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air billowed the curtains, and yellow moonlight filtered in through the open screened windows. I expected to fall asleep instantly and stay that way. Sea air generally does that to me.
    Maybe it was the nightcap that Eliza had talked me into after she got Sarah tucked into her bed on the sunporch for the night, or maybe it was my visions of hooking a giant striper and winning the Derby, but for some reason I slept fitfully. When my eyes popped open in the darkness for the second or third time, I checked my watch. It was around three-thirty in the morning, the darkest hour.
    I figured I was awake for a while, so I got dressed, slipped downstairs, and went outside for a smoke.
    The Derby had been open since midnight—for three and a half hours. J.W., along with several hundred other competitors, was out there somewherewinging his Roberts plug impossibly long distances into the dark ocean. I wished I was with him.
    I went around to the back of the house, where the Fairchild land sloped away over a broad meadow down to their beach. I thought about the big bass and bluefish that were probably herding baitfish against the rocks there. They’d be swirling and flashing their tails and dorsal fins in the moonlight. I was half tempted to go back upstairs, collect my gear, and spend the rest of the night on the beach.
    But I didn’t. I had a week’s worth of nights to fish with J.W. and Zee, and I had an important bet with my son that I intended to win. What I needed to do this night was get some sleep.
    I’d just ground out my cigarette under my heel and turned to head back into the house when I heard an engine start and saw headlights in the turnaround out front. As I watched, a car pulled slowly out of the driveway and turned east on the dirt road. A late-night visitor slipping away after a quick visit to Eliza’s bed? Nate, heading off to the beach with his surf-casting rod to be there before the sun?
    None of my business. Both of Sarah’s children were grown-ups, regardless of how they acted.
    Eliza rapped on my door around nine the next morning. “Are you decent?” she called.
    â€œI’m always decent,” I answered primly.
    â€œToo bad,” she said. She opened the door and came in, bearing a mug of coffee. “There are altogether too many decent men in this world.” Eliza was wearing white shorts that set off her tanned legsnicely and a pale blue tank top that matched her eyes. Pink lipstick, just a hint of green eye shadow, dangly silver earrings.
    She looked quite fetching first thing in the morning, and I told her so.
    â€œI’m glad someone thinks so,” she said. She wished she could linger in my bedroom for more compliments, she said, but she was off to Farm Neck for a round of golf. She’d be back by midafternoon, in time for gin and tonics and flattery. She’d be hurt if I didn’t join her.
    I said I didn’t know what my plans were, but if I was here, a gin and tonic would suit me, and flattering her was not difficult.
    Patrick, she said, was still asleep, and she assumed Nate was in his room at the end of the wing near the barn, sleeping off his night of fishing. Sarah was on the sunporch. Patrick would be up soon to attend to her.
    I should make myself at home, Eliza said. Then she left.
    I drank my coffee sitting up in bed, took a shower, then went downstairs. When I peeked in on Sarah, she had an open book lying facedown on her lap, and her chin was slumped onto her chest the way I’d found her the previous night.
    So I gathered up my briefcase, a portable telephone, and another mug of coffee, and I took them out to the patio. I had to absorb all the information on the Marshall Lea Foundation and the Isle of Dreams Development Corporation that my secretary, Julie, had collected for me, and then I’d make a few phonecalls and set up some meetings. I intended to be finished by midafternoon. I itched to do some fishing.
    It was a