‘I said goodbye,’ Lala told him, ‘but you were asleep. Guess I wore you out.’

‘I guess you did.’

Peach stared at them. ‘So are you two—?’

‘I keep him in my life to drive myself crazy,’ Lala replied.

‘I keep her in my life to drive my mother crazy,’ Cab added.

Cab watched a little smile play across Peach’s face. She found them funny.

‘So why are we here, Peach?’ Cab asked. ‘You said this was Justin’s hidey-hole, but you didn’t know about this place until after he was killed?’

Peach shook her head. ‘I knew he had a safe house, but he never told me where it was.’

Cab looked at Lala. ‘What about you? Did you know about it?’

‘No.’

He studied the wreckage of the house. ‘Well, someone found it.’

‘I don’t think it was Curtis Ritchie,’ Peach said. ‘There were no pictures of this place on his camera. The trouble is, whoever searched it took everything. There’s nothing left to tell us anything. It’s a dead end.’

‘How did you find this place?’ Cab asked her.

He listened to Peach explain about the photograph attached to a draft e-mail from Justin and to the edits in the picture that had led her down San Fernando Drive to this house. She pulled a hard copy of the photograph from her back pocket and showed it to him.

‘See? Justin kept this picture in a frame by the window. I thought maybe he was sending me another message, but I guess I was wrong. I couldn’t find anything.’

‘You said the photo in the e-mail was edited,’ Cab said. ‘What about this one?’

‘I don’t think so. The street number is the same now. So’s the little house on the restaurant sign.’

‘What about other changes?’

‘I – I’m not sure I really looked.’

‘Do you still have the original?’ Cab asked.

Peach nodded. ‘It’s on my phone.’

She scrolled through her camera roll, clicked on a picture, and handed the phone to Cab. He stared at the image on the camera screen, then at the printed photo in his hand. He went back and forth several times, and at first he thought Peach was correct. The photos were identical.

Except …

‘The vent,’ Cab said.

Lala looked at him. ‘What?’

‘Justin added an exhaust vent on the roof of the restaurant. It’s right above Peach. It’s in the hard-copy print here, but the vent’s not in the original photograph.’

Cab didn’t have time to say anything more before Peach was on her feet and over to the bedroom window. She threw up the sash and practically jumped through the cramped space into the flooded yard. She pushed through the standing water until she could see the roof of the house, and then she pointed and screamed.

‘There’s a vent above the bedroom. Right above the bedroom! That can’t be right!’