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stores. Well, it was nice to meet you both. I hope you can help us pull Sam out of this terrible mess.”
    She glided back through the door and closed it behind her.
    “My mother’s a little abrupt,” Sam explained.
    “She doesn’t seem very concerned,” Ari observed.
    “She’s worried, but she’s hopeful. I have a good attorney and the evidence is pretty flimsy. And then there’s the truth. I didn’t do it.”
    Jane looked at Ari. “Well, what do you think?”
    She ruffled her hair. “I think the police have their suspicions for a reason and either they found something or, frankly, they know something you’re not telling us.”
    He glanced from Jane to Ari. “I’ve got nothing to hide and I want her killer brought to justice.” He choked up and his voice cracked. “I could never hurt her.”
    Jane reached over and squeezed his arm. “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you break up?”
    “Nina was high-strung in a lot of ways, but she was an amazing woman and I loved her.”
    Jane threw up her hands. “Then why break up with her, Sam? A lot of women—most women—are difficult. It’s who we are. I don’t understand.”
    He offered no explanation so Ari asked, “Was it your family? Did they not approve of her, particularly with your father’s upcoming appointment?”
    When he fidgeted in his chair and couldn’t look at her anymore, she knew she was right. He’d sacrificed his girlfriend for his family, and from the look on his face, guilt and remorse were weights strapped to his back.
    “Please help me. She didn’t deserve this.”
    * * *
     
    They headed to Nina’s apartment, which was located a few blocks from Irvine Bowl Park. As Jane had spent part of her twenties in Laguna, the drive was a trip down memory lane.
    She pointed at a small dive bar. “That’s where I nearly got arrested.”
    “For what?”
    She grinned proudly. “Public indecency. I tore off my top during an invigorating karaoke performance of ‘I Love Rock and Roll.’ Joan Jett would’ve been proud.”
    “When did you meet Nina?”
    “When I was twenty and she was seventeen. She was my very first true love. I fell hard.”
    “But she wasn’t interested?”
    She shook her head. “No, she was as far from gay as you could get, but she was nice about it. We were friends after that.”
    Ari heard the wistfulness in her voice and imagined the memories were more difficult since everything about Nina was in the past tense. When they passed the Irvine Bowl, Jane laughed and slapped her knee.
    “I can’t tell you how many times we got chased out of that place. We’d jump the fence and see free concerts from the trees.”
    “You and Nina?”
    “Yeah. We were great friends until I moved to Tucson to help my mom. When I think of my early twenties, I think of her. She was a hell-raiser. It’s funny to think she became a social worker at a school, considering how often she ditched, but maybe that’s why. She understood what it meant to be different.”
    “Why didn’t she fit?”
    “Her father was abusive. She hated going home. He hit her mom all the time.”
    “Was he abusive to her?”
    Jane grew silent. “I’m not sure, and I’m not sure about sexual abuse either. I always wondered. I’m sure her own experience affected her feelings about abused children.”
    “Of course,” Ari agreed, surprised by the revelation. “I wonder if she’d shared that information with Sam.”
    They pulled into an apartment complex, a series of rustic wooden cottages, each surrounded by dense foliage that easily grew with the help of the California rains. Nina’s place was easy to find, the only door with yellow crime scene tape across the threshold.
    “We won’t break in,” Jane said, pulling out a key that Sam had given to her. “We’ll just slip between the tapes. That’s probably legal, right?”
    She decided a lecture on breaking and entering was inappropriate at the moment and chose not to answer as they made their