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Claudia scowled at the mail lying in an untidy heap on her desk, daring her to attack it. She considered giving Kelly a call and asking her about what she’d said at the cemetery, but enough time had been spent on matters concerning Lindsey for one day. She rummaged in the pen cup for the letter opener.

Twenty minutes later, she turned to the computer, where a string of spam and unsolicited porn e-mails filled the screen, a stubborn leftover from the last guy she had dated oh-so-briefly. After deleting a half-dozen e-mails with subject lines like,
“Here I cum,” “Barnyard Beauties,”
and
“I’m lying here waiting for you,”
she clicked open a message from her brother.

Pete was in his second year as a widower, still making the adjustment to single-parenting a teenage daughter. His e-mail pleaded for her help with Monica. As if Claudia knew anything about raising kids. She’d given up trying to get pregnant after the third miscarriage, unable to face another bitter blow.

After answering Pete as best she could, she worked on whittling down the e-mails from the handwriting analysis Listserv of which she was a member. She kept hard at it until after nine, when her neck and shoulders began to protest that she had been too long in the chair.

Pushing away from the desk, she headed downstairs, stopping in the kitchen long enough to splash a shot of vodka into a glass, followed by a generous helping of cranberry juice. She took the drink with her and crossed the dark living room, stepping through the open door to the deck that jutted out over the front of the house, facing the ocean. The night called to her. She went back inside and ran upstairs, changed into sweats, and jammed bare feet into grubby sneakers without bothering to untie the laces. Locking the door behind her and pocketing the key, she hurried down the steps.

Wisps of fog curled around her in the darkness. She lifted her face to the cool dampness of marine air on her skin.

“Walk, Flare?” she called softly, crossing her neighbor’s front lawn. A loud bark came from the other side of the wooden fence separating the houses. Even in the relatively safe beach community of Playa De la Reina, walking alone at night was an iffy proposition. Claudia was as grateful for the company of her neighbor’s massive German Shepherd as the dog was eager to go.

She rang the doorbell and heard it play the opening bars of
Strangers in the Night
. Seconds later, her neighbor, Marcia Collins, looked through the peephole, then opened the door. She stood tall and slim in cutoff blue jeans and a man’s Oxford shirt, a cigarette in her hand. “Hey, Claudia, wanna buy a dog?”

“I’ll just keep on borrowing yours if you don’t mind. I’d never be able to give one of my own enough attention.” Marcia stood aside to let her in. “You look a little shopworn, neighbor. What’s up?”

“Went to a funeral. You’d have had fun. Movie stars up the yin-yang.”

“You’re kidding. The funeral on the news tonight? Russell Crowe was there—did you see him?”

“Only from a distance.”

Marcia moaned. “He is
so
hot.”

Claudia followed her into the kitchen. “I just caught a quick glimpse. He rushed off right after the service. So, how’s work?”

Marcia waitressed at Cowboys, the bar and grill down the hill at the beach end of the short string of shops and restaurants comprising Playa De la Reina’s tiny main drag. She scowled. “One of the waitresses took a hike, so yours truly got stuck with the extra hours till they hire someone else. I totally hate having no time to myself. Lucky for Flare you’re here. She wouldn’t get diddly squat of a walk out of me tonight.”

Claudia grinned. “Good, ‘cause I need the beach. Desperately.”

“Honey,” Marcia admonished, wagging a finger at Claudia, “what you need is a man.”

“Thanks for the advice, but I’ve bagged my limit for this year.”

“Oh come on, you’re too young to give up on men.”

“I haven’t given up, I’m just taking a time-out.”

Marcia unwound the dog’s heavy leash from around the doorknob and attached it to a harness. She opened the back door and the big Shepherd bounded in, paws clicking loudly on the tiled floor as she slid to a stop at Claudia’s feet and began nosing her.

Marcia snapped the harness around the excited animal’s forequarters. “Dammit, Flare, don’t do that!” She looked up. “So, this woman who died; she killed herself, right? Flare, sit! Why d’you think she did it?”

Why did Lindsey do any of the crazy things she’d done?

Maybe one of those crazy things got her murdered.

Claudia shook her head with a sigh. “Kiddo, I haven’t a clue.”

As they started back across the kitchen, Marcia stopped to pick up a greeting card lying on the table and thrust it at Claudia. “What do you think? It’s this new guy I’ve been seeing.”

Claudia knew she was talking about his handwriting. She looked at the message scrawled inside:
“You’re the greatest. This is going to work! Love Justin.”

“One thing’s for sure: It won’t be easy to get him to commit.”

“That’s okay; I’m not looking for anything permanent right now.”

“So, go for it. But see how he disconnects the last letter of this word, ‘
going
’? He rushes into new relationships, but come time to put his money where his mouth is, he’s gone. He’s also emotionally needy. He doesn’t put a comma after writing the word, ‘
love
.’ It says
“Love Justin.
” He’s begging for your love.”

Marcia looked confused. “But you just said he wouldn’t commit.”

“People don’t always want what they need. At least he isn’t a psychopath, like the last one.”

“You sure had
him
pegged right. Fantastic in the sack, but honey, could he turn ugly fast.”

“Handwriting never lies.”

“You probably oughta listen to your own advice, my friend.”

Claudia tightened the leash around her wrist as Flare began tugging her toward the door.

“You know how it is. The shoemaker’s kids go barefoot.”

The dog padded a few feet ahead, leading Claudia down the steep hill, keeping the leash taut but never taking advantage. They zigzagged left, then right at the next two streets, passing Tyler’s Coffee House. She could hear the noisy late evening crowd laughing over beer and burgers at The Shack across the street. Marinelli’s Italian restaurant was on the opposite corner, its red, white, and green lights twinkling garishly on the roof like a perpetual Christmas.

Pulling Flare to heel, Claudia crossed the highway and stepped onto the path to the darkened beach. Sensing impending freedom, the dog dragged her across the sand to the water’s edge. She unhooked the leash and let Flare run while she followed.

Alone again.

She couldn’t help thinking of the string of disastrous relationships she’d had over the six years following her divorce. None had survived her all-encompassing compulsion to work, including her five-year marriage to Alan Rose, which had crumbled under the weight of his relentless need for her total devotion. Therapy had taught her that she’d turned work into a compensation for the lost pregnancies, until overwork became a way of life.

Alone is emotionally safer than a bad relationship: no one to complain that I work too much. That’s good
.
But no one to love, no one to love me. Not good.

She’d failed to pay attention to the growing distance between them until Alan consoled himself with another woman. He deserved someone to give him the love he needed, and Claudia hadn’t been the one.

Maybe being alone was okay. She had her house, her career, her freedom.

Better than what Lindsey has.

Groaning, Claudia reached out to silence the persistent buzzing of the alarm clock. The small amount of alcohol she’d consumed the night before couldn’t account for the grogginess she felt as she crawled out of bed and dragged herself to the bathroom.

In an effort to improve her attitude, she set the shower jets to a hard pulse and let the steaming water beat a tattoo against her head and shoulders, lathering up with soap that didn’t deliver on its promise to make her feel like a spring morning.

After drying off, Claudia swiped her towel over the foggy mirror. Her reflection stared back at her. When had the web of tiny lines first begun to appear around her eyes? she wondered with a little shock. The hot breath of her fortieth birthday seared her neck, and her mother’s voice, carping about her lack of a permanent relationship, echoed in her ears.

Telling the voice to shut up, she wiped off the rest of the steam and went to get a handwriting sample that had arrived in yesterday’s mail. An employment applicant from one of her steady clients who owned a Beverly Hills furniture store.

Propping the sample on the vanity where she could see it, Claudia aimed the hair dryer at her hair and let the handwriting work at the edges of her consciousness. Like most of her clients, Rick Taylor wanted the results yesterday and would have faxed the handwriting if she’d let him. But the faxing and scanning process could affect important nuances, such as pen pressure and line quality, so her clients learned to send original handwriting samples whenever possible.

Nearly every centimeter of the sheet of paper was covered with large, round letters and excessively wide g and y loops. To Claudia’s trained eye, the grouping of characteristics bespoke a strong need for approval, plus low objectivity. The writer could be expected to engage in attention-getting behavior and would probably be flirtatious. The extra-short upper loops suggested that the young woman who had written it would have difficulty accepting responsibility for any mistakes. If Rick hired her, he would need to provide close supervision and plenty of pats on the back to keep her happy.

Two cups of coffee and a toasted bagel later Claudia had keyed her report into the computer and e-mailed the resulting file to Rick. Time to get dressed for her meeting with Ivan.

Ivan greeted her at the door to Lindsey’s penthouse in baggy jeans and a red flannel shirt that had seen better days. He waved a sheaf of papers in one hand and a half-smoked cigarette in the other. “I’ve gathered some samples of Lindsey’s handwriting,” he announced, jamming the cigarette between his lips and fanning out a jumble of bills, flyers, and other scraps—standard Lindsey writing materials. “You can see for yourself her writing is nothing like the writing on that phony suicide note. Green pen, always written in cursive. See how she makes this capital W, and here, the way she does her L. They’re completely different.”

Claudia took the papers and sifted through them, glancing at each one before handing them back. “I’m sorry, Ivan. These are not going to work for me. As I told you yesterday, comparing cursive to printed writing is apples and oranges. The note was printed, so it’s important for me to compare it to her genuine
printed
writing. These are all written in cursive.”

Ivan’s eyes narrowed with annoyance. “The police didn’t ask for that.”

“And you weren’t satisfied with the police’s opinion. That’s why you retained me.”

“But she never printed,” he insisted, waving the papers at her, “Never! That’s why I know she didn’t write the suicide note.”

“Forms are usually printed,” Claudia noted, doing her best to hang onto her patience. “How about a credit application?”

“We have secretaries to fill out forms. Lindsey never did them herself.”

Claudia took a deep breath, preparing to do battle. “Ivan, if you want a proper forensic examination and opinion, you’re going to have to come up with some printed samples; otherwise, I can’t help you.

“I’m trying to get this place closed up,” Ivan snapped, a frown drawing his heavy black eyebrows together. “And I’ve got to keep the office running. I don’t have time to go searching for some piece of paper that doesn’t exist.”

Mentally waving good-bye to the money she would have earned from the case, Claudia told herself that it wasn’t worth the hassle. If the client started out creating problems, things usually ended up going from bad to worse. Her professional integrity was at stake. “If you want someone who’ll just say whatever you pay them to, there are plenty of so-called experts who’d love to cooperate. I’ll return your retainer check and you can call one of them.”

Ivan tossed the papers onto a side table. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to get on your high horse.” He started for the spiral staircase, beckoning Claudia to follow. “You can look for what you need in the files and box them up as you go through them.”

On the day of Lindsey’s funeral reception, her office had looked as if someone worked there. Now, less than two days later, the computer equipment had been removed, tables and bookshelves were bare. The glass top of the desk stood against the wall, leaving the black lacquer base an obelisk in the middle of the room.

Claudia was surprised at the speed with which the stack of moving boxes by the door had been filled and sealed. “Somebody must have worked like a dog over the weekend,” she observed.

Ivan touched a button on the wall unit and a door slid open, revealing a walk-in closet more spacious than Claudia’s bedroom. “Lindsey leased the place, which is one reason I’m in a hurry to get everything settled.” He didn’t elaborate further.

A row of filing cabinets stood against the far wall, a heap of collapsed storage boxes stacked on top. “You can start here,” Ivan said. “Just pack the files into these boxes as you finish going through them. Maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

Claudia looked back at him, not trusting herself to speak. She was accustomed to clients having difficulty coming up with proper materials for her examination, but no one had ever offered to pay her hourly rate to search through a half-dozen file cabinets for comparison samples. At this rate, the generous retainer Ivan had paid would soon be eaten up on grunt work.

He went to the door. “I’ll be downstairs on the phone. We were in negotiations for one of our biggest clients when all this went down. I haven’t been to the office in days.” He paused, his hand resting on the jamb. “If you need me, use the intercom on the desk. The codes for all the rooms are marked. Oh, and help yourself to coffee or cold drinks. There’s a fridge in the mini bar.”