On one side of the border, a murder; on the other, a killer. In between stands Neil Hamel, a woman and lawyer with a passion for the truth. "Don't worry, Chiquita," was the Kid's answer to almost everything, and right now Neil Hamel missed the Kid—her part-time lover and car mechanic. Neil had gone to Mexico as a favor to a man she shouldn't be doing favors for, and what it got her was a face-to-face meeting with a corpse, a Mexican lawyer

The "annual" Saint Patrick's Day party hosted by Tim and Jamie Malone in their small northern New Mexico community is their first in many years. For Albuquerque attorney Neil Hamel, going to the party is a reunion of sorts with various old friends she spent a year carousing with in a small town in Mexico in the late 1960s. Just about everyone seems to have made some move from hippie to mainstream except Lonnie Darmer, who—as in the old days—gets

Early in the morning of November 1, Albuquerque lawyer Neil Hamel and her boyfriend, the Kid, are shaken out of their post-coital bliss when they find a surprise visitor at Neil's apartment door. The visitor is Martha Conover, a pinched, elegant older woman pleads for help. Martha's been accused of running over Justine Virga, the girl who accidentally killed her grandson, Michael, in a car crash three years—to the day—earlier. But Martha