“No, she didn’t,” Giulia said, certain.

“Then what’s this?” Mary teased the diary from her purse, and the Mean Girls reached for it, talons outstretched.

“Gimme that!” Giulia said.

“What’d she say about me?” Yolanda asked.

“And me?” Missy asked.

“Sorry.” Mary slid the diary back into her purse, gloating like crazy. “I’m surprised at you guys. I would think you’d respect Trish’s privacy.”

“Oh, come on.” Giulia snorted. “You read it, didn’t you?”

“Of course, but I can. It’s covered by attorney-client privilege.” Sorta kinda.

“Gimme an effin break.” Giulia rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t sound right,” Missy said.

“What a bunch a crap!” Yolanda said.

Mary turned back around in the seat, smiling to herself. “Maybe you should’ve been nicer to me in high school.”

The driver looked over, lifting an eyebrow.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

H alf an hour later, they arrived at the police administration building, called the Roundhouse because it was a round concrete building, circa 1970s. The cab pulled to the curb, and Mary paid the driver while the Mean Girls piled out of the backseat and reached in their bags for their cigarettes.

“Okay, listen, kids,” Mary said. She stood downwind while they lit up. “I can only take one of you inside. But whoever comes with me has to behave.”

“What do you mean by ‘behave’?” Giulia cocked her head, eyes flinty behind the smoke.

“I do the talking, and you stop moping.”

“Whatever.” Giulia stepped forward, clearly an underboss to Trish’s capo di tutti capi.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“I’m not finished my cigarette.”

“Yes, you are.” Mary turned and walked toward the building through the parking lot, which buzzed with media covering the baby Donchess kidnapping. The case had been all over the cab radio on the way over, with audioclips of the parents pleading for her safe return. Reporters milled around, talking in groups, and cameramen sipped coffee, resting their videocameras on their shoulders.

“Mare, wait up!” Giulia hollered.

“G, catch up!” Mary hurried past a male TV anchor with orangey makeup and a paper towel folded into his shirt collar like a bib, doing sound checks with a logo microphone. She reached the smoked-glass entrance doors, opened them, and stopped at the plastic security window, manned by an older uniformed cop with an official smile. She introduced herself and said, “I’m here to see Detective Brinkley.”

“This about a homicide?”

“No, I’m a personal friend of Mack’s,” Mary said, using Detective Brinkley’s in-the-know nickname. She had worked a case with him not long ago, and they’d become friendly. He adored her mother and had even fixed her pilot light, but that was another story. The desk cop looked skeptically from Mary to Giulia, who appeared beside her.

“Who’re you?” he asked.

“My paralegal,” Mary answered, but Giulia was miffed.

“I’m no paralegal. I can walk.”

Oops. “She likes to joke around. I’ll sign us in, Officer.” Mary spun the clipboard toward her, signed them both in, and grabbed Giulia’s arm, hustling her to the metal detector.

“Don’t yank me around.” Giulia took her arm back. “Like I said, I can walk.”

“The deal was, say nothing. Capisce?” Mary got through the metal detector, entering a lobby crowded with uniformed police and other employees. She passed display cases of old police cars, but noticed that the clatter of stilettos had stopped. She looked back to see Giulia chatting up two cops, who were smiling down at her. Mary called out, “Giulia?”

“Comin’, Mare!” Giulia called back, looking over. She blew the cops a good-bye kiss and clacked to the elevator bank, her dark eyes reanimated. “Are they hot or what? How’s my makeup?”

“Permanent.” Mary hit the elevator button. “They friends of yours?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you meet ’em?”

“They arrested me once.”

“Really?”

“Okay, twice,” Giulia said sheepishly, and the elevator doors opened.

Five minutes later, Mary was hugging her old friend, Reginald “Mack” Brinkley. Brinkley was typically well dressed in a brown sport jacket and khaki pants, with a crisp white shirt and shiny loafers. He hugged her back warmly, then held her off, smiling at her like her own father-if her father were tall, thin, and black.

“How you been, Mary?” he asked, his voice deep and soft.

“Great, thanks. How about you?”

“Good. Fine.” Brinkley was handsome, with a long, slim face, a narrow nose, squinty, if benevolent, eyes, and a tight smile. He must have been in his forties and hadn’t added a wrinkle since she’d seen him last, though his short hair was a tangle of silver at the temples. “Got remarried and all.”

“That’s great, congrats.” Mary felt happy for him. He’d had a tough divorce, but he kept all of that to himself. They were friendly, but not that friendly. She introduced Giulia, who had been looking distractedly around the squad room.

“It’s sure ain’t like Cold Case,” Giulia said with a frown, and Brinkley half-smiled, leaning against his desk.

“No. They clean it up for TV.”

“They’d have to.” Mary smiled. A few detectives in shirtsleeves were talking in a group, near beat-up gray file cabinets of different sizes and colors. Messy metal desks were placed in the largish room in no particular order, and the chairs didn’t match the desks. The old-fashioned tile floor looked grimy, and dingy beige curtains that covered the expanse of curved window had brown stains on them and hung off the valance, letting bright sun into the room in odd places. It wasn’t a total dump, but it wasn’t ready for prime time.

Brinkley asked, “Mary, you at the same place, working for Rosato?”

“Yes.”

“She still tough as nails?”

“Nails have nothing on Bennie Rosato.”

Brinkley chuckled. “You got that right. How about Jack? You still seeing him?”

Mary hadn’t thought of Jack Newlin for a while. “Nah, didn’t work out. Or the guy after him, either. Any day now, I’m entering the convent. Does God take lawyers?”

Brinkley laughed softly. “If I got lucky, you will, too.” Then his relaxed manner faded, and he straightened up, folding his arms over a slight paunch. “So how can I help you? This about a case?”

“Kind of. Can we talk alone?”

“Sure. This way.” Brinkley gestured to his left, and they went inside a small greenish interview room that needed repainting. It contained a few odd wooden chairs and an old pine typing table with a few Miranda waiver forms. Brinkley closed the door. “Welcome to my summer office.”

Mary smiled, and after Brinkley and Giulia had taken their seats, she told him about her meeting with Trish, the Mob connection, the search of Trish’s house, and what Fung Lee saw. She knew that Brinkley was respected at the Roundhouse and if she could convince him, he would make things happen for Trish behind the scenes. She argued her case like a lawsuit, with all the facts supporting the proposition that Trish’s disappearance gave cause for real alarm.

Brinkley’s expression grew grave as she spoke, and Giulia stayed obediently silent, even when Mary produced Trish’s diary. The detective bent his neat head over the pages, and she pointed out the terrifying entries and photos, which Giulia craned her neck to see, shaken. He examined them in silence, then looked up when he was finished, his expression concerned.

“Okay, I hear you.” Brinkley closed the dairy. “It doesn’t sound like two lovebirds who decided to take a vacation.”

“No, it’s not,” Mary said, holding her breath for his decision.

“Hang on to this.” Brinkley handed Mary back the diary, then stood up, moving his sport jacket aside with both hands and hitching up his pants from the sides of a black belt. “Here’s the problem. To start with, you know this isn’t my bailiwick. This is a case for Missing Persons, not Homicide.”