The irony, Cy Lefkowitz felt acutely, was that he had come to Hawaii to escape from one mid-life -- or perhaps late-life -- crisis, and had fallen smack into another. He'd flown here with some carefree notion of living comfortably on his savings as a psuedo-beach bum. Perhaps do some writing. And now here he was getting embroiled in a possible foster-care situation just because little Ano had attached himself to him.

Cy sat on the veranda of the General Store in sleepy Waimea town, eating a Hawaiian "plate lunch" of steamed rice and sweet-and-sour pork and sipping an iced tea. The occasional sugar cane truck rumbled by on the way to the mill, raising dust and scattering fallen palm fronds at the side of the seldom-traveled road. This was where Cy came to escape the midday heat of the beach, to eat, and to think.

Adoption? It was insane. Why would he want to tie himself down like that? And why would the convent school and orphanage at St. Agnes's consider him, a single retiree in his 60s, a candidate for parenthood? The whole notion seemed absurd.

As Cy ate his lunch off the paper plate with a plastic fork, he thought of what his colleagues at the agency -- Jim Hillyer, especially -- would think of it. Jim was already convinced that Cy was having a nervous breakdown, anyway. This would confirm it, Cy thought, and smiled to himself.

As he counted out the dollar bills and began to leave them on the wicker table, a beat-up pickup truck drove up and pulled into one of five parking spaces perpendicular to the General Store. Cy recognized the vehicle -- and its driver. It was Sister Anne. The pretty young nun -- Cy wondered if it was sacrilegious to think so -- hopped out with a briskness more appropriate to a high school girl than a religious sister, tossed the straw bag with leather straps she was carrying over her shoulder, and bounded up the wooden stairs leading to the General Store's veranda.

Eat hearty. You're going to need your strength, Cy. The truth of the matter is, as much fun as it's been lolling around this off-the-beaten-track Hawaiian town, it's not just this pretty young nun and her orphans that are going to need your help. And you thought life was just slowing down. So very wrong.

"Mr. Lefkowitz," she announced brightly, "I thought I'd find you here! May I join you?"

"Of course," Cy said, standing up. He'd grown fond of Sister Anne in the brief time he'd known her. Cy admired her dedication, her straightforwardness, and yes, her youth. "I'm afraid I've already had my lunch, though."

"That's okay," she said. "I didn't come here to eat." Sister Anne sat down, set her hands flat on the table, and said, "Mr. Lefkowitz, I have a proposition for you."

Cy eyed her, worried. "Uh-oh," he said, trying to be amusing but, in reality, revealing that he was concerned about what Sister Anne was about to "propose."

"I've made some inquiries," she went on. "To the state board of adoption. And to the diocese."

"Inquiries?" Cy asked, knowing full well what the young woman -- for that was how he viewed her -- was talking about.

"Here's the deal," she continued, as though she were a real estate agent about to close on the sale of some beachfront property.

In London, the vanishing of supermodel Meg Townsend had been tabloid fodder for almost a week now. Some of the papers called it a disappearance, some called it an abduction, some called it a kidnapping -- although no ransom demands had been made. The facts are these: Meg was gone; her flat had been ransacked; she'd frantically scratched out a message saying "Help me, Jim" on a piece of furniture; and Hillyer had arrived from New York to find her gone. Period.

The irony was that, although she was nowhere to be found, Meg was never more visible -- a result of the fact that the new Anson Cosmetics campaign, for which Meg was the "face" -- had just been launched. Meg's gorgeous image stared out at you from slick magazine ads, flashy, overproduced television commercials, bus-shelters from Piccadilly to Times Square, even billboards. Overnight, Meg had become the model of the moment

Only she was gone.

One newspaper columnist even went so far as to speculate that Anson Cosmetics -- or its ad agency, Hillyer, Jones -- had staged the disappearance as a publicity stunt. Some people actually believed it -- although Jim Hillyer himself knew that it was nonsensical. He also knew that he was getting tired, after a week in a tiny hotel in Mayfair, of being detained in London. When he was brutally honest with himself, however, Jim had to admit that, if he had been Inspector Montague, he would have done the same thing.

It begins. Got a theory as to what happened to Meg Townsend? Curious to find out? Then you'll definitely want to be part of the 475 Madison Avenue "What Happened to Meg Townsend" contest. Seriously. DON'T miss next week.

Jim had confessed to Inspector Montague that he had been having an affair with Meg. It was pointless to deny it, or even to try and hide it -- Jim even had a key to her apartment. The one clue the police had discovered after Meg's disappearance -- a clue that led nowhere -- was a Hermes scarf, found in the gutter outside her building, a scarf that Jim had given Meg as a gift. The one communication from Jim -- the "Help me" message scratched on the furniture -- had Jim's name on it. Literally. But Jim truly wasn't involved, and he kept insisting so to the police ... until they actually began to believe him.

Meanwhile, Jim was free on his own recognizance in London, but his passport had been taken from him. After a week, as the media brouhaha actually started to die down, he had begun to wonder if Meg had simply been murdered. It didn't make sense that, if she'd been kidnapped, no one was making any demands.

Imagine, then, Jim's surprise when, as he left the Hillyer, James office on New Bond Street late that night, he was met by a gaggle of CNN reporters and cameramen that had just arrived in a minivan. Thrusting a microphone into his face and shining camera-lights into his eyes until they nearly blinded him, a reporter shouted, "Mr. Hillyer? Mr. Hillyer? What do you think of the announcement that's just been made to the media? The announcement about Meg Townsend?"