“Thanks,” Billy muttered. “I accept your challenge.”

Something made Regan pull the pillow out of the drawer. The red pillowcase looked worn out. She walked over to one of the beds and slid the pillow out of its case. The zipper of the stained shabby pillow was partially separated from the pillow itself.

“I wonder why she doesn’t get a new one,” Melanie commented. “I know she makes good money. I mean, she makes more than I do and my pillow doesn’t look like that.”

Regan unzipped the rest of the zipper and reached inside. Her fingers touched on what felt like small pieces of thick paper. She reached and pulled them out. “Photographs,” she murmured. Quickly Regan placed six photos next to each other on the bed. As she and Cal shone their flashlights over the images, they all gasped.

Five photographs were of different men’s arms with angry red welts that spelled out I AM A SNAKE with varying degrees of clarity.

“Her friend wasn’t kidding!” Melanie said. “Oh, my God! She is so cruel!” Unconsciously, she rubbed her arms. “Regan, you have to find that guy tonight.”

“I intend to do my best. Now what about this?” The sixth picture was of a young girl of about ten, standing in front of a redbrick restaurant with a woman who appeared to be in her sixties. There was a neon sign in the window that was hard to decipher. “I wonder if this is Georgina with her grandmother.”

“Who else’s picture would she keep in her pillowcase?” Melanie asked as she stared at the photo. “She told me she was so close to her grandmother. The girl looks like it could be Georgina…”

Cal took the picture in his hands and studied it. “Wait a minute! I recognize that place and that woman!”

“You do?” Regan asked, astonished.

“It was a little hole-in-the-wall called Nunzio’s on the Upper East Side. I used to go there more than twenty years ago with my friends. It was open until four in the morning and was always jammed. This lady was the bartender! She was one tough broad but she made the best margaritas in town!”

“Are you sure?” Regan asked.

“Yes! This woman had a picture of her granddaughter behind the bar.” Cal smiled. “She bossed everybody around. Especially when she saw a guy who wasn’t treating a girl right. She threw more people out of that joint.” He paused. “She used to say they should be boiled in oil…We all got a big kick out of her.”

They were all silent for a moment. “She made margaritas?” Regan asked.

“Yes.”

“Kit said Georgina drank a margarita tonight. You say the bar isn’t there anymore?”

“No. The woman died in a terrible car accident years ago when she was on vacation. The owner eventually sold the place. I was so shocked when I heard she had died. It seemed like she was going to outlive us all.”

“So that’s what happened to her,” Melanie said softly. “Georgina never mentioned how she died.”