“She was insane that night,” Mike said, still massaging the bruise on his jaw. “She walked right into the house. She didn’t knock, you know? We were watching TV, Shep and I, and we both stood up. I guess I thought it was someone trying to rob us. I think—later, I realized Shep probably thought it was a jealous wife, somebody who had realized he’d been sleeping with her husband. Then I saw that it was Chuck. I kind of laughed because I was feeling out of my head, and Shep started to say something like, ‘Chuck, what’s going on?’ Or something like that. And then Chuck threw him across the room.” Mike mimed shoving someone. “His head dented the plaster. I . . . I moved a plant to cover it.”

  North raised an eyebrow, and Shaw slipped out of the kitchen to check. “Chuck wanted to push Shep around?”

  “Push him around?” Mike stared hollowly at the money. “I thought she was going to kill him. She was hitting him. Kicking him while he was down. Slapping him when he tried to get up. She was screaming and crying. Once, I called a line cook hysterical. She had cut her thumb and wouldn’t stop crying. You should have seen the rest of the staff. They were going to tear me apart. You can’t call a woman hysterical. That kind of thing. But . . . But Chuck was hysterical. She kept saying he’d ruined everything.”

  Shaw nodded as he came back into the kitchen and moved to the refrigerator and began digging through it.

  “And?” North said.

  “And finally I got her away from him. I threw her out of the house.” Palpating the bruise, Mike gave a ghost of a smile. “Not literally. And I locked the door. I would have helped Shep, but he was furious. At me, at her, at the whole world. We started fighting, then. I had known something was going on. I mean, a part of me had known. We never could save up enough money for a baby, but when I needed a new kitchen, he got that miraculous inheritance. But that night, I wanted to know the truth. I was after him, asking and asking until he finally told me, and then things exploded. He was leaving, he said. If I was such an ungrateful bastard, he was never coming back. He had done it for us and why couldn’t I see that.” Mike’s hand finally dropped from his jaw, and he shrugged. “He packed a bag and left.”

  “And you told all this to the police?” Shaw said, emerging from the refrigerator long enough to waggle a chocolate eclair at North. North shook his head, and Shaw shrugged and bit into the pastry; filling squirted out and marked the corner of his mouth. “Because I’m sure they’d be interested to hear about the missing money.”

  “And,” North said, “the missing eclair.”

  Shaw grinned at him; the pastry cream clung to the edge of his lip still.

  “I’m going to guess,” North said, “that you didn’t tell them any of this. I’m going to guess you gave them the same nonsense you gave us: a fight with Chuck about missing money, and then the story that you and Shep were meeting for dinner.”

  “We were going to meet for dinner,” Mike said. “That wasn’t a lie. But I couldn’t tell you about the money because—”

  “Because you wanted to keep it,” Shaw said, polishing off the eclair in two more bites. That little fleck of pastry cream still showed at the corner of his mouth. “Because you deserved it, after everything Shep put you through.”

  “That’s not why,” Mike said. “That money was for a baby. Shep and I were going to adopt, and it’s so expensive. Now he’s dead, and . . . and it’s a chance for me, you understand? You’re not cops. You don’t have to get involved.” His eyes cut toward the French doors and then back to North. “I can pay you. Put you on retainer.”

  “For what? Aiding and abetting embezzlement?” Shaw said.

  North tapped the corner of his mouth, showing on his own face where the pastry cream was still clinging to Shaw’s lips.

  Shaw ran his tongue around his mouth and then raised his eyebrows.

  “Not even close,” North said, beckoning him over. “Mike, you have your car packed, and you’re ready to go. I think the police might have a few questions if the husband of a murder victim disappears without any explanation.”

  “I don’t owe them an explanation,” Mike said. “I didn’t kill Shep. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I hate this place, and I hate being here. I’m going home.”

  With his thumb, North caught the pastry cream on the corner of Shaw’s lips and wiped it away. He looked around for a towel to wipe it off; he didn’t see anything. To Mike, he said, “You’d better cancel that ticket, Mike. You’re not going anywhere. Not until you tell this whole story to the police.”

  “It won’t help your friend,” Mike said, his eyes cutting toward the French doors and, beyond them, to the detached garage. “She looks even worse. She would have killed Shep that night if I hadn’t been there. That’s what I’ll tell the cops. I’ll tell them that she probably did kill him. That’s what I’m going to say. She was so angry that she waited until the next day when he was leaving work, and she killed him and put him in the trunk of her car, and he’s been there this whole time. That’s how angry she was. Is that what you want me to tell the cops? That’ll be enough for them to close the book on Chuck. So . . .” His eyes shot toward the glass again. “So you’d better let me go.”

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is to create reasonable doubt,” North said. “Especially when a key witness gets recorded threatening to perjure himself.” With a grin for Mike, North licked the pastry cream from his thumb. Shaw’s eyes went wide, his lips parted, and suddenly, for a reason North couldn’t explain, a blush scorched its way through his cheeks.

  “I’ve got to go,” Mike said, squirming in place like a kid desperate to pee. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What’s going on?” Shaw said, although he cast a second glance at North—and at North’s thumb, glistening wetly with spit. “This isn’t just about the cash. It isn’t even really about the cops. You had a gun in your hand when you came to the door, Mike. You thought you were in danger. So why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  Mike’s breathing accelerated. He flinched, although nothing had happened that North could see, and he fingered the still-forming bruise on his jaw. “I went to see Grace Augusta,” he finally said, directing his words to Shaw. “I called our insurance agent. I demanded to see the change of beneficiary form for Shep’s life insurance policy. He emailed a copy to me.” Mike drew his phone out from a pocket and tapped the screen. Then he displayed an image for them: a scanned copy of a document full of legalese. Mike tapped the screen again, this time for emphasis. “That is not Shep’s signature. It’s not. I have a million things from him—birthday cards, letters, old checks, on and on. I can prove it’s not his signature. And I knew who changed that policy. As soon as that dried-up bitch came to our house, I knew it was about money. So I called her. She agreed to meet—not that she wanted to, but I had her ass in the air, and she knew it. I drove over there.” He flinched again, cupping his hand over his jaw.

  “What happened?” Shaw asked.

  “She was insane.”

  “Hysterical?” North said with a little quirk of his eyebrows.

  “She . . . she started hitting me as soon as I was in the room. She had something, I don’t know, a sock full of something. Metal. Pennies, maybe. I’ve heard of people doing that. She . . . she hit me.” Wonder tinged his words, as though he still couldn’t believe it had happened. “And she said, ‘Next one will break your jaw. And the one after that will break your skull.’ On and on like that. She hit me here, here.” He touched his lower abdomen and then sketched a spot on his ribs. “I thought . . . I thought she was going to kill me. And she kept asking questions, and I was saying whatever I could just so she’d leave me alone, just so she’d stop hitting me.” Mike was crying now—the painful, humiliated tears of a man who had just learned his breaking point. “I don’t even remember how I started, but I was telling her about the cash in the house, and that was when she stopped. She told me she was going to come collect the money. She was going to follow me over here. And then I was going to leave, without saying another word about the life insurance policy, or she was going to kill me. That’s what she said. Kill me.”

  “She didn’t care about the will?”

  “Why would she? Shep doesn’t have anything. We don’t have anything. Or, I mean, nothing in the bank.” Mike’s eyes cut to the freezer-wrapped blocks of cash.

  “So where is she?” North said. “Seems kind of sloppy on her part to let you go.”

  “There was an accident on I-270. I managed to get off at the Big Bend exit while she was still blocked in the middle of the highway. I was just going to grab a few things and run when the two of you came, and I had Shep’s gun because I wasn’t going to—”

  From the front of the house came the creak of old hinges, and then a light footstep. Laying a finger over his lips, North jerked his head at Shaw and bent to unlace his boots. Shaw nodded; the slender man wrapped the gun in the towel again and tucked it into his waistband. Then he slid a long chef’s knife from the block on the counter. North slipped out of the Red Wings, grabbed a stool that stood next to the kitchen island, and raised it like a lion tamer. If Grace Augusta had a homemade sap, she wouldn’t have to be strong to do a lot of damage. North didn’t want to give her the chance. He eased out into the hallway; his old cotton socks were silent on the wood.

  Ahead of him, from the living room, came another soft step—the heel of her shoe clicking on the floor. And then another. North felt buoyant with the rush of adrenaline, but he also felt a trace of admiration. For a woman who had beat the shit out of a man and then followed him to his house, all in the hopes of extracting illegal money from him, Grace Augusta didn’t sound terribly worried. She sounded more like a woman doing a white glove inspection. A few careful steps. And then silence. And then a few more. Was she thinking about buying the place after she ran Mike out of town?

  At the end of the hall, just before the living room, North drew in a slow, silent breath. Then, careful to plant his stockinged feet so he wouldn’t slip, North spun around the corner and lunged.

  Grace Augusta was waiting for him. She threw something—small and white was all North’s brain had time to register before it shattered against his head. North barely felt it; it was a glancing blow, and his vision stayed clear, so he just kept moving.

  In one hand, Grace Augusta held a long athletic sock, weighted at one end, the cotton stretched thin. She was already swinging it when her missile glanced off the side of North’s head, and if he hadn’t been ready for her—if, for that matter, he hadn’t been young and athletic and seen his fair share of scrapes—her plan probably would have worked: first a distraction, and then, while they were still recovering a hard blow from the sap.

  Instead, the athletic sock cracked against the stool with the sound like a cashbox hitting the ground. Wood splintered, but North kept his grip, and he swung hard in the opposite direction, knocking Grace Augusta to one side and tearing the sock from her hand. She staggered, hitting up against the couch, and her hand went to the pocket of her designer slacks.

  “Stop,” North said. “Right fucking now. Drop the mace or the hairspray or whatever the fuck you’ve got right now.”

  “I knew you weren’t insurance adjusters. I knew it!”

  For a moment, it was a standoff. North decided to club her with the stool anyway, just to be safe. She must have reached the same conclusion because her hand dipped into her pocket, and she was already whipping out a small canister.

  Then, from the kitchen, Shaw shouted, “North, help!”

  Chapter 22

  SHAW’S CRY FOR HELP distracted North just a fraction too long. He turned back to Grace Augusta, thrusting forward with the stool, at the same time that she sprayed. North was lucky. The spray caught him on the side of the head. Immediately his eyes began to sting as the cloud of capsaicinoids diffused through the room, but he kept the stool in motion, and he was rewarded by a choked grunt from Grace Augusta as he made contact.

  A second spray washed over him, and this time North had to turn away to keep from being blasted in the face. Something hit him at the shoulder, spinning him further, and he heard Grace Augusta’s light footsteps. North twisted in her direction, hurling the stool. He caught her low in the back; she staggered and kept running. North took off after her, but he had to wipe his eyes, his lungs burning as he drew in the airborne pepper spray.

  By the time North made it to the door, Grace Augusta was already pulling away in the ancient Ford Probe. The muffler dragged behind her, squealing and raising a line of sparks when it struck metal debris in the road. North wiped his eyes; they were getting puffier, even though he hadn’t taken any direct hits from the pepper spray. He needed to wash the oils from his hair as soon as he could.

  First, though, he jogged the length of the house and found Shaw sitting at the island, the gun still tucked into his waistband as he stuffed napkins up his nose. Blood wicked along the paper. On the island, coffee grounds spilled across the granite, filling the air with their scent. The plastic-wrapped bricks were gone, though, as well as the loose cash that North had pulled out of one of the packages.

  “He left his phone,” Shaw said cheerfully, waving the device.

  “Is it broken?”

  “No, he just dropped it.”

  North made his way to the sink and turned the faucet to warm. He dug around in the cabinets and pulled out the dish soap. “I meant your nose.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Where’s Mike?”

  “He punched me and ran away.”

  North sighed.

  “Do you want help with that?” Shaw asked.

  “I’m a very big boy, Shaw.”

  “Ego, much? I’ve seen you in the shower. You’re not that big.”

  “I meant I’ve been washing my hair by myself for a long time.”

  Still, scrubbing the soap into his hair—no water yet, because water would only dilute the soap and push the oil around—North found the job harder than he thought. The stinging in his eyes was worse, and he had to squint through the tears, not that he could see what he was doing anyway. He needed a mirror.

  Shaw’s quiet steps padded across the room, and then his hand pushed North’s away. Shaw poured out some soap, worked it between his fingers, and began massaging North’s scalp.

  “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “I was thinking about how sad it is that you never went out for basketball.”

  Shaw straightened his shoulders as though displaying the Trail Blazers jersey, and then shook his head. “Nope. I think you’ve been crying about how pasty white you are.”

  “You’d be surprised. A lot of guys like pasty white.”

  “Yeah, I bet you go out to mow the lawn,” Shaw said, his fingers digging a little harder into North’s scalp now, almost uncomfortable, “and you take off your shirt and you wear those little booty shorts that you think I don’t know you own, and you’re so white it’s basically like snow glare. Like a public menace. People go blind from snow glare, you know.”

  “People only go blind from snow glare if they stare, Shaw.”

  “Bend over.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Even with his eyes puffy and filled with tears, North could sense Shaw’s grin. “You’re such a dumbass sometimes.”

  It didn’t take long to rinse the suds out of North’s short hair, and then he dried off as best he could with a kitchen towel.

  “Your shirt is soaked,” Shaw said as he dropped onto the remaining stool at the counter. “Take it off, and we’ll find something here you can wear.”

  North raised one eyebrow. “See? I knew there were boys who liked pasty white.”

  “I’m trying to prevent you from getting pneumonia.”

  “I’ll take the risk.” North plucked at the wet cotton molded to his chest. “Besides, I look hot. Maybe I can seduce the cops when they come. Maybe it’ll be Jadon and he’ll forget all about his twinkie boyfriend.”

  Shaw just rolled his eyes, probing the edges of his swollen nose.

  “Want to tell me how a chef got the drop on you?”

  “No.”

  “Is he a super spy? Like James Bond? And the chef thing was all a disguise?”

  “No.”

  “Does he know some kind of awesome martial arts?”

  Still probing his nose, Shaw glared at North.

  “Did he seduce you? Because if he seduced you, I’ll understand. You’ve always had a thing for older men, and with your sweet tooth, you probably—” The look on Shaw’s face made North stop and groan. “You didn’t.”

  “He did not seduce me.”

  “Yes, Shaw. He did.”

  “No. No way. I don’t even think he’s cute, and—”

  “Not with his body. Jesus Christ. What was it?”

  Shaw writhed on the stool, unable to look at North, unable to sit still.

  “Was it a donut?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Was it that disgusting butterscotch candy you like? Because if it was butterscotch, I will fucking tan your ass right here in this kitchen.”

  “It wasn’t butterscotch. Jesus.”

  “It was the eclair.”

  “Ok, there is another eclair, and it actually sounds really good right now. If you could just pass it to me—” Something on North’s face must have communicated his feelings because Shaw flinched and said, “Give me a little credit. I wasn’t going to get distracted by food when you were creeping down the hallway about to confront a psycho with a tube sock. Mike’s phone started buzzing, and he grabbed it and unlocked it and said, ‘No, this is impossible,’ and then he said to me, ‘It’s Shep calling me.’”

  “Let me guess,” North said. “Shep wasn’t calling.”

  With a shrug, Shaw said, “Mike turned the phone like he was going to show me, and I reached for it. That’s when he punched me. It was a pretty good one. I heard you and Grace Augusta in the front room. I shouted.” He gave North a miserable look. “I really am terrible at this, aren’t I?”