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Near the Italian restaurant at the beginning of the little town’s main street, Claudia hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding plowing into a pedestrian crossing at the traffic light. Glancing away from the pedestrian’s shocked gaze, she checked the rearview mirror. A quarter-mile behind her, the white truck hung a jerky U-turn and sped away. With hands that refused to stop shaking, she reached for her cell phone and dialed 911. After reporting the assault, she called Jovanic, but his voicemail message said he was in court and could not be reached. Going home was out of the question. Her heart was still pounding double-time as she turned into Cowboys’ driveway and parked near the rear wall, as far away from the street as she could. For a few long moments she just sat there breathing rapid, sharp gulps of air. Pinpricks of blood stung her arm when she tried to wipe away the powdery glass. At least she was alive and, she was pretty sure, not hit. She turned her head slowly from side to side, tested each of her limbs, satisfying herself that everything still worked the way it was supposed to.

The driver’s side window was a web of cracks and breaks, with a quarter-sized hole in the center. When she saw the damage to the dashboard where the shell had lodged, she realized how close she had come to being hit; probably killed. She opened the driver’s door and stumbled out. Little bits of safety glass fell from her skirt and crunched on the asphalt under her feet.

The Cowboys lunch crowd had thinned to a couple of customers sitting outside on the deck. Claudia ducked into the small bathroom and locked the door. She stared in the mirror at the red patch on her cheek. Heat from the velocity of the bullet. Running cold water over her arm, she murmured a little prayer of thanks that she had been spared. Then she went out to the bar and ordered a vodka tonic.

When she told him she’d been shot at, the bartender—big guy past seventy, with brilliant blue eyes in a craggy, weathered face, gave her a tube of ointment. “Slap some of this on,” he said. “It’ll take the sting out.”

Claudia twisted the cap off with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling, and smeared the cream liberally over the sore spots. “Thanks, Dooley. I’m counting on the vodka to do the trick.”

She sat at the bar and called Kelly.

“Oh, my God!” Kelly shrieked. “You could’ve been killed!”

“No shit.” Claudia pressed a damp paper towel against her left arm. As quickly as she wiped them away, the tiny red flecks continued to blossom on her skin. Her face stung like hell from the heat of the bullet, even with Dooley’s first aid cream. “The good news is, I’m still breathing.”

“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”

“Don’t bother; I’m okay, really.”

Kelly gave a rude snort. “Shut up, stupid, I need to see you and make
sure
!”

Claudia gave up on her makeshift first aid and switched the phone to the other ear. She tossed back a slug of vodka, choking as it hit her throat.

“Fine, I’m at Cowboys. I figured I could use a stiff one. No sex jokes, please.”

“I can’t believe all the shit that’s come down on you. Does Detective Joel know yet?”

“I couldn’t reach him; he’s in court. Not that I had much to tell. Two guys who looked like ten thousand other white guys on the West Side: dark glasses, baseball caps, generic white truck... one of those little ones. I don’t even know what make. It all happened so fast, there’s no way I could get a license plate.
Fuck
!”

The vodka had allowed the panic to subside a little and she was now royally pissed. There had to be a way to catch whoever was responsible, whether the malefactor was Bryce Heidt or someone else. Yet, if it wasn’t Heidt, who was it? Bostwick? Bishop Flannery? One of the other men on the tapes? Not Earl Nelson, they knew that for a certainty. Someone they hadn’t yet uncovered? Whoever it was clearly had a lot to lose, considering the lengths they had already gone to—for what? A videotape?

Someone
was engineering all the threats and attacks. Someone with the wherewithal to plan and execute.
Okay, maybe execute wasn’t such a good choice of words
. Someone who could plan and direct others to carry out orders. That had to mean big money. Someone Lindsey was blackmailing. Someone whose name was in the spreadsheet and Lindsey’s journal.

And that brought her back to the videotapes. Every man Lindsey had taped stood to lose should the contents be publicized. Exposure would mean public humiliation, ruined careers, possible jail time for drug use or prostitution. Maybe even a murder charge if it could be shown that Lindsey had not committed suicide. Claudia realized that she had come full circle and was asking herself the question she had started with:
Had Lindsey written the note?

A patrol car was parked next to the Jag, and two criminalists in plain clothes who had arrived in their own vehicles were going over it, looking for ballistics. The cops had already interviewed Claudia as she sat glued to her barstool. She had refused to let go of her drink, as if her hold on the glass was the only thing keeping her from falling apart.

Now, waiting outside Cowboys for Kelly, a cool ocean breeze ruffling her hair and lifting the hem of her skirt, it crossed her mind that she was making herself vulnerable standing there. But the booze had boosted her confidence and left her pleasantly light-headed. She’d realized that if her reaction time been a millisecond slower and her car a little less powerful, she might now be on her way to the morgue.

“Considering how many times I’ve called 911 lately,” she said to Kelly, “I should have a direct line to the police station.” Kelly’s eyes glistened with unshed tears as she gaped across the parking lot at the Jag’s shattered window. “Oh my God, Claud, look at it!” She started sobbing. “What would I do if anything happened to you?”

“Don’t cry, you’ll ruin your mascara.” Claudia plunked into the Mustang’s passenger seat. “My poor car.”

“For Chrissake, who cares about the damn car? Thank God the bullet missed
you
.”

“Let’s go. I don’t want to see them dig out the bullet.” Claudia averted her eyes from the Jaguar as Kelly sniffed into a tissue, then put the car in gear and drove out of the lot, avoiding the yellow crime scene tape around the Jag.

On yet another day where normalcy had become a scarce commodity, Claudia’s house seemed weirdly normal; the lacy white birch stood as ever in the neatly trimmed strip of lawn; the flagstone path still led to the redwood staircase; plants spilled over the ledge from flower boxes on the deck above the chocolate-brown garage door.

Chained in her neighbor’s front-yard next door, Flare barked an enthusiastic greeting. Marcia had been spooked by the break-in at Claudia’s house and had taken to leaving her dog outside while she was away from home.

There had been no walks on the beach lately and the big dog whined as Claudia and Kelly crossed the yard to give her fuzzy muzzle a rub. She was rewarded with a warm, sloppy tongue on their hands.

Kelly laughed. “Some guard dog, she’s just a big old softy.

“That’s because she knows you. One day I was walking her on the beach and some guy tried to talk to me. She nearly bit his hand off.”

“Maybe we could take her for a walk together,” Kelly offered. “Safety in numbers?”

“Oh, so we can all be killed together? Thanks, but no thanks.”

Claudia unlocked the front door and switched off the alarm. She wondered whether she would ever be able return to her old life. A life where she could do the simple, everyday things. Like walking the dog.

“Will they be able to prove she was blackmailing these guys?” asked Kelly when Claudia told her about the videotapes she and Jovanic had discovered at the desert house.

“Her clients apparently didn’t know they were being taped. She must have saved that little bit of information until she was ready to extort money from them. According to that spreadsheet I found, she was getting a whole lot more money from some of them than from others. If that doesn’t suggest blackmail, what does? Of course, those are the ones who are least likely to admit it because they have the most to lose.”

She hadn’t told Kelly who all the men were. Even though she now was sure that her friend was innocent, Kelly had all-but indicted herself with the account of her own visit to Lindsey on the night of her death.

The issue of Zebediah Gold’s letter had yet to be resolved, too.

Yolande Palomino had told her to check out Mexico. She wished she had thought to ask Yolande about the phantom boyfriend Bostwick had mentioned. Even if she had refused to part with any further information, maybe she might at least have confirmed or denied his existence. And, if he really did exist, whether he was the Mexico connection.

Mental note: Call Yolande.

An hour later, the living room looked like a paper factory after Hurricane Katrina. The floor was covered with file folders, the couch littered with scraps that they had set aside for later examination.

Jovanic phoned.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can get out of here,” he said in a tight voice. “Don’t leave the house, and stay away from the windows.”

Just knowing that he was aware of what had happened made her feel better. She lowered her voice to an intimate murmur. “Call me when you’re on your way. I’ll order pizza and we can hole up for the evening.”

“Ask him if he’s interested in a threesome,” Kelly chimed in.

“Shut up,” Claudia hissed, but she couldn’t help laughing when Jovanic said, “That woman scares me.” He admonished her again and rang off.

“Look for any references to Mexico,” Claudia said, folding herself cross-legged on the floor. “It’s something Jovanic is following up on.”

Kelly dove into one of the file boxes and came out with Lindsey’s leather-bound appointment book. “I’ll go through this again. Maybe I missed something before.”

“Look for anything that might point to a boyfriend, too. Bostwick could have been trying to throw us off-track with that, but it’s possible there really is someone else we need to look at.”

“Isn’t it strange that if she did have a guy, he didn’t show up at the funeral?”

“Isn’t everything about this situation strange? Besides, how do we know he
wasn’t
there? He could easily have been in the crowd, but not wanted to reveal himself for the same reason Lindsey wanted to keep him secret. If he exists.”

“If we find him and he’s cute, maybe I’ll grab him for myself,” Kelly said, only half-joking. “Poetic justice, wouldn’t you say?”

“She’s dead, Kel, why don’t you drop it?”

“Being dead doesn’t change how I felt about her. I
still
hate her, and if I had a chance to steal her boyfriend like she stole mine, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

At a loss for an answer, Claudia got up and selected a Norah Jones disk, sliding it into the player.

It didn’t take long for Kelly to discover several Mexico references that she had overlooked before. The first, in the previous January, was marked simply, “Mex.”

“There’s a flight number with this one. American Airlines. Nothing the other times. Maybe she drove.”

“Too far to drive. Maybe someone else made the reservations for the other trips. What are the dates?”

“There’s a note on January 13, another on March 25, and one on July 15. Quarterly.”

“How about October? Anything there?”

“Duh,” Kelly said. “She died in September.”

“Duh... even Lindsey might have planned ahead. Look in October.”

Kelly flipped through a few pages and looked up with a sour face. “Okay, smartass, October 14, with a flight number again.”

“I bet Joel can find out if she booked two seats,” said Claudia, getting excited. “Maybe the boyfriend will be revealed at last.” She felt suddenly positive that they were about to solve the case. “Let’s go upstairs. It’s time to do some handwriting analysis.”

“Here goes nothing.”

Claudia flicked a switch on the optical handwriting comparator and the exhaust fan began to whir. The screen flickered once and blinked on, transmitting bright light from behind the Plexiglas plate.

She clipped the suicide note under one of the hold plates and a specimen of Lindsey’s uncontested handwriting on the other. Having failed to unearth any printed samples that would have allowed for a direct comparison, and the handprinting on Earl Nelson’s photos had been done too long ago to be of any real value, she had selected the best of what was available—a page of notes Lindsey had written about a client.

After fiddling with the dial on the comparator until the two handwriting samples were magnified six times their normal size, Claudia stepped back a few paces and narrowed her eyes, blurring the focus. “It’s a tough call, but I think she wrote it. The word spacing is similar. So’s the pressure and the letter proportions.”

She picked up a pen and pointed to one of the on-screen samples. “Look at that dented area in the tops of the
o
’
s. It shows up in both samples and it’s idiosyncratic. It’s her writing.”

Kelly directed her gaze at the two handwritings projected onto the screen and blew out a gusty sigh of relief. “The note’s genuine. It had to be suicide.”

But Claudia shook her head in disagreement. “It’s her handwriting, but something still stinks. I can
feel
it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Either someone forced her to write that note, or she wrote it for some other reason and the killer made it
look
like a suicide note.”

“You’re grasping at straws, Claud. Let it go, for fuck’s sake.”

“It’s kind of hard to let it go when people are breaking into my house and shooting at me.” Claudia snapped. She flipped off the comparator and removed the handwriting samples, her movement jerky with anger. She wanted to yell at Kelly
at least I don’t think
I
killed her
—but what would be the use?

As if sensing what was in her mind, Kelly clambered to her feet and grabbed her jacket from the kitchen chair where she had hooked it. “Nothing good ever came of being involved with Lindsey. Good luck, honey.”