“Hi!” she gushed, as excited as a cheerleader at a pep fest. “Hey, great party, huh? Have you met Fabian yet? God, he’s got like the biggest tits I’ve ever seen and they’re really his! Isn’t that wild!”

“Is this the bathroom?”

Uma giggled, setting the cascades of diamonds swinging on her earlobes. “It better be. I just hurled about a pound of hors d’oeuvres. Eat till you puke-that’s my motto.” She nearly fell over laughing, grabbing on to Mari’s shoulder to keep herself upright. Her breath reeked of Binaca.

“Oh, yeah, that’s catchy,” Mari said, her sarcasm lost on the actress, who had suddenly become fixated on Mari’s hair.

“This is so radical!” She reached up to rub a strand between her fingers. “Where did you get this color? José?”

“DNA.”

“Where’s that?”

“In my genes. It’s the real thing. I was born with it.”

Uma looked confused for a few seconds, then amused again. “People still do that?”

“Call me old-fashioned,” Mari said on a sigh. Her temples were throbbing like a pair of hammer-struck thumbs. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

“God, no.” Uma’s overinflated lips bent into a huge sad-clown frown. “Smoking’s like bad for you. But ask Brycie if you really need one. Brycie can get you anything you want.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he can.”

“No shit. Like he’s got the best blow I’ve ever had. Want some?”

Mari started to tell her newfound friend she preferred to stay on planet earth, but she bit her tongue at the last second. She wanted to know more about Bryce. She wanted to know more about the crowd Lucy had run with before she died. Somewhere along the line, the answers were going to start making some kind of sense instead of leading her deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

“Come on!” Uma grabbed her arm and led her down the hall, her pale, thin face polished by excitement and the burnoff of cocaine. They turned a corner and came to a set of tall carved double doors. She gave Mari a look brimming with conspiracy. “You have to know the secret knock.”

She pounded out a beat that sounded vaguely like “The Rain in Spain,” and fell against the door in a fit of giggles. Mari watched her, thinking that if Uma got any more wired than she already was, something was going to short-circuit. She didn’t wait for anyone to answer her secret code, but turned the knob and stumbled into the room with the swing of the door.

“Trick or treat! Got any nose candy?”

Uma righted herself and made a beeline for a huge billiard table with carved mahogany legs. The only light in the room came from the hanging brass fixture above the table. The light shone down in three perfect cones on a long mirror that had been situated on top of the slate, illuminating a dozen neat white lines of cocaine just waiting for some itchy noses.

Mari came to a dead halt three feet into the room as she recognized the man bent over the table with a rolled hundred-dollar bill poised under one nostril. Her heart slammed into her breastbone and bounced back and forth between her ribs.

MacDonald Townsend. U.S. District Court judge Mac-Donald Townsend.

He glanced up and their gazes collided with all the force of a pair of trains.

“I just came looking for cigarettes,” Mari mumbled, turning away from the puddle of light around the table. Someone handed her a pack of French Gauloises. Instead of shaking one out, she took the whole thing, stumbled over a thanks, and ducked out the door into the dimly lit hallway.

MacDonald Townsend was one of the most highly respected men on the bench in northern California. Rumors already had him placed on a seat in superior court. He had the governor’s ear, a wealthy wife, and, apparently, an appetite for Colombian snow.

And for one long, hot summer, MacDonald Townsend had been Lucy’s lover.

The questions loomed larger, boomed louder with every beat of her pulse in her temples. She hurried down a maze of halls, finding an exterior door just when she was sure she was hopelessly lost. Desperate for fresh air, she let herself out and stood a moment to get her bearings. She was downhill from the parking area, nearer to the stables than the cars. Still trembling a little, her heart still pounding, she walked down a paved, landscaped path toward the dark barnyard. The smell of horse manure and pine trees seemed a big improvement over the stench of greed and power that hovered like smog around Bryce’s crowd.

She wandered down along the end of the long building where a big sliding door had been left rolled back. She leaned a shoulder against it and stared in at the row of box stalls. Music from the party drifted down the hill, diluted enough to be pleasant. More comforting were the sounds of the horses eating and stamping flies, but not even that could loosen the tension in her nerves.

Christ, what a party. Lawyers trolling like sharks in a swimming pool. A pillar of the bench snorting coke. She felt like Alice down the rabbit hole on LSD. The sinister quality of it all crept over her flesh like a thousand worms. It grew and pressed in on her until it felt as if it had taken a solid form and stood staring out at her from the shadows of the stable.

Mari straightened away from the building, unable and unwilling to stop herself from overreacting. All she wanted was away from this place. Wonderland had offered her all the revelations she could stand for one night.

She hurried up the path for the parking area, headed for her Honda, never thinking the feel of eyes on her back was real.

Judge Townsend paced the elegant confines of Bryce’s private lair. He was fifty-two and favored Charlton Heston. Many said he was a man with a brilliant future ahead of him. At the moment, that future was going up in flames in his imagination. His nerves were strung tighter than piano wire.

“Dammit, Bryce, how could you invite her here? She could be another Lucy-or worse.” He stopped his pacing at the window that overlooked the valley and stared out into the darkness for a moment. His thin mouth quivered. He brought a hand up and pressed it against his forehead as if he were feeling for a fever. “Jesus, I don’t believe this is happening to me.”

Bryce watched him from a casual perch on the edge of his desk. He held his expression calm and vaguely amused, but inwardly he sneered at Townsend. Spineless. The man didn’t have the nerve to play in the big leagues. He was weak-weak of mind, weak of spirit. He constantly succumbed to temptation-women, cocaine, money. He succumbed, he did not indulge. The difference was huge. Bryce might have admired Townsend if he had plunged himself into his vices with joy and verve. But MacDonald Townsend was like a tight-rope walker afraid of heights. Every time he slipped from his lofty position, he screamed and sweated and soiled himself. Bryce despised him and enjoyed pushing him, shaking the wire, luring him over the edge.

“We don’t know what Lucy might have told her,” Townsend said. “We don’t know what evidence she might have left.”

“We searched the house,” Bryce said calmly. “There was no videotape. Lucy was playing games with you, taking your money and laughing at you behind your back.”

“That bitch.” His whole body was trembling now. He squeezed his hands into fists at his sides. “I never should have touched her.”

“No,” Bryce commented mildly. He slid off the desk and sauntered to the window with his hands steepled before him like a priest. Ignoring the view, he turned toward Townsend, his pale eyes glowing with contempt. “No, my friend, you should never have touched Lucy. You didn’t have the nerve to play her kind of games. You are, however, very fortunate to have me to look out for your well-being.”

“You’ll take care of the Jennings woman?”

“I’m keeping an eye on her. I’ll take care of everything. I always do.”