I leaned in to pick up the item and actually pumped my fist in the air when I saw what it was.

A phone.

A nice phone.

I had a two-week rule with phones. If nobody contacted me within that window, I put it up for sale online and acted like it had never happened. I’d done it twice already and made seventy-five bucks each time.

This was who I was now.

I sold things online that did not belong to me.

I walked around to my trunk and opened it, tossing the phone into the small bin I kept there for just that purpose. I hoped I wouldn’t have to take it out again until it was time to sell it.

As I slammed it shut, I wondered if the phone belonged to Lotti.

I imagined him calling the phone and the sound of his warm, deep voice flowing through the line as he asked me where I found it and how he could get it back.

I quickly pushed the thought away. As nice as it was to think about hearing his voice again, I’d be much luckier if he didn’t call.

I could probably get at least a hundred for it.

Chapter 3

Claire

The Night in Question

A few hours before she got the call about the body in the Gold Coast, Detective Claire Puhl was at a bar on a Tinder date.

She wouldn’t admit it to anyone—not her meddling mother and certainly not her overly familiar coworkers—but that’s where she was and what she was doing.

Later, she would walk into the scene of the crime as the formidable Detective Puhl, wearing the blazer and the lower, more sensible heels she kept in the back seat of her car. She would set the scene into motion, questioning the first responders and neighbors in her quiet, assertive way. She dealt with people who had the audacity to end another person’s life; she didn’t have time for anything short of scrappy, determined professionalism. She would walk in, and she would get answers, because that’s what Detective Puhl did.

But at eight o’clock that evening, she was just Claire.

Forty-one years old, nervous, and on a date with an accountant named Bill. She’d stood in the mirror a long time before leaving the house, examining the completely out-of-character bright-pink blush on her toffee-colored skin and the plum lipstick that kept getting on her teeth. It had been raining all night, and she had considered using that as an excuse to cancel, but she’d decided against it. So she was pushing small pieces of asparagus around her plate with the tip of her fork while Bill talked ad nauseam about things she already knew from his dating profile.

He “liked sports” but could only name teams, not players.

He “read books sometimes” but could only tell her genres, not titles.