Kayleigh was looking out the window at the dimly lit or black landscape. “I envy them,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“It’s like a lot of the musicians on your website. They play at night and on weekends for their friends and families. It’s not for the money. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so good. Ha, modesty alert … But you know what I mean. I never really wanted to be a star. I wanted to have a husband and”—she nodded back toward Villalobos’s—“babies and sing to them and friends…. It just all got away from me.”

She was silent and Dance supposed she was thinking: If I wasn’t famous I wouldn’t have Edwin Sharp in my life.

Dance could see Kayleigh’s reflection and noted her jaw was set and there were possibly tears in her eyes. Then Kayleigh turned back, shoving her troubled thoughts away, it seemed, and said with a sly grin, “So. Tell me. Dish.”

“Men?”

“Like yeah!” Kayleigh said. “You mentioned Jon somebody?”

“The greatest guy in the world,” Dance said. “Brilliant. Used to be in Silicon Valley, now he teaches and does consulting. The most important thing is that Wes and Maggie like him.” She added that her son had had a very difficult time with his mother’s dating. He hadn’t liked anybody until Boling.

“Of course it didn’t help that one guy I introduced them to turned out to be a killer.”

“No!”

“Oh, we weren’t in any danger. He was after the same perp I was. It’s just that I wanted to put him in jail. My friend wanted to kill him.”

“I don’t know,” Kayleigh said ominously. “There’s something to be said for that.”

Thinking again, probably, of Edwin Sharp.

“But the kids love Jon. It’s working out well.”

“And?” the singer asked.

“And what?”

“You going to tell me or not?”

And here, I’m the kinesics pro. Dance debated but in the end demurred. “Oh, nothing … just who knows what’s going to happen? I’ve only been a widow a few years. I’m in no hurry.”

“Sure,” Kayleigh said, not exactly believing the lame explanation.

And Dance reflected: Yes, she liked Jon Boling a lot. Hey, she probably loved him and on more than one occasion, lying in bed together during one of the few nights they’d spent out of town, she’d come close to saying so. And she’d sensed that he had too.

He was kind, easygoing, good-looking, with a great sense of humor.

But then there was Michael.

Michael O’Neil was a detective with the Monterey County Office of the Sheriff. He and Dance had worked together for years and, if she was instinctively on anyone’s wavelength, it was O’Neil’s. They worked in timepiece harmony, they laughed, they loved the same foods and wines, they argued like the dickens and never took a word of it personally. Dance believed that he was as perfect for her as anyone could be.

Aside from that little glitch: a wife.

Who had finally left him and their children—naturally, just after Dance started going out with Jon Boling. O’Neil and his wife, Anne, were still married, though she was living in San Francisco now. O’Neil had mentioned divorce papers being prepared but timetables and plans seemed vague.