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I stood up, anger smoking from my ears and eyes. “Jackie, you know Diego. This is bullshit.”

She nodded again. “I know.” It was the voice of a girl admonished, so soft it nearly squeaked. It made me feel pretty sore.

“Jackie, listen to me. Total bullshit. And not because I couldn't live with it if it were true. I could. But I know Diego. He treats the law like it birthed him, nursed him, and saved him from a burning building. So quit it with your questioning.” I heard the acid in my voice and cut it out. “You know better than anyone how he is.”

“I know, and you're right. I just—” She hiccupped. “It's just, why was he there? And why would he have drugs on him? I mean, these are facts. They need explaining.”

“When did you hear from the police?”

“Just this morning.”

“When did you last see him?”

“We were with my parents at the Grove. We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and were walking around after. All of a sudden, he said he had to go. And he left. He just ran off. Then he didn't pick up his phone. All night. I didn't sleep. I was going to call the police this morning, but they called me first.”

What did Marlowe do when he heard that Terry Lennox was dead? He mixed himself a mourning drink, lit himself a mourning cigarette, then started to ask questions. He was threatened, beaten, even incarcerated along the way, but he didn't rest until he knew what happened. I understood now, what that meant for Marlowe, where that drive came from. If a few threats from a glib psychopath were enough to restrain me yesterday, they were nothing now.

I stayed with Jackie until her parents came. When the Blumenthals showed up, I watched as she ran to her mother, and I bowed slightly in their direction before I took my leave and indulged in a cigarette. It wasn't my place.

And as the phrase crossed my mind, I asked myself,
Where is my place?
In a matter of hours, I had lost one of my best friends and misplaced the other. Nothing was right about the way Diego was found, and the gnawing hunch that it had something to do with this tangle made me so nauseous I was scared to breathe.

One loose strand of links peeked out from that thick ball of chains. I drove to 432 South Citrus to give it the best yank I could muster.

*   *   *

It was just past noon when I got there. Lori's Jetta was parked on the street, flouting the conventional wisdom and law that demanded no more than eighteen inches between wheels and curb. The driveway was empty.

I parked on the street and hustled to the front door, where I rang the doorbell to the sound of a discount Christmas tune. Not a creature stirred, and a peek through translucent lace curtains showed no light.

I sat on the front curb and dialed Chaz. At the fading end of the sixth ring, I got through. When I heard his flabby voice, it felt like a small miracle.

“It's Song. Has anyone bothered you since last night?”

“Who's supposed to bother me?”

“Look, Chaz, I don't know where Hector is but I have a bad feeling about it. You should be careful.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I have a bad feeling too.”

“Did you find something?”

He started to whisper. “I went into his computer. Really went in there.”

It figured that Chaz Lindley was a hacker. These days, knowing his way around a computer was probably part of his job description. “And?”

“The guy has dirt on everyone at Stokel. You would not believe how much he dug up. He's got the seeds for a dozen divorces and ruined careers right there on his hard drive. These lawyers are morons.” He snorted. “And they all watch porn at work. Weird shit, too.”

I listened as I hoped against hope for Hector's life. “I think he may have blackmailed the wrong person.”

He cursed under his breath, in a quiet, angry string. “Do you know?”

“No. But I'll keep in touch.”

*   *   *

I found Ross Macdonald's
Black Money
in my purse. Death and police meant more to me now than they had the day before, and I put it away after a couple of paragraphs. I smoked a cigarette, then another, trying to make that familiar act fill every corner of my consciousness. I thought about my health and my youth, I thought about the filter and the nicotine and how I'd always wanted to roll my own. I thought poundingly about Diego.

When the Lexus came up the driveway my iPhone said 1:14
P.M.
I hadn't moved more than an elbow in over an hour.

The Lims slid out of the car and onto the sloping cement. The mother came out first, and this time I got a good look at her.

She looked much prettier without the thick, white makeup, and my quick glimpse of her profile in the car proved more accurate than the version I'd seen last night. She wore a fitted white blouse over fitted black slacks and closed-toe pumps in clean black leather. She cut a slim figure and looked to have at least a couple of inches in height on Lori, which made her almost average with heels. Her face was not young, but it was wrinkle-free and attractive, and it was impossible to pinpoint what it was that gave away her age. She wore her hair short, like many older Korean women, but it was stove black and unpermed, with the air that it might grow back into a commercial-ripe cascade if she only willed it.

She had Lori's little nose and full mouth, but her eyes held a fierce focus that her daughter's would never imitate. They glistened in the sun like dark stones under rippling water, and they were fixed on mine.

Lori walked with the molasses gait of a sunbathing seal. She wore a raspberry cap-sleeve cotton dress with a full skirt and Peter Pan collar with tan ballet flats. Her bangs were curled in a dramatic puff across her forehead and her long, light hair bounced loose about her shoulders. It took a few seconds more for her to notice me, and then only because her mother had stopped and she bumped her nose on her shoulder blade. Her lower lip went slack and she said, “Juniper.”

I stood with all the steadiness of a rumpled straw straightening to length without help. I slouched a limp bow toward the mother and greeted her in Korean.

She didn't move, but she responded in English. “Hello. I did not know you were a friend of Lori's. I hope you were not waiting long. We are just returning from church,” It was a voice like stained-glass windows after dark. Perfect
L
s, perfect
R
s, stiff as rods. I remembered her broken accent from the night before—an act, then, for the English-speaking patron.

I nodded. “My name is Juniper. I need to talk to you both.”

Mother Lim looked to her daughter, who stood so close behind her that their faces nearly collided with the turn of her shoulder. Lori stared at me with her lips parted and I realized that her haziness was never a product of alcohol alone. Her eyes, perfectly aligned as they were, lacked direction and clarity, as if some mischievous thing had taken a candle to her pupils and smudged the ashen remains about each iris.

She squeezed past her mother, tucking an arm toward herself to pass her by. When she was a couple feet away from me, she put out a hand and grazed my fingertips in an offering of empathy. “Are you okay?”

I felt the sore swelling of my tear canals and the taut dryness of the skin on my cheeks, showered and shrunken like poorly done laundry. I snapped back my hand at her touch without meaning to, but she didn't seem to notice. “Yeah. I mean, could be worse.” I shook my head. “No, it couldn't be worse. Can I come in?”

I addressed Lori, but it was the older woman who answered. There was no warmth in her tone, but she said, “Of course.” She stepped past me with a jingle of keys and opened the front door.

It opened into an entrance-cum-living-room, with a couch and an armchair in a black leather L on one end and a TV on the other. The floor was light wood, and the shelves lining either side of the doorway holding sundry footwear told me my varnish scufflers were not welcome. I slipped them off my feet and tucked them into an empty cubby, a practice amply familiar from my own shoes-off upbringing.

I took a seat in the armchair without being asked and beckoned the Lims to take their seats on the couch. Under normal circumstances, it was no way for a twenty-six-year-old Korean girl to behave, but I was in an ornery mood, to say the least. The mother looked at me with a wary puzzlement that brought about the first shadow of a wrinkle, just a ridge showing dark an inch northeast of her right eyebrow.

“Would you like an apple?”

“No. Thank you.”

The two of them sat on the couch. I brought my elbows to my thighs and washed my face in my dry, upturned palms before looking back up.

“Mrs. Lim, I'm guessing?”

“My name is Chung, actually. Yujin Chung. But yes, I am Lori's mother.”

“Oh.” I gave her a foot-eating look but she didn't seem offended. “I have to ask you about Greg Miller.”

A rapid change came over her features, a darkening under her skin, calm and feral.

“The name sounds familiar.”

We blinked at each other in silence until I told her what she probably already knew. “He worked with Lori until Friday. Friday he was murdered. Outside of your house. I have to say, I'd be very surprised if Lori hadn't mentioned this little anecdote to you between last night and this morning.”

Yujin Chung put a hand to a stray lock of hair that dared fall over her ears and pushed it back with a reprimanding gesture. “That was his name, yes. Yes, okay, Lori told me. Most unfortunate. The man was not well.”

I couldn't decide on the appropriate address for Lori's mother, so I looked directly at her as I spoke. “From what I understand, he was a regular customer at the Red Palace. He was there Friday night looking for your daughter. Just hours before he died.”

“I wouldn't know anything about that. I was at home that night, waiting for Lori to come back from her party.”

I remembered my mother's vigilance when I was younger, the background checks she'd run against parents of friends when I was invited to sleepovers. But Yujin Chung was shaping up to be the strangest overprotective mother I'd ever met. “I don't get it. You take off work to monitor your daughter, but you let her work in that seedy place? How's that fit?”

Her lip stiffened into a cold smile. “The Red Palace is a legitimate establishment and it puts Lori's best gifts to use. How is it that you presume to judge my decisions for my own child?”

I didn't shrink. “Greg Miller had pictures of Lori at his office. Pictures I think you took. To give to relatives.”

At this Lori turned her head to her mother with a look of kittenish curiosity that turned over to surprise at what she saw. The head of Yujin Chung displayed the slow clouding of a bad omen in a crystal ball, stormy behind sturdy glass. She turned to Lori with a flash of something yellow gleaming behind inky eyes.

Yujin Chung looked back at me with her hands clasped, a primness that might've worn cute on a schoolgirl but that made me think of a villainous nun.

“What pictures are you referring to?”

“Lori done up like JonBenét Does Asia.”

Her steady stare blinked blank.

“Sailor suits, kimonos, pigtails. I can show you. I have them.”

She straightened her shoulders like some massive bird of prey posturing to spread its webbed wings. Then she relaxed, slumping with a sigh, looking wretched for a cigarette.

“I know the ones. It is a long story. Are you sure you would not like something to eat? I am going to make some tea.”

I waved a hand with a floppy wrist.

“You know, you are very rude.”

“I don't mean to be, but this has been one of the worst days of my life. You have a front-row seat.”

“Well, I am going to make some tea, if I may be excused.”

“It's your house.”

She stood with such marked silence that I wondered whether the fabric of her slacks touched the couch cushions at all. As she walked to the kitchen, her feet stayed hidden in the slight flares of pooled polyester accustomed to draping over heels.

Lori gazed with crooked neck at a crisp copy of
The Economist
squared too perfectly in the middle of the coffee table. I kept my eyes on her. Her temples pulsed and she took in every letter written on that cover.

Yujin Chung returned with a plastic tray patterned with impressionistic flowers, heavy with three glasses and a ceramic plate holding cubed watermelon. She set it down in front of me, leaving a careful sliver of space between refreshment and magazine. I recognized the picture—the hospitality of the Korean mother, a pretty still-life I'd seen numerous times in my own home, in another era.

“Hyunmi-cha. My cousin sent it from Korea. Very good.”

Thick, cracked half-moons of ice crowded vase-tall glasses filled with the cool amber tea. The sliced watermelon glistened, black seeds peering out like bright, wet, hungry eyes. She took a dwarf fork and stuck it into the grain of a large chunk and handed it to Lori. She took another and gave that to me, the fruit dripping juice into her cupped hand.

I took it with a quick thanks. My teeth made a satisfying scrape as they bit through sweet red flesh. It was phenomenal watermelon, the kind of stuff I'd ravish over a sink in the comfort of my home, cut up nicely for public consumption. I kept a stern face and discarded the slimy black seeds into a small, empty bowl she had brought out for that purpose. “You were saying, though, about the pictures.”

“Juniper, right? Let me tell you a story.” She took a long sip of tea. I nodded and Lori and I ate more of the fruit as she spoke.

“Lori and I, we are doing okay now. We are both working, and we can pay the bills. Her father is a selfish man who neither Lori nor I have seen in fifteen years. It has not always been easy for us. I wanted it to be easy, at least for my daughter.

“I came from Korea with my little brother when I was twelve and he was eight. My mother had come two years earlier to pave the way for our arrival, working hundred-hour weeks as a seamstress. By the time we saw her again, her hands were worn with scabs and blisters that never went away.