Hardwick raised an eyebrow. “Sounds to me like a nasty little kid trying to shock the grown-ups. That FMAD T-shirt you described makes her seem kind of pathetic. Like inside she’s about twelve.”

“The T-shirt may have been harmless,” replied Gurney, “but her eyes weren’t.”

Esti jumped in. “Maybe the shirt wasn’t so harmless either. Suppose it was a literal statement of fact.”

Hardwick ratcheted up his skeptical look. “What fact?”

“Maybe there’s more than one ‘black widow’ in this case.”

“You mean ‘Fuck me and die’ really means ‘Fuck me and I’ll kill you’? That’s clever, but I don’t get it. How does it—”

“She told Klemper her father coerced her into having sex with him. We have no proof of it, but it could be true.”

“So you’re saying that Alyssa killed her father as payback?”

“It’s not impossible. And if she could rope a horny jerk like Klemper into bending the investigation to put Kay in the frame, the ‘payback’ would also include her ending up with her father’s estate. That’s two major motives—revenge and money.”

Hardwick looked at Gurney. “What do you think, ace?”

“I’m sure Alyssa is guilty of something. She may have ‘persuaded’ or blackmailed Klemper into tailoring the evidence to make sure Kay was convicted. Or she may have masterminded the whole damn thing—the murder as well as the frame.”

“Premeditated murder? You think she’s capable of that?”

“There’s something scary in those glittery blue eyes. But I have a hard time seeing her handling the executional details. Someone else smashed Mary’s head on the side of that bathtub and hammered the nails into Fat Gus.”

“You’re saying she hired a pro?”

“I’m saying if she was the prime mover behind the three murders, she would’ve needed help—but none of that answers the basic question that’s been eating at me from the beginning: Why Carl’s mother? It really doesn’t make sense.”

Hardwick was drumming his fingertips on the table. “Neither does the Gus hit. Not unless you buy Donny Angel’s story about Gus and Carl being hit by a guy they targeted. But if you buy that, and you also buy Alyssa as the prime mover, then you’re stuck with the conclusion that she must have been Carl’s original target—which never felt right to me, and it still doesn’t.”

“But it would give her a third motive,” said Esti.

As Gurney considered the Angelidis scenario one more time, with Alyssa in the unnamed target position, it touched a nerve.

“What is it?” asked Esti, eyeing him curiously.