The PA system crackled hoarsely as if to clear its metallic throat of the salt that had accumulated over the winter, and then rasped, "Lawrence: Party of one."   It coughed once again in dismissal and went silent.

I looked upwards as the evening sun picked up the fuselage of a southbound jet headed toward Jacksonville, a shiny gold arrowhead at the end of a pipe-cleaner contrail.     Judging by the lack of noticeable separation in the trail I guessed it was an MD-88.   ‘Yankees headed to Disney,’ I thought as I poured the last of my lime-and-lemonade down my throat, emptied the ice into the flower bed, picked up my leather jacket and helmet from the sun-warmed stone wall I’d been leaning against, and headed into the restaurant, dodging a couple of scavenging seagulls on short finals for the parking lot.

The Kurrajong is not a large establishment and the fifteen or so people waiting for tables filled the paneled vestibule.    On Kirkhall Island there are only two short periods during the year — early spring and late fall — when the weather is pleasant yet the social detritus has not washed in from Atlanta, and the local folk make the most of these.    Nodding casual hellos to people I recognized, I edged my way toward the hostess’ podium.  Mac, the owner of Kurrajong, was its chef, commanding the kitchen staff with a well balanced fusion of Australian directness and inventive phrases, but it was his wife, Barbara, who was most visble to customers.   She ran the restaurant, and most early evenings she would be where she was now, assigning tables.    Her open, tanned face, framed by red-blonde hair, radiated the sun she had absorbed over many a long day on Brisbane beaches, and the laughter that danced in her light brown eyes could placate even the most impatient and self-important diner.   If I were one to covet my neighbor’s wife, Frank’s spouse would be the subject of many a discussion with some jaded padre in the enclosed darkness of the confessional.   It was she who had chosen to call the restaurant after the tall trees with their tunics of green leaves that had grown around her childhood home. Certainly it was a more imaginative name than the ‘Sandpiper Grill’, and way less affected than ‘a Bord d’Ocean’, the two restaurants that grabbed for the tourist trade at the other end of the island.     As I elbowed through the ring of supplicants pressing around the podium, I caught her light Australian twang addressing a diner.    "It’ll be at least an hour before we can get you a table, I’m afraid.     It’s the first really nice weekend we’ve had in months and everyone’s out tonight."

The man in front of her was, I guessed, about my age, although I’m generally pretty hopeless at age estimation.     The open shirt-neck and pulled-down tie couldn’t camouflage the impression that was created by the neatly pressed suit and expensive shoes which together somehow wafted Wall Street Journal.    He made a grimace and brushed his dark blond hair back from his brow.    "Oh, wow!" he paused, "And I guess there’s no other place to eat down here?"

Now, that was something of a difference: usually the ‘foreigners’ expected to be bumped up to front of the line just because they weren’t from the island.

"Sorry, love.    There’s a couple of places up at the north end of the island, but we’re it down here."   She turned to me as I finally made it to the podium.    "Hi, Chris! Haven’t seen you for a while.  Been busy, have you?"

"Hi, Barbara.    Yeah, pretty snowed at the mo.    Got anything by the windows tonight?"

"Sure.    You know I keep the best for you," she replied grinning as she pulled a menu from under her desk and handed it to the waitress.    "Table eight."

"Yeah right!" I smiled back.   "Thanks, Barbara!"

I turned to follow the waitress and then, out of the blue, the old affliction hit me.    It had been a long time since I’d had a bout — I thought I’d outgrown it years ago — and I was caught off guard.     As I moved past the businessman my mouth severed any connection it had with my brain and went off to do its own thing.   "If you don’t mind sharing a table, you can eat with me," it said and then, ignoring the frantic commands being yelled at it from within my cranium, smiled at him.

Time and again throughout high school that mouth had dragged me into trouble which my brain had foreseen only too well.     It had become somewhat more controlled as I’d got older, helped in that direction no doubt, by getting a couple of bashings for its impudence, but now, once again, it had chosen to manifest its independence.

The suited man was slightly taken aback.   He hesitated for a second and everything may not have been lost, but then my eyes, defecting to the other side, raised their brows questioningly and threw him a friendly look.

"Well,…er…are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah, why not?" the rebel mouth encouraged.

And I must say Barbara didn’t do anything to help either.    I was standing there in a panic, and she simply passed a second menu to the waitress and smiled sweetly at me.   My brain scrambled a squadron of high voltage neurons to instruct my eyes to flash her the frosty flash that meant ‘No, it’s NOT like that’, but all they managed to muster was a bovine stare as I turned to follow the young girl.

In the twenty seconds it took to reach the table my brain finally regained control over my body and formulated a game plan to control the damage.    It was only a dinner, after all.    Only forty minutes — an hour at the most — and we would go our separate ways.    I’d go home slightly embarrassed, and the guy now following about seven feet behind me would have a quaint story to tell his work buddies on Monday.   For less than an hour I’d be an urbane fellow diner and then it would be over.   The plan crystallized as the waitress placed the menus on a table and stood back for us.

Barbara might not have kept the table just for me, but she was right: it was the best.    The windows looked out onto a low dune where the sea-oats, deep yellow in the evening light, bowed a deferential farewell to the retiring sea.    Their shadows slanted across the beach where the waves gently lapped, resting before the next tide would force them to race up headlong and regain the sand again.   While my new friend rolled his tie up and put it in his pocket before neatly arranging his coat over the back of his chair, I slung my jacket over the back of mine and placed my helmet safely between my chair and the wall, out of the way of clumsy feet.   As I straightened up he turned to me and held out his hand.

"I’m Mike.    Mike Jorgensen.    It really was very kind of you to share your table with me.   I thought for sure I was destined for a fast food dinner."

"Well, I’m glad I saved you from that," I laughed taking his hand.    "I’m Chris Lawrence."

"Nice place this," Mike said gesturing with his head as he pulled back his chair and sat down.   "I gather from the warm welcome up front that you’re a fairly regular patron?"    He was from The South I could tell, but more from the gracious slowness of his speech than from any heavy accent.

"Yeah.   Kinda.   I live fairly close by, and Kurrajong definitely has the best food around, so when I don’t feel like cooking my own dinner…"    I let the sentence hang as the waitress returned carrying a board with a hot bread loaf on it.    For Mike’s benefit she informed us that her name was Theresa and then set out to detail the evening’s specials.

"Can I get you something to drink while you look at the menu?" she finished up.

"Chris, let me buy a bottle of wine as a token of my gratitude," Mike asked.     I hesitated: I rarely drink more than a glass if I’m going to ride my bike, but then, I thought, it’s less than a mile home and it’s a deserted road.    Hey, I can rationalize.

"Well, thanks very much.   That’s appreciated."

"So what should we get?"

"I guess that depends on what you’re going to eat."

"Yes, you’re right."    He scanned the menu for about half a minute then looked up.   "It all looks so good.    Do you have any recommendations?   I really don’t feel like making another decision today."

"Well, pretty much everything here is good.    But if you feel like eating meat, then I’d say go with the roast lamb with olive-rosemary crust.   We could have that with a Chianti.   Or if you’d prefer fish, then I’d suggest the baked Atlantic salmon with wild mushrooms, and we could have the Cardeto."

He paused and looked again at the menu. "That salmon sounds really good.    What was the wine you mentioned?"

"The Cardeto.    It’s an Orvieto and I like it."

Mike turned to the waitress.   "OK, Theresa.   We’ll take a bottle of the Cardeto then."

"Dolce or Secco?"

Mike looked across at me.   "I would say secco.    What’s your preference, Chris?’

"Oh yeah.   Secco, definitely."

"And are you both going to have the salmon then?" asked Theresa.

"I am," nodded Mike, "what does it come with?"

"Chef makes it crusted with dill and serves it with wild mushrooms and basil mashed potatoes.    It comes with a house, spinach-citrus or Caesar salad."

"I can’t wait," he said.   I’ll take the house with a vinaigrette dressing."     She jabbed hieroglyphics onto her pad then turned to me.

"Yup, me too.   But I’ll take spinach-citrus thanks."

"OK, then.    Two salmons, one house, one spinach-citrus.    I’ll bring the wine right out and then bring the salads," she said scooping up the unread menus.

She moved away and Mike turned his attention to me.     "I wasn’t expecting to find a restaurant like this down here.     It’s rather different."

"It really is good.    Barbara and Mac — that’s her husband — run this pretty much as a hobby.     Oh, they do all right," I added as Mike raised his eyebrows, "but if they wanted to they could go to Savannah or Atlanta and be famous."

"I could see it working in the summer months, but I wouldn’t have thought there’d be the customer base down here for a year round operation."

"No there isn’t really, but it’s a win-win situation for them.    Most years they close from after Thanksgiving until sometime in February and head back to Oz for a sunny Christmas."

"Ah yes, of course, they have summer then down there."    He paused, reflecting.    "It’d be strange to be hot at Christmas — must confuse the kids: do they even know what a sleigh or a reindeer is?"

I laughed.  "Maybe Santa comes in a cart pulled by a pack of wild dingoes."

"That’d work: a sort of Yule-tide Crocodile Dundee."    We laughed at the image.

"Anyway, there’s enough of a demand to keep them going the rest of the time.    Kirkhall has a fair population.   You wouldn’t think so by looking around here, but up North at Inverness there’s quite a town.     And then we get the folk from St Simons and Brunswick who like good but different food and are prepared to travel a bit to get it."     I pushed the breadboard toward Mike.   "Want some fresh-baked bread?"

"Sure.  Thanks."

As he cut into the loaf he asked, "So, Chris, what kind of work do you do down here?"

"I’m in computers.   I write software."

"Not bad!  I didn’t know there were any software companies down here."    He moved the bread toward me.

"There aren’t."   I put a slice onto my plate and broke a piece off.   "My home office is in Atlanta, but the traffic and senseless rush was getting to me.   An aunt of mine  — that branch of our family had come to The States in the 30’s — had died about a year ago and left her holiday house down here to my cousin.   She’s married to some guy out in San Francisco and couldn’t really use it much, so she’s letting me buy it from her.   She figures it keeps it in the family.    I share a T1 line with some of my neighbors so I have superb access to our company systems and everybody is out of my hair."    I expeditiously omitted to mention the quick look of relief that had passed over my boss’s face when I had first broached the matter of working remotely about a year previously.   It wasn’t getting everyone out of my hair that concerned him, it was getting me out of everyone else’s.

"What do you write?" Mike asked between bites.   "Games?"

"No.   I write control software.   For aircraft."

"No shit?   For 747s and things like that?"

"Well, it’d work in pretty much any plane, but it’ll probably be used mainly by the passenger jets.   They’re big enough to take on the payload of a few computers without making a difference."

"Is this what they call ‘Fly-by-wire’?"

"Not exactly.    Fly-by-wire more or less replaces long mechanical linkages with electrical ones, and some added intelligence stops the pilot from getting the plane out of its flight envelope:   it tries to stop him from banking too far over or getting the nose too high to stall the aircraft.

"What our stuff does is to make airways — the fixed routes in the sky — obsolete: planes can fly pretty much where they like.     It also makes automatic landings safer, because it works in all weathers.   No more back-ups in stormy or foggy weather because the crews can’t see."

Mike leaned forward with a piece of bread midway between plate and mouth and looked at me earnestly, "You know, Chris, when I’m sitting back in coach, wedged between some guy who wants to regale me with a post-mortem of every sports game played the previous weekend, and a kid who is turning green from all the candy his parents fed him in the gate area, the one thing that stops me from going totally postal is the thought that there’s a gray-haired, square-jawed, 45 year old, Church-going pilot up front.     Now you’re telling me that he is, in fact, sitting back relaxing, staring at a computer and hoping that the thing won’t give him the blue-screen of death?"

"Pretty much," I laughed.     "But no.   Our system uses four separate computers.   Three are doing the analysis and the fourth handles the display and interfaces with the controls and stands by in case one of the other three pukes.    A blue-screen is real unlikely."    I broke off another piece of the bread and dabbed a pat of butter on it.

"OK.    So there’re these four computers…"    He stopped, waiting for me to continue.   I was a tad surprised: most non-Geeks don’t really care to venture much beyond this point.    But, if he was interested…

"What we’re working on is a scheme where an aircraft has two GPS units, one, say, on each wing tip, and one inertial navigation system.   Computers average out the information from these three, and about every two, two and a half seconds, transmit 36 bytes — like 36 characters — on a set frequency.    These parameters show which plane is sending the data; some simple characteristics about it such as its type and stall speed; where it is, which it gets from the GPS; its altitude and heading; and what its destination is — a beacon or the airport and runway.

"You following this?" I asked smiling.

"Oh yeah.      In my other life I’m a Discovery and TLC junkie."

"OK, that’s fine then.   There’s something called a TCA, the terminal control area, which is a roughly circular area around an airport and up to about ten thousand feet where aircraft arriving and departing from the airport are under airport control.   Well, in our system, every aircraft in the TCA has a unique ID assigned, and a radio in the control tower polls each one every two seconds or so and each then responds with its data.   So now the controller — or rather his computer — has a very clear picture of which aircraft is where."   I took another bite of bread.   "This of course is only marginally better than the present radar system but he now also knows much more accurately the altitude and heading.     Aside from this, from successive transmissions, the computer can calculate the aircraft’s speed over the ground.    Comparing this with the transmitted heading and airspeed of the aircraft, a good estimate of the wind direction and speed at that specific altitude can be worked out, which helps the base computer make its plans."

"Sounds Star Wars-like," Mike commented.   He was leaning forward and really listening without the normal glazed look that most folk get when I explain my work.   Emboldened by this, I went on.

"That’s chicken-shit.   The Star Wars stuff is still to come.    What I’ve told you up to now is nothing more than like going from gramophones to CDs.    The next step we took is to give each plane some intelligence.    We interface our system with the autopilot which can control the aircraft’s direction and throttles.   We provide a software map about the environment of the airport, either loaded into memory before take-off, or off a CD.   With this information we have the ability to make a totally automatic landing.    The only thing missing is how to stop hitting the guy in front of you."

"They follow that close?" asked Mike with genuine alarm.

"Naah," I laughed.    "Airplanes in flight leave a big, invisible wake behind them.   It twists around like a couple of horizontal tornadoes.     Another airplane flying into that can be in a whole lot of trouble.    At best it’s going to be a wild roller-coaster ride; at worst, the wings or tail may snap off."

"Hey, man, I didn’t need to know that!"

"Not much of a chance of you ever being in that situation," I assured him.    "The FAA mandates a separation distance that keeps planes well apart.

"So, getting back to our system, the controller sequences each aircraft for any runway.   Say there’s a Delta 757, an American 727 and a British Airways Jumbo all entering the Atlanta TCA.    The controller decides that he’ll sequence them onto runway 26-Right in the order Delta 757, American 727 and then the Brit 747.

"In the poll to the 757, data is passed to it giving it the id of the American as the following aircraft.     In two successive polls to the American, it is given the id of the 757 as the preceding aircraft and the 47 as the trailing aircraft.    And likewise in the poll to the 47 goes the ID of the 727 as the leading aircraft.    From that time the computers in each aircraft listen in to the data transmissions from the other aircraft they’ve been told about and grab their data.

"As the Delta flies in, its computers are monitoring the position of the 727.    There’s a built-in table of aircraft types, so the computer knows how far behind a 727 can safely be to a 757.    In the 727, the computers are doing the same calculations.    If the 727 starts to creep up on the 757, its pilot gets a warning on his instrument panel.    The picture on the controllers screen also takes on a different color warning him of a possible conflict.    If it can, the 757’s computers will speed up its approach speed or the 727’s will decrease his.   If the 727 is still overtaking, it’ll reach a critical point in separation, then its computers will initiate a missed approach, climbing him out of the approach pattern.   This is communicated to the computer in the tower that will then notify the 757 that the Brit is now his following aircraft and similarly the Brit finds out that he is now following the 757.

"Cool, huh?"

"If you say so, Chris."

"And the best part," I hurried on on a roll, "is that the weather doesn’t factor into this.    Even in clouds they can follow each other just as closely — still limited only by the wake distance.    Technically we don’t even need the control tower we could add some code to let aircraft sequence themselves in and out of an airport, but I don’t think we’ll go that route for some time."

"And this is all safe you think?" Mike smiled indulgently.

"Oh yeah," I replied with confidence.    "Safer than currently.    Right now, say a pilot gets an alert of a wind sheer above the runway threshold in front of him.   It takes him a full two seconds at best to hear the message, translate it in his brain and begin to act.    A computer receiving that same information reacts almost instantaneously: within quarter of a second the power is being increased and the nose starts coming up, and our friendly computer is hauling his chips and salsa outta there."

"I really regret the demise of the railroads," Mike mocked.    Turning serious he asked, "And you code all this stuff yourself out here?"

"No, I do aileron, elevator and rudder control.  Other guys are doing stuff like engines or position.    Also, remember I told you there are three computers analyzing the same data, making decisions and then voting?  We’re one of two companies writing the software.   We’ve got the same specs and targets, but that is all.   We don’t communicate at all.    It is contractually forbidden.   That way, it’s really unlikely that two different programmers will make the same assumption in their code.   And it’s unlikely we’ll design the same error recovery or build-in the same bugs.   No more than two computers on any one aircraft can have the same company’s brand of software."

Mike nodded thoughtfully and apparently impressed.    Geeks one, mortals nil, I smirked inwardly to myself.

Right then Theresa returned with the wine and an ice bucket.    Mike approved the bottle and watched her cork it and pour a little into his glass.    He swirled the pale yellow liquid around gently and savored the aroma before tasting it.    "This is pretty good," he said to me and then nodded and smiled at Theresa who poured my glass and then filled his.    When she had set the bottle in the bucket and was heading back to the inner sanctum, he lifted his glass to me.    "Skol, my hacker friend!  And thanks again for sharing your table with me."

"Salud!" I replied not to be outdone in foreign toasts, "You’re welcome."    Yeah, the wine was good.   I rolled it over my tongue a couple of times before allowing it to flow down my throat.

"So, now, tell me what brings you to our part of the world, Mike?" I asked as I set my glass down.

"Oh!  I’m involved in a trial up in Savannah that isn’t going too well.   It’s been a real long week and I felt I needed a change and some time to get my mind refocused.   So when we adjourned for the weekend I just threw some stuff in my car and headed down here."

"Yeah, Kirkhall is a pretty good place for being free of distraction," I admitted.   "What kind of trial?"

"Murder," he said with a wry grin.

"Holy cow!" Geez, this guy sure knew how to upstage my story.   I paused.    "You a lawyer?"

"Yes," his eyes held mine steadily.    I thought I caught a touch of ‘Want to make something of it?’ in the stare, but I wasn’t going to.   I can be couth sometimes.

"Who murdered who?"   I asked ungrammatically, "And whose side are you on?"

"Remember Rolf Lee?" My eyebrows shot up.    "I’m his defense."

"The guy that killed Hayden Etchells up at Inverness?"

He shook his head and laughed remorsefully.  "See why I got the trial moved to Savannah?  You haven’t heard a word of evidence and you’ve already got him convicted."     His expression was good-natured, but I felt the barb nonetheless.

"No, I’m not like that!  But I read the newspapers," I scrambled.

"Ah yes.    The fourth estate!  Now that’s an unbiased source for you."   He paused and a sly look came into his eyes.    "I would have thought that you relied on the Internet," he said archly.

"Well, I do for things I really want to research, but this was a bit too sensational to go read what all the Mother Grundies were moralizing about.    To tell the truth I reckoned it was a domestic affair and I wasn’t all that interested."

"The crime passionelle?"  His eyes lost their focus and he broke off a morsel of bread and popped it into his mouth."    That’s what the journalists say," he said looking at me again.    "And, to be fair, it’s what the prosecution is putting forward."   He paused as if reflecting, took another sip of wine and turned to the sea.     I followed his gaze.    There were hardly any waves now, foot-high swells that could barely break after their long journey from Africa rolled in lugubriously.

Turning back to look at Mike I asked, "But?"

"Huh?" Mike moved his eyes to me.

"But you don’t think so?"

"Chris, don’t you read any novels or watch any TV?" he asked with a mischievous smile.   "You know the famous Defense Attorney line?    ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.    It’s what the jury thinks that matters.’"

"Right!  I forgot," I chuckled.   "And right now they believe the prosecution?"

"Oh, they’re trying to be impartial, but I’m not giving them much else to think.    Even folk who disagreed with Hayden, and there weren’t that many of those, didn’t really dislike him.   There is no motive other than the spurned lover."

And that was probably true.   I had known Hayden, not personally, but by sight.   He had run a pretty neat hardware store up in Inverness and I’d been in there fairly often over the last year as I set up the house.    He would have been a hard guy to dislike.

"And Rolf says…?  Or is that a breach of ethics."

"The ethics part is easily taken care of, because my client is saying practically nothing.    He has a novel way of thinking that goes something like this: He is innocent until proven guilty; proof requires evidence; the evidence being produced is illogical; ergo he has nothing to worry about."

"Well, Mike…like…isn’t that how the law works?  We haven’t really gone back to the Spanish Inquisition since the change in presidency, have we?  Although I must say it sometimes seems like it."

Mike grinned at me.   "Geez, Chris.    A well trained (and notice I use neither the word competent, nor even the word good, merely well trained) lawyer could convince the average jury that Mother Theresa was the brains behind, and main beneficiary of, the Enron debacle."

I laughed.    "That’s why techs are such neat folk: everything is straightforward and above board with them."

Mike smiled back, "Yeah.   That’s why, after a year, I still can’t program my VCR to record the programs I want to see.   And as for above board, well let’s talk Microsoft and Netscape."

Our banter was interrupted there as Theresa arrived with our salads.   While she ground peppercorns over Mike’s, I studied my companion.   It was the eyes one noticed.   The windows of the soul were brown under dark brows, but it wasn’t only the color that one noticed, it was the life and energy that lay within them.   I had the feeling that there wasn’t much that this guy missed and I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to be a witness being skewered by those eyes under cross examination.

Wishing us a bon appetite, Theresa walked away and we picked up our forks.   Mike showed no inclination to pick up the previous conversation, and we began to discuss good food and the best places in Savannah and Atlanta at which it could be obtained.     As the sea turned dark gray and the highest peaks of the cumulus on the horizon caught the pink of the setting sun our main course arrived.

By the time we set knives and forks together on empty plates, the sea and the sky were both black and the only evidence of cloud was the distant, silent lightning.   The salmon had been outstanding and the conversation had been fairly catholic.    The dismal performance of the Democratic Party in the last elections had found us in regretful agreement.    This concurrence did not last when we switched to movies.    Mike was a Black Hawk Down aficionado and hadn’t enjoyed Amelie or Royal Tanenbaums which had been my recent cinema highlights.   Concord returned when the discussion meandered to the recent Renoir exhibition at the High and continued until, as the last of the bottle fell into my glass, I recounted the idiosyncrasy of Pope Gregory XVI who had decreed that his body be washed in the wine of Orvieto before being buried.    "I bet that made for some jolly maggots," was Mike’s observation.

"So, how come Kirkhall has missed the trashing that’s hit St.Simons?" he asked me as we settled back in our seats.

"We keep dynamiting the bridge to the mainland," I answered straight-faced as I put down my empty glass.    Mike rolled his eyes up in mock despair.

I relented, "Let me tell you a story.

"Way back in the late 1600s — you’ll have to realize I’m not a history buff, so I’ll paint in broad-brush strokes — the English settled in Charleston.    Almost immediately the settlers began to covet the lands of the Indians, and even the people themselves.    There began a series of wars and engagements, euphemistically termed ‘to deal with the Indians’ savagery’ but, in fact, designed to seize their corn, their lands and their children.     Horrific things happened for close on a century and a half, so that, in retrospect, one can only wonder about who were the ‘savvidges’ and who the civilized.

"The English came into an alliance with the Shawnee and together they rounded up Indians throughout the Carolinas and down through Georgia toward St Augustine to become slaves.

"Some time in the first half of the 1700s, two Englishmen and a party of Shawnee had rounded up a group of Indians south of here, men women and children, and were moving them northward to Charleston, which at that time was the hub of a thriving slave trade.     From Charleston many of these wretched and terrified people were shipped throughout England’s Empire, and those that were kept in the Carolinas were probably only slightly better off.

"Maybe this group was of a different mettle, maybe their captors were less watchful, or most likely it was just an accident, but that would not make the tale as interesting, and so it is believed around here that the captives somehow managed to slip some kind of a poisonous herb into the food of their tormentors.   In any case, during the night the two Brits and most of the Shawnee were in dire straits, retching and worse.    At this point the captives rose up and killed all the slaving party with the exception of two Shawnee who somehow hid and later crept away.

"It is thought that some of the escapees were injured in the fight, or had possibly been previously hurt in their original capture, and they didn’t move very fast to return to their original lands.   Perhaps looking for a refuge, they made their way through the wetlands to Kirkhall Island — although it was not called that then: the name came only after Darien was settled.   In any case, a vengeful party of English and Shawnees returned for justice or revenge.   Once they got to the island the pursuing horde, realizing that they had their prey cornered, proceeded onto the island in a more leisurely fashion so as the better to enjoy the coup de grace.

"The trapped refugees battled them off as best they could with stones and sharpened sticks, but they were outnumbered and out-weaponed so, as the afternoon came to an end the outcome was only too obvious.   Knowing what was to happen if they were captured, a few warriors held the pursuers at bay while the others walked into the sea.   Men and women, clutching their children to them and dragging their wounded, simply walked into the sea and were drowned."

"Holy shit!" Mike was looking at me open mouthed.

"Yeah.   Not one was taken alive.   This mass suicide really nonplussed the Shawnee and, with incredible callousness, infuriated the English who saw only a loss of ‘merchandise’.     Anyway, they began their return to Charleston almost immediately.    On their way off the island, one of the Brits was bitten by a snake, probably a cottonmouth, and died within a day.    In tending to him their departure was delayed and then, in trying to negotiate the marsh in the dark, the son of the leader of the group fell into a hole in the swamp and his father, trying to rescue him, got tangled in the weeds and drowned.    That was the start of the stories.     Later on came the tales of cries and screams being heard coming from the sea at night, and so, with all the superstition attached to it, the island wasn’t settled until much later, and then not very vigorously.

"Did you know that Darien once almost rivaled Savannah in trade?"

"No, I didn’t actually."

"Yeah.    Before the railroads came, Darien was a bustling port exporting cotton from the Altamaha.   Around then some fisher-folks had set up some settlement up where Inverness is now up at the North end of the island.     During the…er…War   of Northern Aggression,"    I grinned mischievously at Mike, "there was always some kind of smuggling going on with the blockade runners.   The waters around here can be tricky and the Union ships were somewhat wary of coming too close in.     One night a small ketch or brigantine, the Fiona, was expected to slip into the area, and a group of men had assembled on the shore to light bonfires to guide her in, since the weather was rather gusty with frequent squalls, and visibility was severely reduced.    While they waited there they suddenly heard screams and shouts, and peering into the stormy twilight, saw people struggling in the water close into the shore.    Believing that the ship had foundered, they grabbed some rope and, holding onto that, formed a kind of human chain, and waded in to the sea to assist.   However, before the would-be rescuers could reach them, the distressed people in the water simply disappeared.    Not drowning: fading away.    The Fiona arrived uneventfully on the morning tide with her crew intact.    In the following days, no wreckage or bodies washed up on shore, and back in the taverns, the men who were at the outer end of the human chain were telling that the people they had seen in the water were Indians, or Native Americans as we now say."

"Geez-us!"

"Yup.   Uncanny, huh?"

"I’ll say."

"After the Civil War the island remained pretty much deserted and Darien fell from prominence itself since the railroads kinda bypassed it.      Since the tales of the supernatural somehow persisted and realtors felt disinclined to invest, the island stayed in a pristine state except for Inverness having a small fishing harbor and some processing plant until the late 1970s.

"Apparently some folk built vacation houses in the mid 60s, but for some reason the type of folk who went to St Simons never cottoned onto this island — I think that, rather than the supernatural scaring anyone, it was the refrigeration plant which detracted from the ambiance of the harbor, both visually and with its odors.   Then in about 1979 or 1980 Hurricane David came by.   It did a lot of damage including flattening the refrigeration plant.   The loss was too great to repair, and the industry more-or-less moved to the Brunswick area.

"My aunt and uncle bought property here in the early 80s and built their house.    I can remember coming down here when my family visited The States when I was about ten or eleven, and it was really out in the boonies.    There were only two other houses down this end, and Inverness was a hick town with a greasy fast-food place and a laundromat.

"My cousin, who is about five years older than me, and I hiked all the way round the island."

"Obviously your family wasn’t impressed by any stories of ghosts," Mike interjected with a laugh, "Or didn’t they like you all that much?"

"Everyone’s a comedian!" I remarked with mock exaggeration.    "Naah, they didn’t give it much credence.    Although, I can remember on that trip spending a stormy night, with no light on in the house other than the hearth fire, with my uncle, who was a bit of a wag, telling us the story of the Indians and having to clench my butt really tight."

Mike laughed then observed, "The island’s grown some since then apparently."

"Yeah.   More up in Inverness.    There’s a couple of firms that build boats  — yachts and stuff like that, a few trawlers are based there, nothing major, and there are some holiday houses and hotels.   Down here there are only about eighteen houses, and I don’t think there’ll be much more development in this area because of the protection of the dunes."

"An undiscovered paradise.   I’ve lived in Savannah about four years and didn’t know much about Kirkhall Island at all until relatively recently."

"Well…it’s a bit of an acquired taste.   Just like Buffalo in New York gets a lot worse weather than places just a short distance away, so we get some bad storms that seem to miss Jekyll and St. Simons.   We jut out into the Atlantic just a tad more than the other barrier islands."

"It sure seems idyllic tonight," Mike responded leaning back and looking out into the blackness.   He paused and then turned back to me and asked "Would you care for a glass of red wine or a brandy or port perhaps?  I’m having such a good evening."

"That’d be real nice, but I’ve got to ride my bike home so I’d better not."     Mike looked somewhat disappointed.    I was, too.   The evening had turned out to be a good deal of fun.    "Where are you staying?"

"I was going to the Ramada up in Inverness.  I guess I don’t need a reservation at this time of the year."   It was more of a question than a statement.

My brain wasn’t as sharp after the meal and the mutinous mouth seized the opportunity.    "Why do that?   Look, I have a whole house down here.   You don’t have to go to a hotel with a room that’s no different from any in Atlanta or Detroit.   At least at my place you’ll have a choice of two rooms."

‘Oh, shit!’ my brain scolded as it was dragged back to handle the new mess.   ‘He’s going to think you’re some fag trying to pick him up.’

"Oh, no.    I wouldn’t think of imposing on you any more," Mike said.

‘See,’ my brain whined, ‘you’ve just gone and screwed up a great evening.’

‘You do realize that there was a pause before his refusal, don’t you?’ The quiet and unexpected observation came from my ears, until then the most loyal of organs.

"I spend most of the day at my computer, so it’s quiet and you could come and go as you like," voiced my mouth making the most of my distraction with this ‘pause’ crap.

"I just feel I’m taking advantage of your hospitality."    OK, I had to admit there was a distinct pause before that statement.

"Would I have offered if I hadn’t wanted you to accept?"    My mouth was totally uncontrollable and I felt my throat contracting in embarrassment.

Mike laughed.    "When Jimmy Carter was elected President, a reporter went down to Plains to talk to his mother.    His family tried to make everyone feel welcome and experience Southern hospitality.   Now Carter had proclaimed he did not lie and would not deceive the American people.    So, of course, this reporter had to ask his mother, ‘Has your son ever lied?’

"‘I believe he is someone whose word you can trust,’ Miss Lillian answered.    But the journalist wasn’t satisfied.

"‘I asked you if he has ever lied.   As his mother, did you ever catch him lying?’

"‘Well, I guess he told little white lies sometimes,’ Miss Lillian conceded.

"‘Aha!   A lie is a lie,’ declared the triumphant reporter, and rubbing it in asked, ‘How would you define a white lie?’

"Miss Lillian looked at her and said, ‘Remember when I said ‘Welcome to Plains, I’m pleased to see you’?’"

I burst out laughing and my brain was now in control once again.    "No, my invitation wasn’t a little white lie.    I had much more nefarious intentions."    Mike’s eyebrows shot up.     "I’ll make you a deal.    You spend the night at my place and, by way of payment, you tell me all about this murder case you’re trying."

Mike broke into a smile and relaxed.    "OK.    If you’re serious about the offer, I can do that.    I don’t really feel like being in a hotel tonight."

I beckoned Theresa.    "Some dessert, gentlemen?" she asked picking up our plates, "or perhaps some espresso and a liqueur?" Now that was a white lie: they wanted us out of there because there was a whole line of folk waiting for a table.

But the social niceties had to be played out, so as Mike put his MasterCard on the table I replied, "Naah.    That salmon was way too good to leave room for dessert."     I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and dropped my card over Mike’s.    "Split it down the middle."

"But the wine is on mine, remember?" Mike said to me.

"Fair enough.  Thanks."   I looked at Theresa, "That OK?"

"Hey, I may not be a computer nerd, but I can do arithmetic," she mocked me.   I just smiled.

As she walked away I said, "I have a couple of bottles of some real good Australian red at home that a friend brought me.   We can sample that."

"Geez, this is turning out to be a great evening.    I never anticipated any of this when I left Savannah."

"Yeah?  You need to leave the city more often and visit the colonies.    But don’t forget your part.    I want gory details."

"Er…let  me see," he rubbed his chin with his finger as though in deep recollection, "Isn’t this Mister-I-ain’t- interested-in-all-those-sensational-details?"

Shit!   He had me there.   "Yeah, well, whatever." I smiled sheepishly.    I guess lawyers are trained to remember careless remarks.

"I’m kidding, Chris.   But really you may be disappointed.   It is not anything extraordinarily exciting.    Probably more sordid than anything.    Your pilotless airplanes are a whole lot more daring."

"Only at test time.   Up till then it’s all numbers and diagrams on a screen.    It’s when we get in the simulator that the adrenaline flows.   It’s hard to remember you’re not in a real airplane."

"Now I reckon I could do a simulator ride.   It’s only when I’m a mile above the ground that I’m scared."

"I’ll get you a ride in the sim one day.   Bring a change of shorts: you’ll need them."    His eyes widened questioningly but right then Theresa appeared with our cards in two black folders.

"Hope you enjoyed your dinner, gentlemen," she said pleasantly as she placed them in front of us.   "Have a good evening.   And ride safely," she added to me.

"Always do.   Thanks, Theresa.   See you soon."

"Sure.   Good night," she directed more formally to Mike.

I figured out the tip, jotted down the total and slipped my wallet back into the rear pocket of my jeans.    Mike’s wallet, with neatly-folded receipt, was carefully returned to his coat which he then donned.

I pulled on my jacket, picked up my helmet and motioned for him to lead the way.   We walked out through the tables.    Once we were outside I asked him, "Where are you parked?"

"The white Audi over there," he pointed.

Not bad, I thought, he must have high-paying clients. "Cool.   That’s my Ninja over there.   Just follow me."    I walked over to my bike and preflighted it while I fastened my helmet and zippered my jacket.    Nothing was noticeably loose and the tires weren’t flat, so I swung my leg over the saddle.   With the engine rumbling gently under me I kicked the side stand up and pushed back from the parking space with my toes.    Once lined up I saw Mike was waiting behind me.    I patted my tail-piece as a signal for him to follow, and put the Ninja into gear.

The road was pretty deserted and dark, but I knew it well, and my mind mulled over my dinner partner as the little bugs sailed out of the blackness into my headlight beam before whizzing past into obscurity.    I downshifted, leaned the bike over in a sharp turn into the driveway and pulled up in the garage next to the Jeep.   Unstrapping my helmet I walked back out into the driveway where Mike was pulling a duffle bag and his PC case out of the trunk.

"Nice place," he remarked as he closed the lid and hit the lock button on his key fob.

"Thanks.  Yeah.   I’ve got some work to do on it still, but it’s solidly built and the neighbors aren’t too close," I said pointing to dim lights about a hundred yards away.    "These were built before the dune protection laws were past.    Nobody else can build here now.    Of course, if we can drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, who knows what the Republicans will allow next — probably an aluminum smelter here."

Mike laughed and barged me gently with his shoulder.    "I guess you’re not in sales with a mouth like that?"

"Me?  The sales folk lock me in a cage whenever a customer is within a mile.   Stupid wankers don’t understand that the customers really want to buy our stuff, and the only thing that makes them nervous is the feeling that the sales folk might be hiding something.    Hear the truth from the tech and you won’t be surprised later."    I turned my key in the Schlage lock, pushed the door open and stood aside for Mike.

I followed him in and put my helmet on the little table by the door as he surveyed my sitting room.    The only light was the small spot that highlighted the painting on the wall.     Mike walked over and stood in front of it, amazed.    "Geez, Chris.   What is this?  A Boeing Clipper?"

It would be hard to say which I was more proud of, my Ninja or my painting.     The oil painting in its gold frame measured just over five foot by four and depicted a Shorts Sunderland, up on the step with engines thundering, just moments before lift off.

"Naah.     It’s a British flying boat called a Shorts Sunderland.    My grandfather flew that one during the war."

"This is beautiful, Chris.   You can feel the power of those engines and almost hear the roar just by looking at it.    Where did you get it?"

"Granddad painted that.     He did it mainly from memory many years after the war."

"This is unbelievable.   He has incredible talent."    He paused, studying the painting, moving closer to examine a detail, taking a step back to get it in perspective.    "Do you paint?"

"Ha!" I laughed out loud.  "No.   I can get as far as stick figures and that’s about it."    Mike laughed and moved away from the painting as I turned up the lighting.

"Not a bad set up you’ve got here, Chris.    Very nice indeed."

"It works for me.   I can get pretty much everything I need.    I go up to Savannah about every two weeks or so to get food stuffs I can’t get here."    I slung my jacket over one shoulder and headed towards the staircase.   "Let me show you the rooms and you can get changed."

"OK.   Sounds good."     We climbed up the stairs and I pointed to the first room.

"That’s my office and this one is where I sleep."   Walking down the passage to the next door I said, "This one is free and so is the one over there.    This has a view over the beach, that one over the estuary and toward Darien.     The head is over here and there’s a bath and shower next to it.    So take your pick."

"Man, this is way too good," he laughed.   "Sea view sounds great."    He walked in and turned on the light.

"Oh, shit!  Hang on."  He stepped back hurriedly at my interjection.

"What?"

I flicked the lights off.   "We need to close the blinds before the light goes on.   It’s the turtles.   If they’re hatching, the little ones wander toward the light."       I pulled the bamboo blinds closed.

"Oh.   Sorry."

"No sweat.   No harm done."  I flipped the switch on again. "Make yourself at home."

"Thanks.    I’ll be right down."    Returning to my room, I hung my jacket behind the door, kicked my sneakers and socks off, and headed downstairs.

My dining room table and chairs weren’t the greatest, but the important furniture was good: a one-hundred-and-eighty-bottle redwood wine rack.     OK, don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t filled with bottles, and most of the bottles that occupied the slots were inexpensive, but to one side I kept my special wines, and from these I took out a bottle of Australian red.      Back in the kitchen I pulled the cork and put it to my nose.     Not bad at all.    I looked at the bottle: a 2000 vintage.    Not too young, but it could do with some breathing time, time which I didn’t really have.      I walked back into the dining room.    The only thing of my grandfather’s that I possessed that didn’t have to do with aircraft was a rose-colored crystal decanter.    I carried it back into the kitchen and gently transferred the contents of the bottle to it.      Visitors at this time of the year were few, and I wasn’t sure what food was in the house that could accompany the wine.    With a Shiraz as good as this a fairly strongish cheese would be ideal.    I grabbed some gorgonzola from the fridge and rummaging around came across a reasonable piece of red Leicester that I had found up in Savannah on my last expedition northwards.    ‘Geez, guy, you’d think this was a date the way you’re acting,’ I thought, grinning to myself as I added some whole-wheat crackers to the plate.    I was trashing the paper wrapper when I heard Mike’s footsteps on the stairs and turned around.

Holy cow! Gone was the neatly suited city lawyer.     With the faded jeans clinging to his legs and his arms, the skin tight enough to show the veins, protruding from a black muscle-shirt, he looked more like a beach boy.

"Wow!" escaped involuntarily from my throat which had suddenly gone dry.    I gulped.   "I mean…er…I guess…um…I thought lawyers were born in suits," I stalled in recovery.

Mike laughed.   He walked over to the table by the door and picked up my helmet and held it up so I could see what he’d seen in his headlights the whole way home: the dark blue rectangle with the yellow equals sign that manifested my HRC membership.      "Wow is good, Chris!"

"Mike.    It’s not like that.   That’s not why I invited you here."    I was panicking again.    This was suddenly going where I didn’t want to go, and it was going way too fast.    I was still officially in recovery, still on light duties, take a look — I have wounds that haven’t healed yet.

He dropped my helmet gently back on the table and came over to me.    "And that’s not why I came," he grabbed my shoulder gently.      "It’s OK, Chris.    We’re here now, let’s just chill and chat."     Blood surged to my head like a Pacific breaker and then drained back to my gut with a violent undertow.   Hormones that had been in hibernation for twelve months were leaping up and racing in clueless confusion through my body.    "So do we drink the wine straight from this fancy decanter of yours or do nerds run to glasses as well?" he asked grinning at me.

"Oh, yeah, of course."   I bolted into the dining room, gaining temporary respite from the normalcy of doing something practical.     Shit, was I so transparent to everyone but me?  Taking two glasses down from the stem rack, I walked back into the kitchen where Mike was peering suspiciously at the cheese.

"What, in the name of all that’s holy, is this?  Looks like a friggin’ pumpkin."

"Geez, don’t you lawyers ever get out of Burger King?"  I countered, glad of the banter to get my equilibrium back.    "It’s a Red Leicester.    Kinda like a cheddar in the making, but it’s got some coloring added.     Used to be carrot or beet juice, but of course now it’s some vegetable dye.    The taste is just a tad stronger than aged cheddar.    It’ll go nicely with the Shiraz."

Mike picked up the wine bottle and studied the label.    "Chateau Reynella.     Never heard of it."

"It’s an Oz wine.   A buddy of mine came over here and brought me four bottles.    There’s one left after this.    Let’s go through.   Can you bring the cheese and plates?" I asked picking up the decanter.

"Sure."   He followed me into the living room.    "You know, you’re not exactly what I imagined a computer nerd to be like.     I had visions of rooms with computers and screens, perhaps two miles of wires and cables and a month’s supply of Kentucky Fried Chicken."

"You’re not exactly what I imagined a lawyer to be," I said, parrying.

"Yeah.    It’s hard to be Perry Mason or Matlock twenty-four by seven."   He paused and then added, "But I could show you a couple of guys like that from our office.     You go to their house on the weekend for a barbecue and they’re dressed up in white lounge shirt and Dockers.   Matt, he’s this friend of mine, is always onto me the way I dress when I’m out the office, but I figure I’ve earned my free time so I’m going to enjoy it."

I laughed and picked up his glass while pushing the name Matt onto a stack in my brain for later investigation.    "You going to try some Aussie Shiraz?"

"Sure.    I enjoy reds.     Don’t know Shirazes that well, though."    He turned and walked over to my Sunderland picture.    "If you don’t mind my asking, are you from Australia?  Your accent doesn’t really sound as though you were born south of the Macon-Dixon line."

"I’m more Southern than even that! I was born in South Africa.   Came here when I was nineteen — got a scholarship to Carnegie Mellon.    When I was finished I had changed too much to go back, so I got a work visa and a job at AT&T.    Got my permanent residence and two years later my citizenship.    The President said anyone from a warm, sunny country that could survive four years in Pittsburgh was most assuredly the kind of guy the United States wanted as a citizen."

"That bad, huh?" Mike laughed as he took the glass I offered.

"Tell you, man, I had to pass out of there in four years.    Another long, cold winter and my skin would have turned green from the mildew."    I set the decanter down and raised my glass to him.   "Cheers, Mike."

"Your health, Chris."    The soul of a red wine, Baron Philippe de Rothschild once said, are its tannins.     There are three sources of tannins.   Those from the grape seeds are abrasive and the wine-maker tries to avoid these at all costs.   Those that come from the small pieces of stalk that accompany the grapes into the vat are somewhat rough and these are spurned, too.    The tannins from the skins, however, have the finest flavors, and so, in order to maximize the contact between these and the fermenting wine, the skins, which rise to the top, have to be continuously pushed down.    It is in this punching down that the tannins are released, giving the Shiraz its rich color, its full flavor.

Our Chateau Reynella did not disappoint.   Like the overture to Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, the subtle woodwinds had come in with the selecting and corking, the urgent tip-toeing of the strings subtly heightened the expectation as the wine was decanted, and now, as I swallowed the first sip, the full flavors rolled across my tongue and exploded into the symphony of sensations in my nasal passages.

"This is really good," remarked Mike as he savored the scents from his glass once again.

"It is.    Bet it’s better than you could have got in the room bar at the Ramada," I said ostentatiously biting my lip to show the humor.

"That’s for sure.   I hate being in hotels: I don’t enjoy being in the bar by myself so I end up flipping channels and watching junk TV for hours."

"Yeah, I know.   Greatest thing about my notebook.    I can work or watch a DVD.     What kind of music do you like?" I asked moving over to the stereo.

"I’m pretty easy.    Don’t like rap or very heavy classical.     Matt is a Wagner fanatic, but I just can’t get into it."

"No.   Nor me.    Let’s be American — a little Copland?"

"Sounds good."

"Appalachian Spring; Billy the Kid; Rodeo."

"Cool.    The South’s link to culture," Mike laughed as he took some cheese on a plate and sat down.

"Uh-huh," I concurred as I set the CD up and adjusted the amp.      I turned off the main kitchen fluorescent leaving just the reflected light from the Sunderland spot and a low lamp next to the stereo, then pulled open the curtains.    The moon was in its first quarter, but it provided sufficient light to see the waves.     Far out toward the horizon the lights of trawlers stood as motionless as the stars making it impossible to see where sea ended and sky began.      I cut a piece of the Leicester and a piece of gorgonzola and sat on the sofa.    "How do you like the Red Leicester?"

"Good.    The color is a bit unusual, but the taste is good.    It does go well with the wine."

"Yeah.   A shiraz needs a bolder cheese."   I took a sip of the wine and let it trickle down my throat before reminding him, "OK, Mike.   It’s story time."

He chuckled.   "Right.   Let’s go right back.   Did you know Hayden Etchells or Rolf Lee?  They lived out here on Kirkhall."

"Pretty much everyone here knew Hayden.     He owned the hardware shop up in Inverness and I was there quite often when I was setting this house up.     He seemed a real pleasant guy.    I’ve been to maybe two social get-togethers where he was also invited, and he seemed pretty normal.    He never acted gay or said anything, so I was kinda surprised when things came out later on.

"Rolf?  I’ve seen him on his bike a few times and waved to him like all bikers wave to each other.   I saw him in the bookstore in Inverness, but he was working there and I don’t think I ever chatted to him more than the pleasantries.

"You must understand there’s a slight caste system on the island.    We who have houses down here tend to be keep-to-ourselves, mind-your-own-business folk.     We live here because we want the solitude and like it.   Up in Inverness I guess it’s more like life in any other little town.    Somehow people up there think of us down here as a bit eccentric or maybe even snobbish, and," I pulled a wry smile, "since that gives us some guarantee of solitude, we don’t do much to discourage it."

Mike laughed then stabbed a piece of the Leicester and put it on his plate.   "That’s something I didn’t know, but I don’t think it has any bearing on my case or client."    He laid the cheese on a cracker and popped it into his mouth.    He chewed for while before continuing.

"Hayden grew up in the Atlanta area.    He went to Harvard and got some kind of business degree.    After graduating he worked at a couple of places in the North and got married.    After about eight years or so there was a divorce.   As far as divorces can be, it was amicable.    There were no children to tie him down, and so he came back to Georgia.    He worked in the city for a time, and one day noticed that while there were big hardware stores in the outlying areas, there wasn’t much in the city especially in areas where people were buying up old houses and renovating them.     He opened up the first Etchells Hardware not far from the Midtown area carrying merchandise that targeted house renovation.    On Saturday mornings he paid artisans to give lessons and demos on how to do the things people wanted to do.    The business took off.    Within a few years he had four stores and was going gangbusters.    In fact he did so well that he was bought out by Home Depot who paid him out really well.

"So at age forty he has all the time in the world on his hands, a fat bank account, a portfolio of investments, and nothing to do.     He traveled some, then he did some business consulting, but it had none of the sense of achievement or the social aspect of his hardware enterprise.    One of the stipulations in the buy-out was that he would not open up another hardware store in any place where it would compete with Home Depot and that left him little room if he wanted to return to that type of work since wherever there was a market with money, there was invariably a Home Depot.

"And then he came across Kirkhall Island.

"As you pointed out, Inverness is finally getting going and there is no Home Depot within a reasonable distance.     So he bought out the Inverness General Store, and set it up much in the same way as he had before, except here he catered for the boat crowd, too."     He paused, took a sip of wine then went on.    "He did well, as you know.   He built a beach-house just outside Inverness and bought himself a small sailboat.    The typical unattached forty-something male.    There was no serious romance that anyone knew about, but there was the occasional weekend visits by various women.    None remained very long.    And also, like many forty-something males, he bought himself a motorcycle."

"Hey, you’ll get on one one day and realize what you’ve missed," I said.

"I dare say," commented Mike dryly.

"Then there’s my client.    Some time after the middle of 2000, Rolf Lee moved here from Savannah.     It was a promotion for him.   He had worked for the same bookstore in the city, and he was made a manager when they opened the store here.   According to the folk who worked with him up in Savannah he was a friendly guy who got on with everybody.    He had a couple of boyfriends, but no serious LTR.    One of the guys has been down here to spend a couple of weekends with Rolf, and Rolf stays with him whenever he goes up to town.

"As you mentioned, Rolf rides a motorcycle, and he met Hayden one weekend when he was gassing up for a ride.    Hayden was going riding that afternoon, too, so they set off together.     After that, they would go riding together almost every time Rolf had time off from his bookstore.    The friendship grew.   They went to restaurants together, Hayden took Rolf out on his sailboat, Rolf took Hayden up to Savannah to some music concerts, and in December, Rolf spent the night at Hayden’s home."

"A-ha!" I exclaimed mischievously, "the plot thickens!"

"Yes, although neither made a big issue of it.     As time passed the relationship grew beyond just friendship and Rolf moved in with Hayden, although he didn’t sell his condo.

"You knew nothing of this?"   Mike asked almost as an aside.

"No.    But that’s not surprising.    I make forays into Inverness for shopping and I go to the bookstore, but I really stay pretty much down here.     I like Kurrajong and don’t like the two eating places up there.    But mainly I work pretty hard for a couple of weeks and then take a long weekend off and head up to Charleston or Atlanta or even the Smokies in Tennessee where there are some great biking roads."

"Do you know Henry Coalter?"

"Who doesn’t.   Another right-wing nut who’s trying to lead us back into the 19th Century."

"Yes, you know him.    He owns the Sandpiper Grill, doesn’t he?"

"I believe so.    That explains why it’s such a dump.   No-one who is conservative can hope to cook well  — it’s a contradiction of nature."

Mike burst out laughing.   "There’s probably a lot of truth in that."

"Anyhow, way before then, one summer, who should come into Hayden’s store but this Mr. Henry Coalter.    Henry was a year or two older than Hayden, but they had belonged to the same fraternity at Harvard.    Naturally they spent some time together, Coalter visited Hayden at his house and had a good time.    So good a time, that within nine months, Henry and his family moved to Kirkhall and he bought the Sandpiper Restaurant.    He renamed it the Sandpiper Grill and, with Hayden’s help — both physical and monetary — managed to open it up in time for the summer.    He did OK that first summer, but after the tourists left, things didn’t look so good.     Apparently, according to Ken Meadowcroft, Hayden’s manager at the General Store and a close friend, Hayden had pointed out some problems with the restaurant before Henry bought it, but Henry was impatient and had either chosen to ignore them or downplayed their importance.

"So, along comes some fall storm and the restaurant’s structure is quite severely damaged.    In spite of the fancy Harvard degree, Henry had failed to adequately insure the restaurant and the insurance company managed to wiggle out from paying."

"Probably some sleazeball lawyer trick," I said with mock innocence.

"If you don’t watch it, buddy, I’ll start telling you what computers have done to my bank account from time to time."    I chuckled in submission, and Mike continued the tale…

"So, Hayden stepped in and bailed his friend out with a loan and, according to Meadowcroft, a lot of materials at cost.    With this much invested, he became a partner in the business.    Hayden didn’t do much in the day-to-day running of the place, but he took care of the physical side: the building, the air-conditioning and the electrical stuff.    He would also work in the restaurant occasionally, such as when Coalter needed a night off or was on vacation.    Last year when Coalter decided to go into politics, his campaigning took him away a bit more frequently and Hayden took more of an active role in the restaurant.    He made some minor changes, separating the folk who wanted a table with a view from the teenagers who came in for a burger and Coke and wanted their music louder, for instance.     This worked well for both groups and business began to improve.

"Last summer, on the Saturday before the 4th July, the Seaburns held a big party.    Apparently it’s a big deal thing."

"Oh, yeah," I agreed: we took some things for granted down on Kirkhall, and the social standing of the Seaburns is one of them.    "Old man Seaburn has been mayor of Inverness for like ever.    He’s not bad.   He owns several trawlers and does pretty well.   They have this massive house right on the beach.   Mrs. Seaburn is a good sort.    Patron of the arts in every sense — supports starting-up artists, buys paintings and books for the library, hosts small concerts.    A very educated person.    So, yeah, to get invited to their parties is a big deal thing."

"Do you get invited?" he asked with a sly glance.

"Not yet.    A — I’m relatively new here and B — I’m a South- Ender, which in their minds means ‘Unpredictable’.   Maybe this year.     I set up the server and terminals in the library and installed the software for their catalogs and they seemed pretty happy about it."

"So geeks are finally getting accepted into the civilized world!"

"Yeah, the Dark Ages are coming to an end."

Mike smiled.     "Matt, who’s an accountant by the way, firmly believes that the introduction of computers is a presage of the fall of the cultured world as much as the influx of the Huns was in southeastern Europe."

"Mike," I reproached him, "Never, no matter under what duress, use the words ‘accountant’ and ‘culture’ in the same sentence.    And it wasn’t that the Huns were completely devoid of culture, but because of their nomadic ancestry their art tended to the more portable items like jewelry and personal adornments and cauldrons.

"But parts of you friend’s analogy may not be too far off: the Huns put cracks in the Roman Empire which was way past its prime, and computers certainly cracked a rather woeful era of ruthless authoritarianism starting off with McCarthyism and running through Viet Nam and Nixon."

Mike shook his head.   "How do you know such weird stuff?   I’ll have to get you up to Savannah to debate with Matt some time."    He sipped his wine and continued his narrative, while I added a mental red tag to the Matt file.

"Anyway, Coalter and his wife were invited, as were Hayden and partner.     In previous years he had attended either stag or with the girlfriend de jour, but this time he arrived hand-in-hand — literally, I’m told — with Rolf." Mike gave me a wry grin as I formed a mental image of what the scene must have looked like.

"That must have given half the guests aneurisms."

"Well, it certainly caused some gossip.    Coalter was very uncomfortable and pointedly ignored Rolf.    Hayden acted as though he was totally unaware of anything untoward, and Rolf was very urbane and circulated amongst the guests joining in their discussions.     Coalter tried a couple of times to pull Hayden aside and was seen to be talking to him very earnestly, but Hayden would just laugh at his protestations and rejoin the group.     Coalter explains that it was not the gayness but that, with Rolf being much younger than Hayden, he, Coalter, felt that Hayden was making a fool of himself and being taken for a ride."

"How solicitous."

"Yes, wasn’t it?  Anyway, on the afternoon of 4th July, Meadowcroft went over to pick up a table and other stuff that he’d arranged to borrow for a barbecue and fireworks party they were having at their house that night — to which Hayden and Rolf had been invited, by the way.

"He got no response from ringing the bell or from Hayden’s cell phone.    The front door was unlocked, so he went in, calling out to Hayden.   The house was a mess: stuff had been thrown around and broken.   Meadowcroft found Hayden lying on the floor of the kitchen and called the paramedics.    He tried to help him, attempting some CPR, but when the paramedics arrived they declared that Hayden was dead.    The cause of death was a severe blow to the back of the head with a cast iron frying pan which was found in a sink of cold, soapy water.   No fingerprints could be lifted from the pan, but the shape of the pan apparently fitted the blow area exactly."

"Shit!  Had Hayden put up any kind of defense?"

"No.    There was no sign of any struggle nor was there any sign of a break-in, although Hayden’s front door was pretty much always unlocked, apparently.    Every appearance was that he knew, and was comfortable with, his attacker."

"Yeah.    We have almost no crime down here.    It’s nearly always drunk-and-disorderly, a euphemism for pissing on the side of a building, or an expired car tag.    We have two cops on the island and have a problem finding enough for them to do.    Consensus is they must be the best trained cops in the whole US since they have so much time to read and study everything that comes out."

Mike chuckled as I inquired, "So why did they pick on Rolf?   Cherchez le fag?"

"Well, it was pretty-much all circumstantial.   A neighbor saw him leave the house in a hurry on his bike about the time of the murder.    He has no alibi.    His fingerprints were everywhere in the house, but, to be fair, he had spent the night there (there was more than ample DNA on the sheets to suggest that he and Hayden had shared the king-size bed), so the prints are not damning in themselves.     There was a small amount of Hayden’s blood on Rolf’s towel in the bathroom.    And amongst all the stuff pulled out in the house, the only things seriously smashed, that is not just broken by falling, were things of sentimental value to Hayden: a photograph of his ex-wife and himself on their honeymoon; an oil-painting of a sailing ship which was attractive, but not worth a whole lot; some old books of the history of this area.    Probably the second worst thing for Rolf was that, when he was arrested, he had a pair of Hayden’s cuff-links in his pocket.   These were gold and platinum and had belonged to his mother’s father and both Meadowcroft and Coalter have testified that he was very proud of and attached to these and, in their opinion, would not have given them away."

"Second worst thing?  What was the worst?"

"In the store, sometime between the Seaburns and the 4th, Meadowcroft had asked Hayden about the party.    Hayden mentioned that he had gone with Rolf but ended up by saying he wasn’t sure if the relationship with Rolf was a good idea.   Meadowcroft doesn’t care who goes out with whom and tends to mind his own business, so he didn’t press for any details, and Hayden said no more about it so we don’t know exactly what he meant by that.    Then on Wednesday, Independence Day, Coalter had called Hayden in the morning about the restaurant.    According to Coalter, Hayden had said that Rolf had turned out to be a very different person than he first appeared.   While he had first seemed gentle and after friendship, he was now into rough sex and other stuff which made Hayden uncomfortable.   He said that Rolf was a money-grabber.   Finally, Hayden had said that Rolf and he were through, and that he was going to tell him to move out."

"And what does Rolf say about this?  Sounds to me like what every hetero thinks gay sex is like."

Mike pursed his lips and nodded, "Rolf says it’s a load of crap.    He says that he and Hayden were deeply in love.    They had each found in the other a true companionship of complementary natures.    After the party at the Seaburns’ party, Rolf had mentioned to him that some folk wouldn’t like or understand their relationship and things might sometimes be difficult for him.  For Rolf, that is.    He, Hayden, didn’t go into any details and Rolf merely thought that Hayden was overreacting.   After all, he, Rolf, had been out of the closet for a long time and had never had any extraordinary problem.   And, what’s more, at the party on the previous Saturday everyone, with the exception of Coalter, had been pretty cordial.

"According to Rolf, after this discussion, Hayden seemed to be more content, and on the Tuesday evening Hayden brought up the idea of commitment and suggested that Rolf sell his condominium.     He says that, on the 4th, they had had nothing planned until late in the afternoon so he had decided to go and tell his friend in Savannah his good news.    In his bookish way he’s a bit melodramatic and so didn’t phone ahead because he wanted it to be a surprise and, anyway, his friend was almost always home or in one of the local gay gathering spots.    He was full of happiness and excitement and, in leaving Hayden’s house, had accelerated real hard in order to get his front wheel off the ground or something stupid."

"He pulled a wheelie, for shizzake.   Geez, don’t they teach you anything in law School?"

"Not if you can’t do it in a Mercedes or BMW they don’t." I groaned and rolled back on the sofa in mock despair.    Mike grinned and went on.

"Anyway, he maintains that when he left, the house was in reasonable order, and that Hayden was alive and happily doing stuff around the house.    As far as he knew, Hayden wasn’t expecting anyone other than Meadowcroft, and they had planned on going to Meadowcroft’s together in the afternoon for the evening’s barbecue and fireworks.

"He says that when he and Hayden had agreed to be partners, Hayden had said that he didn’t have a ring but that the cuff-links would be his troth until he got one.    Hayden said that in any case Rolf was the one that wore formal shirts most of the time, while he, Hayden, was more of a jeans and sweatshirt guy."

I shrugged.    "OK.   So it looks possible.   Maybe it looks bad.     But it doesn’t preclude anyone else from murdering Hayden."

"What’s the motive for anyone else?"  asked Mike.    "Nothing was stolen and Hayden had no enemies of any degree."

"What’s the motive for Rolf to have done it?  If they were breaking up then the worst case would be he had to move out.    Whoop-de-doo!  He’s been living by himself for a while, that’s no big deal."

Mike pursed his lips, looked down and then at me.   "Hayden had, about a week before, changed his will.    Rolf would have inherited the house, a bunch of shares, and some money."

"Oh, shit!  Did Rolf know about this?"

"He says not, but who knows for sure what he knew or what he guessed.or what he hoped."

"Who else knew about the will?"

"No-one is admitting anything.    The neighbors witnessed it, but said that Hayden hadn’t said anything about its contents, and they had not read, or even tried to read, the contents.      But it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to conjecture that a new mate moving in and a will getting changed probably have a connection."

"Who would have benefited under the previous will?"

"We don’t know.   Hayden must have destroyed it after making the new one.   We certainly haven’t found any earlier document.    Meadowcroft, who is a beneficiary under the new will, too, by the way, was under the impression that Coalter or his family would have got a fair amount.    The Coalter kids get only a small bequest each in the current will."

"So Coalter had a motive, then."

"Only if he didn’t know about the new will."

"But, if I understand the law at all, which I must admit seems really unlikely most of the time, Rolf cannot benefit from the new will if he committed the murder.   So don’t the Coalters then get a bigger share?"

"Not the way it’s written.   The way Hayden wrote it, either wittingly or unwittingly, gives the Coalters the same amount, but Meadowcroft’s share goes up a whole bunch."

"So Meadowcroft has the motive."

"You know, Chris, outside Agatha Christie and her ilk, the law-enforcement and the prosecutors’ offices know quite a lot about the law and about crime and about human nature.    We look for all this stuff.   Meadowcroft can account for every second of his time, with witnesses I may add, from the time he went to bed some twelve hours before Hayden’s murder until the paramedics arrived and Hayden died."

"Shit!  And this guy Coalter?  He’s a jerk — my money’s on him."

"Pretty much the same.    With the temperature of the body, the analysis of the digestion of breakfast, the time of death can be narrowed down to about a half-hour period.    During that half hour Coalter was standing in front of his restaurant getting his photograph taken.     His staff swear they knew where he was all morning until they got the phone call from Meadowcroft that Hayden was dead."

"How do they know what time he had breakfast?"

"Meadowcroft had phoned Hayden that morning and Hayden jokingly gave him a hard time about interrupting his breakfast.    The phone company records gave the time of the call.      And, before the phone records verified the time, Rolf had given the time of breakfast as pretty much the same."

"You know, this Meadowcroft has way too much involvement and entirely too tight an alibi in all this for my liking."

"Not really.   We generally have more problems with people trying to give us irrelevant information about crimes than we do in getting them to open up."

"So what about the other person?"

"What other person, Chris?"

"Well, wasn’t it the Sherlock Holmes you mentioned who said, once you’ve eliminated all the possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer?"

Mike swiveled in his chair to face me.   "Chris, there is no-one else.    First of all, why?  Secondly, why did no-one else see them?  Thirdly, why is there no trace of their presence in the house?  And really we haven’t dug up anything that eliminates Rolf."

"Then why are you down here looking for something you don’t know?  You just said you law guys know all sorts of shit about crime and human nature, you have an apparently open-and-shut case which, I may add, you’ve been working on for quite a while, but now at the eleventh hour you’re pussyfooting around because your gut tells you something’s wrong."

"I never said I didn’t think Rolf did it.   Logically and statistically he was the one.    Whatever evidence we have rules out anyone else."   He scratched a denim-covered knee and I suddenly glimpsed a human being behind the professional fa‡ade: a human being well aware of the responsibilities that rested on his shoulders.

"So you do think he did it?"

There was a pause and Mike looked down into his wine glass for a while before looking back up at me.     "Yup.     I think he did it.    I think he had found himself in a place briefly that he’d never been in before.   His position was idyllic  — going to parties where he was openly the partner of a respected member of the community.     Rolf in his intellectual way, I believe, thought that he would be able to live a more grandiose and cultured life than had been his wont before.    I think that, later, Hayden started having second thoughts and began to back-pedal.     Rolf felt betrayed and ridiculed and he simply went overboard."

"So why did you come down here then?"  I bored in relentlessly, my tech skepticism coming to the fore.

"I don’t know.    I had to get out of Savannah; I wanted some place where I could think out my strategy for Tuesday morning.     Certainly not to have some Geek second guess my every move."   He smiled at me to take the rancor out of his statement.

No offence was taken on my part.        This was way cool: I was getting to debate with a lawyer.    "You know, when I first heard about the case I kinda thought it was a lovers’ fight that had got out of hand, too.   That’s why I never worried too much about it; but now you’ve got a couple of unanswered questions that would make me think of reasonable doubt if I were on a jury."    I slung my legs up onto the couch and picked up my wine glass.

"Like what?"

"Why trash the house in the way he did?  If he’s mad at Hayden and is going to trash pictures of his ex and other stuff he liked, why pull all the rest of the stuff out?"

"He started off to make it look like a burglary because he was realizing what he’d just done and was scared.    Then, when he was coming to terms with all that, he came across something that Hayden was particularly fond of and his anger returned.   Subconsciously, in his mind, this was a way he could punish Hayden."

I gave a scornful glance.   "C’mon, he had only just begun to be with this guy.   I mean really seriously be with him.    It was just another relationship going sour.    This was way over-reacting.    If Hayden had chucked Rolf to go back to his ex, then OK, smash the picture of her.    If he had decided to let him go so that he could paint, then smash the painting.     But shit, haven’t you ever had a relationship go bust?"

"Well, yeah, of course."  A hint of confusion, I’d hit a chink in the legal armor, but his recovery was smooth, "But then it was more of a mutual drifting apart.   Rolf was still very much in love and got dumped more-or-less at the end of a high-visibility date.

"The way the prosecution sees it is that on the morning of the fourth, probably at breakfast, Hayden told Rolf that things weren’t working out and he wanted to return to how everything had been before: just friends or just riding buddies.

"Rolf spends time trying to persuade Hayden to give it another go.   Maybe he says he won’t ask for the rough sex.    Whatever.     His arguments go nowhere and the breakfast ends.    Hayden starts to tidy up and the argument continues in the kitchen until, finally, in a moment of sheer, unthinking frustration Rolf picks up the pan and brings it down on Hayden’s head.

"He probably didn’t mean to kill Hayden but rather make him listen.   When Hayden falls down he discovers that Hayden is dead.    That brings Rolf down to earth fast.    Like any amateur crook he decides to try to make it look like a robbery, but takes out particular vengeance on stuff Hayden liked because Hayden made him do this.

"Then he tears off because he knows that Meadowcroft will be coming and would want to speak to Hayden."

"And the cuff links?"

Mike shrugged.   "In the general pillaging he comes across those.   He likes them and he knows they were dear to Hayden and so takes them.   He’s remorseful and thus he can always have something of Hayden’s with him."

"And the jury’s gonna believe that?"

"Well, let’s see.    I’m going to produce a friend that says he believes that Rolf couldn’t have done it for reasons the jury will find tough to swallow, then, under cross-examination this guy’ll admit that Rolf liked "manly" sex.    I’m unable to lay a hint of reasonable doubt on anyone else because, heaven knows, anyone who had the slightest motive has an alibi, and finally there’s no motive for anyone who doesn’t have an alibi."

"And even if they think he looks like the nice boy next door, and even if they want to believe me, when they consider their duty as jury-people, they’ll convict him.    He won’t get the death penalty, but he’s going away for a long time."    He took a long, slow drink from his glass then looked at me. "So what else troubles you?"

"Why did Meadowcroft try and revive Hayden?"

"What?" That had come at him out of left field.    "Shit, because he had no real medical training, but knew that if Hayden could be saved he had to preserve the circulation and the oxygen supply."

"Is that what he said or what you surmise?"

"Effectively what he said on the stand.    I mightn’t have it word for word, but that’s the gist of it.    What’re you getting at?"

"Did Rolf have any more medical knowledge than Meadowcroft?   If Meadowcroft could think that Hayden might recover, why wouldn’t Rolf?  So why go to all the trouble of staging a burglary if the victim might wake up and say, ‘That ungrateful little shit, Rolf, was the guy that hit me on the head with my own pan’?  Why didn’t he make sure?  Go and hit Hayden again — or stab him?"

Mike ran his hand up under the hair on the back of his head.    "You have a point.   I might use that in summary — try and cast some element of doubt.    But personally I would say that most folk overestimate the injuries they cause others rather than underestimate them.   Even if the blow had been less forceful, Rolf may have been convinced he’d killed Hayden."

"Maybe  — you know more about the criminal mind than I do. OK, let’s let that slide for now.   When he left the house in a hurry, do you know how long he kept his front wheel off the ground?"

"No.   Why on earth would that be important?"

"Well, it’s a biker thing.   If he was merely in a hurry, he could have gone wide fucking open and the wheel would have lifted, but he would have probably brought it back down quickly to get more control.    On the other hand, if the guy was really happy and in good spirits, he could well have kept the wheel up for a hundred yards or more.   Just like a happy pilot may do flick rolls for a long time to express his joie de vivre."

Mike looked at me for a long time trying to gauge how serious I was.   Finally he put his glass down and stood up.     "OK, Chris.    Let me go get my file.   My assistant or I make notes while the witnesses talk and maybe that’s down there somewhere."     He took the stairs two at a time. When he came down he had a concertina folder, a yellow pad and a ball point and I had decanted the second bottle of Shiraz.

He selected a manila folder and pulled it out.    "Here she is: Ozella Godel.    Even got her phone number."     He scanned the notes for a minute, "No, no real mention of that.    Shit, do you think eight thirty is too late to call?"

"Naah.     Use my phone.   If they sound sleepy when they answer then apologize and say it’s a wrong number.    Then you can call back tomorrow on your cell."

"You’re a devious bastard, you know that!"

"Just do it."   I tossed the handset over to him.    "Do I have to leave the room?"

"No, only if I talk to Rolf.   Ms. Godel has not hired me to represent her, so what she says isn’t protected."    He punched in the numbers and held the handset to his head.

"Good evening.    I’m sorry to be calling so late, but this is quite important.    May I speak to Ms. Ozella Godel, please?"   There was a pause.

"Hello, Ms. Godel.    This is Mike Jorgensen.     I’m the attorney representing Rolf Lee and I questioned you earlier today on the witness stand…

"Oh, no.    Nothing at all was wrong.   Your testimony was very helpful.   I just was wondering, you mentioned that you saw Mr. Lee leave on his motorcycle and…

"No, no-one is doubting you in any way.   You were one of the star witnesses today and your testimony was very clear…

"Yes.  …   Yes…  Right.   You had mentioned that when he rode off his front wheel left the ground …

"Yes…you’re right.it probably is against the law, but with only two police officers on Kirkhall they can’t be everywhere, I guess…" he rolled his eyes.

"Exactly…now Ms. Godel, did you happen to notice how long Mr. Lee kept the front wheel off the ground?"   He was quiet for a long time.   While he listened to her answer, his eyes never caught mine and his face betrayed no expression.   That must be another thing they taught at law school.

"Really?  I don’t know how they do it either.    But I agree, it does sound extremely dangerous…

"Exactly.    Well, fortunately there weren’t any children there…

"I know.   Well, thank you very much.   Your answer has been very helpful…

"OK, then.    Thank you very much and again, I’m sorry to have disturbed you.   Have a good night."

He put the phone down and looked at me speculatively flipping the ball point end over end in his hand.

"Front wheel up all the way to the stop sign?"   I asked reading his reaction.

"Well, at least for a long, long ways."   He changed his voice to a falsetto, "I don’t know how he didn’t come off.    If there had been kids in the street they’d have been killed.   He had no control over that motorcycle.    There’s never a cop around where they should be."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever.   If there’d been kids around he wouldn’t have done it until he was at least level with them so that they could admire his riding.   Anyways, he wouldn’t want to mess his bike up by hitting anyone."

"Well, I’m glad you guys have your priorities right."

"Go get yourself a bike then we’ll talk."    I brought my mind back to the problem in hand.

"I don’t think friend Rolf was under much stress when he left that house.   So, let’s see, what’s the next strike against him?  When he came back from his fruitless, no pun intended, trip to Savannah, where did he go?"

"Yeah, I’d thought of that, too.      The State Police stopped him on the bridge before he would have taken a turn in either direction so we have no clue.   He says he was going back to Hayden’s place, but who knows."

"OK.   Then what about this rough sex?  Is that true?"

"According to Rolf, there’s no truth in it and he and Hayden had a good and mutually exciting and satisfying sex life.    When I talked to his Savannah friend, he admitted that Rolf could get rather, masculine was the term he used, when he got really aroused.  &nb