Real friends disregard your failures and endure your successes.

-Brainy Laney b.u.t.terfield,

who was, by all accounts,

irritatingly successful

N THURSDAY, I did what I do. Psychoa.n.a.lyzed, watched the SuperSeptic guys do nothing in my backyard, wondered if Rivera would ever speak to me again.

Laney would be leaving the next day, so she came by that night, but things felt strange. A little strained. I wasn"t ready for her to get married. I certainly wasn"t ready for her to get hitched to a guy who, if inverted, could be used as a broom.

"How"s engaged life?" I asked. We were sitting on my couch, Harlequin between us.

She fiddled with Harley"s ear. "I gave the ring back."

"No kidding?" My heart did a little burp, then soared with hope.

"I told him I just wanted a plain band; I couldn"t lift my hand," she said, and grinned, knowing exactly what I"d been thinking.

"I don"t know why I ever liked you."

She laughed, still the Laney I loved, despite her inexplicable attraction to subspecies.

"Tell me you"re not giving back that... planet in exchange for a cigar band," I insisted.

"I"m looking forward to babies. Twelve of them."

"What if they look like the Geekster?"

"Ohhh." She lifted her shoulders in a soundless expression of glee. "Wouldn"t that be great!"

"You are one sick woman."

"Yeah. Lovesick."

I rolled my eyes. "You"re making me sick."

"Marriage will be nice."

"Sometimes it"s not, you know." My tone was petulant, but I knew that despite Solberg"s irritating habit of being himself, he"d be good to her. That or I"d strangle him with his own entrails.

"We"re eloping tomorrow."

"What! How the h.e.l.l-" I ranted, but she was already laughing.

"I almost forgot how easy you are."

"I"m not easy." I might have been pouting a little.

"Tell that to Rivera."

"He"ll never believe it. Not at this juncture."

"What do you mean?"

I shrugged. Still childish.

"Have you seen him lately?"

I considered lying, but my heart wasn"t up to it. "At a funeral home."

"You"ve always had such strange dates." She had her legs curled up under her and was drinking some sort of green slop that would probably make her live forever.

I thought about her statement for a second and decided I didn"t want to talk about my dates just then. And possibly never. "Why do you suppose Rebecca Harris would avoid telling people about her time as the senator"s secretary?"

She shrugged, frowned a little-kept up to speed, I was sure, by Solberg, who needed to tell her everything. "Maybe it just wasn"t very interesting."

"Working for Miguel Rivera?" I was skeptical.

"Do you think he came on to her?"

"Is he a man?"

"Do you think she accepted?"

"Donny"s father said the senator was excellent at avoiding child support."

"So you think there was a child."

I shook my head. "I don"t know. I had convinced myself there was. That Rebecca had gotten knocked up and gone off to bear the baby in shame. But turns out she had endometriosis and couldn"t get pregnant without in vitro fertilization."

"Endometriosis? Isn"t that..." She paused, staring at me as if she should perhaps remain silent, but she spoke finally "Isn"t that sometimes caused by abortions?"

I stared at her for a full five seconds, then launched myself from the couch, scurried into my office, and wrote abortion under Rebecca"s name.

When I glanced back, Laney was standing behind me in the doorway. "You need a new hobby," she said.

"Well, there are only so many geeksters to reform," I said.

She smiled. "You can"t be sure about the abortion," she said.

"No."

"How about the others? Are you sure about their"-she made air quotes-"sins?"

I shifted my gaze over the wall for the thousandth time. "All except Bunting."

She was silent for a moment. "If you"re right, they"ve broken just about every commandment in the book."

"Didn"t there used to be more?"

"They"ve been revised. More sinner-friendly now," she said. "How about you?"

"How about me what?"

"You broken any lately?"

I refrained from fidgeting and went for clever. "I"ve wanted to, but I"ve been kind of busy. With the murders and whatnot."

"How about New Year"s Eve?"

I put down my marker and returned to the living room. "Asleep by nine."

"Yeah? Who woke you up?"

I turned on her, a little peeved. If she had to be gorgeous, it was her G.o.d-given duty to be dumb. "Tell me the truth, do you have spies?"

She laughed.

"Bugs? Little cameras hidden in my teeth?"

"Did Rivera come over or what?"

I shook my head.

"Donald Archer?"

"No."

"The cop?"

I sighed.

"Who, then?"

"Do you remember D?"

She narrowed her eyes and thought back. "The gangster?"

"Apparently that term isn"t very politically correct."

She raised her brows and stared at me. "Did you sleep with him?"

"No. Absolutely not. That would have been stupid. I"m not stupid."

She stared at me some more. I was beginning to itch.

"I mean... I haven"t had s.e.x for..." I thought back but couldn"t remember how many months it had been. Or maybe they haven"t invented a number that large yet. "If I did ... I"d know. Right?"

olberg took Laney back to LAX. I didn"t accompany them, because I don"t like to see grown men cry. Well... sometimes I do, but that"s another story.

Friday dawned, almost cool. Harley and I went for a run before the weather took a turn and tried to kill us again.

I called the senator sometime around noon and asked with my usual tact if he"d had an affair with Rebecca Harris. He flatly denied it. Which meant that she probably didn"t have an abortion and was, in fact, the saint everyone proclaimed her to be. Which meant that my entire theory was probably nothing more than fantasy.

By the time I returned home, I felt out of sorts. Tomorrow would be Sat.u.r.day, which, according to my theory, should be the next day for a murder. I wandered into my office to glare at the wall-and my faulty theory. I mean, yes, all the deaths did take place on different days of the week, but not all were consecutive.

Steve Bunting had died on a Thursday instead of on a Tuesday as he should have. Did that mean that Steves death was unplanned? If that was the case, that left Thursday open for another tragedy. But maybe it was all just my overactive imagination playing tricks on me.

I glared some more, but no new and astounding revelations came to mind, so I had a bowl of ice cream and went to bed early.

I woke up sweating. The house was absolutely quiet, but I could still hear Kathy Baltimore"s voice in my ear. Singing. Hymns. I shivered and climbed out of bed. The office called to me. I wandered in that direction. The tag-board was there, scribbled with a thousand seemingly unconnected notes.

Laney said they had broken every commandment, but it wasn"t true, of course. As far as I knew, no one had been bearing false witness or creating idols in their bas.e.m.e.nts or...

My mind screeched to a halt as my eyes zipped back to Carma. Maybe she didn"t exactly have idols, but she was Wiccan, which meant she had other G.o.ds. Didn"t it? I hurried to the wall and scribbled first and second under Carmella"s name.

Manny had taken G.o.d"s name in vain. Number three.

Kathy had labored to make sure they campaigned on the Sabbath. Number four.

Steve? Steve! If my theory was correct, he had euthanized his own parents. Which meant he was a murderer. Which put him out of order again. But wait. Killing them wasn"t honoring them. "Fifth commandment!" I was muttering frantically to myself.

"Rebecca. Rebecca." She should have murdered. Should have ... But maybe she had gotten an abortion, and some considered that murder. Sixth commandment! Which put all the deaths in order.

Not in days of the week, but by commandments. Of course! Why hadn"t I seen it before?

Which led me to ...

I stopped. The marker fell from my fingers and clattered against my desk.

"Adultery," I muttered, and then I was scrambling for the phone, jabbing at the numbers, but all I got was the senator"s voice mail. I checked the time-2:42.

I slammed down the receiver and tried another number.

"Christ, McMullen." Rivera sounded tired and angry. "I"ve had about all the foreplay I can handle. Let"s just do-"