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of the day and the terrible things that it had brought with it.
    Do over.
    “I’m sorry you’re going to be dragged into this for a while,” Mendez said, taking the opposite end of the bench. He sat with his forearms on his thighs, feeling the hours press down on him as the last blast of caffeine subsided.
    Sara Morgan said nothing. She sat looking down at her bandaged hands in her lap. Blood had begun to seep through the gauze.
    “Can you tell me who some of her friends were?” he asked. “People we should talk to?”
    “The Acorn Gallery sells a lot of her work. The people there would know her well.” She continued to look down into her cupped hands as if she could see visions there, pictures of Marissa Fordham and the people she knew.
    “She has this weird neighbor,” she said. “He’s seriously creepy. A couple of times he just showed up while I was here working with Marissa. She would say hello to him and he would just hang around, looking at her. He never had much to say. He would just hang out for a while, and then he would leave.”
    “Did Ms. Fordham seem afraid of him?”
    “No. I was afraid of him,” she admitted. “That’s strange—don’t you think? That he would just—just— loiter like that, like some kind of—I don’t know—pervert or something.”
    “But it didn’t bother Marissa?”
    “No. When I would say something about it, she would just shrug it off. ‘That’s just Zander,’ she would say. ‘He’s harmless,’ she would say. ‘He’s odd, but he’s a friend,’ she would say.”
    She looked at him hard, looking for an answer he couldn’t give her. “What if he wasn’t harmless?”
    “We’ve already spoken with Mr. Zahn,” he said.
    She sat up a little at that. “And? Didn’t you think he was weird?”
    “Do you know any of her other friends?”
    “That’s really annoying, you know,” she snapped, brushing a rope of unruly waves back behind one ear. “You never answer a question.”
    He conceded with a hint of a sheepish smile tipping up one side of his mustache. “Goes with the job. Sorry.”
    Sara Morgan sighed. “She worked with Jane Thomas, designing the fund-raising poster for the women’s center. Gina Kemmer. Gina owns Girl—it’s a boutique on Via Verde near the college. I don’t really know her more than to say hello, but I’ve seen them together a lot. And she has a patron— patroness . Milo Bordain supports her work. Bruce Bordain’s wife.”
    Mendez jotted the names down in his notebook. Bruce Bordain, the parking lot king of Southern California, was a big shot not only in Oak Knoll, but all the way south to Los Angeles. He had made his money first buying up and managing parking lots, then expanding into the construction of multimillion-dollar, multilevel parking structures. He owned some high-end car dealerships just for fun, and sat on the boards of McAster College and Mercy General and who knew what else.
    His wife was a well-known patron of the arts, instrumental in the organization of the prestigious Oak Knoll Festival of Music, which took place every summer, drawing renowned classical musicians from all over the world.
    “And you never knew her to have a boyfriend?” Mendez asked. “An ex-boyfriend? A lover?”
    Sara Morgan stared down at the blood soaking through the gauze around her hand. “No.”
    “She must have had,” he pressed. “She had a child. She never talked about the girl’s father?”
    “Not to me.”
    “You never asked?”
    “It’s none of my business. I don’t pry into people’s lives.
    “Can I go home now?” she asked softly.
    “Are you all right to drive?” he asked. “I can have a deputy take you home or follow you home.”
    “No,” she said, getting up from the bench. “No offense, Detective Mendez, but I’ve had more than I ever wanted to do with your office already.”
    He let her walk herself back to her car, but he watched her the whole way.

8
    “The little girl hasn’t regained