“I mean she might have said her name is Margo or Fargo or whatever,” the woman said. “But I know this girl well. We used to work for the same service. She was younger than me, so I kind of looked out for her. A real looker, in my opinion—natural, if you know what I mean. Didn’t need no makeup—at least not yet. Girl’s name was Sylvia … Sylvia Winger. But she went by Angela.”

Was.

Darlene and Ochoa exchanged tight-lipped glances.

“Well, Angela, or Margo, was coerced by somebody into framing a good friend of mine,” Darlene said. “We promise that we mean her no harm. We just want to talk to her.”

“That’s impossible,” MonicaBelle replied.

“Almost anything is possible. I’m pretty well connected.”

“You could be the pope, for all it matters, but nobody can keep Angela safe now. She’s dead.”

The words, though no longer totally unexpected, fell like hammer strikes.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Darlene said, her voice breaking. “Do you know what happened to her?”

“She moved to Tampa to be with her mom a few months ago. I got a postcard from her.”

“Do you know how she … died?”

Without Margo, Martin would never believe Double M’s recording was real.

“She drowned,” MonicaBelle said simply. “Washed up on a beach after she’d gone missing from a party. Her mother found my number in her things and called to tell me. You can imagine how she was feeling. Angela was a baby.”

“I’m so sad. Would it upset you if Victor tried to learn the details of her death?”

“We don’t mind,” the woman said. “You really seem like a nice person.”

“So are you—all of you.” Darlene didn’t have to force the sincerity in her voice. She extended her hands, and the three escorts covered them with theirs.

Darlene nodded to Ochoa, who pulled a BlackBerry from his jacket pocket as she looked over his shoulder, watching him key the name Sylvia Winger and the word Tampa into the Google search box. Margo’s photo—possibly from high school, appeared in a search result set that included the girl’s obituary. They read through the short paragraph, and then an earlier account in the Tampa Tribune of her death.

“It says here that the toxicology was positive for alcohol. Three times the legal limit. No one seemed to know or care where she was partying.”

“Accidental drowning,” Darlene said to the women. “It makes sense the police here didn’t know about her death. It wasn’t suspicious, so the Tampa cops had no reason to publish her picture on any of the law enforcement databases.”

“I never knew her to be that heavy of a drinker,” MonicaBelle said, “but then again, I didn’t know her all that well.”