The Night Café. Taylor Smith

and drop off the painting. It wasn’t like she was running guns for Gladding.

      Approaching the end of the Santa Monica Freeway, the vista suddenly changed, the aqua-blue sky downshifting to gray. This early in the season, the ocean was still cold, so no matter how hot the Southern California land mass, when warm air met cool, it turned to dense fog. In the space of less than a mile, the temperature dropped about ten degrees. Hannah shivered in the sudden damp, rolling the car windows back up. By the time she turned onto Pacific Coast Highway, the air was so heavy that she could scarcely make out the crashing surf.

      Rush hour always meant stop-and-start progress on the two-lane highway, which traced the line of Southern California’s beach communities. Lighter northbound traffic allowed her to move a hair faster than the poor saps heading south into the heart of the city, but like most road trips in L.A., this one wouldn’t set any land speed records. She’d been in traffic so long by now that the NPR morning broadcast was repeating stories she’d already heard. When her cell phone bleeped, she snapped off the radio, happy for the distraction, grabbed the phone from the center console and glanced at the caller ID on the screen.

      “Hey, big sister! What’s up? Gabe leave something at your house last night?”

      “No, not that I noticed,” Nora said. “I’m just on my way from the Amtrak station. I put Nolan on the train back to school and now I’m in standstill traffic heading home.”

      “Yeah, me too.”

      “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”

      “Oh, believe me,” Hannah said, “if a monkey took the wheel, it couldn’t possibly get into an accident going this slowly.”

      “It’s not the driving. It’s just that I don’t want to interfere.”

      “Interfere?”

      Nora hesitated. “Are you still going with Rebecca to pick up that painting this morning?”

      “I’m en route to Malibu as we speak. Why?”

      “It’s just that…I don’t know. I should probably mind my own business…”

      If it were anyone else, Hannah would heartily agree that yes, she should, but saying so would only upset Nora, who was a sensitive soul and a worrier to boot. Maybe it was a sign of long-delayed maturity that Hannah was finally—mostly—learning to keep her smart-aleck mouth shut instead of bristling every time her big sister slipped into mama bear mode. “Spit it out, kid.”

      “Well…I don’t mean to tell you what to do, Hannah, but I’m really hoping you’ll do this favor for her. You will, won’t you?”

      Hannah said nothing.

      “Oh, I knew it. I’ve made you mad.”

      Hannah sighed. “I’m not mad, but I’m feeling a little pressured here, to tell you the truth. I just can’t commit to doing something because it’s your old roommate and you say I should.”

      “You shouldn’t not do it for those reasons either,” Nora snapped. Then, she relented. “I know you always think I’m trying to tell you how to live your life—”

      “It’s not that.” Although it was, a little. Would there ever come a day, Hannah wondered, when she’d stop feeling like the loser kid sister? “It’s that this is my business—my profession, I mean—and I know what I’m doing. I need to assess the whole picture before I agree to take on a job. It’s what I always do—although in this case, I’m even more inclined to tread carefully. You may not be aware of it, but this client of Rebecca’s is a real piece of work. Aren’t you the one who’s always nagging me to be a little more careful about what I jump into?”

      It was Nora’s turn to fall silent. Hannah wondered whether it was the “nagging” line that did it. Old family fault lines always ran deep and Nora knew she had a rep for being cautious to a fault.

      “You’re right. But my God, Hannah, did you see her yesterday? She looks like she’s lost about twenty pounds since I last saw her. She stayed on to talk for quite a while after you left last night. You wouldn’t believe what that bastard ex-husband of hers is putting her through. She’ll be lucky to get out of this without a bankruptcy. You know why she’s not getting the house like he promised?”

      “Why?”

      “Because in addition to maxing out every credit card they had—and some she didn’t know they had—he took out second and third mortgages on the house. With the drop in the real estate market, they went into negative equity, totally unbeknownst to her. Of course, California’s a community property state, so she’s on the hook for half the debt. Even after the house is sold—if it sells—she’ll still be in it up to her eyeballs. And the gallery isn’t exactly a moneymaker. They rarely are, Becs says. Having her own gallery was always her dream, but after what Bill’s done, she may have to pack it in and get a regular job just to pay her bills. And don’t even get me started on what happens if she gets sick, as she’s bound to at this rate, because of course she doesn’t have health insurance.”

      “Oh, man, and I thought Cal was a schmuck.”

      “At least he gave you the house.”

      “Yeah, for all the good it did me. Anyway, you’re right, it sucks, big-time.”

      “When you see Becs, don’t let on I told you about all this, okay? She’s mortified by what’s happened.”

      “Not a word, I promise.”

      “And Hannah? I’m sorry. As far as taking on this job for her, you do what you think is best. I know you know what you’re doing.”

      Now there’s a first.

      “Just pretend I never called. I’m really sorry.”

      Hannah rolled her eyes. “Stop apologizing already. It’s no big deal. And Nora?”

      “What?”

      “Don’t worry about Rebecca. This situation she’s in—it’s lousy, for sure. But you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She’s going to be okay.”

      “I really hope so.” But Nora’s sigh said she didn’t believe it for a minute.

      The Sandpiper Gallery was across the road and just north of the Malibu pier. If Rebecca had owned the building or the Malibu waterfront on which it stood, her financial problems would be nonexistent, but Nora had said that the property was a rental and not a cheap one at that. It had been Rebecca’s husband, Bill, a wheeler-dealer Realtor with delusions of grandeur, who’d insisted on this pricey location. Apparently he’d had visions of bringing in wealthy clients to buy art for the multimillion-dollar McMansions he was hoping to peddle—except Bill spent more time playing the ponies at Del Mar and Hollywood Park than in flogging real estate. Now Rebecca was stuck with a long-term lease that even Sotheby’s might have thought twice about taking on. How many commissions would you need to cover prime real estate like this and still pay the grocery bill? If the gallery was just some rich woman’s hobby, it might not have been a concern, but as a breadwinning proposition, it was iffy.

      Hannah pulled into the gallery parking lot, empty except for Rebecca’s fire-engine-red BMW. Climbing out of the Prius, she stretched muscles gone tight from the hour spent in traffic. Something moved in the corner of her eye and she swung in time to see three gray pelicans flying in low formation over the choppy waves, hunting for a fish dinner. Or maybe they weren’t hunting at all, just having an exuberant game of follow-the-leader in the morning light.

      Hannah smiled, then reached back into the car, grabbed her soft leather messenger bag, slung it over her shoulder and headed up the gallery’s sand-blown front steps. A sign in the front window said the gallery was closed on Mondays, but there were lights on inside, and when she tried the handle, the door opened and a bell tinkled softly. Instinctively, she kicked the sand off her shoes before stepping onto the gleaming hardwood floors.

      She’d