Inside, there was a magazine and an oatmeal-colored cardigan—a color I’d never seen Lou wear. I frowned and lifted it out. Embroidered on the collar were the words Good Vibes! in pink thread. Not Lou’s style at all. Good Vibes—I’d seen that before. Ellen’s shower curtain that we’d wrapped Klein’s body in. I frowned, uneasy, and lifted the sweater to my nose. A faint trace of plasticky, candy-smelling perfume. I knew that smell.

Frantic, I threw the cardigan on the bed and clutched the magazine, a glossy tabloid that screamed coverage of the Klein-Howard murders. Something a murderer might keep, if she was sloppy. A trophy. Underneath it, case notes in my handwriting, with Ellen’s name on them.

Underneath that—the tip of a gun resting on a bed of white. I thought of what Escobar had asked, what I’d done with the gun. I hadn’t seen it since that night. And yet here it was.

But the gun wasn’t the worst of it. My fingers trembled as I pulled one of dozens of the Lady’s embossed fleur-de-lis envelopes from Lou’s suitcase. The Lady’s special stationery—in Lou’s suitcase.

Before I could process it, the door creaked open and Lou, still naked, handed me a tumbler.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, setting the tumbler on the bedside table so I could hold the envelope out to her.

Lou glanced at the envelope and then at the spread of evidence on her bed. Her expression didn’t change. She grabbed the silk robe from the foot of the bed where she’d abandoned it, turning away from me to cinch the belt. I watched the long line of her neck bent over her task.

Maybe there was a simple explanation for it all—the gun, the envelopes, a piece of clothing doused in Ellen’s perfume. Maybe the gun was for safekeeping. But the envelopes . . . “Lou, why do you have the Lady’s stationery?”

Lou sighed and turned to face me, eyebrows raised. The faint marks my lips had made against her skin were starting to bloom, and a pulse in her neck ticked as I stared. She didn’t look like my Lou. But then: she’d never been my Lou, never. I closed my eyes, feeling sick.

“Come on, Jo,” she said, still turned away from me. “You must’ve guessed.”