“But you can’t leave. You’re not built that way. For one, you can’t just abandon Esperanza and the business.”

“I could sell her my share.”

“No, you can’t. And even if you could, you need to learn the truth about Suzze. You need to figure out what’s going on with your brother. You need to look after your parents. You can’t just dump that all and come here.”

“And you can’t come home,” Myron said.

“Not yet, no.”

“So what does that mean?”

Terese shrugged. “We’re screwed. But just for a little while. You will find out what happened to Suzze and settle things.”

“You sound confident.”

“I know you. You’ll do all that. And then, well, when things are settled, you can come for a long visit, right?”

She arched an eyebrow and smiled at him. He smiled back. He could actually feel the muscles in his shoulders relax.

“Definitely right,” he said.

“Myron?”

“Yes.”

“Do it quickly.”

Myron called Lex in the morning. No reply. He called Buzz. Same. Chief County Investigator Loren Muse, however, answered her cell phone—Myron still had the number from their previous encounter. He persuaded her to meet him at Suzze and Lex’s high-rise, the scene of the drug overdose.

“If it will help wrap this up,” Muse said, “you’re on.”

“Thank you.”

An hour later, Muse met up with him in the front lobby. They got into the elevator and started up to the top floor.

“According to the preliminary autopsy,” Muse said, “Suzze T died of respiratory arrest caused by an overdose of heroin. I don’t know if you know much about opiate overdoses, but classically the drug just decreases the victim’s ability to breathe until it just stops. Often the victim still has a pulse and survives for several minutes without breathing. I think that’s what helped save the baby, but I’m not a doctor. There were no other drugs in her system. No one conked her on the head or anything like that—no signs of any physical altercation whatsoever.”

“In short,” Myron said, “nothing new.”

“Well, there’s one thing. I found that post you were talking about last night. On Suzze’s Facebook. The one that said, ‘Not his.’ ”

“And you think what?”

“I think,” Muse said, “that maybe it’s true.”

“Suzze swore it wasn’t.”

Muse rolled her eyes. “And, gee, no woman would ever lie about paternity. Think about it. Suppose the baby isn’t Lex Ryder’s. Maybe she felt guilty. Maybe she worried about being exposed.”

“You could always run a paternity test on the baby,” Myron said. “Find out for sure.”