“I’m talking about money, Kevin. Not just the business with Fat Freddy, or Moira’s back royalties. She was convinced you were doing some fancy footwork with Jett’s cash. Otherwise, why would he be on the constant treadmill of tours and albums? Most people of his stature who’ve been in the game as long as he has take it a lot easier than him. A few big stadium dates, an album every eighteen months or so. But according to Moira, Jett had to keep working to keep paying the bills. So where was all the money?” I pinned him with a hard stare, and I was gratified to see his hands grip his knees tightly.

“Look, I told you. If she’d had any proof of anything like that, do you think I’d still be around?” he exploded. “She was full of shit! She loved to stir it. I told her a dozen times, her cash was all accounted for. It was tied up in a high interest investment account that I have to give three months’ notice of withdrawal on. Out of that tiny, insignificant fact, she built a whole edifice of poisonous rumor. That shows you the kind of woman she was.”

“Frankly, I’m amazed. I’d have expected you all to fall on her neck weeping tears of joy and gratitude, given the way Jett’s career’s been going of late,” I retaliated.

Kevin’s head seemed to shrink into his shoulders, like a tortoise in retreat. “Listen, Kate, I said when you started looking for Moira that we were looking at trouble. She was always a manipulative bitch. She loved playing us all off against each other, always had. OK, Jett’s been going through a difficult patch in creative terms, but he would have come good again, with or without Moira. He just got this crazy obsession that he needed her. So we all got lumbered with her. She was only through the door five minutes when she had us all at each other’s throats. I’ve told you already. We’re not killers. We’re putting an album together, that’s the number one priority. No one would jeopardize that by making us the focus of all these shitty stories in the press,” he added.

“I thought Neil was controlling the press for you.”

Kevin snorted. “Might as well try to knit a bed jacket out of a mountain stream as try to control those toe-rags. Neil’s done his best, but he’s got an uphill struggle on his hands. God knows where they’ve got some of this stuff from. I mean, one of them’s even got some tale about Moira and Tamar being at each other’s throats. I’ve a good mind to sue, except that it would only cause more bad publicity.”

“You’d have a job suing.” I couldn’t resist it.

“What d’you mean?” he asked indignantly.