"You've been with Dr. D'Anton several years now?" Monks asked.

"Going on six. Why?"

"You get to meet the movie stars, all that?"

"I'm not a toy boy." The words came out suddenly and sharply, with a hostile glance.

Monks was taken aback. "I wasn't suggesting anything like that. Just – you know. It must be interesting," he finished lamely.

"I've got my own interests," Todd said. He heaved the case of wine up onto his shoulder and turned his back, heading toward the party.

Monks followed more slowly. Flattery was usually an effective way to start probing for information, but apparently he had hit a nerve.

He nodded sociably to other guests, but no one offered introductions, which was fine with him. There was the sense that they all knew each other. The dress was informal but elegant, Armani jackets and open shirts for the men, summer dresses for the women, with a lot of jewelry on display. He had put on his one decent sport coat, a Harris tweed – hardly in this style range and a little warm for the weather, but serviceable.

He reached the house and stepped to a window, to see if Gwen Bricknell was inside. This was evidently the party's center, a large old-fashioned drawing room. White-clothed tables set with liquor, wine, and hors d'oeuvres lined the walls. The room was crowded with figures who looked posed in a tableau. Those at the periphery stood in pairs or small groups, talking, drinking, eating.

But at the center, a man and a woman presided, like a high priest and his acolyte at the altar. The man was Dr. D'Anton. The woman was the nurse, Phyllis, whom Monks had encountered at the clinic.

He realized that there was a gradient of the sexes in the room – mostly men at the periphery, more women closer to the center. He guessed that many of them were D' Anton's patients. Most were in their forties, or older, but their beauty was almost surreally enhanced. There was a lot of collagen and silicone walking around in that room.

Phyllis was preparing something with her hands. She turned to D'Anton, presenting the glimmering object to him solemnly. He lifted it to the light and inspected it, as if offering a chalice. Now Monks realized what it was – a syringe.

D' Anton leaned over a woman who was sitting in a chair, with her head tilted back. His hands, holding the syringe, moved to her face.

Botox, Monks thought. Party favors.

He stared, thinking about Roberta Massey. I remember those hands, real specifically.

D' Anton finished the injections and returned the syringe to Phyllis. The woman in the chair rose, and another postulant took her place, leaning back to receive D' Anton's blessing.

Monks moved on, looking for Gwen.

He could see another cluster of guests, outside, toward the far end of the house. The area was a large flagstone patio, discreetly lit, with more tables of food and drink. Monks heard splashing and realized that there must be a swimming pool there. He started toward it.

Then his gaze was caught by a figure, a woman, off to his left, moving away from the crowd, toward the shadows at the edge of the lawn. She paused, cupping her hands to light a cigarette. A nearby sconce highlighted her coppery skin and long mane of silky black hair.

She was dressed differently than she had been yesterday – soft sleeveless pullover, skintight flared jeans cut below her navel – but there was no doubt that this was Coffee Trenette.

Another link in that chain that kept leading back to Eden Hale.

The match she was holding flared. But Monks saw that what she was lighting was not a cigarette – it was aluminum foil twisted into a conical pipe. Whatever was on the foil glowed briefly as she inhaled. She shook the match out, then let her head hang back in bliss. Maybe crack, Monks thought. Maybe heroin.

He walked over to her. She was half turned away and didn't see him.

"Small world, Ms. Trenette," he said.

Her hand moved quickly to thrust the pipe into her purse. She turned to him, face cool. Then recognition came to her, and she jerked away as if she had been hit with an electric shock.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed.

"Nice to see you, too."

"Don't you fuck with me, asshole."

"All right, I'll get straight to it," Monks said. "Of all the guys out there, how was it you happened to pick Ray Dreyer on that one particular night? The way he tells it, you wouldn't have spit on his shoes before then."

Her eyes gleamed with the feral look of a threatened animal. Her cultivated air was gone, too.

"You got a problem with that, you better lose it," she said. "I got some people be pleased to deal with you."

"Eden was your friend, Coffee, and now she's dead. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"You don't make friends in that world." She spun away, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly with her quick breaths.

Then, with her back still to him, she said more quietly, "You think I don't feel bad? Eden was nice to me."

"Even though you got a break, and she never did?"

Her head moved, in a nod that might have meant yes. "She was too nice, you know what I'm saying? People walked on her."

"What really happened that night, Coffee?" Monks said. "After your fight with your boyfriend?"

"There ain't no boyfriend, honey," she said scornfully. "Unless you count the ones come around wanting smoke and pussy."

"Then why did you call Ray?"

She stepped away from him, her forearms rising to cross her breasts, hands clasping her slender upper arms. Then she glanced back to him, with her gaze cool again.

"Because I'm a bitch," she said. But it had the feel of bluster this time.

She walked away, toward the crowd around the swimming pool. Monks almost felt sorry for her. Under her hardness and arrogance, there was a girl who had been given too much too fast. It had gone to her head, and she had made bad choices. Like Eden, she was a casualty of a world that glittered on the surface but was lined with broken glass.

But his pity stayed at almost. There were too many real victims who had never had anything but bad choices to make.

So – there hadn't been any boyfriend or fight. Something else had impelled her to sleep with Ray Dreyer that night, and guilt about it was softening her. Monks decided that he and Larrabee would be calling on Coffee again.

"I didn't realize you two knew each other," a sultry voice said.

Monks turned to see another young woman walking toward him. Like Coffee, she was dressed very differently than the older guests, in a thigh-high leather skirt and black tube top under an open white blouse. A wide belt with a big brass buckle encircled her narrow waist. Her dark hair was done up in a tousled ponytail.

He realized, with astonishment, that this was Gwen. He had only seen her before in her professional mode, beautiful, but sedately dressed and clearly almost forty. Now, in this light, she could have been in her twenties.

When she reached him, she leaned forward, offering her cheek to be kissed. Monks obliged, catching the scent of that same perfume she had worn at the clinic, deep and heady, musky rather than sweet.

"You look ravishing," Monks said.

"Tell me how you met Coffee," she said teasingly. "I need to know if I should be jealous."

"No worry there. My partner and I found out that Eden's boyfriend spent the night with her, while Eden was dying."

Gwen stepped back in shock. "My God, that's awful. That's why he wasn't with Eden?"

Monks nodded. "We asked her to confirm it. She did, but she wasn't happy about it."

"No, I don't suppose she would be. Coffee's not doing very well anyway."

"Drugs?"

"Big-time. And money. She's about to lose her house."

Monks remembered the air of neglect around the place. "I heard she had a very promising future."