I’d told Jonathan about my roommate reunion, and before I’d even thought it through I was asking him if he wanted to join us for dinner that night. He appeared flattered by the invitation and accepted after some coaxing. I had a brief twinge of regret-what if Peter showed up?-but then I reminded myself that the odds of that happening were pretty much nil. The crisp champagne with the sweet lacing of Kir washed away the sour taste this thought induced.

It was close to six when Jonathan’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and checked the caller ID. “I should get this,” he apologized. “I don’t know who it is, and there’s been too much going on lately to let it go.”

He went out to the lobby to take the call, and I quickly pulled out my own phone to let Jane know that I would be bringing an unexpected guest to dinner (who, as it turned out, was not a serial killer) and to warn her that I expected them all to be on their best behavior. “I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Jane answered pointedly when the call finally went through. I was beginning to think it was time for a new phone.

“Perhaps somebody could give Hilary an etiquette refresher before we arrive?” I suggested.

“Perhaps. Although, she’s at the library right now doing some research. Apparently her interview went well, but she had some things she wanted to look up afterward. If she gets here before you do, however, I’ll be sure to read her the riot act.”

“Thanks. See you soon.”

Jonathan returned to the table as I was replacing my phone in my bag. “That was Gabrielle LeFavre,” he told me.

“Really? I thought she’d disappeared.”

“She had. But she’s reappeared. And she said she really needs to talk to me. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked her to meet me here.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “But I should leave you two alone to talk.”

“No, stay,” he urged.

“Are you sure?” Given my suspicion of Barbara Barnett, I was pretty confident now that Gabrielle hadn’t attacked Sara in a fit of jealous rage, but I was still curious as to what she might have been up to.

“I wouldn’t ask you if I weren’t.”

Gabrielle showed up less than fifteen minutes later. It was fully dark outside, but she was wearing sunglasses, and her hood was pulled up, hiding her strawberry-blond hair. She looked furtively over her shoulder as she entered and then carefully surveyed the other occupants of the lounge as she made her way to our table.

“Could we switch tables?” she asked. “I don’t want to sit by the window.”

It seemed like an odd request, but given that she was all but in disguise, I guessed that she was concerned about being seen. We moved to a corner table against the back wall, which had the added virtue of being nearly hidden by a large plant. The question of who Gabrielle didn’t want to see her was answered quickly enough. She required only a small amount of encouragement from Jonathan to tell her story, and it quickly put to rest any suspicions I might have once harbored as to her having a role in the attacks on Sara.

Thursday morning, Gabrielle had left for the gym early, even before Sara had left for the boathouse. She’d brought a change of clothes with her, and she showered and dressed at the gym after her workout. Then she’d gone directly to the Winslow, Brown recruiting suite where, as Cecelia had told me, she’d waited until I returned.

She turned to me apologetically. “I was a disaster when I saw you. I really was. And I’m so sorry. I was just completely in a tizzy. I was getting dinged from every bank I interviewed with, and it was making me frantic. I’d just totally lost perspective. And I felt like I was completely losing it.” She’d certainly seemed to be losing it when I’d encountered her.

“It’s a stressful time,” I said. “It’s hard to deal with all the pressure.”

She nodded. “Yes. And I clearly wasn’t dealing very well. Anyhow, after I spoke to you, I was pretty much at my wits’ end. My mind was racing, and I felt like I just had to get away for a bit.”

“So what did you do?” asked Jonathan.

“I went to the movies.” This seemed a reasonable choice. I had to confess that on the semiannual occasions when I found myself at loose ends on a weekday afternoon, my first thought was to sneak into a matinee. There were always movies that none of my friends wanted to see with me, probably because they were geared toward teenage girls rather than thirtysomething Yuppies. I still didn’t understand how my tastes could be so firmly aligned with a different demographic.

However, Gabrielle’s choice of movies hadn’t done much to calm her. The Brattle Theatre had been showing a medley of movies featuring women on the edge, and they’d whipped her into an even greater frenzy. Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct probably shouldn’t be viewed when one was already in a precarious mental state. “You see,” said Gabrielle, “it wasn’t just the job thing that’s been upsetting me. There was a guy who I’d been really into. And for a while, I thought he might be into me, too. But then he started asking Sara out.”

“Grant Crocker?” I asked.

She nodded. “It’s hard, you know. Sara’s got so much going for her, and she didn’t even like him. I did. But she was the one he wanted. And I couldn’t understand it. So I decided I would just ask him. Flat out. Find out why he rejected me like that.”

I listened in wonder. I’d often had the urge to have similar conversations with men who’d jilted me, but fortunately those urges had never coincided with my being sufficiently drunk to act on them. Gabrielle hadn’t required liquid courage, and there was a part of me that admired her for it, although I doubted it was a tactic I’d be employing anytime soon.

She’d gone to Grant Crocker’s apartment. He was, not surprisingly, surprised to see her, nor was he terribly welcoming. He tried to slam the door in her face, but she was too quick for him, and managed to slide through the opening before he could shut her out. In his living room, she launched into an impassioned and prepared speech. “Then I saw it.”

“Saw what?” I asked.

“He has a-I don’t even know how to describe it, really-but it’s like a shrine set up.”

“A shrine?”

“To Sara.” Apparently he’d dedicated a corner of his living room to a bizarre sort of installation art. There was a massive framed picture of Sara on a small table, surrounded by other pictures and various mementos. So, I’d been right after all. Grant Crocker was the Creepy Stalker.

“He’d been trying to block my view of it, but I got around him, and then he grabbed me, and we were sort of struggling. He’s really strong, you know. He’s sort of a work-out fanatic. But I am, too, and I’ve even taken self-defense courses, so I put up a good fight. He was holding on to me, but I managed to pull away, and I went crashing into his desk. There was a pile of newspaper clippings on it, and the impact made them go flying all over the room. And here’s what really freaked me out.”

I would have been pretty freaked out already, given the shrine, and Gabrielle had already been freaked out when she’d arrived, so it was hard to imagine what could elevate her level of panic still further. But when I heard what she had to say next, I was amazed she didn’t have a coronary on the spot.

“The clippings were all about the prostitute killings. And it looked like he’d been putting them in a scrapbook. And there was a pile of stuff, too. An earring, a ring, a lipstick-none of it nice stuff. And a couple of the things were Sara’s. There was a page that must have been torn from one of her notebooks-she has really distinctive handwriting-and a glove that Sara thought she’d lost.”

“Souvenirs,” I said, remembering Hilary’s lecture on serial killers. “They frequently take souvenirs from the victims.” So much for Barbara Barnett, I realized, almost disappointed. Grant Crocker was more than Creepy. He was Violent, too. And if Sara’s belongings were in the pile of souvenirs Grant had taken from women he’d killed, it looked like he’d intended to kill her, as well.