As I stepped out of the terminal into the scorching heat, I took a look around the airport. Never been to LA before. LA-X is the international airport, and looking out the window, I gasped at how flat the airfield was. Never in a million years could they pull it off in New England. The scale was disorienting.

After I dragged my suitcase inside, a young man wearing a cowboy hat and jeans stopped in front of me.

Howdy, I almost said. He was a big guy, tall and lanky, but his eyes bore none of the laidback attitude his posture would portray. He was sharp, in the way I like to think I’m sharp.

“You have to be Gunther,” I said.

He laughed. “And you got to be Ms. Bailey.”

With one hand he took my luggage and lifted it smoothly off the ground. I had to jog to catch up to him, and I thought with some amusement that I would have no trouble finding him if I did happen to lose him. His cowboy hat sailed a foot above the crowd.

Out front he found a blue sedan and popped the trunk. While he put my bag in, I leaned over next to him. “What’s a girl like Tammy Faye doing asking me for my help? Did you know she was a televangelist? Am I crazy? Be honest if you can. I took this job half expecting to be fired on sight when she realizes who I am.”

Gunther turned and eyed me. “She might not have noticed.”

“But as far as I can tell, she and I have nothing in common, and I don’t have the kind of reputation to attract customers from across the country.”

He shrugged. “You can ask her. But not today. Hop in. I can drop you off at the hotel.”

And that’s how I wound up in LA for the first time.

The next day, I got up before my alarm, and walked around restlessly on the thick carpeted floors of the hotel. Breakfast in the hotel lobby was lucky charms out of a plastic container. The hotel lobby smelled fresh as an endless summer.

My ride came exactly on time. When I caught a glimpse of the car and driver through the round windowpane: he was a tall, weatherbeaten man in a deep red and green flannel, with a squint in his eye and a stern set to his jaw. Somehow seeing Gunther sitting in his car, I felt like I got him. I saw the silhouette of a worn leather cowboy hat on his head.

The car was old, frosty blue with beige hubcaps and faded leather seats. As I navigated out the spinning hotel door, he hunched over to look out at me through the window, and his look was casual but sharply discerning. I felt he wasn’t looking at me the way normal people do. I felt like he was looking into me. With a practiced motion he leaned over and popped the door open. Looking at him through the open door, it occurred to me how out-of-place he was in the car. He belonged on horseback, wind in his hair.

“Gunther,” he said, in case I’d forgotten. “Ms. Mennser sent me to pick you up.”

Pulling out of the hotel’s semi-circular driveway, Gunther drove me to where Tammy Mennser lived. Up the boulevard lined with beach houses, screened with evenly spaced bushes, palm trees, and deep evergreens for shade.

I saw Tammy soon as we pulled in. White hair that curled at the end like elk antler clouds about her jawline, and a face both serene and remote, a judging face, a face that offered no warmth or sigh of approval.

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She sat under a white arch, surveying the pool, its aquamarine tiles and the sun-baked patio around it. Flower beds lay beyond the patio, in view of a generous balcony of bleached wood, like driftwood. A white stone chimney rose above the pale orange roofing, and thin, glittering windows glaring out from the tops of private lofts and bedrooms inside.

The cowboy and I approached her up a winding cobblestone walkway. She did not turn her head, but stared resolutely into the distance, over the flower beds, the groves of palm trees, the gentle slope of sand and dry grass down to the roiling blue and white foam breakers, out to sea. We stopped in front of her, our feet coming to rest on the echoey stone walkway. She turned as if she had known we were there, stood up, and shook my hand. Her grip surprised me. “You’re the girl,” she said. The first surprise of many; her voice was a southern drawl.

“Eliza,” I said. She asked my last name and I told her.

“Tamara Menser.” She let my hand go. “Like anything to drink?”

I shook my head and sat down next to the lady, fingering the armrests. When Tamara had sat down carefully, much slower than when she got up, she eased herself back into the cushions.

“I read your book.”

“Thanks.”

“Based on a true story, really?”

“As much as an autobiography can be.”

“Meaning?”

I shrugged.

“No tell me. I want to know.

“Okay. The marketing team says it’s based on a true story in order to trick the audience into thinking of it as real. It sort of doesn’t matter if it’s based on a true story. What would that even mean?”

“Well, you talk just like in the book. And I like the way you think. The way you think about things. I like your point of view. You can help me. That’s what I think. Your book demonstrates a kind of precision and thoroughness in regards to your research.”

I paused, to let her go on, but no.

“You want me to do some research for you?” I said.

“Indeed.”

“I flew a long way to see you today.”

“And you’ve been well compensated. Maybe you wonder why I didn’t just tell you over the phone?”

“Yes, but it’s pointless to wonder because I don’t have room for a job right now.”

“Oh?”

“You’re aware I’m a journalist?”

“Indeed.”

“Well, usually I publish my research, in a story.”

“Hear me out,” she smiled. “I’m aware of your interest in journalist. My offer isn’t money alone. I have connections in the publishing world—I was a TV presenter once, and then a writer. You might find my network useful, but—” she raised a hand to silence me. “I was going to suggest that, assuming you can solve the case, why not write an article about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it. You’d have to move out here, but I can help with that too.”

“You haven’t even told me what we’re talking about.”

“You haven’t exactly given me room to breathe. Is everyone from Boston like you?”

“You should know. You went to college in Boston.”

“I thought I went to college in Tennessee,” she said, smiling.

I shrugged.

“Alright, I’m impressed, but weren’t you partway through refusing my offer?”

“I want to take your offer. I’m enticed, and the pay is—I mean, I wish I could. But I can’t.”

“Well, I respect that. In that case, best of luck to you.”

“Out of curiosity, what was the case?”

“A five-year-old boy murdered his own father.”

“Right. Best of luck to you.”