“I have a bad back. It hurts right now.”

For the first time since I entered, Winslow’s grim mood lightened. With the semblance of a friendly expression, he lowered the curtain and turned to me.

“Come this way,” he said.

TWENTY-THREE

WINSLOW crossed to a dark hallway. I followed warily. Stepping through the shadows, I entered another dimly lit space with peeling paint and a soiled rug. Like the front room, this one was sparsely furnished: one bookshelf, a cracked-leather chair, and a large computer on a desk of scuffed mahogany. The computer was the newest, most expensive item in the large, gray room. Its flat-screen monitor emitted more color than the Land of Oz.

“Is that your Web site’s home page?” I pointed to the screen, where the primary shades of Rxglobal tempted like the storefront of a candy shop. “I think Monica mentioned something about it.”

“It’s my business, yes.”

“I clicked around the site, but I didn’t see anything that could control my pain.”

“That’s because the vitamin and herb supplement pages aren’t where I do my important business. The other pages have a special password.”

“Oh, so that’s why!” I laughed. The joke was on me, right? I wasn’t in the know. “Do you have a local carrier?”

He shook his head. “My server is set up outside the country. That’s where I get the prescription drugs, too.”

Winslow moved a standing dresser aside to reveal a hidden closet. He drew a key from his sweatpants and unlocked the door. There were several boxes sitting on a shelf; all had labels with foreign script. He reached into a carton and pulled out a clear plastic bag of pink pills. G164 was embossed on each one.

“OxyContin is quite effective for the control of back pain. I’ll start you off with a hundred and fifty tabs.”

He sat down at his desk, quickly counted out the tablets, using a plastic pill sorter. Then he poured them into a sepia-colored bottle like the ones I’d seen hidden in Monica’s desk.

“You have a medical degree, too, right?” I said with a shrug, as if it really didn’t matter either way. “I mean, in addition to your doctorate. You seem so knowledgeable about all this.”

“If you could get these from a licensed physician, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

“So that’s a no?” I looked around the room as if searching for his degrees. “You’re just a Ph.D. then, and not an M.D.?”

He capped the bottle. “Does this look like your gynecologist’s office, miss?”

He leered, and I shivered. God, what a creep.

“This is just a down payment,” he promised, holding the bottle out to me. “You get me the rings, and I’ll get you all the OxyContin you want.”

“Thank you, Dr. Winslow, for giving me the pills,” I said, loud and clear.

Got that, Mike? I hope you heard me!

I took the bottle, and Winslow ushered me back into the living room. As he headed for the front door, I hesitated.

I didn’t have enough on this guy yet. The man had been married to Breanne Summour. I figured there must be a motive for his wanting her dead (other than the woman’s personality, of course). He was in league with Monica Purcell to steal Breanne’s rings. The two were probably working on an elaborate revenge plan, too. I just had to get him to say so.

Think, Clare. Do something!

“Excuse me, Doctor?” I called as he unlocked the heavy door.

He turned. “Yes?”

“May I trouble you for a glass of water? I’d really like to take a few of these now…” I shook the bottle. “Please? My pain is bad.”

The man paused for a moment then nodded. He left the room. When he came back with a half-empty glass, I was sitting, uninvited, on his shabby sofa.

“Here you are,” he said.

The glass wasn’t the cleanest, but I had to make it look good. I put on a show of shaking a few pills into my hand. I knocked back the imaginary hit and took a drink of the stale water. Then I leaned my head against the couch back and pretended to close my eyes-the junkie getting her fix.

Winslow was still standing over me. His unkempt odor combined with the smell of creosote was making me queasy; the loudly ticking grandfather clock was close to maddening.

Through the bottom of my lashes, I watched the cadaverous drug dealer watching me. Winslow stood motionless, his dilated pupils sweeping my body up and down. For long minutes, my breathing stopped altogether and my heartbeat pulsated like something out of Poe.

Mike’s out there listening, I reminded myself. The ticklish wire between my breasts was my lifeline, the only rope that could save me if this scarecrow in sweats decided to slip me something other than narcotics.

Winslow’s skinny limbs began to move. Every muscle in my own limbs stiffened, ready to fight him off if I had to.

But I didn’t have to.

The gamble was working. The man moved away. When he finally settled into a nearby chair, I released my held breath. He misunderstood the reason for my sigh.

“Good, isn’t it?” he whispered.

“It always takes a little while to kick in for me.” I opened my eyes. “You don’t mind if I hang until it does, do you? Like I said, my pain is bad.”

Winslow gave me a little smile-one junkie to another. “I understand.”

I scanned the dreary space, deciding the best way to prod more information out of Winslow was to goad him.

“You know, it’s hard for me to believe you and Breanne were a couple. She’s so dynamic. A woman with exquisite taste in fashion, art, wine-”

Winslow laughed. “She didn’t start out that way. When I met Breanne, she was a struggling journalist. She could barely afford the rent on her East Village walk-up.”

“That must have been a long time ago.”

“She was in her twenties. I was considerably older.”

“The first marriage for both of you?”

Winslow shook his head. “I’d been married for over a decade to a proper wife. I had two proper children, as well, and operated a proper pharmaceutical company.”

“So… how did the two of you meet?”

“Breanne interviewed me for a piece in New York Trends-”

“You mean Trend, right?”

“New York Trends doesn’t exist anymore. Breanne saw to that.”

“Oh, I see… so what did Breanne interview you about, exactly?”

“An antiwrinkle pill my drug company had developed. It was quite effective, in some ways revolutionary.”

“Wow. Sounds lucrative. So what happened? Did you two fall in love during the interview?”

“Love…” Winslow laughed. The sound was harsh and hollow. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as if envisioning the past. “Breanne was stunning back then, dazzling, even more of a beauty than she is now. It was hard for me to concentrate with her sitting across from me. She seemed impressed by my background, my academic records at Haverford and Princeton, my ‘patina of refinement’ as she called it. She was flirtatious and seductive. And so we had sex, lots of it.”

“And you married her.”

Winslow opened his eyes. “I didn’t want to, but Breanne wasn’t content with being a mistress. She found a way to inform my wife about our relationship.”

“Was that really such a big deal? I mean, you probably weren’t happy in your first marriage, right?”

Winslow shifted his wasted frame. “The breakup of my marriage caused me problems. My family was unhappy. They settled the Winslow fortune on my ungrateful offspring. At the time, I didn’t care. I still had my company, and I had Breanne. It was enough for me. It was not enough for her…”

The man sighed, fished a vial of pills out of his pocket, and dumped a few into his mouth, swallowing them dry. Then he stared off into space.

Come on, Clare. Find another button to press…

“So why did you and Breanne break up exactly? It sounds like you had a pretty good thing going.” (If you can call a torrid extramarital affair capped by a heartbreaking revelation for the wife and kids a “pretty good” thing.)