“Until Shaw got into the mix,” Joe said.

“Lem and I were hot and heavy again, like before. He found out about the stealin’, liked the danger of it, the thrill. Bein’ rich didn’t make any difference. He took chances his whole life. Now, he was bored, feeling old, sick of his wife, gettin’ his rocks off with me. Pulling jobs with me kept the excitement goin’. But it got tough for me, jugglin’ the two of them at the same time.”

Her turn of phrase caught his attention, and given everything else that had gone before in this case, an uneasiness began to creep up on him. “And then Don found out somehow,” he said, following the notion to see where it led.

“Yeah. He got jealous. I mean, he was screwin’ Robin on the side. What did he expect? But it led to him pickin’ up that I was operatin’ again, with somebody else, and takin’ things from his storage units and sellin’ them, which I probably shouldn’t’ve done. Between that and the sex, it was a double whammy to his ego.”

Joe was impressed by the easy duplicity of it, but more so by having his suspicion confirmed about Cheri’s true relationship with Don.

He worded his next question carefully, although still casually. “When was it you and Donny went from mother/son—which I know wasn’t biological—to being a couple?”

His matter-of-fact tone was taken at face value. “Yeah,” she admitted. “Sounds weird, I know, but it felt really natural. You know how it is: You spend a lotta time together. One thing leads to another. He was almost sixteen when it happened, so it wasn’t that big a deal, and like you said, it wasn’t like we were related.”

“No, no, no,” Joe said soothingly. “It explains a lot more about the fight at the club, though.”

Her face grew solemn. “I still can’t believe he stole Lem’s car. Poor old Donny had no clue who he was messin’ with. Course by then, he’d turned into an asshole in my eyes, so goin’ after Lem was just par for the course.”

By now no longer sure what to expect, Joe asked, “When did Lucy come into it?”

Cheri glowered at the mention. “That pig. What the fuck he ever see in her?”

“Shaw?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed with emphasis. “That woman’s a monster.”

He caught the verb tense. “You know she’s dead?”

Cheri eyed him carefully. “Really? Good. I hope somebody killed her.”

“What did she do to you?”

“She poisoned everything. I coulda handled things if it wasn’t for her.”

Joe couldn’t help thinking that by this point, Lucy was only trying to catch up. “Does this connect to why your fingerprints were on that ashtray and lighter?” he asked. “You broke your own rule about not stealing things with inscriptions.”

Her smile was grim. “I wanted to prove they weren’t the only ones who could push people around. I stole that stuff when Lemuel told me Lucy went ballistic after hearin’ he’d stepped out with me. Typical that he told her. Still, I wanted her to know it wasn’t just her husband I could take, but her personal junk, too, right out from under her nose.”