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bristly coat.
    A photo album lay on the coffee table. It was filled with pictures of a recent cycling trip I’d taken in France with my friend Venus Corday and her boyfriend, Max Huffman. I picked up the book and flipped through the pages of familiar photographs. In every one I saw a thirty-year-old woman who was almost thirty-one. She was tall and thin with brown shoulder-length hair and eyes the color of Old Grand-Dad Kentucky bourbon. All were shots of me. Me, in Paris leaning on a bridge over the river Seine. Me, posing for a portrait in Monmartre. Me, straddling my bicycle in front of the Romanée-Conti vineyard. Me, sipping espresso in an outdoor café in Bonne. If the Tour de France had a wallflower jersey, I would have been wearing it.
    Venus had billed the trip as salve for my broken heart. It was something less than that, but at least for two weeks, the exercise and the French food distracted me from thinking about the end of my relationship with an LAPD homicide detective named Joe Deegan.
    There was nothing profound or poetic to say about our breakup. The relationship had been challenging from the start. He was accustomed to calling the shots. So was I. There had never been any man in my life telling me what to do—not a father, not even my ex. Maybe I was just meant to be alone.
    A moment later, a rumble of thunder jolted me out of my reverie. Lightning flashed through the sky, which sent Muldoon bolting from the room like a reluctant bridegroom. He hated loud noises. It would take a T-bone steak to lure him out from under my bed. I sat up and braced myself for another thunderbolt. None came. I knew thunder. It would wait until I felt safe before shattering my nerves a second time.
    I gazed through the glass of the French doors at the gritty film of sand on the deck and my fake wicker deck furniture, which was covered for the season because even plastic degrades in L.A.’s winter storms, and I thought about Lupe Ortiz. By nature I was a curious person. I wanted to know what had happened to her. Maybe she’d gone out to buy garlic shrimp and had forgotten to lock the door when she came back. Maybe a thief entered the shop, looking for a quick score. Except nothing was missing. Why would a burglar kill Lupe Ortiz and not even take the money in the cash register, which seemed easy enough to find? The other possibility was that somebody came to Nectar with the sole purpose of killing her. Helen said Lupe’s son was troubled. I wondered if he’d been involved in her death. It was a chilling thought because just hours before I’d been standing on a front porch in East L.A., talking to a murderer.
    The rain was launching its full attack now. I could hear the branches of the Domanskis’ trees being whipped by the wind. The deck light illuminated the metal railing that led down the steps to the sand. Drops of water had accumulated on the underside of the pipe. They looked transparent in the light. One grew plump and fell to the ground with a Humpty-Dumpty splat. All the king’s men in the nursery rhyme had failed Humpty. I doubted they could put the Ortiz family back together again, either.
    That night I lay awake wondering if Lupe’s children were with their cousin or in a foster home, surrounded by strangers. I wanted to believe the dawn would bring good news, but I knew in my heart that life, like nursery rhymes, didn’t always have a happy ending.
    Charley Tate was a private investigator and a former cop. He might have some ideas about who killed Lupe Ortiz and how long Nectar would be closed for business. I decided to ask him.

Chapter 5
    The next morning, I overslept. There was no time for breakfast, so I made a cup of coffee for the road and loaded my purse and laptop computer into the car. Then I dropped Muldoon off at Mrs. Domanski’s house for a play date and headed for the office.
    It was still raining. Not the deluge from the night before, but a gentle spray that darkened the sky and covered the