"He also admitted, finally, that he hadn't slept with you, that he'd wanted to but you weren't interested."

She looked like a blind person, feeling her way along the back of two chairs until she finally collapsed onto a section of the sofa. She lowered her head to her hands, her hair falling forward. "This is crazy," she whispered through her hands. "I don't understand any of it."

"That makes two of us. But the fact remains that Jilly is gone. Vanished." I had to attack straight on, I thought, whether I liked it or not. "I want to know where she is, Laura. I want to know how you convinced her to leave with you. I want to know how you managed to get out of the hospital without anyone spotting you."

She looked up at me, eyes focused and hard. Her voice was fierce. No more shock or palpitations out of her. "Listen up, Mac. I didn't lie to you, about any of it, the party included. I told you I had to leave early to give Grubster a pill. If there turned out not to be a party, that has nothing to do with me or with what Paul and Jilly told me."

"Where is Grubster?" I asked, looking around. Who would have a cat around when Nolan was sitting quite at his ease on the back of a chair, looking at my coffee cup?

She shook her head as she rose from the sofa. "Now you don't even believe I have a cat." She left the living room. I heard her light steps up the stairs. When she returned a couple of minutes later she was carrying a huge tiger-striped cat. "This is Grubster. As you can see, he likes his food. He weighs eighteen pounds. He doesn't move very quickly, unless it's a matter of food. He's nearly eight years old. He just looks at Nolan and yawns. Sometimes they just have staring contests. Sometimes Nolan even deigns to sit on his back and dig around behind his ears with his beak."

"Squawk."

Laura looked over at the bird. "Come here, Nolan, and say hello to Grubster."

The cat yawned and curled up next to Laura on the sofa. The mynah bird hopped from chair back to sofa section until he was finally looking down at the cat. Grubster cocked an eye open and regarded the bird with complete indifference.

"Would you like some more coffee, Mac?"

I just nodded, staring from Grubster to Nolan. Someone was hanging me out to dry. Someone was playing a very big game with me and I didn't have a notion yet about the rules. I didn't know where the game left off and reality kicked back in. I also had no clue where Jilly had gone. Laura's claim that she'd had a bad headache and slept throughout the night was a good one, one I couldn't check out.

Laura handed me a new cup of coffee. Steam was snaking off the top of it. I took a sip. It was delicious. Maybe she'd tossed in a dash of Amaretto. I drank some more, trying to get my brain back on track. She handed me a chocolate chip cookie. She couldn't have known they were my favorite. I ate two, to help soak up the dash of alcohol in the coffee, then said, as I watched her drink her own coffee, "When you were at Jilly and Paul's last Tuesday night, what did you do after dinner?"

She took another drink of her coffee. "Very well. There were just the three of us. I got there about six-thirty. Jilly wanted fish. Paul made a salad, spinach, I think. I sliced and garlicked some bread. We ate, then listened to some music. Jilly and I even danced a couple of numbers. Paul drank a good bit. Jilly knew I couldn't stay late because I had to work at the library the next morning and because Grubster needed meds. She told me that some other people were coming, but later, so I'd have to meet them another time. We'd have another party in Edgerton real soon, she said."

I leaned forward in my chair. "Is this the truth, Laura?" She remained silent for a long time. I sipped more of my coffee, watching her.

"There's more, isn't there?"

She looked down at Grubster and began to scratch behind his ears. I could hear the cat purring from where

I sat.

Finally she nodded. "Yes, there is more. I really don't want to talk about it, but Jilly's gone, and I know you won't be happy until you know everything, even if it doesn't have anything to do with what happened to Jilly." She sucked in a hard breath. "When Jilly went to the kitchen, Paul grabbed my breasts and pushed me down on the sofa. He started kissing me, tried to shove his knee between my legs. Then he heard Jilly call out something from the kitchen, and he jumped back away from me. He was breathing real hard. I looked at him and told him he was a creep.

"When Jilly came back to the living room, I made up the story about Grubster needing medication earlier than he really did. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn't want Jilly to realize what her precious husband had done, the jerk. She adored him. She worshiped him. She wanted to have a kid with him. God, it was awful."