Tarla weighed whether to push her friend, but she decided that now wasn’t the time. She had several more days before she needed to be back on set in Mallorca, and she was staying with Diane in Birch’s mansion, the way she did every summer. They could talk more later. Tonight was for politics. Tonight they had to wear masks.

Tarla and Diane had grown up together in the sleepy central Florida town of Lake Wales. They’d spent their earliest summers here in the Bok Sanctuary, swatting no-see-ums as they lay in the grass near the tower, talking about boys and dreams. Tarla knew that her best friend had always looked at her with naked envy since those days. Tarla was slim, blonde, tall. She’d escaped Lake Wales for Hollywood as a teenager and did what no real person should be able to do. She made it. She became an actress. She made movies and money. When the two girls both had out-of-wedlock sons at age twenty-one, Tarla could afford to shuttle her son Cab to movie sets around the world, while Diane relied on food stamps to feed Drew.

Birch Fairmont hired Diane as his secretary at Welsh Capital when Drew was ten. He chose her for her body and breasts as much as her Microsoft Excel skills. Age thirty, single mother, unapologetic about stealing a married man – which was what she did when Birch divorced his first wife. She had never pretended that her affair with him was anything but mercenary. She’d gotten exactly what she wanted: the mansion in the Mountain Lake Estates, the island vacations, the permanent security for her son. Though it had come with a steep price tag, which was written on Diane’s face.

Tarla took the chair on the dais next to her friend. The other chairs were empty, but Birch and his entourage would soon fill them for the speech to the wealthy guests. Vote for me, but more than that, give me money. Not that Birch needed it. He’d funded most of his campaign from his own venture-capital millions.

‘You heard they found that poor girl?’ Diane asked.

‘What girl?’

‘The one who went missing. Alison, I think. Fourteen years old. It was in the news over the weekend. They found her body hidden in a ditch. Terrible.’

‘Did you know her?’

‘No, but I should write to her parents. Imagine what they’re going through.’

Tarla didn’t know what to say. She didn’t understand the criminal mind; she couldn’t comprehend how one person could inflict suffering on another. It mystified her that her only son had chosen to immerse himself in solving crimes. With his looks, Cab Bolton could have been an actor or model, but he investigated murders instead. Tarla hated it. She thought he had chosen his career as a kind of rebellion against her Hollywood world.