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it, met the devil on a Delta crossroads somewhere nearby and sold his soul in exchange for his unholy excellence on the guitar.
As the final hymn drifted over the heads of Vanessa's mourners, I heard the low murmur of a single-engine prop biplane that resurrected a distant memory of riding in the back of Al Thompson's pickup down some dusty road at Mossy Plantation when the crop dusters would fly right over our heads and leave us lightly frosted with DDT powder.
Faces in the crowd turned expectantly upward as one, toward a vintage, fabriccovered Stearman PT-17 Kaydet biplane painted bright red. The old military trainers from the mid-1920s had been all over the Delta when I was a child. From a lengthy New York Times article, we all knew the Stearman was owned and piloted by Vanessa's daughter; Jasmine, who had almost become a commercial airline pilot before being pulled into her mother's irresistible orbit of law and power.
The Times article noted that even as a child, Jasmine had been something of an aviation prodigy, winning competitions and the respect of adults many decades her senior by designing and building advanced radio-controlled model aircraft that enabled her to obtain three patents by the time she was thirteen. But by then, she had moved on to earning a license to fly real aircraft.
Because her mother's offer of financial assistance with college came with law school strings attached, Jasmine—having inherited her mother's headstrong temperament—refused the money and had put herself through school by flying a news helicopter for a series of Los Angeles television stringers and freelancers before finally landing a slot with one of the network affiliates.
All of this came back clearly and easily as the biplane emerged over the treetops so low and slow I was certain it would simply fall out of the sky. Instead it made a lazy, tight circle as only a biplane can do in the hands of an expert pilot, then loosed a dense shower of rose petals, filling the sky with color and the air with fragrance. The Stearman dipped its wings, then vanished as the brilliant petals drifted to earth.
No one moved until long after the sound of the Stearman's engine had faded, such was the shock, the depth of loss, and the reluctance to leave a wonderful woman behind. Then we all began to drift reluctantly away.
I thought I had said good-bye to Vanessa and the past. I was wrong.

CHAPTER 14
    Standing at the wheel of my sailboat, I marveled at the smoky orange remains of a late June sun as it sank beneath the horizon, leaving behind a hazy Southern California sky painted with shifting pastels of peach, terra-cotta, and a strange smoky rose that worked its way through violet into the black approach of night.
    The deck of the sloop Jambalaya hummed smoothly beneath my feet as I steered her on a port tack, heading straight toward the beach at Playa Del Rey. Night sifted down swiftly now, filling in all the spaces between the shadows. I reached through the spokes of the wheel and turned on the running lights. I kept a close eye for the idiots who had no clue about lights and for the legitimate Sunday-evening traffic as well. As the traffic to my port side opened up, I eased the Jambalaya's bow through the eye of the gentle wind. When the big 135 Genoa headsail began luffing, I hauled in on the port jib sheet wrapped three coils around the self-tailing winch, and trimmed it in. The main brought the boom around and filled itself with the air coming over the starboard bow.
    On my new tack, roughly northwest, the lights marking the breakwater protecting the main channel into Marina del Rey made faint halos in the evening haze. The chatter on the VHF grew louder and more urgent as a jam of private watercraft clotted at the narrow harbor entrance.
    As the Jambalaya gathered speed on its new tack away from the traffic, urgent, angry shouts echoed from the harbor entrance, shouts so loud they carried across the water, arriving like an echo moments after