“Very funny. I don’t pick the locations of the pictures I make.”

“Then you’ll come along? We will make an interestin’ couple. Unsettle the natives.”

It would be nice to get away from the intense atmosphere that surrounded the production, he thought. See some new country, meet some new people. The Teamsters he usually hung out with probably had plans of their own for the weekend. And he’d heard that the Georgia coast was real pretty.

“Why not?” He buttoned up his poncho. “I’ll rent a car.”

“I’ll let you,” she said agreeably.

III

They clung to 95 all the way to the coast, picking up Interstate 16 just north of Savannah. From there it was a straight shot southward.

Much of the town of Brunswick was obscured by dense forest which was a never-ending source of wonder to a visitor from Southern California. Piney woods dominated the terrain in every direction except east, where tidal flats and rush-choked waterways separated the coast from a verdant necklace of barrier islands.

The address led them to a cluster of private postal boxes. Only Ashwood’s insistence and Carter’s wheedling succeeded in prying the location of the owner’s actual residence from the reluctant but slightly awed franchise operator.

“Can’t get a reward from a post office box,” Ashwood pointed out.

The disc’s owner lived not on the mainland but on nearby Sea Island, which was itself a suburb of Saint Simon Island. Directions sent them across a busy causeway, through housing developments and compact shopping centers, across a second much smaller causeway, until they eventually found themselves driving down an unexpectedly beautiful avenue lined with enormous live oaks.

Spanish moss dripped atmospherically from the vaulting branches. Stunted streets named for local flowers, birds, and animals ran perpendicular toward the mainland or Atlantic Ocean. The houses themselves consisted of everything from fifties ranchstyle homes to rambling Castilian mansions and concrete bastions ajut with Bauhaus flourishes.

Robin Lane contained only four homes. The last, of brick and glass, faced the surf. Vehicular approach to the house was barred by a gray wrought-iron gate. From what little he knew of such matters, Carter thought the house architecturally unimaginative and pedestrian in execution.

“Not a bad place,” he commented, damning it with faint praise.

Ashwood let out a grunt. “Be the caretaker’s shack in Beverly Hills. I reckon it’s what passes for fancy around here.”

An intercom was mounted on the pillar immediately to the right of the gate. Ashwood rolled down her window, leaned out, and addressed the pickup. Following a brief delay a male voice replied.

“Who is it?” The voice was richly nasal, with a drawl than hinted strongly of New England rather than southern origins, Carter decided.

“My name’s Ashwood. Got a friend with me. Were y’all by any chance floatin’ around the Macon area the other day?”

Another pause, then, “Who are you people, and what do you want? I’m a …”

“… very busy man,” Ashwood finished for him. “I know, you men are always ‘very busy.’ Just answer one question for us. Did you visit a movie set and lose something?”

No pause this time. “You found my property?”

“What kind of property?”

“A small storage CD,” the voice replied impatiently. “Obviously you found it, or you would not have been able to find me. Just a moment.”

The disembodied twang was replaced by the whirr of a hidden motor as the heavy gate was drawn aside.

“Park by the main door, please. I will meet you there.”

“Not so fast,” said Ashwood. “How do we know y’all are the owner and not just somebody house-sittin’? Are you,” she hesitated briefly, remembering, “Bruton Fewick?”

“Fee-wick,” the voice snapped. “Not Few-ick. I am.”

As Carter drove up, Fewick came lumbering lightly down the front steps, moving with unusual grace for someone with the build of a resurrected zeppelin. He had wavy blond hair, hazel eyes, and the look and demeanor of a demented baby. He was also much younger than Carter expected, thirty at most.

“I am very grateful to you.” Definitely New England, Carter thought. As an actor he picked up on accents right away. “I have been working with the material on that disc for some time and, silly me, neglected to back up everything.” He turned. “Please, come inside.”

Must be valuable, Ashwood told herself, for him to have been carryin’ it around with him. To Carter she added in a whisper, “Maybe we can get two thousand out of him.”

“Marjorie.” Carter shook his head disapprovingly.

He expected servants, but there were no other signs of life as Fewick led them through the house and into a combination library-study.

“Stupid of me,” their host was saying, “keeping that on my person.”

“Yeah, it was.” Ashwood feigned interest in the crowded bookshelves that lined the walls.

“You must know something of how RW-CDs function because you got in deep enough to unearth my name and address.”

“I work with optical storage myself,” she told him. He looks like a surfing snowman, she thought. Only pink instead of white. All he needed was black eyes instead of brown and a carrot sticking out of his mouth. Instead of waddling when he walked, as she would have expected, he covered ground with a sort of athletic mince.

Unlike his companion, Carter found the room fascinating. The only time he’d ever seen more books in a private residence was in the mansion of a major producer who’d been considering him for a role. Every book there had looked brand-new, probably because not one of them had been touched by human hands since they’d left the bindery. In contrast Fewick’s all looked thoroughly perused, unevenly packed on their shelves, sometimes stacked in horizontal haste instead of having being returned to their proper niches.

A huge antique desk dominated one corner of the room near a window that overlooked sand and salt grass. Gilt decorated its clawed feet and edges. Two other tables stood nearby. The top of one was inclined forty-five degrees and displayed sheets of paper. It was illuminated from within. The other was home to more than a dozen wide, shallow drawers of the type one might find in the office of a professional cartographer.

Sculptures and other arcane objects were scattered about the room: on shelves, pedestals, the carpeted floor. Carter found himself standing next to a gargoylish human figure which had been boldly hacked from black wood. Decorated with feathers and beads, its cowrie-shell eyes seemed to follow him around the room. He thought the fist-sized ball of amber on the desk much more attractive, despite the dozen or so insects entombed within. It rested next to a small solid sterling sculpture of a nude woman and a swan, whom the artist had captured in the middle of an act not likely to be depicted anytime soon on the Disney Channel.

“Lotta books,” Ashwood observed. “You read ’em all?”

“At least in part,” Fewick replied pleasantly.

Carter turned from the desk. “Mind my asking what kind of business you’re in?”

Fewick beamed. “Why, the best sort of business there is.” A gargled, choking noise emerged from his throat, which, since he was evincing no obvious signs of external distress, could be nothing other than a laugh. “My parents are obscenely wealthy. They are also painfully sophisticated, extremely intelligent, and dull as dishwater. Which is why, as soon as I came into my inheritance from my grandparents, who were, if anything, even duller people, I immediately moved out of the family manse and set myself up down here.”

“Where’s home?” Ashwood asked him.

“Boston. Have you ever been to Boston, Mr….?”

“Jason Carter. I’m from Minnesota myself. About fifty miles west of Minneapolis. A town called …”

“How extremely interesting,” Fewick said with unseemly haste. As their host smiled it struck the actor that he wasn’t being intentionally rude. It was simply his manner. At least he was straightforward, which was more than could be said for the average executive producer or axe-murderer.

“If you would be so kind as to restore my property to me?”

Ashwood removed the plastic-wrapped CD from her purse and handed it over. Fewick took it delicately, holding it by the edges.

“Thank you,” he told her with feeling.