hey have got to be kidding, Delia thinks. After trying and failing a third time to open the estate gates, she grabs the security phone and buzzes the main house.
"Yes?" A voice barks out of the earpiece, audibly annoyed at the disturbance.
"Mrs. Beachwood, it's me, Delia. I can't seem to get in the front gate."
"We changed the key code," Mrs. Beachwood says, with far less apology in her voice than the situation calls for, Delia thinks. "I left a note on the cottage door."
                Wondering why she never calls it "your cottage door," Delia hears a buzz, then a familiar clunk, and the gates begin creaking, crunching and generally making a big production out of opening all the way up so the diminutive tenant and her small set of wheels can roll in.
                Mrs. Beachwood has made it clear she doesn't like the buzzing noise the scooter makes, so Delia is required to push it, rather than drive it, down the 200-foot pebble driveway to her cottage.
                A former beauty queen who co-starred in a couple of low-budget jiggle comedies in the early '80s, Renee Beachwood is the property's uptight proprietress. Decades of dissatisfaction and years of Botox have contorted her once striking good looks into a sort of generic non-ugliness. Her uniform of taut, colorless twinsets and polished loafers mark her as a member of Santa Barbara's Very Wealthy Set.
                Her husband, Charles, is old Hollywood. His grandfather was a famous silent film star, his father a successful director and Charles retired a few years ago as a B-list producer.
                They are not especially friendly - in fact, it occurs to Delia as she removes her helmet that they've never once invited her into their home - but she tolerates them because she loves her tiny cottage. She pays reasonable rent in exchange for baby-sitting the Beachwoods' surprisingly normal toddler, Jackson, a few times a week.
                Delia takes Mrs. Beachwood's elegantly scripted note off the front door, goes inside, cranks the space heater and scrambles into a pair of flannel pajamas and Greta Garbo slippers before reading it:
                "Delilah," it begins.
                "Unbelievable," Delia muses.
                "The front gate has a new key code: 32752," the note continues. "We trust you will keep it to yourself. Also, Mr. Beachwood and I need your help looking after Jackson at a neighbor's party Tuesday night. Please be waiting at the lower garage by 5:45. Dress is black-tie."
                Now, Delia has been asked to do some weird things with that poor kid: accompany him to play dates with other mothers, keep him busy in her cottage during grown-up holiday parties at the main house. But shuffle along after his parents like hired help and wipe his nose while they sip whisky sours in the study? They must be deranged.
                She calls home for an outrage check, but there's no answer. Her mother, an English professor at Cal State Fullerton, has thrown herself into her work ever since Delia's father died, and often spends nights grading papers in her office on campus.
                So she dials Rodrigo's cell phone to find out why he stood her up.
                "Hello?" he huffs.
                "It's Delia. Why are you panting?"
                "Driving a pedicab with three Wilmas in the back," he says, whispering, "big Wilmas." She laughs. "Hey, flake, I thought you were working the film festival tonight," she says.
                "They wouldn't let me in."
                "I called the gallery, but you'd already bailed," he said. "You've got to get a cell. Anyway, I took my buddy's cab route instead."
                "Rodrigo, you have a master's in music," Delia says. "What are you doing hauling clubbers down State Street?"
                "Up!" he grunts. "Just chasing down some ducats to record the demo. Whassup with you?"
                "Get this," she says. "Jackson and I have to accompany the Bluebloods to some snootfest Tuesday night. How 'Nanny Diaries' is that? ... Rodrigo?"
                His cell phone has cut out, but it's just as well. Delia was running out of hipster slang. She nukes a Hungry Man dinner and falls asleep listening to Otis Rush groaning the blues on "It's Got to Be Some Changes."
                By the time she pulls into the lot behind the gallery the next morning, she has gotten her self-pity in check and is focused on accomplishing things at work while her boss is out of the country buying sculpture. Perhaps she'll sell some art today, maybe even overhaul the filing system and arrange a new window display.
                Arriving at the front door, she pulls out her keys only to discover in horror that she doesn't need them. It's wide open, and through the window she sees a strange man scrambling to cram a small, abstract painting into a black sack.

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