“No,” Ronnie said, surprised. “Not a client—no way. What I do . . . it’s all friendly. In good fun, really. All the work I do is up the coast, nowhere local. And all the people are screened beforehand, and we go in pairs.” She was looking at Lane now. “Two girls, always.”

“Well, good,” Lane said, his voice stilted. “So this is where you’ve been, when you go to work? Not the nonprofit?”

Ronnie stared at her shoes. “No.”

“And is there sex, in these visits?” Cromwell asked.

“No!” Ronnie’s cheeks blazed. She wanted to curl up in a ball. “It isn’t a client who told on me. I’ve done a good job. Never upset anybody. The clients understand my need for discretion as much as I understand theirs.” She stared down at her fingers. They were shaking. “I actually wondered if it was another mom. Like maybe someone’s husband uses the service, and she figured it out. That’s why I was in Piper’s hallway, actually.”

Lane crossed his arms. Taking a breath, Ronnie explained the strange, crayon-printed message she’d found on Esme’s device . . . and the various ways she’d tried to interpret it. “Ronnie!” Lane interrupted. “It said hate? Esme would never write that!”

“I know, but . . .” Then she explained how paranoid she’d felt in the school hallway, enough so that she’d hid in a supply closet to spy. Lane looked scandalized. When she said she saw Piper slipping the note into Lauren’s kid’s bag, Lane shut his eyes slowly.

“It just kind of snowballed,” she said in a small voice as she finished up the story. “I didn’t mean to go to the offices. I was just following Lauren to convince her to leave. We were all in the same boat. So I ran after her. And on my way down the hall, someone hit me. I fell. When I woke up, Piper was on the ground near me.”

It was best, she thought, to leave out the part about opening drawers in Piper’s office. That random spreadsheet she’d found was still balled up in her pocket; it was divine intervention that the cops hadn’t searched her.

Lane was gawking at her with dismay. “I can’t believe Piper was doing this to families.”

“She isn’t as perfect as you think,” Ronnie said sharply, then glanced guiltily at Cromwell.

“Where were you when all this happened?” Cromwell asked.