Jens Williams’s return smile was lopsided. “Okay, yes, sir. Ms. Corey is a client. I’m just not at liberty to …” He shrugged. “She was just here, as a matter of fact.”

“How long ago?”

“I’d say … an hour ago, give or take. Why?”

“She was here to see Mr. Fellinger?”

A beat. “This is above my pay grade. Um, can you tell me what it’s about?”

“Ms. Corey was just found dead in the parking lot.”

Jens Williams’s hand shot to his mouth. “Oh my God, a car hit her?”

Milo said, “What kind of law does Mr. Fellinger practice?”

“Family and business litigation—my God, I just saw her.” Williams looked at the receptionist. One hand worried her pearls. Her jaw had dropped open and her posture had gone to hell.

Milo said, “We need to talk to Mr. Fellinger.”

Jens Williams replied, “Yes, yes, of course you do, I’ll go check, please hold on.”

He hurried away.

The receptionist said, “This is horrible. She was just here.”

Milo turned to her. “Sorry to deliver bad news.”

She shook her head. “That place is crazy dangerous.”

“The parking lot?”

“Don’t quote me but all those turns where you can’t see around the corner? Are you kidding?”

Milo said, “Scary.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I nearly got run over on the employee level.”

“Which level is that?”

“Second before the bottom.”

One above the death tier.

The receptionist said, “Did the person stick around or was it a hit and run?”

“No trace of the offender,” said Milo.

“God, that’s evil! Maybe now they’ll do something about it.”

“They?”

“The management company.”

“What should they do?”

“Like—I don’t know. Something. I mean look what happened.”

A voice said, “Gentlemen?” Jens Williams was back, standing ten feet behind the reception desk, crooking his thumb to the left.

We followed him up a long hall hung with generic abstractions. A short, stocky man emerged from an office midway up the corridor and stood with his arms folded across his chest. Fifty or so, he wore a pink shirt over blue pin-striped slacks held in place by leather-braid suspenders, a mint-green tie patterned with orange French horns, brown calfskin loafers.

Black hair combed straight back and thinning at the top was probably tinted. Bushy eyebrows topped a shelf-brow. His face was full, somewhat simian—more chimp than baboon. Clean-shaven but already blue in the beard zone by late morning.

Jens Williams said, “Mr. Fellinger, these are the police—”

Grant Fellinger silenced him with a hand-slash. A deep voice with an odd echoing quality emerged from plump but narrow lips: “Do me a favor and go down to the café and get me a white jasmine tea. Make sure they leave the flower in.”

“Plain, one Splenda?”

“Plain, no Splenda. I’m not feeling particularly sweet given the circumstances.”

Peevishness but no anxiety.