As expected, Crowley was still in the kitchen, drinking coffee.

Jennifer was long gone.

“Am I being watched?” I asked, emptying my mug in the sink and then refilling it from the carafe.

Crowley pushed back his chair and stood. “Not anymore,” he said.

He’d been keeping an eye on the suspect until the evidence could be collected, I realized.

“Don’t leave the area without checking with me,” he told me, inclining his head toward the table, where his business card lay, face up. He’d had the good grace to replace the bloodstained one, at least. Or maybe he’d just wanted my fingerprints.

I nodded.

Crowley paused on the threshold between the kitchen and living room. “Is there somebody you can stay with? The guys will be downstairs for a while, but it might be safer to spend the night elsewhere.”

A chill shivered up my spine. With all that had happened, it hadn’t crossed my mind that whoever knifed Bert might come back, when the coast was clear, and do the same thing to me, just in case I’d seen something and remembered it later.

I could call Greer, I supposed. She’d take me in, but she’d probably make Russell sleep in the garage. Tucker was either waiting in line in the celestial train depot or tunneling through the underworld of users and dealers.

I needed to get out more. Make friends with people who would let me crash on their couches in an emergency.

“I’ll be fine here,” I said, hoping it was true.

I saw Crowley to the door, locked it behind him and turned around to find Russell standing at my heels. His expression was baleful, but then, he always looked that way.

I fired up the computer, figuring I might as well do some billing and coding, since I probably wouldn’t sleep. While the program was loading, I went back to the kitchen and searched the shelves until I came up with a can of beef stew, stuck behind the roasting pan in the rear of my tiny pantry. Russell might have been traumatized, but there was nothing wrong with his appetite.

He snarfed up the stew, and I headed for the computer, only to think of Jolie and retrace my steps. My cell needed charging, so I reached for the wall phone, after wiping it off with a paper towel and some antiseptic spray cleaner. I tapped into the voice mail, intending to use the breather to work out what I could say to Jolie beyond “I’m sorry.”

Only there wasn’t a breather.

The first message was from Greer, and she sounded as though she’d been crying. “Mojo, I really need to talk to you. Call me.”

I took a deep breath. Now I had two conversations to rehearse.