I told myself I shouldn’t be bitter, that she’d come to the canyon; she’d helped me with Ellen when I needed it. I couldn’t blame her for the fact that she’d chosen not to stay with me after, that she’d had someone else to hold her while I lay sleepless, Ellen’s ghost fluttering over my bed every second. Most of all, I told myself that bitterness wouldn’t be attractive to Carrigan. That was what I needed to be focusing on.

If I had any shot with Carrigan left, it would be tonight. Now that I’d already talked to him, I couldn’t regroup, try to corner him again—it would look too suspicious. I had to push it, now, see how far I could take it.

If he came back to refill drinks, I’d try again. If he got up to go to the bathroom, I’d follow him down. I pressed my hand to my temple, tried to think, but my hands were shaking. MacLeish was waiting for me. Or Escobar, or someone new, to ask me questions about Ellen.

The woman next to me was starting to get loud and belligerent. “. . . what if it was murder all around? Like, so, she kills him, but then someone kills her and leaves those bodies in the canyon . . . or maybe someone killed them both, you know? Like don’t those producer guys always have mob ties?”

“You watch too many movies.”

“Mark my words. Cosa Nostra.”

And then I truly couldn’t breathe. I was sweating even though we were inside and the heat had started to retreat in the last week—although I couldn’t remember, had it been hot the morning of the canyon, had Ellen’s body been sitting out in the heat, had her mother had to identify some heat-eaten thing, had she, had it . . .

“Goddammit,” I snapped out loud. The woman to my left turned to stare at me. I stood up, plunking two twenties down on the table to cover my bill. I had to get some fresh air. I kept an eye on Carrigan’s table—he was still nursing the club soda, nodding at something one of his partners was saying—and ducked outside. I picked a spot near the valet stand where I could gulp the fresh air, pretend to smoke a cigarette, maybe, but where I could still keep an eye on Carrigan’s table.