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what had caused his reaction, Claudia stepped back hastily as the beaded-haired woman from the cemetery swept past her as if she were not there, and eased up to Senator Heidt.
    The woman slipped her arm through his, pressing her body against him. Her mouth brushed his ear intimately. “ Hello there, Mr. Senator.”
    Heidt recoiled as violently if she had held a match to his bare feet. “Excuse me,” he said a shade too loud. “I’m afraid I er...”
    The woman’s smile revealed a set of film star-perfect teeth. “Your victory party, Senator. You remember, don’chu? I was with Lin’sey.”
    For an instant, though the chatter went on unabated around them, the three of them occupied a private zone of frozen silence. Heidt darted a quick glance around as if gauging the need for damage control, but no one seemed to be looking their way. The moment passed and the consummate politician recovered his poise. He gave the woman an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, miss, you must be mistaken.”
    Undeterred, the woman winked, long and slow. Seductive. “No, no, no, Senator. Let me remind you, I am Destiny .”
    He shook his head, his lips stretched into a bad excuse for a smile. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells.”
    She gave a throaty laugh. “Oh, but I thought it would ring your bell.”
    “Destiny darling, how are you?” Ivan had returned. “Let me get you a drink.” He took the woman’s arm in a firm grasp and hustled her away, glancing back over his shoulder. “Claudia, don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”
    Claudia stared after them. Was the woman drunk? A spurned lover? She had appeared neither spurned nor drunk. She’d looked downright pleased with herself.
~
    Ivan and Claudia ascended the swirl of white Carrara marble stairs, party noises chasing them to the second floor.
    “Lindsey never expected to live a long life, poor darling,” Ivan remarked as he led her along a hallway lined with framed photographs: Lindsey, at a restaurant, laughing with Johnny Depp. Lindsey, snuggling up to Tom Cruise. Lindsey having drinks with Donald Trump. None of them had turned out for her burial. “She made plans for her funeral a long time ago. She hated looking at long faces. A party was more her style.”
    “You’ve certainly given her that,” Claudia said, blanching at the odor of stale cigarettes as Ivan opened the door to an elegant home office.
    Ivan crossed to the six-foot desk that dominated the spacious room and offered Claudia a guest chair. He removed his coat and hung it on the back of the throne-like executive chair before seating himself behind the desk. “Thank god,” he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves and fanning himself with his hands. “I’ve been dying to do that all afternoon.”
    He shook a smoke from the pack of Marlboros that lay on the glass-topped desk and lit up with a silver lighter. Leaning back against the inset moiré silk he sucked in a generous drag and puffed it out on a long sigh, watching the blue smoke curl toward the ceiling. It wasn’t until he had finished enjoying the nicotine rush that he broke the silence.
    “Lindsey may have planned her funeral, but one thing she never planned was to kill herself.”
    Carefully setting the cigarette on an ashtray filled with half-smoked butts, he stared at Claudia, as if daring her to dispute him. She waited in silence as he opened the top drawer of the desk and removed an envelope, tossed it across the desk.
    She opened the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper, folded in half. Six words had been block-printed on Alexander Agency letterhead in black ink.
    IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED
    “This is the suicide note?”
    “That’s what the cops called it.”
    Claudia’s brain flipped to automatic as she studied the note: Nothing remarkable in the style. Not enough handwriting to suggest depression or suicidal ideation; none of the tremor that would be expected in a case of illness or drugs or forgery. No signs that