The e-mail had an attachment.

I was even gladder now that I was alone, because it would have been embarrassing to have to explain to anyone that I’d overlooked the attachment the first time around. I double-clicked on the little paper clip icon and opened the file.

It was a photograph of three men, highballs in hand, standing in front of an orange-and-black banner that read Princeton Class of 1976, 25-Year Reunion. Actually, it looked to be a photograph of a photograph in a magazine, perhaps the Princeton alumni journal, because there was a white border around the picture and a caption underneath.

I didn’t need the caption to recognize two of the men-they were slightly younger versions of Glenn Gallagher and Nicholas Perry. The third man was identified as Flipper Brisbane, apparently also a member of the class of ’76. He looked too old to go by a name like Flipper, but if he let himself be called Flipper in the first place he was probably beyond help.

Man of the People had added his own caption to the photograph of the photograph: “They’re in this together,” it read.

While he at least hadn’t sent me an empty message, and while the visual aid was nice, he still hadn’t told me anything new. He’d said “they” had done it before in his previous e-mail, and I knew that Perry and Gallagher had collaborated on the Tiger buyout, too. I would have preferred more information about what, precisely, they were in together now, and maybe even some input about if it could possibly be related to Gallagher’s death. I wondered if Man of the People even knew that Gallagher was dead.

Then it occurred to me that this Flipper guy might be more than an innocent bystander trapped in the same picture as Gallagher and Perry. I opened up a new browser window and typed “Flipper Brisbane” into the search bar. But the only results were links to sites about dolphins, pinball, and Australia.

I turned back to the e-mail and pressed Reply. I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be attempting persuasive communications, and Man of the People was only partially responsible for my current level of frustration, but I had to do something.

Enough with the cryptic e-mails already. Glenn Gallagher’s dead, and they think I killed him, so unless you actually want to tell me something useful instead of confirming what I already know, stop contacting me. It’s annoying, and I have a murderer to catch.

Rachel

I read over what I wrote. It was, perhaps, a bit terse. I thought for a second and then made a couple of quick edits.

Enough with the cryptic e-mails already. Glenn Gallagher’s dead, and they think I killed him, so unless you actually want to tell me something useful instead of confirming what I already know, please stop contacting me. It’s annoying, and I have a murderer to catch.

Best,

Rachel

The please and the best definitely helped.

Satisfied, I hit Send.

I sat in front of the computer for a while longer, waiting to see if my newly aggressive tone would inspire Man of the People to respond in a more timely manner, but no such luck.

By ten-thirty, I’d done several laps around the apartment, flipped the television on and off another three times, and checked for new e-mail repeatedly and fruitlessly. I’d also consumed two additional Diet Cokes, polished off the first bag of chips and started on another.

By eleven, I’d convinced myself that if I didn’t get out of the apartment soon I wouldn’t be able to fit through the doorway and that it would be safe for me to leave if I took the appropriate precautions. These consisted of ransacking Emma’s closet in search of a fresh disguise, on the very off chance somebody had tracked me to Saks and there was security camera footage showing me going into the ladies’ room and an Olsen twin coming out.

Fortunately, Emma was a bit of a pack rat. On a top shelf I found a platinum blond wig I remembered from a college Halloween party, when we’d all gone as different Madonna songs. Emma had been “ La Isla Bonita ” Madonna, complete with the matador outfit.

I skipped the matador outfit but pulled the wig on over my own hair, straightening it in the bathroom mirror and then taking a step back to survey the effect. It looked okay-like a bad dye job rather than a wig-but my eyebrows now looked strange, their dark red clashing with the platinum. Emma wasn’t much of a makeup wearer, so I knew I wouldn’t find anything useful like an eyebrow pencil in her medicine chest, but I did find a charcoal stick among her art supplies. With careful application, I managed to transform myself into a brunette who hadn’t thought to dye her eyebrows to match her bad dye job.

I put an old pea coat on over the sweater and jeans Emma had already loaned me that morning. It was a good thing we were roughly the same size and that she had simple tastes; if it had been Hilary’s closet, everything would have been either inches too long or far too skimpy, and if it had been Luisa’s, I’d be too scared that I’d rip or spill on one of her precious designer garments to dare borrow anything.

A trip to the window assured me that the street below was quiet and seemingly clear of police surveillance. I stuffed money and my copy of Emma’s key in a pocket, donned my sunglasses, and let myself out of the apartment.

I’d filled my MetroCard a couple of weeks ago, but I was still concerned that there were computers somewhere logging when the card was swiped at a turnstile and connecting the swiping to me via my credit card. But I also didn’t want to be trapped in traffic with a potentially inquisitive or New York 1-watching cab driver. So I paid cash for a new MetroCard and took the subway up to midtown.

Hilary had said something interesting the previous night, but it was right before Emma arrived with food and the news about the rat poison so handily stored in my kitchen. The discussion had veered off in another direction, and Hilary’s question had not received the attention it deserved.

How, she had asked, did Dahlia’s attacker know to impersonate me?

I’d been thinking about this as I roamed Emma’s empty apartment, and I still didn’t have a good answer. Both Naomi and Annabel had seen me, but only in passing-they didn’t know my name or how I fit in. Perhaps Dahlia had told one of them she knew something incriminating and that she intended to tell me, too, and perhaps one of them had thought that framing me while attacking Dahlia would be a nice way to tie up both loose ends, but there were still a lot of dots to be connected to make this line of conjecture work.

The more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to the possibility that Gallagher’s murder and the attempt on Dahlia’s life could have something to do with the Thunderbolt buyout. It still seemed like Naomi and Annabel had the only obvious motives to do away with Gallagher, but if one of them wasn’t responsible, and if the crimes were connected with the deal in some way, then maybe Gallagher and Dahlia weren’t the only possible targets.

That somebody had gone to the trouble to impersonate me while seeking to commit murder had, in effect, made me a target, too.

And if I was a target because it was assumed I knew more than I did about this deal then the same assumption could be made about Jake, or even about Mark Anders. It seemed only fair to warn them they might be in danger.

I recognized that this was a relatively elaborate justification for getting out of the house, but this was about more than just warning Jake. I could use his help, too. He knew the context and the principals involved, so he might have insights that my friends couldn’t have with their secondhand knowledge of the situation. And he’d be able to fill me in on anything that people might be saying around the office. He knew me well enough to know that I would never have done anything to hurt Dahlia. I trusted him not to turn me in to the authorities.