They had gone into a private family room in the funeral home. The drapes were heavy and the room reeked of stargazer lilies and gladi olas. Jane Thomas had sunk down into a corner of a velvet couch the color of a good cabernet. She was as pale as death, still shaken by the discovery of Lisa Warwick’s body.

Mendez had gone into overdrive at the realization that they had both a dead woman and a woman missing, and that both women had ties to the Thomas Center for Women. He had a million questions and wanted to fire them off like rounds from a machine gun, but Jane Thomas was fragile, and he had to be patient. Not one of his stronger virtues.

Jane looked at him, confused. “No. Who is she? Is there some reason I should know her?”

“She was never a client at your facility? She never worked at your facility?”

“Not that I remember. What does she have to do with . . . ?” She turned her head in the direction of the embalming room, unable to say the victim’s name.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, shaking. “Karly. You think she’s with the—the animal that did that to Lisa, don’t you?”

Cal Dixon put a reassuring hand on her knee. Mendez mentally raised an eyebrow.

“Jane,” Dixon spoke quietly, as if he were talking to a nervous horse. “Chances are Karly is with someone she knows. She probably just went—”

Jane Thomas steeled herself, sitting up a little taller. “Don’t you dare patronize me. We’ve been over this. Karly did not just anything.”

“Miss Thomas?” Mendez tried to bring her attention back to him, a little irritated at his boss for bringing an obviously personal note into the proceedings. “Julie Paulson was a woman found murdered outside of town in April last year. I’m wondering if she might have had a connection to the center.”

“April ’84? I was in Europe for several months. My parents own horses. Their top horse was competing in Germany and Holland. I went with them . . .”

Mendez knew why people in this situation rambled and digressed. If Jane Thomas was thinking of her parents’ show horses, she couldn’t be thinking about the horror she had seen in the room down the hall.

“Have there been any threats against the center recently?” Dixon asked.

“The usual kooks and religious fanatics.”

“What does ‘usual’ mean?” Mendez asked.

“The a-woman’s-place-is-barefoot-and-pregnant crowd. The whores-should-turn-to-Jesus-or-burn-in-hell crowd. The right-to-lifers, though I’ll never figure that one out. We provide our women with access to medical care. We don’t advocate abortion.”

“Do you keep hate mail?”

“Yes. In a file at the office.”

“We’ll need to see it.”

“Of course.”

“You said the victim—Lisa Warwick—used to work for you. When was that?”