Her car was gone, too. An idea was beginning to form in the back of Eve’s mind about how this new information could factor into what happened to Tanya. “What kind of car does she drive?”

“A 2017 Mercedes E-class, metallic blue with a fancy license plate rim covered in fake Schwartzvasky crystals.”

“Swarovski,” Eve said.

“Whatever. I think it’s garish. Captain America’s collar has them, too, which is humiliating for a Doberman, especially one with that name,” Irv said. “Is Donna in trouble?”

It was the same question Clarissa had asked. It’s the same question most people asked whenever she started prodding them about someone. Eve didn’t have a straight answer. Yes, she was sure Donna was in trouble, but what kind?

“No, I just want to ask her some questions about a friend of hers,” Eve said and handed Irv her card. “Please ask Donna to give me a call when she gets home.”

He stuck the card in one of his many shirt pockets. “I’ll keep my eye out for her.”

Eve left the Mulwood neighborhood, turned north onto Mulholland Highway, and drove toward the WELCOME TO CALABASAS median boulder, where three days ago two LAPD detectives had tried to stick her and Duncan with a dead man in a pickup truck. His throat had been cut wide open.

The body was found on the same morning that the homicides of Tanya and her children were discovered. In fact, Eve realized, the truck was parked only a few yards from the Gelson’s shopping center where the deputies gathered before serving the no-knock warrant at Coyle’s house. They met there because it was the nearest rallying point for them near Coyle’s house.

Another odd coincidence. Or was it?

Eve slammed on her brakes, coming to a jarring stop at the same spot where the LAPD cars had been parked the morning that she and Duncan had rolled up behind the dead man’s truck.

Her heart was racing. She knew that she was onto something . . . but she wasn’t sure what it was.

She looked across the flower-bed median at the northwest corner of Mulholland and Mulholland. There was an office building that was set back from the corner by a parking lot and a grove of pine trees. It was the spot where the pickup, its windshield splattered with blood, had been parked before the LAPD officer pushed it over the city limits into the Calabasas side of the road.

It struck Eve at the time, and again now, that the man had picked a strange place to slit his throat.

Did his choice have something to do with the office building? Or was it the view of Gelson’s? If he was murdered, by whom and why here of all places?