“Lily?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have to work,” I said, my voice flat and even. “I’m just…” Angry, unhappy, empty; all of the above.

“I’m going to miss you, too.”

“Will you?” I asked, my voice as low as if there were someone there to hear me. “Will you think of me when you’re alone in your hotel room?”

He allowed as how he would.

We talked a little longer. Though I got satisfaction out of realizing that Jack really would regret he wasn’t with me, the end result was the same; I wouldn’t see him for a week, at the very least, and two weeks was more realistic.

After we hung up I realized I hadn’t told him about finding Deedra dead. I wasn’t going to phone him back. Our good-byes had been said. He’d met Deedra, but that was about the extent of his knowledge of her… as far as I knew. He’d lived across the hall from her before I’d met him, I recalled with a surge of uneasiness. But I channeled it aside, unwilling to worry about a faint possibility that Jack had enjoyed Deedra’s offerings before he’d met me. I shrugged. I’d tell him about her death the next time we talked.

I tugged the crammed garbage bag out of the can, yanked the ties together in a knot, and braced myself as Camille Emerson staggered through the kitchen door, laden with grocery bags and good will.

I was late for my appointment with Marta Schuster, but I didn’t care. I’d parked my car in my own carport before striding next door to the eight-unit apartment building, noticing as I threw open the big front door that there were two sheriff’s department vehicles parked at the curb. I was in a bad mood, a truculent mood-not the frame of mind best for dealing with law-enforcement officials.