“Excuse me,” I said, after clearing my throat, “but if there’s anything that can be described as ‘after the fact,’ it’s a crime scene.”

“I want to be on the front lines,” she said. “I’m tired of weighing stomachs and counting bone fragments.”

The meatball I’d eaten earlier did a line-drive up my esophagus and slammed into the back of my throat. I felt the blood drain from my face, and Jolie noticed immediately.

“Sorry,” she said, with a little wince.

It was my turn to do the narrow-eyed stare. “What’s really going on here?” Revelation struck, and I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it. You’re dating a homicide cop, and this is your misguided idea of togetherness.”

“You should write fiction,” Jolie replied. “I’m not dating anybody. This is about doing something different.”

“Weighing stomachs and scraping up samples of somebody’s brains are not all that ‘different,’ Jolie,” I pointed out.

She got that stubborn look I remembered from when Lillian and Ham first got together, over in Ventura Beach. Let’s just say if Jolie had written a letter to Santa Claus that year, Lillian, Greer and I wouldn’t have been on her list of requests.

“At least it’s a job,” she said.

I’m not stupid. I know when to take offense. “I have a job,” I retorted. “I do medical billings. Not just any idiot can remember all those codes, damn it.”

“You live over a biker bar, Moje.” She nodded toward my trash-bag luggage, slumped in the third chair. “You don’t even own a suitcase.”

“Have you been talking to Greer?”

“I don’t have to talk to Greer,” Jolie argued coolly. “I’m not blind. You’re flying under the radar, Moje. You have so many secrets that there’s nothing true in your life. Ever since you and Nick split up, you’ve been dodging emotional bullets. You’re always darting from one thing to another, like some kind of moving target.”

The truth hurts.

I sat back, feeling as if she’d slapped me.

Jolie sighed. “That went well.”

I stood up, reached for my purse, then the garbage bag. I hadn’t touched my wine since those first few sips, and I must have bumped the table, because the stuff trembled in the glass.

“Moje,” Jolie pleaded. “Please—don’t go.”

I couldn’t stay.

I couldn’t even speak.

I took my purse and garbage bag and left.

Two and a half hours later, I pulled into Bert’s lot, grabbed my stuff, and locked up the Volvo. There were a couple of bikes and half a dozen cars parked close to the side door, but plenty of noise spilled out into the warm night. I climbed the stairs and let myself into my apartment.