The Trade. Shirley Palmer

handed Matt a bottle of Evian, and leaned his belly against the railing. “I saw Margie Little. Your horses are over in Agoura. Be good if you could make arrangements for them, the animal shelter is pushed to the limit.”

      “I’ll get them out of there as soon as I can. Your house okay?” Bobby and his wife Sylvie had a tiny place in Las Flores Canyon.

      “Yeah, bit singed is all. Lost the big cedar in front, though. Okay, I’ve got to go, there’s a long night still ahead.” He patted Matt’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of the baby, Matt. Don’t worry about it. Maybe you’d better have someone take a look at that arm.”

      “Sure,” Matt said. He did not turn to see Bobby leave with the child in his arms. He listened to retreating footsteps, the sirens racing along the highway. The wind had shifted and was blowing offshore again.

      It would be days before this fire was contained.

      CHAPTER 3

      “Matt, did you hear what I said?” Ned Lowell leaned back from his desk to look out of the window of the office on San Vicente Boulevard in fashionable Brentwood. “What’s so interesting down there?”

      The small plaza below the window was festive, elegant stores decorated for Halloween with piles of pumpkins and hay bales, kids and adults in costume, witches, dragons, fairies, a lot of Harry Potters. Matt had his eyes on a small pink rabbit with big floppy ears and white tail. Her mother was holding her on a large orange pumpkin while her father took pictures.

      “Cute mom,” Ned said.

      Matt spun his chair around, fitting his feet around Barney, asleep under his half of the partner’s desk he shared with his older brother. The office was large, the main decorative feature the display of architectural photographs of Lowell Brothers projects. “I’m listening. What did you say?”

      “I said Mike Greffen called about that building downtown on San Julian and Pico. Did you look at it?”

      “Not yet. I’d planned to go down on Monday before the fire. Used to be a dress factory. Been empty for years, price should be right.”

      “What’s around there?”

      “About what you’d expect in the garment district. Plus some light manufacturing, a few run-down apartment buildings. Pretty grim, but it might be good for studios or workshops.”

      In fourteen years, they had created elegant offices in abandoned banks for those eccentric souls who found high-rise office buildings sterile, made luxurious pied-à-terre apartments out of crumbling warehouses, built low-cost housing in old railroad yards, for which the city loved them. They had turned deconsecrated churches into concert venues and restaurants, created artisans workshops, art studios and lofts throughout downtown. On the way, Lowell Brothers had received design awards, thanks from a grateful city, and made a lot of money.

      Ned rose to his feet, stretched his six foot two plus frame—he had a couple of inches on Matt—rotated his hips, then shrugged into his jacket. Matt noticed how much his brother was looking like their dad as he grew older, the same thick rumpled head of dark hair streaked now with gray, the deepening lines around his eyes and mouth. He’d look like that, too, probably, when he was Ned’s age, another ten years. They’d always looked alike.

      “I’ll call Mike in the morning then. Right now, I’ve got to get home for trick-or-treating or Julie will kill me. Are you coming?”

      “No, I don’t think so.”

      “Why not?” Ned stopped at Matt’s desk, and peered into his face. “Matt, you don’t look so good. I know it’s only been a couple of days, but are you okay? Sleeping, eating, that kind of stuff?”

      “What are you, my mother all of a sudden? Get out of here.”

      Ned lingered. “Listen, this dead baby. You want to talk about it?”

      “Nothing to talk about. Get going.”

      “I know it was a hell of a thing, but it’s not your business. You just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. You didn’t know that baby. You couldn’t have saved it. It happens, shit like this.”

      “You’re right. It does. It just did.”

      “Oh, come on, you know what I mean.”

      “No, you’re right. It’s not my business.”

      But it felt like his business. Yesterday, Matt had spent a couple of hours with sheriff’s deputies walking the beach trying to pinpoint the exact place where he’d found the baby’s body. They’d found nothing. No trace.

      “So why don’t you come over tonight and hand out candy, while we take the boys out to plunder the neighborhood?”

      “Not this year.” Last year, he and Ginn had still been together. It had been a blast just watching her laughing at the parade of kids, oohing and aahing over the costumes. She was good with kids.

      “We’ve got people coming over later, costumes and some drinks. Julie asked Susan Dean, and I think she only said yes because Julie dangled you as bait. Susan’s a good architect, bright, and gorgeous. What she sees in you God only knows.” He thumped Matt’s shoulder affectionately.

      “Now you’re my social director, too? I thought you said you were going home.”

      “If it’s still about Ginn, Matt, that was your choice.”

      “She’s the one who left, not me.”

      “Come on, man. She’s thirty-five years old. She wants kids. You don’t even want to get married. You think you left her any option?”

      “Knock it off, Ned, okay?”

      Ned raised both hands. “Sorry I spoke. See you tomorrow.”

      Matt waited until the door closed behind him. He looked down into the plaza, but the pink rabbit and her family had gone.

      He reached for the phone. The deputy who answered said that Eckhart wasn’t in the station house. Matt left a message that he’d called.

      Traffic was clogged on the Pacific Coast Highway. Fire equipment returning to home bases all over the state rumbled south to the I-10. Going north was a nightmare of backed-up traffic. At Topanga Canyon a young entrepreneur was doing a brisk business, running up and down the line of cars waiting to get through the sheriff’s department roadblock, taking money, handing out T-shirts that read “I Survived The Latest Greatest Malibu Topanga Fire.”

      Matt showed his driver’s license to a deputy to prove he was a resident and was waved through. A few restaurants had reopened in time for Halloween but they’d be crowded with people wearing false noses and mustaches, partying and swapping war stories. He stopped at PC Greens to pick up food for dinner.

      It was dark when he got home. Instead of the sweet smell of sumac and thyme that grew wild up on the hills, the heavy stink of wet ash pervaded the air, overpowering even the fresh salt spray from the Pacific.

      The phone in the kitchen started to ring as he came down the walkway. Barney raced ahead and Matt hurried the last few steps—mad hope, but maybe Ginn was calling to find out whether the house had survived, if the horses were okay, how Barney had come through. She’d found Barns at some rescue outfit, a two-month-old pale yellow scrap with an unusual white star on his forehead, and brought him home, dumped him in Matt’s lap on his birthday a couple years ago. Matt let himself into the kitchen, dropped the groceries on the table and picked up the phone.

      “Matt Lowell.”

      “Hey, Matt. What have you been up to?” Jimmy McPhee’s voice was loud, jovial.

      “Hi, Jim. Heard the restaurant made it okay. I’m glad.”

      “Yeah, by the grace of the Almighty. Only damage was a broken window in the kitchen, can you beat that?”

      “I’m