Thirty minutes later, she was behind the wheel of her car, doing just that. She was already regretting how she’d spent the first part of her night off, but there was no need to dwell on it. She would go home, climb into bed, turn on Midsomer Murders, and settle into a deep, deep sleep.

• • •

Five hours later, she wasn’t settled into any sort of sleep, deep or otherwise.

Instead, she was standing under an umbrella in front of the three-flat apartment building at 115 West Oak. She was wearing the blazer and comfy heels from her car on top of the black slacks she’d pulled over the shorts she’d been relaxing in. When she’d heard her phone ring and saw Detective Greg Kuchi’s name on the screen, she’d groaned out loud, since it had to be something huge for him to interrupt her on one of her very few nights off.

“Kuchi,” she had said.

He had sighed loudly into the phone. Greg was adamantly opposed to the use of his last name—which, in his own words, was pronounced “like ‘cookie,’ but in the way Cookie Monster says it.” He insisted that everyone call him Detective Greg, a rule by which Claire typically abided, except in rare circumstances when she was annoyed with him.

“All I wanted was one night. Just one.”

“I know,” he said. “Tell people to stop being assholes and quit killing people.”

“Where am I going?”

“Gold Coast.”

It had taken her about twenty-five minutes to get to the apartment, and when she arrived, there was a crowd gathering. She walked toward the building with her shoulders squared, her eyes shrewd, her jaw determined. Around her, a few cops looked up and then whispered to one another.

She saw them and held back a smile.

The apartment sat in a long line of mansions and row houses at the northeast end of the Gold Coast. They were just a few blocks away from Lake Michigan and the typically bustling shops of Michigan Avenue. It was almost 3:30 a.m., and cars still whizzed by on Lake Shore Drive as the warm Chicago night came to an end.

The building looked like something out of a historic painting. It was a warm-brown brick three-flat with ornate black-iron trimming around the windows and Juliet balconies that added little beyond a bit of added charm. The hedges out front were immaculately trimmed, so perfect, they looked like they’d been clipped one leaf at a time. The concrete steps led up to a beautiful, chocolate-stained door, and there was an orange-cushioned swing on one side of the small porch. It was a stately and beautiful building, at least from the outside.

Claire had a feeling that what she would find inside would be a sharp contrast.