“Planted? That isn’t what happened.” She shook her head. “I was shocked. I’d talked to Lucy at my hotel, oh, weeks ago, and he never breathed a word about it. Of course he wouldn’t necessarily, but—but—it was unexpected, anyway.”

“How do you know they weren’t planted?” I asked. “Is that what Alex told you? After I wrote you that Global was doing the broadcast tonight?”

“How do you know—she didn’t—” Lacey stammered.

“Alex?” Father Lou said. “Oh, the girl from Hollywood. Don’t lie about this, Magdalena. If she talked to you about it, I want to know.”

Lacey’s wide mouth contracted into a sulky pout. “When I read this Warshawski woman’s note, I called Alex. Don’t bite me: I know her, and I don’t know Warshawski from a pit bull. Someone like me gets a million people a day saying they have special news or they can protect me from some weird shit or other. I thought Warshawski wanted to scare me into hiring her detective services.”

“That isn’t implausible,” I said. “But it doesn’t explain why it rattled you so badly you had to call Alex about it. I wrote Ms. Dowell that Global was going to smear Frenada on television,” I added to the priest. “I wanted to talk to Ms. Dowell about it. Since I couldn’t get a phone call in to her, I wrote her and waited in the lobby in case she wanted to talk to me. Half an hour later Global’s Doberman showed up, very agitated.”

“What did she tell you, Magdalena?” Father Lou demanded.

“She—Alex—she came to the Trianon and told me it was true, she even showed me a photograph they had of a kilo of cocaine inside a fabric bolt Lucy brought in from Mexico.” Lacey looked pleadingly at the priest. “If you think I wouldn’t come here because I’m coldhearted, you’re so wrong. I didn’t want to have to talk about Lucy with you if he was dealing drugs. You never could hear one bad word about Lucy. Not even when he was a lookout for the Lions when he was eleven. If you want to believe it was a plant, go ahead, but Alex warned me, warned me that Warshawski would try to get me caught in a smear campaign. And she warned me not to talk about it. It’s one thing for Hugh Grant or some other male star to get in trouble with sex and drugs, but when a woman does it, especially one getting to be my age, she looks like slime. Alex said it could kill me if it got around.” Lacey looked at me. “I suppose you were hiding behind the potted palm in the lobby.”