Letty stared down at the tabletop, at the greasy, yolk-streaked remains of the FBI agent’s breakfast. It reminded her of the thousands of dishes she’d cleared in her years of waiting tables at the Lazy Daizy. And of sitting down, that first time, across from the polite, generous customer all the waitresses referred to as Table Two.

What if she’d blown him off, told him to take a hike that day, when he invited her to see the apartment he suddenly had available? What if she’d never met Evan Wingfield, or allowed Tanya to guilt-trip her into allowing her to move in with her? The what-ifs were relentless. They woke her up every morning, came to her in her sleep, or at odd moments when she was reading with Maya.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Secrets within secrets. That was Tanya.”

Joe drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “So far, all we’ve heard is Wingfield blowing off steam, which is not the same thing as asking you to find somebody to kill Letty. Did he eventually stop dancing around?”

Vikki Hill picked up the phone and tapped the fast-forward button on the recording. “Give a listen,” she said.

It was her voice, midsentence.

“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you want Letty dealt with?”

“I told you already. Call it frontier justice.”

“No. I call it bullshit. I know you, Evan. It all comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

“That crazy Tanya had a will. Who knew? Some Indian woman she met at AA. Who hires a drunk lawyer for estate planning? Tanya Carnahan, that’s who. Long story short, she left everything to Maya, in a trust with Letty named as Maya’s guardian.”

“So?”

“So, when we were together, before things went bad, I put a bunch of my holdings in an LLC and transferred it into Tanya’s name, which I never mentioned to her.”

“As a tax dodge.”

“It’s perfectly legal. Now though, with Tanya dead, my four-year-old kid and her crazy aunt hold title to, like, twelve million dollars’ worth of prime New York real estate. My apartments. And my lawyers tell me I can sue, but unless I can prove Letty killed Tanya, the apartments are held in a trust that Letty controls.”

“But you’re Maya’s legal father, right? Can Tanya just cut you out of the kid’s life like that?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But we don’t need to go into that right now. Let’s get back to Letty. Can you find her, or not?”

“Maybe? I mean, what’s it worth to you?”

“Ten thousand.”