I ripped off the evidence of my prying and slotted the page into my notepad. Margaret was still looking the other way, so I thought I might take a quick peek around. I started toward the kitchen but didn’t make it far before a noisy rumble stopped me.

The small, utilitarian service elevator arrived on the floor with a soft ding, and a pair of chefs in clean white uniforms emerged. When they saw someone waiting for them, their backs straightened and they cut their chatter. They each gave me a polite nod and proceeded into the kitchen in silence.

Margaret had heard the subdued commotion, bringing her attention back to me. “All set, Mr. O’Howell?”

“Everything’s squared away with the home office. You can take me to Cynthia now.”

My detective’s mind filled in the narrative implied by the evidence of the phone call while I dawdled back to Margaret. Roush had mentioned to Fosse that I had been poking around the crime scene. Fosse had then called Sanders to warn him. Then Fosse had someone drum up the fake bounty to keep me distracted.

I seemed like a clown to some thanks to my TV persona. Fosse thought I was when he expected me to fall for the clumsy, heavy-handed scheme. Truth is, I’m a real detective with decades of experience, and I had already sniffed out his little rug rat. Fortunately for him, I wasn’t going to say anything no matter how salacious the prospect of Hot Type City’s top plutocrats breeding a low-life criminal was. I didn’t see that it was anyone’s business but their own. I wasn’t Marcella.

Margaret brought me back through the main room and down the hall. The apartment was an offensively big place, but I wouldn’t have had any trouble finding the women on my own. The sound of tinkling glasses and jewelry were almost as piercing as the women’s high-pitched, half-drunk tittering and clucking.

Massive windows framed the corner room, capturing what light shone down through the clouds and bounced up from the stratus of smog below. The north wall opened onto a rooftop patio, complete with a full-sized swimming pool, deck chairs, and multiple cabanas. With November coming on strong and a dreary December on the horizon, the weather was far too cold to get any use out of the space. Still, the pool was filled to the brim with water saturated with caustic chemicals and vibrant dyes that gave it an unnatural sapphire hue.

Fine crystal drinkware glittered like diamonds in the hands of three of Hot Type City’s most influential women—at least according to the entertainment news that was Russel’s stock-in-trade. I recognized Cynthia and the field mouse, Barb Chapel, from magazine covers, but not the same ones I recognized the apartment itself from. They were the sort you’d only find on high shelves at unscrupulous news stands and hidden inside black cellulose bags to spare children the temptation.

The women lounged around a short, wide table loaded with champagne bottles and fresh fruit. The slick glass table might have been called a coffee table in another apartment, but caffeine wasn’t the stimulant it was most acquainted with.

Cynthia, the snake at the center of the group, looked up when Margaret entered. She smiled while her friends continued to laugh, but I didn’t miss the way her hood puffed out when she looked at me. Was she scared I might find something? Or just annoyed to have someone as unkempt and unmannered as myself invade her Shangri-La?

The laugher died down as the other women took notice of me. All three pressed their lips into camera-ready smiles.

It took a second to get over the surprise of seeing her there with the former starlets. When I did, I recognized the third member of the cohort, a cat with luscious waves of white hair. Thick black lines outlined her eyes, bringing out the blue in them, lighter and more precious than the manufactured pool water. She could have been a model by the way she batted her lashes, but she was famous in her own right from all her media appearances at Regis Fellini’s side.

“Mrs. Sanders?” Margaret’s voice was soft, as if speaking too loudly would cause Cynthia to shatter like delicate glass. “The detective is here to see you.”

Cynthia’s tongue flickered out with a faint hiss before she spoke. It was fundamentally the same as Cal cleaning his eyeballs, a pink tongue on green scales, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little enticing when she did it. It felt dangerous, flirty, and intimate all at the same time. She had picked up a few tricks from her Barnyard days.

“Mr. O’Howell. Why don’t you pull up a seat? Have a mimosa?”

I wasn’t usually the type to turn down a drink, but I had business to take care of. Besides, their drinks all looked too saccharine by half. I needed something with bite.

“I won’t be here long. I’m sure you’ve heard, I’m on a case.”

“Yes. I heard about that. Just awful what happened to that poor kid.”

“You’re looking for Ethan Calhoun?” Felicity Fellini asked, but she didn’t wait for me to respond. “I’ve been following the news. You should know, my husband is disturbed by what happened and is doing everything he can to help the police solve the case.”

“Sure. When he isn’t busy with talk shows and rallies,” were the words I thought. What I said was: “Virginia is grateful for all the help she can get.”

I found things went a lot smoother if the people you interviewed thought you were trying to be their friend. When I couldn’t swing that, I at least tried not to be hostile. I used to be a lot better at it when I was on the force.

“Awfully sad,” Barb squeaked, her head swaying from side to side in a daze.

“Must be especially hard for you two because you knew her.”

“Wha— Huh?” Barb said. “Oh, right. I guess we did.”

“Barnyard was a long time ago—longer for some than others.” Cynthia packed a lot of contempt into her words, defying the affected pleasantness of her tone.

“Sure, but I wasn’t talking about Barnyard. I was talking about your kids. They went to school together, didn’t they?”

“Who me?” Cynthia said. She gave Barb an incredulous look. The mild disgust she got back strengthened her, allowing her to slip a healthy dose of disdain into her next words. “Ethan is what, thirteen? My Paisley is barely out of diapers. You see, we waited until we settled down before having kids.”

“I was talking about Douglas.”

Cynthia’s tongue darted out with a slithering sound audible in the fresh-fallen-snow silence. She thought about it a moment. I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the added splash of vodka in her mimosa clouding her mind.

“Hmm… Yes. I suppose Douglas might have mentioned a kid named Ethan. I guess I never made the connection.”

“Really? You don’t talk much, do you?”

“You know boys his age. They start caring about girls and looking cool and getting into trouble. Don’t have much time for their stepmothers.”

“That right?” I said. Cynthia’s eyes narrowed as she sipped her drink. I let her stew in the moment. Now that I knew Fosse had called to warn them, I knew she knew what I was there for. I’d let her broach the subject. What can I say? I’m a nice guy. And this way I got to see which questions she wanted to answer and which she wanted to evade—how she wanted to frame the situation.

“He’s a good kid, you know.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“Not that Ethan brat.” I had given Cynthia all the time in the world to choose how to respond, and she chose venom.

The other two women gasped, and Felicity clutched her hand to her chest. I didn’t react at all. I wanted to draw out more.

“I think you know what I’m talking about, Mr. O’Howell. Ethan wasn’t the sweet kid they show on TV. Can’t blame him too much, though.” Cynthia set her glass down and occupied herself with a cigarette in a foot long holder. She balanced the rod between her slender fingers with barely any pressure holding it down, but her face stayed hard. “His mother was a whore, and his father was a doped-up burn-out. The inevitable has happened—Virginia went fishing in more open water if I had my guess—and now you’ve got a broken family to exacerbate his problems. Kid probably ran off.”

“Tell that to Al McCarthy’s widow.” My voice was sharper than I had intended.

The other two women were looking for a way out, fearing the impending fight, but Cynthia didn’t budge. She dragged on her cigarette, let the smoke flow out of the slits of her nostrils, then blew the rest of the cloud out the side of her mouth.

“Could be a coincidence. Kid decided to dip. Al was embarrassed the kid got away and went looking for him in a bad part of town.”

“Nice theory. But the evidence doesn’t match up.” If it had been a mugging, the killer would have stripped Al’s body clean, stolen his car. Probably the thug would’ve tossed him in the Gutter just to be sure. “I don’t think it was a coincidence he was found in The Margin a few streets down from where your kids were doing their little horticulture experiment. But you didn’t know anything about that, did you?”

“Not until recently, no.”

It wouldn’t do any good to keep harping on about it, so I changed tack. “When was the last time you talked to Virginia?”

Cynthia settled back in her seat, gave a casual flip of the hand not holding her cigarette. “I don’t know. Ten years? Maybe one of our staff has talked to her waiting outside the school or something. You could ask them.”

“I will, but I’m not quite done talking to you yet. You must have some insight, given your background together.”

“It was fifteen years ago,” Barb said, giving Cynthia a break. “We’ve all changed a lot since then. Her more than us.”

I flipped open my notepad, careful to keep the rubbing from slipping out. I wanted to encourage them to talk by implying we were just getting to the part worth writing down.

“We went on to have full rewarding careers,” Cynthia said. “She fell out of that life early when she decided to start pumping out kids.”

“She chose to leave Barnyard?”

“Not sure if chose is the right word. She got pregnant and refused Heifer’s offer to have it taken care of. Couldn’t have her at Barnyard after that. Not good for the brand.”

“Mothers weren’t in vogue?”

“Barnyard is a classy magazine—or at least it was in its golden age,” Barb said. “Our subscribers wouldn’t have stood for a cover model who had a kid out of wedlock. With a musician, no less.”

Felicity shivered at the mention of a musician and the image of slovenly, trilby-wearing, poetic types it evoked.

“That’s right,” Cynthia said. “If she wanted to keep up modeling, she would have needed to find a home in one of the trashy mags—Spread, Wingspan, Topdown—you know the sort.”

“I’m familiar,” I said, jotting down an encouraging burst of scribbles.

“Just not the same class,” Barb mused. “Can you imagine if she had been invited to the reunion? All frumpy and sad, smeared makeup, thrift store dress… What?”

Barb cut her diatribe short when she noticed Cynthia staring at her. I stopped scribbling. Barb had hit on something Cynthia thought was significant.

“There was a reunion?”

“Just a little thing,” Cynthia said. “A girl’s night to commemorate Heifer opening Club Callout. We shot a few promos for him, that’s all. It’s not at all like you’re thinking. Even Felicity was there.”

Now it was Felicity’s turn to scowl. “Regis thinks it’s important to support local businesses. All the stars were out that night.”

“Must have made Virginia awfully jealous to see you getting back into it while she was left out in the cold.”

Cynthia snorted a puff of cigarette smoke out her nostrils, then blew it away. “I’ll say. I heard she went crawling to Heifer after she found out, begging him to involve her in something like that. He knew she wouldn’t fit. She didn’t have the class for events like the reunion, and she didn’t have looks or youth to fit in with his dancers on usual nights. Heifer said she had let herself go, but from what I’ve seen on TV, it looks like she swung back the other way. All skin and bone, trying to slim down so she can be a model again.”

All three women chuckled, but I didn’t see the joke. Virginia had looked more on the gaunt side when I saw her. The disappearance of her son could account for some of the hollowness, but not all.

“When did all this happen?” I asked. “With Heifer and the reunion?”

“Hmm… You’d have to check the newspapers to get the date right, but it’s ancient history. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Ethan, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“How ancient? Weeks? Months? Years?”

“Months,” Cynthia said. “Sometime this summer. Must’ve been August.”

“That’s right,” Felicity said. “It was the week before Heifer formally opened Club Callout. Tell me, Mr. O’Howell, have you been?”

Her voice was suggestive. She was trying to embarrass me, but it wouldn’t work. “Haven’t had the pleasure. I’ve heard stories, though. Any of you get up on stage? Maybe relive the glory days a bit?”

My attempt to embarrass them was marginally more successful. Cynthia smiled coyly, but Barb clutched at the pearls on her chest.

“Mr. O’Howell, please,” Cynthia said. “Those days are long behind us. We were there as VIPs.”

A door opened somewhere in the mountaintop mansion and voices echoed down the hall. Two men laughed. Each sounded smarmy in a different way. One was husky and kind of nasally. The other sounded too clean—like it was a performance, all charisma with nothing behind it.

I smelled the men before I heard their footsteps: cigars and the kind of scotch I’d need to clean under a hundred dirty couches to afford.

Regis Fellini came around the corner first, as comfortable navigating the labyrinthine penthouse as Russell Sanders, who followed behind him. Russel stopped smiling when he saw me, hiding his uneven teeth. His nose twitched, compelling his whiskers to do the same, and the dead weight of his great, fleshy tail thumped behind him when he stopped.

If Regis was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it. He blinded me with a smile that widened like the slow opening of a crocodile’s jaw.

“Hey. Don’t I know you, son?” Russel said, waggling a finger at me. His hands were hairless and small compared to his corpulent rat body. “You’re that dog detective from TV, right? Ruff McGruffin, isn’t it?”

“Close,” Regis said, sparing me the indignity. “That’s Jonathan O’Howell, Delinquency Dog. I’d recognize his face anywhere. He’s one of Hot Type City’s most iconic characters—or was for a few years. Too bad it didn’t work out. I was always a fan.”

I nodded in lieu of thanks. “Doing some last-minute campaigning? Got to scrape up a few more donations?”

Regis gave me the same laugh I had heard from the other room, allowing me a front-row view of his joyless eyes while he did it. “I’m just visiting an old friend.”

“That’s right,” Russel said. “The damn regulations won’t let me give any more money.”

“The election’s all but decided anyway,” Regis said. “For better or worse.”

Which outcome better and worse referred to differed between me and Regis, but his conclusion was dead on. The polls had him winning the election in a landslide.

“But I’m sick of talking about the election. What are you doing here, Mr. O’Howell? Seeing you twice in a week seems like quite the coincidence. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were investigating me.”

“Should I suspect you of something?”

“Not unless loving the people of Hot Type City is illegal.” Regis stayed lifeless, but he pushed a chuckle out with his chest.

“Depends on how you do it, I guess.”

Regis didn’t bother processing what I said. He’d gotten social interaction down to a science and knew this one was over. He smiled and patted my shoulder companionably while he moved past to talk to his wife.

“Ready to go Felicity? We wouldn’t want to keep the commissioner waiting.”

Felicity checked her watch, a small timepiece on a fine loop of chain draped around her dainty wrist. “Well, would you look at the time? Cynthia, it’s been a pleasure, as always.”

“Likewise. We’ll see you on Tuesday.” She leaned forward to exchange ghostly cheek kisses with Felicity, holding her smoldering cigarette out so it stayed clear of the cat’s hair.

“Can’t wait,” Felicity said as she repeated the same parting gesture with Barb. “Do you need anything else? Chefs? Security?”

“Don’t you dare worry about that,” Cynthia said. “You and Regis will be busy and stressed enough. We’ll handle everything.”

Cynthia smiled at Felicity’s theatrical relief, but her face soured when she saw me lingering in the doorway. She took the last drag her cigarette had to give. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help, Mr. O’Howell. Margaret?”

It took Cynthia’s slight uplift in volume for me to notice Margaret wasn’t behind me anymore. Regis and Felicity continued the well-orchestrated dance of saying goodbye. Felicity found a clutch as white as her fur and waved with a few more platitudes. Regis did a lot of smiling and nodding, then foisted a meaty handshake on me, complete with another pat on the shoulder.

“It was a pleasure seeing you again, Mr. O’Howell. You keep up the good work now.”

I returned the gesture with a mute nod as he blew past. Marget was on her way in, but stood to the side with her head bowed as the future statesman and his queen made their exit.

“Margaret,” Cynthia said, “would you be so kind as to show our guest to the service elevator?”

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to Douglas if he’s—”

Cynthia wasn’t listening. “It’s nothing personal. I thought I’d save you any More hassling from that gargoyle working the elevators. He does his job, but he can be…intense.”

I knew when I was being kicked out. Neither Cynthia nor I were happy with the outcome of our meeting, but if I stayed, things could get a lot worse for me. The coincidence of Regis’s presence and even the other women Cynthia surrounded herself with reminded me she knew some important people.