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about soup lines and the crowds of men waiting for handfuls of jobs at construction sites every morning. It was possible, but Dex didn’t make that choice. He maintained his position, kept his eye on Laird Wyndham—now back on the phone—wrapped his hand around his bourbon and did a slow burn.
    Later Dex would figure perhaps another half hour passed before a scream broke over the din of the party. The band stopped on a gasp and the silence that filled the wake of the music seemed louder than the dance tune they’d been playing.
    “Oh my God,” a woman’s shrill lament. “Oh my loving God, someone help me.”
    Without even thinking about it, Dex unsnapped his holster, making sure he could get his gun clear in a hurry. At the same time, he moved toward the source of the sound: a bedroom at the back of the bungalow.
    The door was open now, light spilling onto the carpet in thehall like a puddle of blood. People seemed to be moving both in and out of the room. Fear was a rising tide. Dex could smell it, could even taste a bit of it himself.
    The cause of that tide was apparent even from the doorway. Dex did not recognize the girl on the bed in that first fast look, but he saw all he needed to make his decision.
    He was not at first certain she was dead, but it was clear that she was damaged. Her head was on a pillow, but at an unnatural angle. And she was absolutely still.
    Rhoda Darrow pushed her way through the gawping throng and into the room and took command. She picked up the girl’s wrist, took her pulse, shook her head.
    “She’s gone,” Rhoda said. There was sadness in her voice; concern. But Dex thought he tasted artifice; saccharine on the tongue.
    And then, “Where is Laird Wyndham?” It was Rhoda who said the words, but Dex heard them repeated through the bungalow, like a stereophonic echo from all corners. In seconds it was apparent that he wasn’t there.
    “What did you do then?” I asked, wide-eyed.
    “I left,” he said, inspecting the end of his index finger.
    “You left?”
    “Sure. There was nothing I could do, Kitty. The girl had checked out. Anyway, I figured I’d been hired to keep my eye on Wyndham and once I realized he’d vamoosed, I figured I was duty bound to follow him.”
    I could see the sense in that. “So where did he go?”
    Dex looked sheepish. “I don’t know.”
    “C’mon, Dex. You’re no palooka. How could you have lost him?”
    “By the time I figured he’d left the party and went after him, he had disappeared without a trace.”
    I rolled my eyes at the bit of drama, but prepared to move on. “So you went back to the party?”
    Dex shook his head. “Naw. I checked the hotel grounds pretty good: from the parking lot to the pool, all the bars, the lobby. No sign of Wyndham and no one had seen him. By then I was getting a bad feeling about the whole business and, since the guy I was tailing had up and disappeared, I figured I’d just get the hell out of there. Sort it all out with the client in the morning.”
    “Except, of course, by morning, Wyndham had been arrested.”
    Dex ran his hands through his hair again. But all he said was, “Right.”
    “OK, Dex: I don’t understand. I mean, look at you,” I pointed at him with my thumb and he knew I meant the whole package: he had apparently decided to drink himself stupid at his office rather than someplace else. And though yesterday he’d been sunny and sober, today it was like he couldn’t get the alcohol into himself fast enough.
    “I don’ know Kitty … it’s just that…”—he hesitated, as though grappling with the words—”like I said, the whole business was kinda fishy from the get-go, wouldn’t you say?”
    “I don’t know if I
would
say that.”
    “And the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”
    “Worse than that furniture polish you call bourbon?”
    “Much worse. And it would take more than a pint of Jack to wash this away.”
    “Judging by the state of you, it looks