“Too bad. She missed out on her freebie. Anyway, we can get an evaluation done by tomorrow and-”

“But I really need the cleaning done tomorrow-I’m having guests, and the place is a mess. This lady mentioned a specific maid, said she didn’t have her name but that you’d know her because of her tattoo.”

“Unless she works your area, we can’t promise that a certain maid will be sent to your house-and certainly not on a rush job. Tomorrow will require me to do rescheduling, and I’m afraid that will cost extra.”

Damn. I gave away too much too soon. “Maybe she works in my area. This tattoo is on her left ring finger.”

“Ah. Loreen. She’s quite popular. Where do you live? I’ll see what I can do.”

My heart sped at getting a first name. I thought, Where do I need to live? But I had the feeling that if I asked too many questions-like Loreen’s last name or her territory-he’d get suspicious. Nope, I saw no way around giving the manager what he wanted. “I live in West U.”

“Sorry, Loreen works in The Woodlands four out of five days a week, and her other houses are in the Memorial area.”

“Darn,” I said. “Could I get her another day this week?”

“That would take a massive overhaul of my schedule. I have an excellent pair assigned to West U-Angela and Dolly. I can fit you in at, say, ten a.m. Tuesday, depending on your square footage. I’m seeing on my job chart that they only have until noon to do the house.”

“My home is small, maybe twenty-one hundred square feet. And ten is fine,” I said.

After he gave me a quote and took my credit card info, I gave him my address and hung up. At least they were coming tomorrow. I sure hoped Angela and Dolly liked to talk, and that one of them knew Loreen, or at least her last name.

I left my office, which ticked off Diva and sent her scurrying up the stairs to find a warm place in my bedroom. I wanted to swing by Jeff’s apartment and check on how he and Doris were doing, maybe join them for dinner. But before I could gather my purse and an umbrella, the doorbell rang.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Damn,” when I saw Paul Kravitz in the monitor. Couldn’t he have stayed away longer than a weekend?

I let him in.

“Hello, Abby. Looks like I need to be brought up to speed-especially since you didn’t call me when a certain significant event happened after I left town.” He strode past me into the living room and sat down on the sofa.

I followed him and said, “Hi, Paul. Come on in and have a seat.”

“A man was murdered, a man connected to the Christine O’Meara case,” Kravitz said.

I lowered myself onto the farthest chair from him. “I figured you’d be back soon and I’d tell you then. How did you find out?”

“HPD is communicating with us-but I thought you and I had an arrangement to cooperate with each other, for Emma’s sake.”

“Yeah, well, maybe when I found the GPS tracking device on my car, I decided cooperation is a one-way street for you-and goes in your direction.”

“What are you talking about?” He looked truly surprised.

“And,” I went on, trying to keep him on the defensive while he was a little confused, “what’s with the guy you put on Emma? You never mentioned him.”

Kravitz rubbed at a few drops of rain on his suit jacket shoulder. “It never came up, did it?”

He had me there. “You should have told me.”

“We put someone on Emma because we don’t want her talking to other reporters. Now, what’s your explanation for not telling me about the murder? I want to know about this man and his connection to Christine O’Meara.”

“I thought your police friends already told you,” I said.

He pointed at me. “You are pissing me off. If you’d called me, I would have sent our own guy to the murder scene to tape. Now we can’t even examine local news footage, because going to any of your TV stations would tip them off that the infant bones and the Billings murder might be connected.”

“Listen, Paul. I don’t care whether you got to tape or not. And if you or one of your yokels like Louie put that thing on my car, don’t expect anything more from me.”

He took a deep breath, his stare never wavering from my face. “I did not put a GPS device on your car, and I specifically told my investigators to leave you alone. Since someone else is obviously on to your investigation, did it dawn on you that you led a killer straight to Billings?”

“Oh, yeah. It dawned on me.” I felt an unexpected burning behind my eyes and fought hard to avoid the tears. I succeeded.

But Kravitz saw. He was an experienced interviewer and could read the emotion in people’s faces. “Sorry. That was unfair.”

“No, it’s the truth. What do you want from me?” I asked.

“I want you tell me how you found Billings and what you learned about his connection to Christine O’Meara.”

“Like I said, sounds like you already got everything,” I said.

“Not exactly. I want your take, with every detail you can remember. We’re already doing a background check on this guy, but you were one of the last people to talk to him. It’s the details that make a good story, Abby. The telling details.”

23

I was watching from my office window when the Purity Maids minivan pulled into my driveway Tuesday morning. The van was turquoise, like their uniforms, and the logo on the vehicle was white with darker turquoise letters. I realized I’d seen vans like this in the neighborhood before, but they blended into the background, like so many other things that weren’t important at the time.

Last night, after I’d told Kravitz all those telling details he so desperately wanted, I’d spent the evening with Jeff and Doris. Jeff had made plenty of calls Monday and scheduled interviews with two home health care agencies today. When I left them to drive home, I felt a sudden sense of loss. Jeff and I had a comfortable routine that would have to change. Though I didn’t resent Doris, I realized we’d have to come up with new ways to spend time together. She was a part of our lives now. A new challenge-but maybe a reward, too.

The two women who’d gotten out of the van, one black, one white, dragged to my doorstep a vacuum, mops, and two plastic pails filled with cleaning supplies. I opened the door before they could ring the bell and welcomed them inside.

“I am thrilled you could do this on such short notice. I’m Abby, by the way.”

The older woman set down her vacuum and pail in the foyer and pulled a folded paper from her uniform pocket. “Ms. Rose, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Dolly, and this is Angela. You understand that ’cause this is a rush job your credit card’s already been charged in advance?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you.”

“One dirty house is the same as any other,” Dolly said. “Don’t make no difference to me. How many bathrooms you got?”

“A powder room down here and two upstairs.” I smiled at Angela, hoping she might be someone I could chat with, because Dolly was already wheeling her vacuum into my living room. From what I could tell, she was all business.

“Angela’s gonna do the upstairs, and I’ll-” Dolly stopped talking when Webster loped into the living room to greet my visitors. The woman’s stiff posture indicated that she wasn’t happy to see him. He sat patiently in front of her, waiting to be petted. I knew he wouldn’t get his wish. “I didn’t get no alert about animals. You got any more?”

“A cat. But they’re both really sweet and-”

“I don’t care if they got angel wings; you gotta put them up. And if they’ve made messes anywhere, we don’t touch animal waste.”

“I understand. I’ll put Webster in the utility room.” I turned to see if Angela felt the same way about pets, but she’d disappeared up the stairs. I didn’t blame her.