Angie came back out of the kitchen and called Phil to tell him she’d be staying overnight and it turned into an ordeal, his voice plainly audible through the receiver as he ranted on about his fucking needs, damnit. Angie got a blank, faraway look on her face, and she held the receiver in her lap and closed her eyes for a moment. She turned her head and opened her eyes. “You need me?”

I shook my head. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow around ten or so.”

She spoke back into the phone in a voice so soft and placating that it made me nauseous, and shortly after she hung up, she was gone.

I’d checked to see that it was the only phone and bolted the back door so no one could open it without making noise. I sat in the window seat and listened to the house. Through the bedroom wall, I could hear Jenna still trying to explain our deal to Simone.

Earlier, Simone had made some squawking noises about kidnapping and federal offenses, quoting me a whole shit-load of legal references that she learned from LA. Law. She was on something of a tear, babbling at the top of her voice about “enforced incarceration” or some such nonsense, when I assured her that the alternative to my handling of the situation would be a swift legal execution of her sister’s affairs by Sterling Mulkern and company. She shut up.

The voices in the bedroom died out and a few minutes later I heard the door open and Jenna’s reflection rose up over my shoulder in the window. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt over a pair of old, gray sweatpants, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. She held two cans of beer in her hand and when I turned, she put one in my hand. She said, “My sister made me promise to replace these.”

“I’ll bet.”

She smiled and sat on the window seat across from mine. “She told me to tell you to stay out of her fridge. She don’t want you touching her food.”

“Understandable,” I said and cracked the beer. “Maybe I’ll go in after you guys fall asleep, move things around just to piss her off.”

She took a sip of the beer. “She’s a good girl, Simone. Just really angry.”

“At?”

“Who you got? The world in general, I s’pose. The white man in particular.”

“I don’t suppose I’m doing much to change her impression.”

“No, you’re not.”

She seemed almost serene, sitting there in the window, head resting against the pane, beer in her lap. Without any makeup, she looked younger somehow, less exhausted. Once, she might have even been pretty, someone men commented on as she walked down the street. I tried to picture her that way a young Jenna Angeline with a glow of confidence flushing her face because she was young and under the illusion that her youth and her beauty gave her options but I couldn’t. Time had laid too heavy a hand on her.