“Why don’t you enlighten us?” Sadie suggested. “If you’re so in the know. Or maybe you’d prefer my friend here took you downtown for a more intimate conversation.”

“Okay. Okay.” Vandiver visibly struggled to compose himself. “Tara is using this place to distribute drugs. The packages come in, and she passes them along to her foot soldiers, who do the selling. She never gets her hands dirty, and no one ever suspects a classy joint like this would be serving as a distribution center.”

Sadie couldn’t say she was surprised. Walsh had suspected this was the strategy being utilized. She shrugged. “Tara said she got her drugs from you.”

Vandiver gave another of those snorty laughs. “Of course she did.” He placed his tray on the counter and looked Sadie square in the eye. “I’ve been around enough folks in the business to recognize her scam. Yours too.”

“You didn’t think it was important to tell us this before?” Falco demanded. “Maybe we could do our jobs if people like you didn’t hold back crucial information.”

Vandiver scoffed. “Whatever. I had to protect myself. If I don’t stay clean, my old man will make my life more miserable than it already is. Tara told me if I told anyone she would go to my dad.” He grinned. “Guess it doesn’t matter now. Apparently, she’s out of here.” He made a poof sound. “She’ll have to find herself some other way to do her moonlighting.”

“Whatever,” Falco parroted, then thrust one of his business cards in the guy’s face. “If you see or hear from Tara, call me.”

“It would make my day,” Vandiver assured him.

Falco headed for the exit. Sadie followed. “We going to her town house now?”

“We are.”

“Good thing I have a key.”

Falco glanced at her and grunted. Didn’t ask questions. He knew better.

McGill Town House

Hampton Heights Drive

Birmingham, 8:40 p.m.

McGill wasn’t answering. Falco called her cell phone, and the distinct sound of it ringing echoed through the door.

He put his phone away. “Use the key. If need be, we can say the door was unlocked.”

“And ajar,” Sadie added, giving him a fake smile. “I remember how it works.” She unlocked the door.

“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered as they entered the premises.

Sadie was the one grunting this time. She knew the deal.

Nothing looked disturbed as they moved into the living room.

“Ms. McGill, you home?” Falco shouted. “This is Detective Falco. Your friends at the shop are concerned for your welfare.”

Yeah, right, Sadie thought.

Falco jerked his head right and nodded to the left. They split and began the slow, careful move around the first floor. Didn’t take long.

Falco led the climb up to the second floor. A moment later they were at McGill’s bedroom door. Bed was unmade, clothes discarded on the bed.

Sadie moved into the en suite ahead of Falco.

“Damn.” Tara McGill was in the whirlpool tub. Sadie didn’t need a medical examiner or a closer inspection to tell her the woman was dead.

Her body, including her head, was submerged beneath the water.

A small handgun and an empty bottle of vodka lay on the floor alongside an empty medication vial. Sadie crouched down and looked at the label on the vial. Tranquilizers. Falco eased down next to her and checked out the small handgun.

“No surprise,” he muttered. “It’s a .22.”

Sadie glanced around, spotted a handwritten note on the closed toilet lid. Based on the notes she had seen on the kitchen bulletin board and at McGill’s desk, the handwriting was the vic’s.

Falco leaned Sadie’s way, reading the note along with her.

I fucked up. Got in too deep. I loved Leo but he found out about the money. I had to do it to stay out of jail. His friend was there. I had no choice . . .

Sorry.

“All tidied up in a neat bundle,” Falco commented.

“Looks like”—Sadie stood—“you can close your case now. How nice is that?”

Falco chuckled, a dry growl. “Yeah.” He pushed to his feet. “When were you here?”

Sadie glanced at the woman in the tub. “Around one in the afternoon on Wednesday.”

“Caldwell said she was at work last night until closing, which means this,” Falco surmised, “happened in the past twenty or so hours.”

Sadie shifted her gaze from the bathtub and the body in the water. “I’d say in the past four or five hours. No way she’s been in that water overnight or even all day. You know the shit that happens when a body has been in water that long.”

Falco nodded. “Let’s have a look around. Tell me anything that looks different than when you were here on Wednesday afternoon.”

They moved through the second floor one room at a time. In the bedroom turned office, it was clear what the killer had taken.

“The computer is missing.” Sadie walked over to the desk. “It was here. I pulled the info I gave you from it.”

Falco scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Good thing you were one step ahead of whoever ordered the hit.”

“Yeah.” Sounds and images from the hours she had spent between the sheets with McGill whispered through Sadie’s head. “I’m thinking now if anyone had spotted me coming or going on Wednesday, she would have been dead before today.”

“There would likely be signs of an interrogation as well,” he reminded her.

No signs of interrogation. Didn’t make Sadie feel a hell of a lot better.

“Don’t forget,” Falco added, “McGill made her own choices. You didn’t do this to her; she did it to herself.”

Maybe.

“I guess you have to call this in.” Sadie started backing toward the door. “I should go. See you later, Falco.”

Sadie was out of here. She had shit to do. Otherwise the damned voices were going to take over.

Cortez Residence

Eleventh Avenue South

Birmingham, 10:30 p.m.

She should have brought something stronger than coffee.

Sadie screwed the lid back on the thermos and tossed it into the passenger seat of Heck’s shitty yellow car.

She stared at the Cortez home. There were no outside lights. Just the moonlight sifting through the trees, spotlighting the house in an eerie glow. The windows were like boxes outlined in gold. The curtains blocking most of the interior lights caused a gold-colored edge to encircle each one.