“Three of them hadn’t seen the video before,” Ray said. “Harder to tell with Layla. She had a look on her face like she’d been expecting it all along. Her motivation to erase the file would be to shield Erik. Simple.”

“Not that simple,” I countered, remembering her outrage. “Why would she shield him? Why wouldn’t she want him burned at the stake?”

“No idea.” Ray chuckled. “So say it was one of the others—why would they erase something without watching it?”

“Maybe it wasn’t one of the crew,” I said. “Maybe it was someone else at LAAC. Maybe Hal.”

“I don’t think so. You need some software and know-how,” said Ray. “Hal has a reputation for being a technophobe. He doesn’t even own a cell phone.” He paused. “I’m still puzzling over Layla’s reaction.” He crossed his arms and tightened them, buckling forward like he was sick to his stomach. “Like that. The whole video. She’s keeping something back.”

The body language reminded me of Layla in Nelson’s coupe earlier, and I told Ray what I’d spotted between her and the gallerist.

Ray stopped chewing, pushed his plate away, and asked me to repeat everything I’d seen.

“It didn’t look like the first time,” I admitted, and wondered aloud if Layla was upgrading boyfriends from Erik to the gallerist, gamely overlooking the complication that Nelson was her best friend’s dad.

“Maybe,” said Ray. With what seemed like forced casualness, he pulled his plate back and began eating again. But his movements were robotic, and the meat didn’t stay on his fork, so he balled up the tortilla with his hand and bit into it. He caught me watching him, and his eyes went soft and lazy. “You should get another one,” he said, gesturing at my plate.

He was trying to change the subject from Layla and Nelson. Something about them bothered him. Their age difference?

“You think Erik knows about them?” I said.

He swallowed. “No.”

“Do you think Brenae did?”

“Hard to say,” he said carefully. He asked me to give him an exact play-by-play of my day, from the moment I walked in, the latte from Layla, my conversations, to looking for the key in Nelson’s office, to bringing in the shoes.

There was something else, I realized, as I related the whole day to Ray, some other detail of the morning that was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I just had an intuition that what I had missed was obvious, and I ought to be pointing it out.