In the morning, I checked the cars on my street. No unmarked now, no one surveilling the place. If Lou was right and had seen someone, he or she was long gone by now—but I was also pretty sure they’d be back. I thought of the slipped bangle, lodged in the side of Carrigan’s car. I wondered how quickly I could call and ask to retrieve it.

I was about to head inside, call a taxi so I could pick up my car from Sole del Mare, when I heard her.

“I see you didn’t sleep at Jackal’s.”

I whipped around. Lou was leaning against her car door, smiling at me. She didn’t seem pissed, or suspicious—just waiting.

“No,” I said, stepping toward her. “What are you doing here?”

“I went to Jackal’s first,” Lou said. “He said he hadn’t seen you.” She shook her head at my complex. “This place is such a dump.”

“It’s beachfront,” I said automatically. “Really, Lou, what are you doing here?”

Lou’s smile faltered. She looked tired. I wondered how much sleep she’d missed last night and who she’d been missing it with. “I haven’t been sleeping,” she admitted. “I wondered how you were doing.”

“That’s why you haven’t been in the office?” I took a step toward her. Lou nodded. Bullshit. Across the hot car, glittering in the morning sun, Lou was tapping her hip against the open car door. Fidgety. That worried me. Drop-in visits weren’t her style, not at all.

“Lou, about Chinatown—”

“Forget it, Jo,” she said. “Really, forget it. That’s not why I’m here, anyway.” The corner of her tongue darted out and touched her very pink lips. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying not to remember the feel of those lips pressed against mine. Trying not to think of her face, bone white, in the moonlight, Ellen’s body between us.

“Let’s play hooky,” she whispered. Up close, her eyes looked smeary and her lips were twitching. “Let’s forget everything that happened, today only. Okay? We’ll forget her and we’ll go somewhere else, and then tomorrow, it will be like it happened, but for today only, we’re not going to talk about it or think about it or anything. Okay?”

I squinted into the morning sun. Put Ellen aside for the day. In theory, it sounded wonderful. But it would also mean a day of drinking with Lou—it always meant a day of drinking with Lou. I wasn’t sure I could handle that. I wasn’t sure that two drinks in, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from reciting all the little details I was barely keeping a handle on now—Ellen’s favorite color, the plasticky feel of the shower curtain around Klein’s body, the candied smell of the drugstore perfume she always wore.