I’d known it was coming and I’d practiced my answer to minimize Lou’s concern. “Infatuated, maybe. She asked if we wouldn’t mind if she kept seeing him, once it was all over.” It was bad news and Lou would worry, but not as much as if I’d pretended nothing was wrong. And not as much as if I’d told her the truth.

“How big a liability is she?”

“Well, she told me,” I said, hating myself a little for the lie. “So she still trusts me. It’s nothing, I’ve still got her under control. I guess I wanted to tell you, be honest with you.”

“Jo, tell me now if you think you can’t handle—”

“No,” I said, fast. Lou had stuck her neck out for me with the Lady. I’d find a way to handle it. Ellen had her money. She’d be in almost as much trouble as us if she went to the cops. Even just thinking of the cops made me shudder. “It’s a little crush, nothing to worry about. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

Lou looked at me from the side of her eye, not turning her head. I held my breath. But she didn’t push it any further.

Carrigan’s office took up three high-rise floors in an Art Deco jewel box of a skyscraper that was located in the apocalypse of downtown. On the forty-minute ride, I had time to fill Lou in on what I’d learned so far about Carrigan.

His favorite movies starred Humphrey Bogart. He’d grown up in Wisconsin. He’d been the college quarterback. Married to Tana Carrigan, Philanthropist and Wife. Not a bad-looking woman at all, more handsome than beautiful, with a square chin, and despite her evident Botox, she still looked mostly human. She was also seven years older than her husband, which I suspected might have something to do with the fervent upkeep.

Before Tana, there’d been another wife, the college sweetheart, pictured with him in an old notice about Carrigan’s football prowess. A nice-looking girl—small silver cross around her neck; nails painted purity-ring pink; shiny, center-parted hair. Also blonde. They’d been married three or four years—maybe she’d refused to give it up without a diamond; she looked the type. Virginity can make a woman sound interesting to a certain kind of man, but it’s an interest you can never earn back once you’ve spent it. A quiet divorce, no children. Then came Tana, the I Mean It This Time Marriage.

And after Tana, zilch. Not so much as a photograph within an arm’s length of another woman. Surprising, for a man that handsome.