Gwen opened the door, flushed and sweating, drying her face with a towel. She was wearing a spandex outfit. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. A large-screen TV showed several shapely women, also spandex-clad, dancing in swift precise unison. Like Gwen's apartment in San Francisco, like every place she had lived, this one was fitted out with an exercise studio – Nautilus weight-lifting equipment, a NordicTrack, videos of aerobics and Mari Winsor workouts and bun busters. Most mornings she was up at five a.m., putting in a fierce hour-long regimen before dressing to go to the clinic, with extra stints when she had time. She was just as careful with other aspects of her health. There were cabinets filled with vitamins, the finest skin-care products, estrogen and collagen cremes. She had tried them all, in all combinations, even getting ingredients directly from the clinic and mixing them herself.

Then there was the medicine that fueled her fierce energy – a plate with several lines of cocaine, waiting on a dresser.

"Sorry to interrupt," Julia said.

"It's fine. I was just getting ready to shower."

"I was wondering about tomorrow night. Whether Welles is coming." D'Anton usually came to the parties here, dispensing Botox injections to his female guests.

But now, nothing was as usual.

"He'll make an appearance," Gwen said. "He knows he can't let his adoring fans down." She waited for further questions, her face politely inquiring – the same look she used on women at the clinic, to put them in their place.

Julia felt her anger stir but resisted the urge to rise to the bait. She turned to go, then asked, as if by afterthought, "Did that Dr. Monks stop by?"

"Yes. I showed him Eden's records. He seemed satisfied that everything was all right."

"He's not going to be a nuisance, then?"

"I don't know about that," Gwen said. She stepped back into the room and picked up the cocaine plate, offering it to Julia.

Julia waved it away. "What do you mean?"

Gwen bent over the plate and inhaled through a plastic straw, a long shuddering breath into each nostril. She came back up with eyes bright and intense.

"I got a phone call right before I left the clinic," Gwen said. "Dr. Monks thinks Eden might have been murdered."

This evening, Martine was not there when Monks got home. He knew it before he pulled up the driveway and saw the empty spot where she usually parked her car, before the edge of his vision caught the disappearing tail of the black cat, Cesare Borgia, no doubt plotting revenge against his truant humans.

But then, there was no reason she should be.

There was a single message on his answering machine. He had a feeling he knew who it was going to be, and he was right.

"Carroll!" Baird Necker's voice roared. 'That girl's father called up screaming that you'd come by, talking about murder. Are you fucking crazy? If you pull anything else like that, I'll kill you with my own hands!"

Monks put away the groceries. Then he opened a fresh bottle of the Finlandia vodka and sliced a lemon into wedges. He poured the liquor into an old-fashioned glass, watching it smoke slightly over the ice. He gave it a minute to chill, then raised the glass to his lips. The first taste brought goose bumps.

Ordinarily, he would have worked out first, but tonight he was not even going to pretend. He had been scheduled to work the day after tomorrow, but he had called Vernon Dickhaut and arranged for Vernon to take over for him. Monks had not given a reason – just said something had come up. He had not wanted to explain that he might not be coming back to work ever again.

It had been a long time since he had felt like this.

He finished the drink in three strong swallows and poured another one to take with him to the shower. He stayed in for a long time, as if the almost scalding water could wash away the past two days. Then he dressed in clean jeans and a sweatshirt, poured a third drink, and took it out onto the deck.

Pacing, drinking steadily, he went through the story in his head, piecing together the information that he and Larrabee had coaxed out of Josh Hale.

Eden and Ray Dreyer had been living together in Los Angeles until several months ago. On a visit to San Francisco, through some connection, they had attended a party at the home of Dr. D. Welles D' Anton. There, Eden had caught the eye of Julia D' Anton, the doctor's wife.

Julia was a sculptress – Monks recalled her strong hands, work clothes, and the stone chips he had seen in the back of her SUV – and a patroness of the arts. She had asked Eden to pose for her.

Not long after that, Eden had started an affair with Dr. D'Anton. It must have been a hot one. She had moved to San Francisco, receiving quite a bit of money from him – along with free cosmetic surgery. It seemed that D'Anton planned to make her into a showpiece.

And Eden was trying to change her life accordingly. She was getting rid of Ray and her connections to his sleazy world. She was upgrading her wardrobe. There was something childishly wistful about it – the belief that by changing her clothes and body, that would change her being, too.

Never mind that the trigger for it all was an affair with a married man, which, given its intensity, seemed likely to end in divorce. Eden may have been sweet and naive, but she obviously had no compunctions about taking D'Anton away from his wife.

Monks wondered if that was why Gwen Bricknell had lied about Eden being "just another patient"-if Gwen had known about the affair and was trying to protect D'Anton. If the news came out, it would make for a juicy scandal.

But while it might be unethical for a physician to have sex with a patient, it was not illegal. And none of the information put Monks any closer to knowing who might have murdered Eden Hale, or why – or even whether that was, in fact, what had happened.

Still, some potential motives were starting to appear, like shapes in fog.

Maybe D' Anton had wanted to end the affair – in spite of what Eden had told her brother Josh – and Eden had blackmailed him.

Or Julia D' Anton, fearing that her marriage was being destroyed, might have decided to remove the threat.

Ray Dreyer – jilted as a lover, and losing his long-term investment – was still on the charts, too.

There were many other possibilities that might or might not ever come to light. Including the damnable one that the salmonella in Eden Hale's bloodstream was what had killed her. That if Monks had recognized it and treated it differently, she might have lived. And all the rest of this was a waste of time and effort, a pathetic attempt at exoneration – an epilogue to a ruined medical career.

He went back inside and poured another drink, noting that the bottle was more than one quarter empty. He took the drink and the cordless phone back outside with him.

Martine answered on the third ring.

"It's me," he said.

"Hi." Her voice sounded remote.

"I just wondered what you're doing."

"Nothing. Fixing dinner."

Monks thought he heard talking in the background. It was probably the TV.

"Any developments?" she said. "On your – situation?"

"Yes," he said, but then stopped, unable or unwilling to continue, at this remove. "Is there somebody there?"

She sighed. "No, Carroll."

"Just asking. It will be good for you to make new friends."

"Are you drinking?"

"Yes." He took a long swallow, clinking the ice close to the phone so she would hear it.

"You really want to know what I'm doing?" she said. "I'm watching movies. The kind you were watching yesterday."

Monks's forehead creased. Martine had occasionally brought a rented video home, but he was pretty sure they had not watched any in the past week or two, and he had not been to a theater in years.