AFTER I FIXED MY DAMP hairline as best I could in the coffee shop window, I tugged my suit straight and entered. Ray was at a table, flipping through the city’s free weekly paper, a smart publication that supported itself mostly with thinly veiled prostitution ads. I wondered how the arts editor would respond to an exposé about a suicide and sexual harassment at LAAC. I could see Brenae’s face on the weekly’s cover, staring out, her thick hair like a halo. But not my own byline.

Ray rose from his seat as I approached. He looked like he might be wearing the same T-shirt and jeans as last night, a suit jacket thrown over them, and his eye sockets were dark from lack of sleep.

As we waited in line together, he told me that Detective Ruiz was also on her way, but her one-year-old had dropped her cell phone in the toilet that morning and she was stopping to get a new one. I heard my shocked laugh, and expressions of sympathy and pity, but inside I was thinking, She’s a mom? How could I not know? Ray seemed unsurprised, entertained even. It struck me again that they seemed to know each other well. Better than professionals engaged in the same task. Like friends. Or more than friends.

We both ordered large plain coffees, and I noted with some amusement that Ray seemed to approve of this spartan choice. Paper cups slid warm into our hands. “I want it noted that I’m fetching you your coffee,” Ray said, brandishing a credit card. “Long day ahead of us.”

“The students are already there,” I said as we sat down. “They didn’t spot me,” I added, noting his alarmed look. “But I saw Layla. It’s his daughter, isn’t it? Layla Goetz-Middleton?”

Ray nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Funny how we always skip the small talk.”

“Funny that she’s involved in this and that you didn’t mention her yesterday,” I said.

When artist Kim Lord went missing on the opening night of her Rocque exhibition in April, Ray and I ended up independently following the same dead-end lead, to a rich collector named Steve Goetz. Goetz had spent the better part of two decades trying to rig Kim Lord’s value in the art market by buying and rebuying her artworks under different identities. He considered it a conceptual experiment, demonstrating the power of the collector to fix an artist’s worth. But when Kim was murdered, Janis had strong-armed Goetz into selling most of the paintings to the Rocque’s collection, and the collector’s manipulations had never reached the public.

Still, Goetz had frightened me when I met him at his gallery last spring. I remembered his coldness and his pride. And I remembered Ray’s hostility toward him, too.

“You seemed suspicious of him, even after . . .” I didn’t finish.