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stared blackly at Stephen Parker, but then his grim expression turned into a cordial smile.
    “I’d expect nothing less from a professional of your caliber, Mr. Parker,” said Nathan Quinn, grinning complicitly.
    The private detective returned the grin, then looked behind him at the men who stood by the door, arms crossed and faces expressionless.
    “I should be going,” Parker repeated, the discomfort he had felt not entirely dissipated.
    “Yes, of course.” Quinn rose and offered his hand, which Parker took. Quinn’s grip was predictably crushing. When Parker was released, he rushed out the door, slamming it behind him.
    Nathan Quinn was silent for a moment, watching the black lacquer doors as if waiting for Parker to return. Then he walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of gin.

chapter four
     
    J effrey was asleep beside Lydia on the flight to Miami, the result of his taking Tylenol PM and two shots of Jack Daniel’s before getting on the plane. Bottled bravery, because Jeffrey was terrified of airplanes. His breathing was heavy, and his head was on her shoulder, one hand palm-up on her thigh. She kissed his forehead, glad he was sleeping instead of fidgeting and nervous, which, in turn, would make her fidgety and nervous. The first-class cabin was dark and nearly empty, except for a few other passengers. A young businessman sat on the aisle across from her, tapping furiously on his laptop. An older Asian woman, wearing a black silk tunic and a remarkable jade fu lion on prayer beads around her neck, had the kind of ageless beauty and silken hair of Asian women that Lydia had always admired. The other passengers were just dark, silent forms around her.
    Too edgy to read or sleep, Lydia’s thoughts turned again to Tatiana. A girl possessing such luminous beauty is in for all kinds of trouble in her life, thought Lydia. Average women, plagued with self-doubt about their bodies, battling negative self-images, constantly comparing themselves unfavorably to media images of beauty, would likely look on someone like Tatiana Quinn with a jealousy bordering on hatred, even though she was only fifteen. What they didn’t know, what they could never know, was that physical beauty was no recipe for happiness. A certain kind of man would desire her, but feel inadequate and hate her for it, and perhaps become abusive. Another kind would never approach her at all, assuming that she was too good for him. Women would be falsely nice but secretly hate her. People worship that kind of physical perfection but despise it at the same time, aspire to it endlessly but can’t bear to see it in others, a reminder of their own imperfections.
    For some reason, Lydia kept thinking about the Gretchen Corley murder, a high-profile case on which she and Jeffrey had consulted briefly. Her mother, Kristen, had entered Gretchen in beauty pageants from the time she was old enough to walk, just as Kristen, a loser in the Miss America pageant, had been before her.
    Lydia’s personal theory about Gretchen Corley had been that her mother had murdered her, though no arrests had ever been made. The case was still unsolved. Lydia believed that Kristen had groomed Gretchen all her short life to be the little coquette that she was, all the while hating her for the youth and beauty that underscored Kristen’s inevitable trek toward old age. And that Kristen had one day discovered her husband was molesting their daughter.
    Instead of feeling a murderous rage toward him and the violation he had committed against their daughter, she must have been jealous toward the little girl, who, even at her young age, was more beautiful than Kristen had ever been. That in her heart, Kristen probably believed that her daughter had stolen her husband. A narcissist would be compelled to eliminate the threat. Lydia wondered if something like that could be at play with Tatiana.
    Lydia believed that women like Kristen Corley, who admire their own beauty and