I’ve never bothered to think about what sort of house Lillian Smith would live in, but this one is painfully dull, one that has gone out of its way to be normal. It’s brick, with a double garage that faces the front, two windows on the second story, and a wide front porch that holds two rocking chairs and a pot of dead geraniums. Three houses down is an identical duplicate, and across the street is the same home, flipped and minus the front porch. They have three parking pads, and there’s an older sedan in one with a Nine Inch Nails window decal. I circle the block, then return and park a few houses down, in front of a ranch style with a FOR SALE sign in the yard.

  Gersh shared with me what they knew—that the neighbor across the street saw Lillian walk out her front door and head to the left around eleven. After that, she disappeared. The closest major intersections with cameras don’t have any record of her on foot, and there are no taxis or car services that enter or exit the area that haven’t already been questioned and cleared. I knock on the neighbor’s door and wait, eyeing Lillian’s house across the street. According to Gersh, she’s a bit of a busybody, but that works well for me.

  I knock again, and look down the street. A truck passes, then a sedan. It’s fairly busy, which should help. Someone had to have seen something, and we just have to find that person, and then the next person. She got from here all the way to Malibu, so someone, other than her killer, saw something.

  I step off the porch and cross over to Lillian’s house, then turn the direction that the neighbor said she walked. According to the husband, she left the house with a bottle of bourbon, a fact he was very insistent about. So she was drinking, and I can certainly put myself in that mindset. I pause at a cross section of streets. Ahead, a major road two blocks up. To the right, a cul-de-sac. I turn left.

  I wander down streets and across lawns. I stop a kid on a bike and show him a picture of her. I sit on a bus stop bench and call Gersh and ask him to check the bus activity. I walk and take my own sips from a flask and think through everything that I know so far.

  Women don’t just disappear. If not by their own hand, they are taken by a stranger or by someone that they know.

  First, the potential stranger. She’s an attractive woman, though that isn’t necessary to attract danger. She’s alone in public, in a fairly safe area, if any part of Los Angeles can be considered safe, but she’s drinking and she’s off her medication, which makes her unpredictable and prone to blackouts, according to her doctor, husband, and best friend. So maybe she blacked out or flagged down a stranger. And that stranger could have drugged her, accidentally or intentionally killed her, and dumped her body in Malibu. It’s not a horrible theory except for . . .

  The phone calls. Someone needed an intimate knowledge, or at minimum a working knowledge, of Lillian in order to make those phone calls. And whoever did make those phone calls was intentionally casting red herrings. So I was leaning away from a stranger’s involvement.

  And the phone calls also eliminate the possibility that Lillian got drunk, got herself over to Malibu, and overdosed, either intentionally or accidentally.

  I trip over a crack in the sidewalk that I should have seen, but I didn’t, because my attention is on what I have just found: Lillian’s drinking spot. I know it because she described this spot before, in a conversation I had forgotten but now recall.

  “I cheat on you, you know.” She peeked at me through hooded eyes, and if I still had a heart, I probably would have fallen in love with Lillian already.

  “Do you now?” I’m trying to stay upright, trying to maintain a cool air of dignity, but the tombstones are beginning to spin, and I need to just lie down and close my eyes for twenty, maybe thirty, minutes.

  “I do. I have another cemetery, much cuter than this one. And it has benches.” She said the word as if it were special, as if we couldn’t buy benches if we wanted to—though I wasn’t sure we could, since the board wouldn’t approve the budget to repair the broken trash can that someone backed into last December. “Plus, it’s in walking distance of my house. So . . . none of this”—she waved both hands in the air to encompass her car and the LA traffic—“driving nonsense.”

  “But does it have me?” I asked.

  “A grouchy groundskeeper who steals my food and drinks?” she deadpanned. “No, that is an excellent point. It’s clearly lacking.”

  I had toasted to that and then lain back on the grass to keep the world from spinning.

  Before me is a small neighborhood cemetery, one surrounded by a neat iron gate. I open it and step in. There is a bench, I note. And past that, another one. I walk down a thin paved path. Maybe fifty plots, many of them disturbed by the mature roots of the trees. And it’s quiet, pleasantly so. She probably sat here and got drunk. And then . . . what?

  I weigh the possibilities and listen, counting the cars and people as they pass. Not many. If I slouched down, I could sleep on the bench and no one would bother me. No one would likely see me.

  I return to the street and look left, then right, getting my bearings. The road is a cut-through, one that people take when jumping between the two main roads. Maybe on her way here, or on her way back, someone she knew—her husband or a friend—saw her walking and stopped. Offered her a ride. Opened the trap door they would later push her down.

  I quicken my steps, aware that the sun is starting to sink in the sky. I don’t want to drive in the dark, not with my bad eyes. I make it back to her street and am passing the neighbor’s house when I detour back up the front steps and try her door once more. This time, it opens immediately and I’m met by a birdlike woman with white hair and darting, suspicious eyes. “Yes?” She keeps the door half-closed, so I can see only the edge of her face. Behind her, there are stacks of boxes and papers, and the faint odor of cat urine hits my nose.

  “I’m Leonard Thompson, formerly of the LAPD.” I take off my hat, which Marcella used to say makes me look nicer.

  “Formerly?” She squeaks when she speaks.

  “I’m retired, but I was a close friend of your neighbor’s, Mrs. Smith.”

  “Are you here about my call?” She edges the door a hair wider and pops her head out, craning her neck to look around me and at the street. “Where are the others? Are they coming?”

  “What call?” I step back so that she can get a better look.

  “The call about the boy,” she snaps and steps onto the porch and pulls the door tight behind her. She’s wearing a LeBron jersey and green pajama pants, and I try not to stare at her feet, which are bare, with toenails so long they curl into ringlets at the ends. She points toward Lillian’s house. “The teenager. Two men came and took him, just a few hours ago. I’ve called three times about this.”

  “Took him?” I repeat cautiously, and I’m not entirely surprised that no one has shown up yet. According to Gersh, she called 911 forty-three times last year, to report litterers, dogs off leashes, seat-belt violations, suspicious characters, and the belief that her next-door neighbors were selling drugs. They weren’t. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that two guys went around to the back of the house and, five minutes later, walked out with him and put him in the back seat of their car. And he was scared. I could see from here, the way he was walking, like if he moved wrong, they were going to hurt him.” She nods, her arms crossing over her chest, and I believe her.

  “What can you tell me about the men? Do you remember what they were wearing?”

  She smiles, and if she could have cackled, she would have. “I can do better than that. I took a picture.”

  Rosa Bertawich took six photos, and all of them are worthless, save one, which shows the vehicle that the two men and Jacob got into: a white Nissan Altima with black tinted windows. The smaller of the two men took the driver’s seat, while the other got in the back seat, with the teenager. Rosa was right to be concerned. Even in the still frames of a photo, you can see that Jacob is in trouble, his posture stiff, his face pale and afraid. I have her text the photos to me and step out on her porch to call Gersh.

  CHAPTER 68

  LILLIAN

  They sit Mike down at the computer and point at the keyboard and mouse and wait. Silence falls and it feels like everyone is holding their breath, staring at him, waiting on him. For what?

  “Make the transfer.” This is not Aerosmith or Tank Top; this is a new man, dressed in a nice white golf shirt and pleated shorts. He looks like a businessman: an expensive watch on his wrist, straight white teeth, and a clean-shaven face with a fresh haircut. Subtract the extra forty pounds he’s carrying, and he could be a menswear model, posed by a smiling child, someone I would trust to give me directions or accept an offer from to fix my flat tire. My judgment is off, because he appears to be in charge, and Mike is obeying him as if he were holding a gun to his head, which he isn’t.

  “I can’t.” Mike’s hands are on the keyboard, but they aren’t moving, and the look that he sends Jacob’s way terrifies me. It’s apologetic, like Mike can’t get them out of this, like this is the end. But that can’t be right, because Mike always has contingency plans, always. Even if we don’t have the insurance money yet, surely our 401(k)s, our home equity, the balances in his whole-life policy—surely there’s enough there to buy him some time, to give him a week or two to come up with more. And we know people. Sam would pitch in, and Mike has other friends, rich friends, who would loan some money if it meant saving Jacob’s and Mike’s lives.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” The businessman leans over Mike and stares at the screen. “That’s the account, right there. So move it.”

  “I don’t know the private key. I have the address, but not the key.”

  The man’s grip on Mike’s shoulder tightens and my husband winces. “Who has the key?”

  Mike closes his eyes and exhales. I’ve never seen him like this. My husband is always in control, always confident. It’s annoying, the consistency of his self-assuredness—but now I want it back. I want his cocky, smug look, his know-it-all tone, his condescending overexplanation of concepts that are dumbed down to an elementary level. I want that Mike back and this one gone. “I’m trying to find the key now.”

  Aerosmith brings another chair out, and the businessman sits in front of Mike and leans his elbow on the table. “Explain this to me, Mike.”

  Yes, I beg. Please, explain this to us.

  “I couldn’t store the key in a digital wallet, or anything connected to the web, due to security risks or potential government seizure. The safest place to put it was old-school—pen and paper, which was a storage system that I’ve used for Colorado since we first moved to Bitcoin.”

  There is complete silence as Mike pauses, and if he expects a nod and murmur of understanding, he doesn’t get it. “I also needed something portable that could be easily moved in case of emergency. Something that could be protected in an instance of fire or flooding.” He glances at Jacob, who looks like he’s going to be sick. “So I hid the key in a box with a bottle of liquor, and stored it in a safe in our pantry.”

  Oh no.

  “The liquor had sentimental value, and we’d planned to open and drink it on our twentieth wedding anniversary—”

  The man in the golf shirt cuts in. “Get to the point.”

  “I haven’t figured out why, but my wife took the box on the day she died, and left the house. I was tracking her movements today but haven’t found the box yet. With the police, and all of this”—he gestures to Jacob and the other men—“I’ve been distracted.”

  “Distracted from Colorado?” The man chuckles, but there is no amusement behind the sound. “How do you get distracted from Colorado?”

  I don’t understand what Colorado is and why it needs a key, but it appears that I may be the one to blame for Jacob being kidnapped, and for Mike bleeding sweat in front of this computer.

  “Your wife has been dead for almost two days, Mike.” The man slowly stands and moves the chair away from the table. “When did you discover that this key was gone?”

  “This morning.”

  “This morning?” He doesn’t like that answer, and I’m feeling faint and slightly nauseated myself. I’m not sure if it’s because whatever connection I have is fading, or if I’m just ordinary-living-person nervous, but all this is bad. Really bad.

  I strain to remember what I did with the box of bourbon. I walked to the cemetery and started to drink it there. I remember sitting on the hard concrete bench and watching two mockingbirds go at it and wondering whether Mike and I would be divorced by the time our twentieth anniversary rolled around. And then . . .

  “This morning . . . ,” the man repeats. “Before or after you met with Sam Knight?”

  “Uh, before.” Mike sounds unsure, as if he’s testing the temperature of the water with his toe before stepping in.

  “You know, Sam’s an interesting cat.”

  “Luis . . . ,” Mike pleads, putting his palms together.

  “You have done many deals with him, with our money. Some good deals.” The man tilts his head. “Some bad.”

  “Everything washes the cash,” Mike says quietly. “Even the losses.”

  “Yes, but we have to wonder . . . Is Sam really the best person for this task?” The man—Luis—sits back down in the chair and it creaks, metal against metal hinges. “Which makes us wonder if you are really the best person for this task.”

  I’m mentally torn between my attempt to chase down the memory and the information that is unfolding before me. I glance at Jacob and he’s also listening closely, the both of us trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that we didn’t know existed.

  I’m proud of him. I’m proud of him for keeping quiet, for not crying, for waiting and watching and staying in control of his emotions. Part of that is the Mike in him, but part of it is me. I am half of him. I raised him, more than Mike ever did. I move behind him and try to wrap my arms around him, but I don’t have arms and legs anymore. I am just here, waiting for the moment I will be gone.

  “You see . . .” Luis pulls at the leg of his shorts, straightening the material. “We did not know the nature of your relationship when you brought him to us. Specifically, while we knew his sexual proclivities”—he shrugs in acknowledgment—“they are fairly obvious, but we were not aware of yours.”

  Yours? I am lost and stare at Mike, trying to understand why he has gone even paler.

  “Romance doesn’t mix well with our business. Neither do secrets.”

  Romance? He’s alluding to the idea that Sam and Mike are involved, but that can’t be right. Jacob makes a soft sound, like a cat crying, and then more footsteps come down the stairs.

  “Let’s share all of our secrets, Mike,” Luis says. “Shall we?”

  My mind skitters, like a flickering film frame, and suddenly, I remember.

  CHAPTER 69

  LILLIAN

  The day of the death

  The thing about Mike and his girlfriend, thinking back on it, is that this wasn’t an isolated affair. I suspected he’d been unfaithful at multiple intervals over our eighteen years of marriage. And I was happy with David. I felt different, and I liked different, and maybe . . . if Mike wasn’t being faithful and I was happier with someone else, maybe this whole marriage thing had no point.

  I tipped back the bourbon bottle. The flavor was beginning to grow on me, the bite less stiff as I took smaller and more frequent sips. I used to love bourbon. That drink that I used to have every Christmas . . . the cinnamon maple bourbon sour. That was it. Sam would make it, along with his famous eggnog, and serve them both with chocolate biscotti. I should save some of this for that.

  I would definitely get Sam in a potential divorce, despite his fondness for Mike. I took another sip and smiled at the thought of going out with him and letting his matchmaker tendencies go wild. Maybe I could move in with him. He had enough room. That giant house? Granted, he was a bit of a nag about organization and neatness. He’d probably kick me out the first time I tracked in dirt, or didn’t use a coaster, or left hair in the shower.

  I glanced at my watch and sighed. I should head home. We had the meeting with the attorney in two hours, and I needed to change and freshen up. I could put the bourbon back in the box and in the liquor cabinet. Mike wouldn’t even notice until after our divorce was filed or the anniversary occurred, and by then—if we made it that long—who would care about a few missing sips?

  I eyed the bottle. Maybe I had taken more than a few sips. Had I really drunk that much? I stood, and the gravestone closest to me swayed. Okay, yeah. Maybe alcohol, on an empty stomach, with medicine, wasn’t a great combo.

  I pushed the bottle back into its box and returned it to my bag. Sighing, I pulled the strap of my blue Marc Jacobs purse over my shoulder. I took an unsteady step forward, then another. My right leg buckled and I grabbed the edge of the bench for support.

  Okay, I had this. I glanced around, and considered inducing a vomit. No one was around. No one would see if I hurried over to the closest palm, leaned against it, and let everything fly out.

  A car drove by, on just the other side of the low iron gate, and I nixed the idea. I was only four blocks from home. I could make it there and into the privacy of my bathroom. With my luck, I’d do it here and end up with chunks of last night’s pizza all over the front of my shirt.

  Gathering myself, I aimed for the gate and made it out and onto the sidewalk without incident. I kept my eyes on the sidewalk ahead of me and plodded, one foot in front of the other, to the stop sign at the cross section of the nearest street. My street. I just needed to hang a right and go three blocks and . . . voilà. I’d be home. Easy peasy.

  Jeez, I was thirsty. My tongue felt like it was caked in dryness. An ice cube right now would be glorious.

  Glorious. That was a word you didn’t hear enough of. In fact, with over a thousand obituaries written, I’d never once used the word glorious. I could have fit it in. She lived a glorious life as a . . . I frowned. Maybe glorious wasn’t a good adjective for an obit.