She sat there staring down at the phone. The call had been disturbing and annoying and … comforting. Not surprising, when Lynch could be all things to all individuals if he wished.

Tonight she’d try to forget the disturbing and remember the comforting. It had been a rough day, and she needed to be soothed and told that everything would be all right.

And he had not done that, but he had said he wanted to watch her back, and that was pretty good, too.

She finished her tea and took the cup to the kitchen. She had planned to go over the items in the houseboat and try to put some clarity to confusion. But she would leave it for the night and go to bed. Maybe everything would be clearer in the morning.

She went back to her bedroom and started to turn out the light.

Then she stopped.

Not yet. One more thing before she risked that nightmare again.

She went into the bathroom and opened the drawer where she kept her toiletries.

Her silverback brush that Olivia had given her last Christmas shimmered in the lights from the vanity.

She looked at it for a moment, then took it out of the drawer. It felt light to the touch. There were a few strands of hair still on the bristles.

It would have been so easy for someone to run a comb through those bristles and take those strands.

Had Colby been here, looking in this mirror, the brush in his hands?

She shuddered. She could almost imagine him standing behind her, smiling.

No!

She threw the brush in the drawer and slammed it closed. She whirled, flipped off the light, and strode back into the bedroom.

She would not imagine what she did not know. She would not let him torment her. He was doing quite enough of that without her help.

She dove into bed and closed her eyes.

Don’t think of the gully.

Don’t think of that hairbrush.

Think of Lynch. Don’t push away any part of what he made her feel. It might save her from Colby tonight.

Take it. Take what I can give. You won’t be sorry.

I’m taking it, Lynch. Tonight, I choose you.

*   *   *

KENDRA WAS PERCHED ON THE edge of the sofa, staring intently at her television, when Beth entered the condo the next morning.

“Aha,” Beth said. “The only thing that could require that level of concentration is the latest episode of Real Housewives. Or maybe Duck Dynasty.”

“I got up early, and I’ve been going over the video you shot of Sheila Hunter’s houseboat.”

“Even more entertaining. I went over it a couple times myself. I have a hunch that you saw more than I did though.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Does it give you any ideas?”

Kendra paused the video. “Yeah, maybe. At any rate, today we’re going to meet with the powerful CEO of a multinational media corporation and ask him a boatload of questions. No problem, right?”

“You’ve got to be talking about Robert Schultz. I saw the references to him in her phone records. You’re going to try to see him?”

Kendra nodded. “Sheila Hunter was in constant contact with him, at all hours of the day and night. I can see it on the call logs Lynch pulled for me.”

“You think something was going on between them?”

“Something was. It rang a bell with me when I was talking to those cops yesterday. One of them got extremely shifty when I accused him of cheating on his wife.”

Beth laughed. “You accused a cop of—”

“Not my finest hour. I kind of lost my patience. Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that some of the things that had been wiped clean might have been done to hide evidence of an affair, not a murder.”

“What?”

“The main reason that Colby wanted me to go to the houseboat was to see how clever he’d been in planting that DNA. But there might have been something else, and I didn’t see anything. Everything was wiped clean. Colby wouldn’t have wiped anything clean if he wanted me to see it. So I began to wonder if someone else wiped that crime scene down.”

“He could have been hiding evidence of his affair and the murder.”

“If I didn’t know Colby was responsible, I might have thought that myself. I need to talk to Schultz right away.”

“Not that I doubt you, but high-powered executives tend be a little busy. How exactly are you going to pull that off?”

“I already have. We’re meeting him at Amici Park in half an hour.”

“You’re not joking.”

“No, I have his personal cell number, remember? Plus a bit of embarrassing knowledge. Trust me, it’s a potent combination.”

*   *   *

IN TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES, KENDRA and Beth were walking on the outskirts of downtown’s Amici Park, which on weekdays became the playground for an adjacent elementary school. The small park was located in Little Italy, and it offered one of the few grassy areas for dog walkers in the downtown area.

A slender man in an expertly tailored suit was already there. In his fifties, he had fine features and slightly thinning brown hair. He was leaning against the fence, skimming e-mails on his phone. Kendra approached him. “Robert Schultz?”

“Yes, Ms. Michaels.” He put away his phone. “When I suggested this place, I didn’t realize it was closed to park goers on school days. We can go somewhere else.”

“This will be fine. Our conversation isn’t going to last long.”

“I hope not.” He turned to Beth. “And you are?”

“Helping me,” Kendra replied. “Beth Avery.”

Schultz nodded. “Which means she’s cut from the same cloth.” He turned back to Kendra, and said coldly, “I don’t usually respond to tactics like yours, Ms. Michaels. I don’t appreciate threats.”

“You don’t usually find yourself in the middle of murder investigations, either.”

“I had nothing to do with what happened to Sheila Hunter.”

“I believe you.”

He stared at her. “Then what’s this about?”

“You already know. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. I know you were having an affair with her. You spent a lot of time with her in that houseboat. You were paying for it, weren’t you? It was billed under one of your midlevel executives, but you were footing that bill.”

He looked away. “Why should I talk to you?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll make a lot of noise you won’t want to hear. I don’t care about your affair, Mr. Schultz. I have no interest in telling your story to the world, despite the fact that your girlfriend stooped pretty low to tell mine. But I promise I’ll do it if that’s what it takes to get the answers I need.”

He looked back at her. “I’m a married man. I have children. And Sheila worked for my company. The last may actually be worse than the first as far as my professional standing is concerned. We had to be very discreet.”

Kendra nodded. “You wanted a nice place near your office but not a place where many people would see you coming and going. Almost no one lives on their boats in Harbor Village. I imagine it was a nice spot for you two.”

“It was heaven.” For the first time, Kendra saw the pain in his eyes. “The place. The woman. Sheila understood me. We had the same values. It was the one place I could relax and enjoy myself. I hated whenever I had to leave.”

“The night she was killed … I know you were there.”

He turned sharply toward her. “I told you I had nothing to do with it.”

“And I told you that I believe you. But I know you were there.”

He looked down and finally nodded. “I found her. It was horrible. I couldn’t believe it.”

“She was already dead?”

He nodded.

Beth wrinkled her brow. “But you didn’t call the police.”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t get involved. But I knew the police would put the entire place under a microscope. I wiped my prints off everything, every gift, every trinket that might possibly be linked back to me or my credit-card purchases. I put them in a laundry bag and got the hell out of there.”