The phone rang, reminding me of where I was. The sound had come from the vintage black rotary-dial phone I’d salvaged long ago when another elderly neighbor had left the building. You couldn’t use an answering machine with it, but you had to respect technology that had been around for half a century and refused to quit. On impulse, I went to the desk and answered it. “Hello?”

Silence on the other end. Then a sound like a wheezing breath.

“Hello?” I repeated. “Who is this?”

“I think I got the wrong number,” replied a woman’s voice. She sounded very old or very tired. “Sorry ’bout that.” She hung up, and I set the receiver back into its cradle.

I’d spent long enough at Claudia’s. I retrieved my bag and grabbed my cell phone. My best friend, Jesse, answered on the second ring. He’d wanted to come to my sister’s apartment with me. As a consolation prize, I’d promised to phone him when I was done.

“It’s me,” I said. “Are you ready to get drunk now?”

CHAPTER 3

I woke up early Monday morning, jet-lagged and hungover. What really made me feel ill was the fact that I had to go to the morgue that day. Claudia and I were each other’s only family; there was no one else to identify her. Still, when I called the police precinct to let the detectives know I’d arrived in New York, I held a faint hope that I wouldn’t have to do it. The police had to be busy right after New Year’s. It was January third; they’d be up to their eyeballs in thieves and fighters and would-be terrorists. “Car will pick you up ten-thirty,” barked the desk sergeant. “Detective Renfrew will meet you.” The name twigged my memory. Norah Renfrew was the sympathetic-sounding officer who’d called about my sister’s death. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting her.

I was staying at Jesse’s apartment, and he was up brewing coffee by the time I’d showered and dressed. “Mornin’, Tiger Lily,” he said in his deep Oklahoma drawl, handing me a cup.

“You didn’t have to get up.” I felt guilty. “I know you’re not a morning person.”

“You’re not gonna let me live down that time I fell asleep while eatin’ breakfast, are you?” He smiled down at me. Jesse was six-foot-one, handsome like a thirty-year-old Gregory Peck with his dark brown hair and piercing eyes.

Even on such a grim day, he could make me smile. “You went headfirst into a bowl of cornflakes.”

“That’s our li’l secret.” We clicked coffee cups as if they were champagne flutes. “Damn, but you look fine first thing in the mornin’. Like Ava in The Barefoot Contessa.”