“Of course.”

The minute he left the room, I texted Parker. At Adams’s house. Get here now.

In a meeting. Be there in an hour.

Wonderful. How was I going to keep Mr. Adams busy for an hour? I had a meeting to get to myself.

I couldn’t put Cookie in the middle of this. Ubie was busy. I couldn’t drag Pari into this, either. I’d just dragged her into the Heather case. I had no choice.

When he walked back in, I was pointing the shotgun at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, alarmed. For good reason.

“Sit down,” I said, indicating the sofa with a wave of the gun like they did in the movies.

He stood there, took a drink of the water that was meant for me, and resigned himself to his fate by opening his hands. Damn, I didn’t think of that. Pointing a gun at someone who is suicidal is like Christmas coming early.

I never think ahead.

“I mean it,” I said from between clenched teeth, hoping it would make me sound more authentic.

“Just do it. Please.” Tears still shimmered in his eyes, and as angry as I was at him, my heart still ached.

I released a loud breath in defeat and started to put the gun down when I remembered the turtle in the tank. I grinned and pointed the gun in its direction. “Sit down.”

Thank God Mr. Adams had no idea I’d sooner shoot him than the turtle.

24

My family’s coat of arms is a wraparound and ties in the back.

Is that normal?

—MOSTLY TRUE FACT

After tying up Mr. Adams, I put his phone on the table in front of him. “You can call the police when I’m gone. Just use your nose. It works. Trust me.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because, Mr. Adams, you are a danger to yourself. I’ve called Parker, too. Oh, and I’m going to meet with Fernando, so if you could wait to call the cops and have me arrested for about, say, twenty more minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

“You can’t meet with him,” Mr. Adams said. “Mrs. Davidson, Charley, he is not a nice guy. Look what he did to my baby. Please—”

“Mr. Adams, this is the only way to get the charges against Fiske dropped. I need to find the real murderer.”

He bowed his head, grief consuming him.

I left him alone like that, hoping there wasn’t another gun in the house and Parker really would get there when he said he would. Just in case, I called Uncle Bob, told him I’d tied a man up for his own safety, and asked him to send a uniform in, say, about twenty minutes.

The last thing I heard before hanging up was “You did what?”

I pulled around a rather nice house in what was known to the locals as the war zone. The crime rates in this part of town were astronomical.

I knocked on the front door of the house, a nice adobe with flowers in window trellises and ivies growing up the sides. It wasn’t huge, but it was nicer than most of the houses in the neighborhood.

“This way.”

I turned to a man motioning me to go around the side of the house and through a gate to the backyard.

“Are you Fernando?” When he didn’t answer, I asked, “Strong silent type, huh?”

When we got to the backyard, a man in his midfifties waved me over with a barbecue fork. I could only hope it would not be the instrument of my death.

“I’m Fernando.”

Wait. According to gossip, I was immortal. He couldn’t kill me with a barbecue fork.

He then raised an eight-inch boning knife.

But a boning knife?

“I’m Charley.”

Desperately needing a shave, he wore his slightly graying hair in a ponytail and a bright Hawaiian shirt with an A-line tank underneath. The sun had made an appearance, but it was far from Hawaiian shirts and barbecuing weather. He was not what I’d expected.

“You’re not what I expected.”

He chuckled and turned a stack of ribs on the grill. Smoke billowed around him, and my mouth watered. Just a little. Not enough to openly drool.

“Are you going to check me for a wire?”

He chuckled once more. “I think Umberto covered that. I hear you think I killed Adams’s daughter?”

“I don’t anymore.”

He eyed me from over his shoulder and then motioned for me to sit at a patio table. “Good, because I didn’t. I threatened, of course, but only because he doesn’t know me well enough to know I would never do something like that.”

A group of kids ran out the door and past us, the girls screaming as the boys chased them with dirty hands.