Daniel handed her a glass of water from the table beside her bed.

She drank it down, clutched the glass between her hands, and said slowly, “Then-what? You think Paulie did this as a copycat?”

“Maybe.”

“Then Jamie Ramos is still out there?”

He said nothing, he didn’t need to.

She looked at him for a very long time, looked down at her bare feet, at the three chipped French toenails, and whispered, “Well, shit.”

IT was midnight. Jack was angry and scared for her, pissed that he hadn’t been there, even more pissed that he couldn’t come down. She made him swear he wouldn’t tell her father, at least not yet.

When Mary Lisa disconnected, she was exhausted, but her brain was squirreling around so madly she began to pace her living room, unable to keep still. Only Elizabeth and Lou Lou were here now, Lou Lou sprawled on one of the living room rugs, her legs up on a chair, bare toes in the air. Elizabeth, elegant in her TV clothes, sat on a love seat, a cup of coffee in her hand.

“We will get through this,” she said to Mary Lisa. “We will.”

Mary Lisa was wearing her favorite pea green T-shirt she’d bought that fateful Saturday and a pair of banged-up low-cut jeans. She nodded toward Elizabeth, and went out to her back deck to lookup at the star-strewn heavens. “So many interesting shapes up there. I don’t see a single motorcycle.”

Lou Lou walked out behind her, yawning. “No, I don’t either. Now, Daniel is as upset as we are, mostly with himself because everything is dead-ended again. When he’s upset, he paces around like you, he’s not focusing on anything but you. Do you know I’ve even told him the name of your third-grade teacher?”

“You don’t know the name of my third-grade teacher.” Mary Lisa paused, turned to rest her elbows on the deck railing. “Do you know I don’t remember it either?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to disappoint him so I told him her name was Mrs. Pilsner, how’s that? I think I was drinking a beer at the time. Damn, Mary Lisa, this is getting old. I’m ready for an ending, you know? A happy ending.”

Mary Lisa watched Elizabeth stroll out on the deck. She’d taken off her stilt heels and came to stand at the railing beside Mary Lisa, dangling her shoes by their straps over the side. She’d taken off her panty hose and her bright crimson-painted toes sparkled in the dim light.

Mary Lisa said, “I’m going to spend six hours with Chico tomorrow, then I’m going to the firing range for another six hours. Then I’m going to call Irene at the studio and tell her I want the studio to hire me around-the-clock bodyguards, about a dozen of them.”

“And the studio’ll do it in a flash,” Elizabeth said. “They’re not stupid.”

“About that six hours with Chico…” Lou Lou began.

Mary Lisa held up her hand, eyes narrowed. “What? You think that’s not enough?”

“Maybe I’m thinking it’s too much the other way.”

“Elizabeth, you agree with Lou Lou?”

“Six straight sessions with Chico and you’d be a cripple, if not dead. Yeah, cut that down to three sessions.”

Mary Lisa sighed. “Okay, I need you guys to tell me if I’ve gone over the edge.”

“You have,” Lou Lou said. “A long time ago. It’s okay.”

The three women stood side by side beneath the beautiful black sky, a quarter moon bright above their heads, a warm breeze against their faces, hearing conversations from people walking on the beach. None of them said anything.

Finally, Mary Lisa whispered, “Okay, three straight lessons. I can do that.”

FIFTY-TWO

Goddard Bay

It was midmorning on a sunny Friday. Jack sat at his desk studying the transcripts of all the interviews conducted since Milo’s death two days before. Only two days? It seemed like beyond forever. He hadn’t gone home the night before, stayed here at the office and thought and reread all the reports until he was nearly blind. He’d gotten only a couple of hours’ sleep. He was vaguely aware of voices outside his office door, but he blocked them out and tried to focus. The words blurred in his head. He knew he was tired, too tired, really, to see something he’d missed. He swigged down some coffee so thick it could make its own Rorschach if he spilled it.

He was trying to concentrate on proving it was Olivia Hildebrand who had killed her husband. He had little doubt about that by now. But the problem was, Mary Lisa kept coming front and center into his mind. She’d called him last night, not five minutes after he’d spoken to Daniel, and he’d listened to her tell him about Paulie Thomas’s mad motorcycle attack and all that happened afterward. He was so scared for her as those words had rained on him that he’d felt paralyzed with it. He’d heard the fear in her voice as well, she was unable to hide it from him, actress or no. He’d known her such a short time, he thought, but he was coming to know her well. She had tried to present a picture of control for him, and he admired her greatly for it. Mary Lisa was solid, and what was cool, in that moment he thought of his mother and how she’d say Mary Lisa was solid as well. He smiled at that. She’d erased the lingering stain left from his failed marriage, the memories of distrust and dread that had haunted his mind, and betrayal, the final nail Rikki had banged in his coffin. He tapped his pen on his desktop, wondering if Mary Lisa was feeling something like what he felt, if in the short time he’d known her, he’d helped to rub out that jerk Mark Bridges from her mind. It was still awfully soon, dammit, maybe he was expecting too much.

He wanted to be in Malibu, he wanted to find the creep who was terrorizing her, which meant, bottom line, that he had to get Olivia Hildebrand into his jail, and her signed confession into his pocket. So he forced his mind back to Milo’s murder yet again. He simply had to. How had Olivia managed to get the poison into Milo’s food tray? They’d found rat poison at her home, but that wasn’t nearly enough, as Pat Bigelow had acidly pointed out to him. Rats were common enough in Goddard Bay.

He wanted to find that bum who’d been around the Goddard Bay Inn kitchen. He was the key, Jack knew it.

He underlined something Mrs. Hildebrand had said-“I’ve loved my husband for thirty-five years, only him.” And he’d asked, “And did your husband love your daughter, Mrs. Hildebrand?”

“Ah, Marci-such a talented, beautiful child.”

He drummed his fingertips on the transcripts.

“Hey.”

That soft voice sounded sharp in his mind. No, the voice wasn’t in his mind, and it was supposed to be down in Malibu. He jerked up.

Mary Lisa stood in the doorway, grinning at him.

He stared at her, her windblown hair, the big sunglasses she wore dangling in her fingers. She was wearing baize slacks and a fitted top beneath a navy blazer.

He nearly knocked his chair over as he went to her. He hauled her up against him, buried his face in her hair, breathed in the lemony smell, and reveled in the softness against his skin. He felt his fatigue fall away from him, forgotten.

He hugged her for what seemed like a long time, feeling her heart beating against his, and finally whispered against her ear, “I can’t believe you’re here. I was just thinking about you and hating that I couldn’t be down in Malibu with you. Sweet Jesus, Mary Lisa, this is a wonderful surprise.” He eased her back, looked down at the face he’d once seen on the other side of bars in his jail, grinned and kissed her. He said into her mouth, “If I’d have managed to get to bed since Milo’s murder, I’d have dreamed about this.”

She laughed into his mouth, felt the hard length of him that fit against her so perfectly, so naturally, and knew what coming home really felt like, for the first time in her life.

She squeezed him hard, went up on her tiptoes and kissed him. He tasted like heat and man and really strong coffee.