
No one's ever fallen out of love with Glorette Picard, with her black waterfall of hair and skin gold as a mothwing. Fine as wine and just my kind, they call her. Gilt, they call her. Still, when they drive by the alley where she works every night, they call...

In August in Rio Seco, California, the ground is too hard to bury a body. But Glorette Picard is dead, and across the canal, out in the orange groves, they'll gather shovels and pickaxes and soak the dirt until they can lay her coffin down. First, someone needs to find her son...
