“And what happened to Lady Adderall Bites?”

Regina cocked her head, her blond tresses whispering against the back of her chair, and shredded another cotton ball. “Do you mean, is she behind all of this? Some sort of revenge?”

“I’m just asking what happened to her.”

“She stayed on the circuit for a few more years. I don’t really know. I moved home, and I lost track of her.” Her flamingo nails took in the dressing room, parroting shadows against the wall in the harsh, horizontal light. “I had the crown. I had a reputation. St. Louis had clubs but it didn’t have Regina Rex and it didn’t have anything like this. What I’m going to do with the Lucky, what it’s going to be when I’m done, it’s going to make San Francisco look like the Deep South. The gays are going to scream their way to St. Louis just for a chance to be inside the Lucky.”

“How much?”

Regina flicked another cotton ball, and this one caught North on the cheek. “Sweetie, you don’t just come out and ask a lady a question like that.”

“How much, Regina?”

“Five hundred dollars a month.”

“That’s—” Shaw began, and then he stopped.

North could feel the other man’s tension. Could feel his own tension.

Regina shook her long hair again. “That’s not very much? Child, maybe private detectives make more money than I thought, but for an old queen, five hundred dollars is a lot.”

“You have the Lucky,” North said.

“I have a small business loan, and I have an outrageous interest rate, and I have shows to put on. I sleep here. Did you know that? Not here, this room, but in the theater. This is everything. This is all I have. I gave up the apartment. I have amateurs running sound and lights because I can’t pay a professional. And if I have to pay five hundred dollars a month to keep from losing it, well, baby, I’ll keep buying my wigs on Gravois.”

“Teddi told me you’ve received generous donations. Gifts to help you renovate.” North kept his gaze steady and waited.

“It’s gone. All the money. I had to pay the bastard who was blackmailing me somehow, didn’t I? And then there were permits, hoops to jump through. It all goes somewhere.”

“Teddi said you’d already gotten the permits. He made it sound like everything got fast-tracked.”

“As I said,” Regina stated in a flat voice. “That money all went somewhere.”

“How long has this been going on?” Shaw asked.

“Years, sweetie. Years.”

“Since you moved back?”

Regina dropped the cotton balls, and they tumbled off her lap, rolling across the floor to gather dust and lint and fragments of a broken cake of blush. She studied Shaw, pinching the spaghetti straps with her long flamingo nails, adjusting the dress, breathing deeply. “Well, well, well. Shaw, baby. I’m hurt.”

Red lines cut along Shaw’s ridiculously high cheekbones. “Since you moved back, Regina?”

“You could have called me. You could have at least let me make a counteroffer.”