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which, by your own admission, you did? Want me to read back that part of the statement you gave us yesterday morning while they were taking Jay’s body to the morgue?”
    “No, no! I remember what I said in my statement because it’s the truth. What I don’t remember is how we got undressed and into bed.”
    “You don’t remember getting blitzed on scotch?”
    “No.”
    “Or taking off your clothes?”
    “No.”
    “Or having sex.”
    “I don’t know that we did.”
    Javier reached into the pocket of his sport jacket and removed a small plastic sandwich bag. Inside was the foil packet for a condom. It was empty. “We found this among the cushions of the sofa.”
    Britt stared at it, searching her memory, coming up blank.
    “Do you customarily carry a condom in your handbag, Ms. Shelley?”
    Meeting his insinuating gaze, she replied coolly, “It must have been Jay’s. He could have used it anytime.”
    Clark shook his head, looking almost rueful. “His maid had come that morning. She said she gave the place a thorough cleaning, even took the cushions off the sofa to vacuum underneath. She’d swear to it this wasn’t there then.”
    Britt asked, “Did you find the condom itself?”
    “No. It’s assumed Jay flushed it.”
    “He could have used it earlier in the day. After the maid cleaned, but before meeting me.”
    Clark shook his head. “Jay was here at headquarters all day. Didn’t even go out for lunch. He left at six. Hardly time for him to return home and have sex on his sofa with another woman, then get to The Wheelhouse and down several drinks before you joined him at seven.” He smirked and Javier chuckled, anticipating what his colleague was about to say. “Even Jay wasn’t that fast.”

CHAPTER
3
    G EORGE M C G OWAN OPENED HIS BEDROOM DOOR IN TIME to see his wife of four years, Miranda, slipping a terry-cloth robe over her nakedness. The young man in the room with her was zipping the cover around his portable massage table.
    Unruffled by the unexpected appearance of her husband, she said, “Oh, darling, hi. I didn’t know you were home. Would you like Drake to stay? He just finished with me.” Her eyelids lowered drowsily. “He was particularly magic today.”
    George felt his face grow hot. His fingers tightened around his glass of Bloody Mary. “No thanks.”
    Drake hefted his table, essentially doing a biceps curl with it. “Wednesday, Mrs. McGowan?”
    “Let’s make it ninety minutes instead of the usual sixty.”
    He smiled suggestively. “I can extend it as long as you like.”
    Drake’s double entendre wasn’t lost on George. Neither was the hot, musky smell of sex that permeated the room, or the rumpled satin sheets on the king-size bed. Drake hadn’t done his work on the massage table, and the sly look he shot George as he sidled past him on his way out said as much.
    He should follow the smarmy bastard, break him over his knee, shatter the bones of his hands, ruin his face, and put him out of business. The oily, Mediterranean-looking prick was beefed up, but George could whip his ass. Maybe he’d gone a little soft around the middle, but he could still make this guy wish his ancestors had stayed in Sicily or wherever the hell they were from.
    Instead, he soundly closed the bedroom door and turned to glare at his wife. The silent rebuke was wasted, however, because she didn’t see it. She had moved to her dressing table and was pulling a brush through her mane of auburn hair as she admired her reflection in the mirror.
    She would dearly love for him to take issue with her screwing her masseur in their bedroom. So damned if he would give her that satisfaction. Besides, something else took priority.
    “You need to see this.” He opened the doors of the tall armoire and turned on the television set inside. “Britt Shelley is about to conduct a press conference about her and Jay.”
    “This should be interesting.”
    “It is. She claims she was given a date rape