Since the Chinatown wishing well that thought had never been far from Keegan’s mind. “Moore thinks you seduced me,” he said. “He thinks I helped you kill your uncle.” He spoke as though the notion was an obvious lie—but from one angle, that’s just what had happened, wasn’t it? He’d handed a stranger a loaded gun and taught her to use it. He’d sent her back to that big, dark house with six live rounds and a jumble of nerves. If that wasn’t actually complicit, it was in the neighborhood—maybe even adjacent property. Goddamn Louis Moore. “The lieutenant thinks you’re grooming me to take the fall,” Keegan said.

Eve considered him silently from where she sat, her face prim and inscrutable. If she was still angry or upset with him, she was hiding it well. She turned her face up to him and looked from one of his eyes to the other, as if searching him for something. “And what do you think, Jim?” she said at last. “Do you think I did it on purpose? Do you think I murdered my uncle?”

She spoke as though the answer should be obvious, but it wasn’t. Not to Keegan. Not right now. Somewhere in this labyrinthine script, Keegan was being played—by Catling or Moore or Eve. He was somebody’s patsy; he was fortune’s fool.

“I don’t know what I think,” he said.

Eve took a couple of deep breaths and pulled back her shoulders. Her face darkened. “I am not going to sit here and listen to this,” she said. “You got me to come all the way here just so you could—”

Another unfinished sentence to file away with the others. Another thought left hanging. She stood, gathered her clutch under one arm, and strode to the closed bedroom door.

“Wait,” Keegan told her.

She paused with her back to him and her small, pale hand on the doorknob. Her narrow shoulders looked rigid under the tailored gray fabric of her dress.

“Before you go,” he said, “fill me in on a few things. If I’m going to get hauled in and interrogated, it’s the least you can do.”

She turned back to him and took a single, grudging step in his direction, arms folded. Her chin was set and her lips pressed together. Rather than speak, she just glowered at him with that brand of haughty, self-righteous scorn only money can buy.

Keegan watched her face closely. “Let’s start with something else I learned from Lieutenant Moore,” he said. “Let’s talk about that friend of yours they fished out of San Francisco Bay.”