He’d been worried he had lost his knack for sniffing out dishonesty, ever since Bree had snowed him so hard at the party. He thought if she lied to him again, he might catch it, though. Her face and body language sold her words, note perfect, but her old stage charisma leaked when she was lying.

He’d seen it when she was lying to Kelly Wilkerson and also clocked the moment that the leak had closed and she’d become herself again, saying way too much. Onstage she’d always been a little more alive than other people. Last night, in the Orchid Center, he’d assumed she was shining because she was at a party with her husband’s clients. Not to mention he’d been trying not to let his gaze drop to her long, bare legs. Plus, he hadn’t seen her act since high school.

He still remembered, though. She’d played the killer in The Mousetrap. Emily in Our Town. Juliet and Blanche DuBois in weird, truncated high-school adaptations. Most people who’d seen her onstage remembered; they always brought it up at the reunions, how good she’d been in this play or that.

This guy, Adam, he was just a regular liar. Marshall watched him manufacture a shrug.

“Nope. No.” He looked Marshall dead in the eye. “Can’t say either of those faces rings a bell.”

Marshall looked back, long and level. A cop stare, bolstered by cop silence, creating an expectant void.

Adam’s face stayed quizzical. Here, his face said, was a man who wanted badly to be helpful but, regretfully, had nothing.

Such unmitigated bullshit. But subtle. Kelly was buying it. As Marshall had floated Bree’s way-too-close-to-truth story by Adam, a little tension had come into Kelly’s drug-slack spine. A little hope. Her husband’s denial crushed about half of it out of her.

“Show him the other picture. The old lady,” she demanded, slurry and querulous and not ready to give up. “She looked familiar to me. I think I saw her in the Piggly Wiggly. I was feeling the avocados, and I turned around and there she was, bent over the stroller. Geoff was asleep. I thought nothing of it at the time, because who wouldn’t look? He was such a lovely boy.”

Marshall was sure she’d just broken his pressure, but instead it was as if she’d piled more weight on Adam. The mention of a lady sped up Adam’s blinks and paused his breathing. His expression remained polite and helpful, but Marshall got the sense that Adam had an idea of whose face would appear in the next picture. Moreover, he didn’t want to see that face.

Marshall flipped to the grainy photo from Bree’s security camera. Held out the phone.

Sure enough, Adam had a hard time pointing his eyes that way. He glanced nervously at his wife, the ceiling, the window, but finally he had to look.

Micro-surprise, micro-relief. Whatever woman’s face he’d been expecting to see, it wasn’t this one. Interesting.

“I don’t know her.” He really didn’t.

Kelly Wilkerson deflated, listing sideways, her head lolling on the sofa back, as if his words had rendered her unable to hold it upright any longer. “Maybe look again? I really think I saw her. Avocados.”

Her husband patted her leg. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know her at all.” Marshall heard a subtle shade of vindication. It was true.

“Maybe you should look at the pictures of the men again,” Marshall said. “They’re both lawyers. Aren’t you a lawyer, too?”

“I’m a professor,” Adam said.

“But you went to law school. You passed the bar,” Marshall said, inexorable.

“It didn’t suit me. I’m better here, in academia. I like the life of the mind.”

Beside him Kelly continued to sag down, her eyes drifting shut.

“You live more like a lawyer,” Marshall said, looking pointedly around at the vaulted ceilings and marble counters.

“I have some family money,” Adam said. He waved at Marshall’s phone like he was shooing it away. “I told you. I don’t know them.”

Marshall wanted to follow up, but Kelly appeared to be fully unconscious now. She’d faded out so fast it worried him. “Kelly?”

“M’yes,” she slurred, so slack as to appear boneless. “M’up.”

She wasn’t. As they watched, her lips parted, mouth falling open. Marshall was about to get somewhere with this asshole, but he couldn’t keep pushing while this girl slid into a coma and died.

“Kelly? Hey, Kelly?” Nothing. He turned to her husband. “Maybe we should—”

“She’s fine,” Adam cut him off, making Marshall’s eyebrows rise. “I saw her like this yesterday. And the day before that. This is what three p.m. looks like here.”

A little drool had collected in one corner of her mouth. But she was breathing, shallow and steady.

Marshall leaned toward Adam and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Well, she’s definitely out. If that helps you change your answer.”

“What does that mean?” Adam asked, but a flush came to his cheeks, visible above the beard.

“You tell me,” Marshall said. “No judgment. There are plenty of questions I wouldn’t want to answer in front of my wife.” He was good cop now, inviting Adam into a world where men kept confidences with each other. It smelled like that might work on this guy. “Remember the stakes. The cops are on the wrong scent, and I don’t think your PI has any leads. I do. This could be your shot.” Shitty, considering what the mother had told them about Geoff, but there it was.

He could feel Adam shifting, but he didn’t break. “I told you, I don’t know those men. I’m sorry for your client. She’s in hell. Believe me, I know. But it can’t have anything to do with me.”

Marshall caught the tiny emphasis on “can’t.” The guy was in denial. He couldn’t bear for it to have anything to do with him.

“He’s lying,” Bree said from the doorway. Adam jerked like he’d been shot, twisting at the waist to see her. Kelly stirred at his sharp movement. She made a small moan, but her eyes stayed closed. Bree held up a small framed photo, stabbing her finger at the faces in the picture. “That’s you, with the pledges. That’s my husband, in his senior year. That’s Spencer Shaw.”

Marshall shot her a quelling look. She’d pretty much handed this sober asshole her identity.

“Oh,” said Adam, very unconvincingly. “Was that Spence? I didn’t recognize him. I haven’t seen Spence or Trey in years.”