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mystery of her sandwich.
    I said, “It’s not so much what Cupcake wants done about you. There’s the little matter of a murdered woman. The law gets pretty worked up about murder. They’ll want to know what happened in Cupcake’s house, how that woman’s throat got cut.”
    Briana finished folding the wrapper back from her sandwich. She raised it to her red lips and took little rabbit nibbles at it. Her teeth were so chalk white, I almost expected them to crumble to powder from the pressure.
    She said, “I’ll just explain to them that I don’t know. After you left, I knew people would come to make me leave the house, so I went to the master bedroom and changed clothes. When I came out, a bleeding woman was lying on the living room floor. I was afraid, and I ran out the back door.”
    Jancey was going to be really steamed that Briana had used their bedroom.
    I said, “That’s your story?”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “Briana, nobody in the world will believe that.”
    “They will if you help me convince them.”
    I chewed some more and told myself to keep my voice down, not to yell at her, not to stand up and shout, “Are you completely nuts?” because in fact she was completely nuts, and it wouldn’t change anything to point it out to her.
    I said, “Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into the Trillins’ house?”
    She waved a languid hand. “Oh, that was easy. I have a little handheld electronic gizmo that can disengage selected zones of the security system without alerting the security company. I blocked the zone that regulates the scanners outside the back sliding patio door. All I had to do was pick the lock. Took about ten seconds.”
    Her voice had gone brisk and sure of itself. I didn’t know if what she described was possible, but she sure sounded like she knew what she was talking about.
    “What about the entrance gate? What about the walls around the whole place?”
    She smiled. “Parked my Jag out of sight on the other side of the wall, climbed up and clipped the razor ribbon hidden under the vines, pushed it aside, tossed a plastic ladder over, and came over. I hid the ladder behind the vines so I could climb back up. The wall where I cut the wire is behind some trees, and nobody pays any attention to a woman jogging early in the morning.”
    My hand holding my sandwich sank to the table. This woman was not a dithery nut. She was an accomplished break-in artist, a calculating scaler of razor-topped walls, a woman with wire clippers and experience at slipping into places impassible to everybody else.
    “I take it this isn’t your first breaking-and-entering job.”
    That smile again, cool and sure of itself. “Hardly.”
    “You supplement your modeling income with a little theft on the side?”
    This time she actually chuckled, as if she found me drolly amusing. “I go in people’s houses, but I don’t steal anything. I just like to get a look at other people’s private lives. You might say it’s a hobby, like stamp collecting or softball.”
    “Okay, so you didn’t break into Cupcake’s house to steal. What was your reason? Why were you stalking him?”
    Her smug smile died. “Is that what he thinks? That I was stalking him?”
    I couldn’t keep my mouth from saying it anymore. “Are you nuts ? Of course that’s what he thinks!”
    Her red mouth turned down at the corners. It trembled. She raised her fingers to her lips to comfort them. A tear trickled down her cheek from behind the dark shades. Her shoulders sagged as if a great weight had been laid on them.
    “I thought he would understand. Of all the people in the world, I trusted Cupcake to understand.”
    My own shoulders went a few inches lower, too. Whatever the woman carried around in her disturbed head sent out heavy, oppressive waves.
    I said, “Here’s the deal, Briana. A woman was murdered inside the home of Cupcake and Jancey Trillin. You were in the house at the time the woman was killed. Now you