“Claudia would not tell me who the man was, so I became suspicious,” he said. “This Gorevale fellow had quite the history. He fancied himself a rake, though I have trouble regarding a man who had intimate relations with his own patients anything but criminal.”

The loathing in his bearing made me shiver. “Fancied?” I asked. “Past tense?”

“Past tense,” Tariq affirmed.

“He’s dead?”

“Yes.” Tariq was eerily calm, as if daring me to inquire further.

“Did you have anything to do with Dr. Gorevale’s demise?” I asked, remembering what Claudia had told me about Tariq. Pakistan is different—someone hurts your family, you have to hit them back twice as hard. Someone attacks your cousin, you have to kill him and maybe his brother, too. I’d never seen Tariq be violent, but underneath his sharp suit and polished manners and elegant language, I knew he was dangerous.

“The question is an insult.”

Jesse muttered. “Anything hurts like that, hurts in proportion to the truth.”

Tariq ignored him. “In September, when the illusion of love shattered, Claudia took it hard. I still cannot imagine why. That musician she dated and that artist she lived with were both better men. At least they had talent, unlike a washed-up old charlatan who forced himself on vulnerable women.”

“Did you know that my sister had a miscarriage?”

“She what?” Jesse yelped, hitting the table with his foot and making it rattle.

Tariq stared at me. “This is, what, a theory of yours, Lily?”

“No.” I dug into my bag and pulled out the folded page from the hospital. Tariq took it from me, read it over, and swallowed hard. “That is why she took it so badly,” he said, softly. “I could not for the life of me work out why she would be wrecked over an old fool like that.” He bowed his head so that I could no longer make out his expression. “I teased her about not drinking anything at dinner in August, but I believed it was just part of her new health regimen. She never said… she never mentioned…” His voice trailed off and he stood up and went to the window, his back to me.

“When did you hear from her next?”

Tariq took so long to answer, I wondered what had caught his attention outside. “I received a call from Claudia on September the twenty-fourth,” he said finally.

“You rehearsing for the cops?” asked Jesse. “‘Cause it’s sorta funny you pulled September twenty-fourth off the top of your head.”