“But here’s the really creepy thing. I put those photos in a folder, with the other stuff I’d found, in my study, and I sent Kent—you met Kent, right?”

“Sure. That night, at the hospital. Nice guy.”

“Yeah, he’s really been there for me these last few days. Him, and my sister Letitia, who’s heading back to Denver tomorrow. Anyway, I sent Kent back to my place to get this stuff, so I could give you more details over the phone, but he couldn’t find the folder anyplace.”

“Go on,” I said slowly.

“The place had been totally torn apart, and the folder was gone, and the pics along with it.”

“But that was Bullock and his crew,” I said. “I saw your office that night. It was a complete mess. They were tearing apart your place, trying to find anything that would tell them what happened to the Virtue. They found the check I wrote you, for the same amount you’d paid the people at the auction, and that’s what led them to me.”

“They didn’t have to tear apart my place to find that check,” Lawrence said. “It was sitting right on the counter, in the kitchen, on top of some mail. I’d left it there so I’d remember to deposit it. They couldn’t miss it. It would have been the first thing they found.”

“Then why would they tear apart your office?” I asked. “And why would they want your folder on Trevor Wylie?”

But even as I said it, I knew Bullock and his crew would have had no use for the folder on Trevor Wylie.

But Trevor might have been interested in it.

And if Trevor knew that Lawrence Jones was investigating him, and had gone to get any incriminating evidence himself … After he’d turned back early on that drive out to Oakwood, he’d have had time to go to Lawrence’s before the detective and I were supposed to meet at Brentwood’s… .

I looked at the cake and noticed that the carving knife I’d been using to cut slices was not there.

“Lawrence,” I said, “could Trevor have known that you were asking around about him?”

“I might have fucked up,” he said. “As I was walking away from the car, he was coming the other way, saw me. And then, if he noticed at some point the pictures were missing, well, he might have put it together.”

“And he knew where you lived,” I said. “Remember you gave him your card, told him to shove it up his ass when we found him in my backyard.”

“Yeah, that was mature.”