We stared at each other while the words hung in the air. It was nothing but the truth, but I’d never planned to say such a thing aloud, least of all to a cop.

“Lily, your sister is tied up in this. That doesn’t mean she did anything to the woman. But that woman was drugged before she died. Even if the heart attack was an accident, the drugging wasn’t. And it’s just too big a coincidence that this woman’s death was made to look like your mother’s suicide.” Bruxton leaned forward. “The way I look at it, there are two main possibilities. This girl died by mistake, and someone tried to cover it up.”

“What’s the other one?”

“This woman was killed for a reason, and whoever did it wanted the world to believe it was Claudia.”

The second possibility made me shudder. But it didn’t hurt me like what came out of Bruxton’s mouth next. “I should get going. By the way, Norah and I decided to pull the LUDs for the apartment for all of last year. Turns out your sister and your old friend Martin Sklar spent a lot of time on the phone together.”

“Excuse me?”

“Actually, most of the conversations were last March. But they were both making the calls. Sometimes they talked an hour or more.” He stood up. “Who knows? Maybe they both missed you.”

CHAPTER 18

“Mmm, greens,” Jesse swooned as he came into the kitchen and kissed me on the cheek. “Honey, I am most definitely home.”

He’d called me just as Bruxton was leaving, asking if he could pick anything up for me. The studio he shared with a couple of other photographers was barely a ten-minute walk from his apartment. Knowing he’d be home soon had kept me from jumping into a cab and heading uptown to confront Martin. Instead, I was pan-searing tuna steaks when Jesse came in. When I heard the door I threw spinach and mustard leaves into a pan with the kale and some onion. I’d often pictured Jesse and me settling into sexless companionable bliss in our eighties, and over dinner I remembered why. He wanted to know everything about my meetings with Melissa Ardito, Sarah Lyons, and Rachel Heidegger. I told him all of the chilling things Bruxton had said. In the end, I admitted that I’d had drinks with Martin at the flamenco bar, even though I knew what his reaction would be.

“He’s a low-down, no-count lowlife,” Jesse ranted. “What poor excuse for a man would make you meet him in a bar in exchange for information about your sister?”

“That’s not how it happened,” I insisted. “You’re deliberately misinterpreting what I said.”

“Oh yeah? I’m not misinterpretin’ the part about his kid bein’ nuts. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”