?

—My dad.

I leaned back and looked at her.

—So on the subject of not thinking clearly, I thought Harris and those guys maybe killed your dad. I thought maybe you knew about it. I thought maybe you made a deal to take care of the almonds for them if they did it for you. Killed your dad for you.

I pulled the towel over my leg where it had fallen to the side.

—Still want to go home with me?

She kept looking at the stars.

—Well, I'm not really in much of a position to criticize you for thinking bad things about me right now, am I?

I put that in my top ten of Most Loaded Questions Ever and ignored it.

She ignored me ignoring it, and moved on.

—You promise to teach me a few more constellations?

—Sure.

She shrugged.

—Then I still want to go home with you.

I put my hand on the door.

—Soledad.

—Hm?

—The reason we didn't have the truck, the almonds, why we had to get all tricky and, you know, all that crazy shit. That was because Customs was seizing all your dad's property. So, stuff is probably gonna. You know.

She put her hand to the glass.

—Yeah. I know. Jaime told me outside the inn.

She tapped the glass.

—Is that one?

I looked.

—No. But.

I took her finger and traced a circle on the glass.

—All those, those are Vela. The Sails.

—Huh.

I got out.

—I'll be back in a few minutes.

She didn't look.

—OK.

I swung the door back and forth a little, the hinge creaking.

—Soledad, I thought maybe you had killed him yourself. Killed your dad.

She drew her finger around the circle I'd traced.

—You were close enough on that one.

I closed the door and went up to see L.L.

THE ABSENT PHOTO

The house smelled like mold and whiskey.

Piled books squeezed the entryway, leaving just clearance enough to open the door and scrape through. Bindings and pages swollen and dotted with rot from the damp canyon air, the stacks teetered and listed, propped up by more books. Shelves lined the walls. Shelves that were little more than more stacks of books broken by the occasional strata of a pine plank used to create stability. The fireplace, long out of use, vomited books. The couch rested on a pedestal of them. Looking into the kitchen, I could see that the doors had been removed from the cabinets to allow more room for the spines of oversized editions to jut out. If I opened the fridge, I had little doubt I'd have found paperbacks wedged into the crisper, first editions of Mailer growing ice crystals in the freezer. The only thing to challenge the rule of books were the empty bottles lining window ledges, mounded in the sink, overflowing from liquor store delivery cartons.

I picked my way through the heaps, noticing, above the books' high watermark on the walls, the occasional slightly less dingy patch of paint where L.L. had once hung posters from his halcyon years. Five Easy Pieces signed by Jack. An original lobby card from The Thin Man. An Alfred Hitchcock silhouette, also signed. A photo of himself and Mom, when the novelty of Hollywood could still hold her wandering attention, flanked by Francis Ford and Eleanor Coppola