"Nonsense," Nicole said. They were sitting in the Clark living room in Hannegan's Cove a few hours later. "This place is almost too big as it is. With me gone it'll be really empty for Randy. You two figure on staying here."

"But Nicole," Myleigh protested. "As I told you last Winterset, I do not wish to even give the appearance of scandal. I should not like for you to have the least grounds of suspicion."

"Myleigh, your good manners and good intentions have always been one of the things I've liked best about you," Nicole said. "But sometimes you don't think things through."

"How, pray tell, may I ask?"

"Oh, I agree there might be some grounds for suspicion if you were staying here alone with Randy," Nicole smiled. "Not from me, but you never know what the loose lips are saying around a town like this. And, rentals are high here in the summer, so you wouldn't each want to have to rent one. And, there would be what you call 'grounds for suspicion' if you were to share an apartment with Trey, right?"

"Yes," Myleigh frowned. "That would be a concern, of course."

"Well, as I see it, if the two of you stay here, that way Randy is chaperoning the two of you, and Trey, you're chaperoning Randy and Myleigh. It makes a nice balance, as far as I'm concerned."

"And it won't be like you'll see a lot of me," Randy said. "Once we get going on Whispering Pines, there we are back at the fourteen and sixteen-hour days again."

"Between Whispering Pines and the Canyon album, I think there's going to be a few long days for us as well," Trey agreed.

"Fine," Randy said, "Works for me. Do your share of the cooking and cleaning and dishwashing, and we've got a deal."

"But Randy," Myleigh protested, "I should not wish for Trey and I to impinge upon your hospitality for several weeks. It should be most ungracious of us."

Randy let out a sigh. "Myleigh, how many times have I told you to get off your high horse and let a friend do a favor for you? Especially one that costs me almost nothing! Think of it as doing a favor for me. If you're here to keep me on the straight and narrow, Nicole may possibly get back from Mosquito Valley and not find the place looking like Matt and I used to keep our dorm room."

"Ah, yes," Myleigh remembered. "I do seem to recall something of a shambles on occasion. After you had cleaned it up, that is."

"I always got the impression from your mother that you were something of a neatnik in the dorm," Nicole grinned.

"It was actually sort of a running joke," Randy said. "The last week before I headed home, I'd start in on all the dirty laundry that had piled up, just to make Mom think well of me," he laughed. "She was always a little frustrated that she couldn't complain about the huge pile of dirty laundry that I never brought home."

"The truth comes out," Nicole said. "Well, OK, that's settled. Myleigh, I have to ask you. We've been calling this project 'your canyon album' ever since the idea came up back on the wedding trip. Have you come up with a name for it yet?"

"I confess, I did do some thinking about the notion whilst we spent many weary hours upon the Interstate," she said. "I suppose we shall have to see how the editing goes, and of course, we haven't even started on it yet. However, I can see that the order of the tracks will be something that shall have to be worked out, and I cannot help but think that one way to do it is to do a simple chronological progression down the river."

"Might work," Trey said. "I'd have to think about it some, but I know that I was pretty impressed with the track you cut back at Lee's Ferry, and the Diamond Wash one might prove to be a keeper, too. But, you're right, we'll have to see how the edit works out. But, what does that have to do with a name?"

"Trey, you will remember when Al asked if there might be room for the company name on the label, in the form of an acknowledgment?"

"Yeaaaah," Trey smiled, getting the idea.

"Considering the amount of assistance and forbearance we received in recording the album, I cannot help but wonder if 'Canyon Tours' should not be in the largest print on the label."

* * *

Fact, in time, becomes legend. Given more time, legend becomes myth, and then even myth fades . . . sometimes.

Memories fade especially quickly in organizations where there's a lot of personnel turnover. The story of Lenny Hurtibese and Sherwin Rogers getting dumped into a mosquito-filled northwoods swamp wasn't even a myth anymore around Hollywood Tonight, even though Sherwin was now chief cameraman in the studio where the daily production was done. Oh, once there were stories about it, part of the legend of the organization, but lots of people had come and gone in fourteen years, and Sherwin didn't like to talk about the story. It was one of the dumber, more embarrassing things that had ever happened to him -- and it would never have happened if Lenny hadn't gotten a hair wild enough to think that he could chase an airplane from the ground, even a creaky old antique. They were bad memories, and Sherwin hadn't thought about it in quite a while.

Though he held the title of "chief cameraman," he actually hadn't done any camera work in a few years, except for the time a bout of flu went through the studio staff, and he'd run the Number 2 camera for the evening taping. Mostly what he did was oversee the camera operations. He didn't actually make the assignments; that was the managing producer's job. The managing producer would assign a producer to do some coverage, and it was among Sherwin's responsibilities to see that the producer had a cameraman who was ready to shoot. Since normally, cameramen and producers stayed together in a more or less permanent crew, it wasn't something that took up much of Sherwin's time. But there was a lot of ground to cover. Sometimes a producer needed two cameramen -- or at least he thought he did -- and other times, a producer might be doing just some background work and not need any, so there was always some shuffling around, and never quite enough to go around. So, Sherwin was less than pleased to have the managing producer, John Dittmer, phone him with an order to burp up a cameraman for a special assignment, length unknown, lasting several days.

"Come on, John, get real," Sherwin replied to the call. "That's crazy. I can't bust loose a cameraman for a week or more. For Pete's sakes, I had to yank a guy off the Britney Spears watch today as it is. I'm going to play hell getting someone free for that long."

"This is a special deal," Dittmer told him. "We're going to try for some surveillance shots of Jenny Easton and her new baby."

"In Nashville? We've got a crew there, for God's sakes, why do we have to send someone from here?"

"There's just the one crew, and they're pretty busy," Dittmer replied. "Besides, this isn't Nashville, this is up in her home town, some place named Spearfish Lake."

"Spearfish Lake!" Sherwin almost yelled. "John, are you out of your stupid mind? You can't ask a crew to take a risk like that. They damn near kill people who come up there for sneak shots. Maybe they have. Didn't you ever hear about that?"

"About what?" John said.

Sherwin shook his head. The stupid bastard ought to have known better. But then, it had been a long time ago. He was fairly new, and might not have heard. "Look, a long time ago," he started, "A producer by the name of Leonard Hurtibese and I went up there to try for some shots of her. We were sorta speeding a little, trying to tail her, and we got stopped by the two biggest cops you ever saw. They roughed us up some, dumped us out in some damn swamp ten miles from nowhere with more damn mosquitoes than you ever saw in your life. Said they didn't like people trying for sneak shots of her. We barely made it out to the main road alive. We were lucky enough to catch a ride from some damn hillbilly in a pickup truck, and he took us to the airport. He told us that some deer hunters had found skeletons out in that damn woods, and the locals all thought it was a crew trying for shots of her. Lenny told Jim Six, he was the managing producer then, that he could take Hollywood Tonight and shove it, and I told him I'd go to Watts in the middle of a riot before I'd ever risk my life up there again."

"I hadn't heard that," John said. "In fact, I've never heard of anyone having trouble up there like that."

"Yeah, but how many film clips have you ever seen that were taken of her up there? Crap, it's all over town, at least used to be."

"Can't think of any film clips," John admitted. "But, that's all the more reason to do it. Something that hasn't been done before, at least recently. Look, there's photos of her in the tabs every now and then. Not often, but if crews from the tabs were disappearing, you'd think we'd have heard about it. Look, there's no reason to worry. We got a deal worked out with a guy from Nashville-Murray, the record company. He owes us a couple. He's going to try to get her out in the open for the crew, but the crew can't act like they know anything about him."

"You really want to lose a producer and a cameraman, don't you?" Sherwin snorted. "That has to be one of the dumber things I've ever heard come out of the front office. Follow her around in that small town, try to stay out of sight, and hope that nobody notices and that he can get her out in the open. Hell, we get good footage on Britney Spears every day, and even if you do get something out of a deal like that it won't be worth jack shit."

"We're committed to try," John said. "Maybe it doesn't work that way anymore. The tabs don't seem to have any trouble, anyway. If it works out, then this guy said he thinks he can work out a way to get us in and interview Mark Wolf in jail."

"Mark Wolf?" Sherwin snorted again. "Oh, that hillbilly singer who's doing ninety days for busting up some bar. What's he going to have to do, get them jailed there, too?"

"Hey, look," John said. "It's clear to me that this guy from Nashville-Murray, Frank Oldfield, is frying some other fish. If this comes off, he'll owe us a couple. This Mark Wolf doing time is about the biggest entertainment scandal in Nashville right now, and getting a jailhouse interview would run one by a lot of people. It makes it worth the risk."

"John, have you ever itched for three weeks with a body that is one solid damn mosquito bite? It's the height of the bug season up there right now! I don't want to have to be responsible for someone else going through something like that!"

"Sherwin, I said we're committed on this," Dittmer said firmly. "That means we're committed. I need a cameraman for a few days. I want the crew out of here tomorrow and up in Spearfish Lake the day after that. I don't want any more shit out of you. We're doing this."

"All right," Sherwin said, resigning himself to failure. At least he'd tried. "Let me figure out who I can afford to lose the most. Odds are they won't be back, at least soon." He hung up the phone, thinking various obscene thoughts about the front office people who threw around his resources like they were bottomless, then bitched because everything didn't get covered that they'd like. Did they think that his kind of cameraman grew on trees? This was beyond the limit. He knew that he could go over Dittmer's head, maybe get it revised -- or at least, maybe come up with a contract cameraman who he wouldn't care about losing. Come to think about it, there was a guy who was expecting an offer from World News Network -- he'd probably be losing him pretty soon, anyway . . .

Maybe Dittmer had a point. The tabs did seem to run shots of Jenny Easton every now and then. The Trib had one of her and her baby, oh, a couple months ago. In spite of the fact that Lenny had left Hollywood Tonight a long time ago, they'd stayed friends of a sort, stayed in contact every now and then. Besides, they'd shared some good times together, and that one bad time. If Lenny was getting shots of Jenny Easton, he'd have to know if they were still hassling people up there. Maybe he was just letting that bad memory get in the way of good coverage. Well, one way to find out . . . he reached for the phone.

Sherwin took a couple minutes going over old times and recent news with Lenny, times that didn't involve mosquitoes, before he worked his way around to the subject. "Hey, Lenny," he said, "I see you guys got a photo of Jenny Easton here a while back. Was that before the bugs came out?"

"Boy, that was a bad day, wasn't it?" Lenny laughed. "No, we got a local guy who can get around up there pretty good," Lenny replied. "He usually can get us the stuff we need if we wait a while for him to get it."

"Does he ever get hassled by the cops the way we did?" Sherwin asked.

"Not that I've ever heard, and he's been doing it for a while. He's kind of dumb, but he comes through."

"They must not dump people naked in the middle of a swamp anymore," Sherwin said. "At least, I haven't heard any stories recently."

"Well, there was a guy from the Inquirer," Lenny said, "Maybe a year or so after our little adventure. I guess he mouthed off to some cop, and wound up doing sixty days in the local slammer, but I haven't heard of anything recently. Our guy never seems to have any trouble. I'm thinking that those cops we ran into weren't exactly spring chickens, they might have retired. Are you guys thinking about sending a crew up there again?"

"Thinking about it," Sherwin admitted, not wanting to say that he'd been flat ordered to do it. "The deal is that some record company exec by the name of Oldfield is going to be up there, day after tomorrow. The crew is supposed to stay a little covert, and this Oldfield guy is going to try to get her out of her house, maybe with her new kid."

"Might work," Lenny said thoughtfully. "Don't know that you'd get any decent footage out of it, but like I say, our guy seems to get around there all right anymore. I don't really follow it that close now since Jenny Easton isn't really box office for us. That story we ran a couple months ago, I thought it might stir things up a little, but it died on us. I think people just really don't care about her all that much anymore. My guess is that there hasn't been a film crew who's tried it in a while. If they got in, kept quiet, got their shots, and got out, I think there'd be a good chance of getting away with it. If there hasn't been a film crew in a while, they might not be expecting one. When we did it that time, we hung around town, not laying real low, for what? Two or three days? No wonder they got wise to us."

"Yeah, I suppose," Sherwin said grudgingly. 'Spearfish Lake' was still a term that sent cold chills up his spine, but what he was getting from Lenny told him that there might be a chance that it could be gotten away with. "Since you put it that way, it might be worth a shot."

"Just in case, make sure you tell your guy to take plenty of bug dope," Lenny laughed. "You know, Sherwin, you don't get the good ones in this business unless you stick your neck out once in a while."

"Yeah, I guess," Sherwin said, still not happy with the idea, but realizing that he didn't have an argument anymore. At least he could warn the camera crew about what had happened once upon a time and tell them to be on their very best behavior -- and not try running red lights at triple-digit speeds. It'd have to do. "Hey, good talking with you, Lenny. You ever get out this way, drop by and we can have a couple for old times' sake."

"Have to do that," Lenny said. "I don't get back to civilization from here in the sticks very often, but once in a while. Catch you around, guy."

* * *

Lenny leaned back in his chair in his Nashville office, and stared at nothing in particular while the gears ground in his mind. He'd never actually identified Eino, and Sherwin probably hadn't ever heard of him, much less heard he was the Jenny Easton guy in Spearfish Lake for all the tabs. And, the truth was, Eino never did seem to have any trouble with the cops up there, although he'd often said he had to watch his step and be pretty stealthy -- well, not in those words, of course -- "I godda lie low, yaah, you betcha."

But why was Oldfield involved? Lenny kept his ear pretty close to the ground in Nashville and knew that, maybe a year ago now, Jenny hadn't renewed her contract with Nashville-Murray. Probably up to something; Oldfield was a sneaky one. If Lenny had to bet, his money would be on Frank setting the camera crew up so he could get back in Jenny's good graces. But, it could easily be something else, too.

But that was beside the point, he realized. The way the cops had treated Sherwin and him back up there years ago still bugged him. It was unbelievable that cops could get away with that shit in this day and age. Suppose, just suppose, that Eino could get some photos of cops hassling the Hollywood Tonight crew the way he and Sherwin had been hassled?

Getting right down to it, he thought, it was a no-brainer. The hell with Jenny Easton; after all, like he'd told Sherwin she really wasn't box office anymore. Eino had to be given a heads-up on what was happening, of course, and it would still involve getting lucky, but Eino really did seem to be pretty good at coming through, he thought while reaching for the phone. Handle that right, and it could be payback time for a lot of itching.

* * *

"Walworth residence." Wendy's voice sounded in his ear. "May I help you?" Damn, he thought. They must not be home, since they've got the phone cut over to her.

"Yeah, Wendy, this is Mike. I've got to talk to Blake and Jennifer, right now. You got any idea where they are?"

"They're right here," she said. "They brought Jeremy over so I could see him for a bit while Mom's out shopping. Boy, he's a cute one."

"I'll be right over," Mike said. "I don't want to go into this on the phone."

Within five minutes, Mike pulled to a stop in front of the Carter residence. It was a nice summer day, and the windows were open; snatches of conversation floated through the screens. Blake met him at the screen door. "What's up?" he asked as he opened it, letting Mike in.

"Raid warning," Mike said quietly, without elaboration. He wasn't sure how much Wendy was in on that part of the security setup, although he knew she knew quite a bit about it.

"When?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"Ohhhh, boy," Blake shook his head. "It's been a long time. Come on in, and fill us in."

Mike followed him into the house. Wendy was in her normal position in the middle of the room she rarely left, semi-reclined in her bed or chair or whatever it was, with most of the computer gadgetry pulled back so she could socialize. He knew Wendy -- had gotten to know her pretty well in the days that Brenda had been the junior reporter, and even better during the days that she'd interviewed him for the book about Carole and Brenda. Jennifer sat close beside her, holding Jeremy, who was feeding at her breast. "What's up, Mike?" she asked.

"Eino just got a phone call from Lenny at the Trib," he reported, figuring that was the invitation to go ahead and talk freely in front of Wendy. "He has good info that there's a crew from Hollywood Tonight on the way up here. Should be here the day after tomorrow."

Blake shrugged. "Well I suppose we can just blow town for a couple of days. It'll give Myleigh and Trey some time off. They've been working pretty hard."

"It's not going to be that simple," Mike said. "There's supposed to be someone else, some guy named Oldfield who's coming too. The way Lenny was talking, you might know him."

"Frank Oldfield?" Blake asked. "From Nashville-Murray?"

"Lenny didn't say," Mike went on. "He's supposed to try to lure you out in the open for a photo, at least that's what Lenny thinks the camera crew thinks. But Lenny thinks that this Oldfield really wants to set up the camera crew, for whatever reason."

"Set them up?" Blake frowned.

"Yeah," Mike said. "Jennifer, you remember that time we had that Hollywood Tonight crew up here, back before you moved back here, when you were here on vacation from LA?"

"Yes," Jennifer said. "That was scary, especially with Blake not around to help. But you and Harold and LeRoy did a number on them that's pretty well kept them out for years."

Mike shook his head. "I didn't know until just now but it sounds like Lenny was on that crew. He didn't actually say it, but he said some things that he'd about have had to have been there to know. What he thinks is that the cops are going to pull a number like that on this crew, and he wants Eino to get pictures of that."

"Hooo, boy," Blake said, shaking his head. "You're right. That does make it a bit more complicated. Look, Mike, Wendy knows about this. Oldfield is the top guy at Nashville-Murray. He's been bugging us for a year, ever since Jennifer walked out on contract negotiations."

"Blake has been trying to tell him to go to hell in a nice way," Jennifer said. "But apparently he hasn't gotten the message. Why would he be involved?"

"It's obvious," Wendy smiled. "He wants to tip you off about the camera crew to get back in your good graces. If you throw him out, or don't answer the door, then Hollywood Tonight has a story. If you call the cops or go out and rip some arms off them, then Eino gets the photos for Lenny. That'd look good on the front of the Trib. Either way, you look bad."

"Yeah, that limits the options," Blake agreed.

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "Especially since we can't pull another cowboy stunt on the film crew like we did that time. Harold about had my ass over that. Wendy, you know the story, right? I told Jackie to just fly along slow, just to tease them past the spot where Harold and LeRoy were waiting, and I figured they'd go through at oh, maybe sixty in a thirty-five or something. I didn't expect those idiots to run a red light at 117 miles an hour. If I'd known they were going to do that, I wouldn't have asked Harold to do all that rigmarole back in the swamp, so they could be set up for the lecture Eino gave them on the way down to Camden. Harold and LeRoy could have gotten in trouble over that except, Jennifer, he figured he owed your dad a couple."

"How about that guy from the Inquirer?" Wendy asked. "Didn't you set that up?"

Mike shook his head. "No, that was just sheer dumb luck, arrogance and stupidity run wild. I never knew about it until I went through the police log the next day. The guy was a jerk, and he got mouthy with LeRoy when LeRoy was in a bad mood. Then he said the magic words, 'Jenny Easton,' and LeRoy wrote him up for everything he could think of. The yahoo didn't take it seriously and was still stupid enough to be mouthy to Judge Dieball, so he was the guest of the county for sixty days. That's what made us decide to have Eino set up shop. There were another one or two, but they never got anything because we learned about it soon enough for Jennifer and Blake to get out of town."

"Does the camera crew know about Eino? Or Oldfield, for that matter?" Blake asked.

"Don't know," Mike said, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm guessing not, but I'm just guessing. If the camera crew knew about him I would have thought that Eino would have heard from them just for the sake of local information. But no, as far as Eino is concerned they're coming in dumb."

Blake sighed. "As I see it we've got three problems. First, Oldfield. The only reason he would want to come up here is to try to talk to Jennifer directly. He probably knows we wouldn't just throw him out of the house, but somehow he's got to be told that no means no. Jennifer, I think you're going to have to be the one to tell him, too. I've been saying that for months."

"I know, I know," Jennifer said. "Face it Blake, I haven't wanted to talk to him. I'm afraid he might say something that would get me really mad, or that I might say something that he might take as encouragement."

"Right," Blake agreed. "And however it happens, we need to do it without the camera crew around to complicate things. And three, the camera crew has to be, uh, discouraged in such a way that it'll keep them from trying it again."

"And, without doing something that would give Eino photos to send to Lenny," Mike added. "If they don't know about Eino I'd just as soon they don't find out."

"We can deal with Oldfield now that we know he's up to something, and if we don't have to deal with the camera crew," Jennifer said. "Especially knowing what we know now, or at least what we think now. The camera crew, that's harder."

"Oh, I don't know," Wendy grinned. "I think that's the easy part, if we can get a little cute."

"Wendy," Blake grinned. "We already knew you have a devious and dirty mind. What's in it?"

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