"What are you working up to here? I hope you're not thinking of doing anything so foolish as taking reprisals on Julia. You could get us both in a lot of hot water."

"Hot water? Two people are dead. Gerhard might not have been the most savory character, but he didn't deserve what happened to him. And Christy… I liked Christy."

"Please don't do anything rash."

"Me?" Jack said. "Rash? Never."

"So you'll stay away from Julia?"

"Won't harm a hair on her head."

But he couldn't speak for Jeremy Bolton.

3

That guy, that detective, that Robertson… had to be him.

Jeremy fumed in silence as he comforted a sobbing Dawn in the police station. The two of them were seated at the desk of a detective named Cullen—homicide of all things—who'd just explained the circumstances of her mother's death. Balding, overweight, sweating, Cullen was obviously uncomfortable as he described how they'd found her, and the wounds that had killed her.

"B-but the news said something about 'suspicious,'" Dawn said. "What does that mean?"

"It means the circumstances are unusual enough to warrant an investigation. We received a call informing us of your mother's death. That's certainly unusual in a suicide. And the caller told us to run drug and tox screens on her."

The fuck! How could he know?

Jeremy felt a scream of rage building… wanted to start smashing things… but forced himself to remain calm and cool.

"But what does that mean?" Dawn said.

"It means we have two possibilities." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Someone found your mother after she committed suicide, wrongly suspected foul play, but didn't want to get involved; or someone found her dead, rightly suspected foul play, but didn't want to get involved. The second possibility means that someone killed your mother and made it look like suicide."

"But who…?"

"That's what we'd like to know. The caller used a pay-as-you-go cell phone, so the call is untraceable."

Jeremy could tell him who owned that phone. Robertson… that fuck Robertson must have paid a visit to Moonglow soon after Jeremy left, found her dead, and made the call. A simple suicide had now become a possible murder. And if they checked her blood as suggested…

Jeremy said, "If she was killed—I can't imagine a soul in the world who would want Mrs. Pickering dead, but let's just say she was—how do you know it wasn't the killer himself who called?"

"That would be even more unusual, but nothing's impossible." He squinted at Jeremy and then pointed at his own nose. "Have an accident, Mister"—he checked his notes—"Bethlehem?"

"Tripped on the stairs yesterday. Racked up my knee too."

Cullen's expression said nothing. He turned to Dawn.

"Did your mother seem depressed recently?"

Jeremy jumped in before Dawn could reply. "She was very unhappy that Dawn had moved in with me." He looked at her and squeezed her hand. "I don't think I'm talkin out of school when I say she's been actin real strange ever since we became involved. Without gettin into particulars, she seemed to become downright unglued when she learned Dawn was pregnant."

Cullen made some notes and said, "Unglued how?"

Jeremy cut Dawn off again. "She never threatened suicide, if that's what you mean. At least not to me. How about you, darlin?"

Looking dazed, Dawn shook her head. "No, never. She did hire a detective, though."

Shit-shit-shit! Never should have let her speak.

"Right," Jeremy quickly added. "We don't know who she hired and we don't know why—I asked but she wouldn't tell us."

Cullen was nodding. "We'll look into that."

Jeremy wanted to shift the subject away from the detective before Dawn said anything about her mother's accusations against him.

"You say the caller mentioned drug and tox screens. Has anything come up?"

"No results back yet." Cullen looked at him. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, it's just that—"

Cullen's phone rang. He answered it, muttered and grunted a few times, then said, "I'll be damned. Keep me posted."

He hung up and looked at Dawn.

"Looks like our mystery caller is back again. He called downstairs and said we should check your mother for Rohypnol."

Jeremy almost jumped out of his seat. How the hell—?

When Moonglow came up positive for roofies and the word got out, Dirty Danny was sure to hear about it. He'd put two and two together in no time.

Looked like Danny was going to need an accident.

Shit!

This was getting more complicated by the minute.

"What's that?" Dawn said.

"An illegal downer. Was your mother into downers?"

Dawn glared at him. "My mother wasn't into anything. She was like totally antidrug."

"Yes," Jeremy said. "I'd be very surprised if you found anything. The only thing Mrs. Pickering seemed hooked on was caffeine."

Cullen shook his head and sighed. "Okay. In the meantime, for the record: Where were you two last night?"

Jeremy had known this was coming—family members, especially those like Dawn in line to inherit, were always prime suspects—but he put on a shocked look.

"You can't think Dawn would have anything to do with this terrible thing!"

Cullen didn't react. "As I said, for the record."

"We were home," Dawn said. "Jerry was hurting from his, um, fall, so we went to bed early. When I got up this morning…"

She broke down again. Jeremy put a comforting arm around her quaking shoulders.

"She heard a news story about a suspicious suicide in town. And since her mother had been actin weird, she gave her a call, just to check on her, and, well, you know the rest." He gave Cullen a pleading look. "Can I take her home now?"

"Sure. I have your contact numbers. Miss Pickering, I'll keep you updated on developments."

Still sobbing, Dawn nodded.

Jeremy struggled out of the chair—the knee hurt worse today than yesterday. The good news was that he didn't look like a guy who'd be sneaking around faking someone's suicide.

But knee or no knee, he had to do something about Dirty Danny. And then he'd have to track down Robertson. He wanted Robertson for a lot of reasons. Payback topped the list, but he also wanted to know where he got his information. Especially how he knew about the roofies.

4

"You don't need a man of my not inconsiderable talents for something like this," Russell Tuit said as he positioned the paper on the glass. "You could teach yourself in less than an hour."

He'd adopted a put-upon look, but Jack knew he got off on anything with a whiff of scam or illegality. He'd done some soft time for bank hacking and one of the conditions of his parole was a ten-year ban from the Internet. Russ had found ways around it—like helping the guy next door set up a wi-fi network in his apartment last month and making sure the signal was strong enough to penetrate the wall they shared—but he swore his hacking days were over. He did not want to go back inside.

"But I don't have one of those thingamajigs, Russ."

"This thingamajig is called a scanner."

Jack knew that, but he liked to pull Russ's chain.

"Right. Don't have a scannamajig. Don't even have a printer."

He shook his head. "How anyone can have a computer and not a printer is beyond me. I mean, what if you need to print out something like Mapquest directions?"

Russ was not the stereotypical mouse potato—no taped glasses or pocket protector—but he tended to get so wrapped up in his keyboarding that he'd forget to bathe. The fact that he lived over a Second Avenue Tex-Mex restaurant was sometimes a good thing.

"Not much of a traveler, Russ. And if I need directions to anywhere I can write them down."

"I suppose I'd be crazy to ask if you've got Photoshop."