Luke lifted his palms in the air like a preacher beseeching the heavens. Then he pointed at me. ″I already told you, Kate-former Detective Fisher is a drunk and a psych case. So you can take all his information with a friggin′ dump-truck-load of salt. Okay?″

Glancing away, he added, ″As for Gavin Spellmore, well… look. Plenty of guys have something going on outside their marriage, or maybe they raid the family′s piggy bank. That′s just the way some men are.″

″Oh, shit, Luke. That′s just a rationalization, and you know it. How can you sit there and defend the guy when you know that he-″

″Look. I′m not defending this rat fucker,″ he said. ″But having an affair doesn′t make the guy a wife murderer. If that were true, we′d have to arrest half the male population in the United States. Hell, we′d have to arrest half the guys in this room. Why do you think it′s called the dick squad?″

″Shut up, Luke,″ a disembodied voice announced.

Someone chucked an apple core across the room. The pippin projectile sailed past my nose, headed for Luke.

While Luke ducked out of the way, I shot another glance at Jonathan′s desk. When Luke had talked about men having affairs, it felt as if he was talking about me and Jonathan directly. Plus, now I knew that Jonathan had called me a pit bull to his coworkers. It wasn′t exactly what you′d call a term of endearment. Would someone who loved you call you a pit bull to his coworkers? I don′t think so.

I wondered whether Luke or any of Jonathan′s friends in the United States knew about Gi. Probably not. Jonathan usually kept his personal matters close to the chest.

But maybe he′d kept Gi secret only from me. Maybe everyone else in town knew about her, and I was a laughingstock. The thought made the tangerine I′d just eaten start fizzing in my stomach.

Was I Jonathan′s ″something on the side″? Just a little something to be disposed of the minute his wife insinuated her size-zero butt back into the picture? Was that what I was when you broke it down? Jonathan′s naive, stupid fool. That′s exactly it.

I sat for a moment longer, trying to dismiss the distraction of having my head planted firmly up my ass. Then a new thought struck me.

″I forgot to tell you about something,″ I said to Luke. ″It′s about Jana′s purse.″

″What purse?″

″Jana′s Miu Miu bag. When Jana and I had lunch on Wednesday, she said she thought she′d left it at a friend′s house the night before. She was going to try to get it back.″

Luke reached for a notepad and pen from his desk and started making notes.

″Name of friend with Jana′s moo-moo… um, purse?″

″Trish Putnam. I don′t know whether Jana got it back before she was killed.″

″And what was Jana doing over at the Putnam home that night?″

″She was there for a support group. I was there, too. It′s a women′s group called the Newbodies. ″

″New what?″

″Newbodies. It′s a body-image support group. They-″

″I don′t give a shit what it is. Tell me about the purse.″

″It was a bronze metallic color. By the designer Miu Miu.″

Luke started leafing through Jana′s file. ″Strip! Check with Inventory to see if a brown purse was found in the Miller car. Had cows on it or some kind of shit like that.″

Strip′s voice said, ″There wasn′t a purse in the car. We assumed it was jacked during the attack on the women.″

″You assumed?″ Luke rolled his eyes. ″Well, right now it′s apparently sitting at some lady′s house. Not jacked. And you call yourself a detective? Cripes almighty.″

While Luke continued making notes, I said, ″Here′s something else interesting, Luke-the woman who founded the Newbodies group was killed last spring in a home-invasion robbery. Her name was Anaïs Loring. Evidently the detectives in that case talked to some of the members of the Newbodies group at the time. That′s an odd coincidence, huh? I heard her murder is unsolved, by the way.″

″And of course you were thinking I should pull up that other woman′s murder file,″ Luke said without looking up from his notes. ″You know, most pains in the ass aren′t as cute and charming as you, Kate. That′s your secret weapon.″

He tossed the pen on top of the notepad, then leaned back in his chair. ″But I can tell you right now that a cold-case murder in a ladies′ social club probably won′t pan out into anything,″ he said, cracking his knuckles. ″I′ll pull the Anaïs Loring file, but these two deaths have got coincidence written all over them. Besides. We have our prime suspect in jail. Antoine Hurley.″

That was fine by me. Even if Anaïs Loring′s death wound up as nothing more than an investigator′s footnote in Jana′s file, at least I′d have the satisfaction of knowing that I′d kicked over every stone.

Including the ones that the ″real″ investigators were ready to ignore.

Chapter 21

Saturday morning I came groggily awake to the pile-driving beat of the alarm clock. I tried to escape by burying my head under a pillow, but then something began dragging a strip of sandpaper along the back of my hand. It was Elfie. Evidently she′d decided that I was in need of a cat bath, or maybe she was simply trying to see whether I was still alive.

″Hey there, kitty,″ I croaked.

What I really needed was a hot shower. Surrounding me was the detritus of a blowout binge from the night before-Snickers wrappers, an empty pint of Pralines ′n′ Cream, foil crumpoids of chocolate kisses-I′d spent the previous night in the sweet embrace of one of my worst sugar benders so far of the autumn. And it wasn′t even Halloween yet.

I struggled to open my eyes and found them glued together by sleep crystals that had formed overnight. That always happened in the wake of a massive intake of chocolate and high-fructose corn syrup. Let the Hollywood celebrities risk their lives with prescription drugs and worse. I preferred to take the edge off pain with pure, unadulterated sugar. If only I didn′t pay for my sins in poundage the next day. That was the killer.

I pried open my eyes with my fingers, then checked the messages on my cell phone. Four of the messages were from Jonathan.

″Oh, sure. Now you want to talk.″ A surge of anger flowed through my fingers. I autodeleted Jonathan′s messages without listening to them. Let him worry about what I was thinking for once.

In the wake of that feeble act of payback, the silence felt hollow. What had Jonathan wanted to say to me? What was there to say? He was married. Or at the very least, he had slept with his ex-wife. End of story.

After checking on Shaina-the head nurse informed me that she was going to be released later that day-I made a pot of coffee and toasted a bagel. I wound up ignoring the bagel. The eating frenzy of the night before had left me feeling stuffed. Sick, even.

I stepped on the bathroom scale. Despite my binge of the night before, I′d lost two pounds since the previous weekend, but even that news didn′t lift my spirits.

The Broken Heart Diet-boffo idea for a best-selling diet book, I thought with grim satisfaction. The cover will display a red heart, and your lover′s ex-wife will be driving a fork through it. And the ex-wife′s name will be Gi.