“Come on,” I barked at her.

“How do you know…”

“Because the bastard came to see me. He wants money. He thinks I murdered Mick, and he wants a piece of the action.”

“What did you say?”

“I put a shotgun in his face and told him there was no murder.”

“That’s good,” she said, eager for any reassurance at all.

“That it was an accident.”

“That’s good.” Oh, she felt that was better yet.

“Did you give him money?”

“No.”

“Or Winston?”

She shook her head. I said, “Anything at all?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Then very plaintively, “Why? Why are you asking that?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

JUST THE THREE OF US

THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN. LIZ stepped in. She looked at Madelaine. She turned her head and glared at me. “Why are you making her cry?”

Sure enough, there were actual tears on Maddie’s face. At least coming from one eye, with the other working up to it. As for her expression, imagine an actress, somewhere in her third and fourth decades, playing an abused child.

“I was just about to explain criminal conspiracy to her.”

“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth said. “When two or more people agree to commit an illegal act and take some step toward its completion.”

“When it was just the three of us,” I said, “I was reasonably certain—unreasonably certain—that this could be contained. Now I know that there are at least five of us. Three who have benefited. One who hasn’t—Owen Cohen—who is very upset. And one who’s dead.”

“Owen doesn’t know anything.”

“Oh, Liz,” Madelaine said, not knowing enough to keep her mouth shut.

“Bullshit,” I said. “I need you to tell me what happened with Winston and Owen. Every bit of it.” I knew they’d wanted a female killer. Or several. I was sure they’d tried. “I need to know if you approached anyone else.”

Both of them claimed that they’d never spoken to any women about it in a direct way. But, well, when they encountered women who seemed particularly disgruntled, they did try to spin conversations in that direction. Just as a sort of gossipy possibility. Sort of like the way men say, “Women. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them,” trying out lines like, “Husbands, don’t you sometimes wish you could just eliminate the current one?” and “What if there were a service to get rid of husbands for you?” They got lots of positives, but never anything even slightly serious.

“We just don’t know people like that,” Madelaine said.

“We travel in very limited circles,” Liz said, dry and sarcastic.