“I took the liberty of calling your Aunt Millie,” Cal said, handing me a cup of coffee. Black with sugar. Perfect. I took a grateful sip. “She agreed to come visit with Sue again today.”

I nodded. “Good plan.”

“We’re going over to Hattie’s,” Aunt Sue said. “God rest her soul,” she added, then crossed herself. “Her only family’s some nephew in Hoboken, so I figured we’d pack up her place for her.”

The guilt from last night hit me full force. “That’s nice of you.”

“It’s the least we could do. You know, considering…” Aunt Sue trailed off. Cal cleared his throat. I stared down into my mug. It was unanimous—we all thought I was guilty.

Aunt Sue pulled a plate from the cupboard and transferred a slice of French toast onto it before shoving it in my direction. “Here. Eat something,” she directed.

While food was the last thing I wanted, I obliged. Mostly because the fight had been guilted out of me. I sat down at the tiny dining table, digging into the toast and shoving a forkful into my mouth.

And nearly choked.

I spit the bite back onto my plate, gulping down coffee to put out the fire that had exploded on my tongue.

“What did you put on this?” I finally managed to ask. Though it came out more like, “ut id ou ut in is?” since my tongue had somehow swollen to twice its size.

At first Aunt Sue gave me a blank look. Then she shrugged. “I couldn’t find the cinnamon. So I used cayenne instead. Gives it a bit of a kick, huh?”

I shoved the plate away. “A hell of a kick.”

At least now I was wide awake.

Chapter Twelve

Just as I was finishing my coffee—sans volcanic French toast—my cell rang. It was the LAPD, as predicted, asking Aunt Sue and me to come down to the station to give an official statement about last night. While reliving the scene was the last thing I wanted to do, as Cal had said, I didn’t have much choice in the matter now. I told the officer I’d be there as soon as I could, finished my coffee, and the three of us loaded into Cal’s Hummer.

Three hours later, I had completely spilled my guts to a homicide detective who was the spitting image of Kojak, and Aunt Sue had given a somewhat coherent statement to his partner, a woman with the most severe ponytail I’d ever seen. By the time we were finished, I had renewed purpose. I was going to find this guy if it was the last thing I did.

And I was going to start where we left off yesterday—Blain Hall’s agent.

As soon as we dropped off Aunt Sue at Millie’s, I plugged the agent’s address into Cal’s GPS.

“What’s that?” he asked.