"SOMEONE TRIED TO KILL GLORIA?" MY FEELINGS are boomeranging. I realize I'm more comfortable thinking it was a botched fake suicide than a murder attempt. I always thought I was the only one with motive enough to want her dead.

David either isn't paying any attention to the lack of concern in my voice for Gloria's plight, or he's too distracted to comment. "She said someone came into her suite while she was asleep," he says. "A man in a hotel bellman's uniform wearing a mask. He chloroformed her and dragged her out of bed. He fed her pills and whiskey before he left. The next thing she knew, the paramedics were forcing a tube down her throat, and she was puking her guts out."

"Does she know who called the paramedics?"

David shakes his head. "No. Harris says it was an anonymous nine-one-one call from a pay phone in the hotel lobby."

"What about the bellman's uniform? Anyone report one missing?"

"The manager said the uniforms are picked up each Friday afternoon by a dry-cleaning company and returned on Saturday. They're left in an employee's lounge. Anyone could walk in and pick one up. It's a big hotel with a large staff. The people working day shift aren't familiar with people working the night shift and vice versa. No one claims to have seen anyone acting suspiciously."

"But how did he get into Gloria's suite? He must have had a passkey. Surely somebody keeps track of those."

David nods. "The manager is looking into that." He looks past me into Gloria's room. "It doesn't make sense. Why would someone hurt Gloria, then call for help."

I remember Harris' comment that he would have to tell the DA that Gloria attempted suicide. "Maybe because if people think Gloria tried to kill herself, it would make her look guilty." I'm thinking of Laura now, the jealous stepmother. Wanting Gloria to suffer the humiliation of a trial might be just her style.

"If they wanted her out of the way, why not kill her when they had the chance."

I shrug. David doesn't know about Jason or his suspicions about his stepmother. I want to speak with Gloria's lawyer before I voice my own opinions, so I add, "Maybe whoever is responsible didn't want Gloria dead. They wanted her in jail. Whatever the motive, it was a clumsy attempt."

Or juvenile. Jason? How hard would it have been for him to buy over-the-counter drugs, take a bottle of liquor from home, steal a bellman's uniform? No, any smart kid could have done that. Now, getting his hands on a passkey is another story. That would have taken some ingenuity.

I give myself a mental thump on the head. It couldn't have been Jason. He was genuinely concerned about Gloria. He might have faked it when we met at Lestat's, but that display on the courthouse steps? He had no idea I was watching. He wouldn't risk hurting her or worse if the plan went wrong.

"Anna?"

David's voice pulls me back.

"What are you thinking?"

Nothing I want to share. I turn my attention to the room. It looks as if Harris and the lawyer are getting ready to leave. I gesture vaguely at the window. "Let's see what Harris has to say."

Harris comes to the door, then stands back to allow Jamie Sutherland through first. She looks at me with calm brown eyes and holds out her hand.

"Are you Anna Strong?"

I nod and return a brief handshake. Jamie Sutherland is thirtysomething, tall, lithe, possessed of great cheekbones and arresting but irregular features. Wide eyes, small, straight nose, a generous but rather thin-lipped mouth. Along with that sweep of black hair, I'm guessing Eurasian ancestry.

Harris greets me with a nod, too, as he closes his notebook and slips it into his jacket. "I've taken Ms. Estrella's statement. As soon as the doctor gives his okay, she's free to go. Bail conditions remain the same. She's not to leave the jurisdiction."

"What about the attempt on her life?"

David's tone is belligerent and confrontational. Obviously, he and Harris didn't mend any fences while I was gone.

Harris doesn't rise to the bait. Worse, he ignores David completely. He looks instead at Jamie Sutherland. "Counselor, we'll be in touch?"

When she nods, he steps around us all and makes his way to the exit.

David looks as if he's about to charge after him. I stop him with a hand on his arm. "Go see Gloria," I say. "I want to talk to Ms. Sutherland."

He shakes off my restraining hand but doesn't argue. With a grunt, he pushes open the hospital room door and steps inside.

Sutherland throws a wry smile my way. "Well. Looks like someone has finally tamed the Ryan beast."

It's an odd thing to say and suggests a familiarity with David that catches me off guard. "You and David . . . ?"

She laughs. "No. Not an ex. David and I met at Notre Dame. He was a senior and I was a first-year law student. We had friends in common, that's all. Ah, but that temper. Got him in trouble more than once."

Well. I definitely want to hear more about that. Later. Right now, I want to tell her about the gun and get Gloria on her way out of our lives.

"Want to get some coffee?" I suggest. When she gestures to lead the way, I do, telling her as we make our way to the basement cafeteria about my conversation with Jason and what I found in his house.

I don't tell her everything. I'm purposefully vague about how I found the gun and might have given her the impression that Jason was at the house at the time I did my non-breaking and entering.

She's watching me the way an eagle watches a mouse. I get the feeling I'm not fooling her.

"So," she says when I pause for air. "You were in the O'Sullivan house at the minor son's invitation because he suspects his stepmother killed his father, and found yourself in Mrs. O'Sullivan's private office where you stumbled upon a small-caliber gun in a desk drawer. That about sum it up?"

Except for what I found in Jason's room. Don't think I'll mention that right now, either. "That's it." I feel like I should be batting my eyelashes and winking.

She's quiet for a moment, drawing slow circles in her coffee with a spoon. Finally, she taps the spoon on the edge of the cup, sets it down on the table and raises the cup to her lips. Instead of drinking, though, she eyes me over the rim. "As an officer of the court, I'm compelled to tell you that you should have called the police the minute you found the gun. The evidence, exculpatory or not, may now be considered tainted because of the way it was handled."

I stop her with an upturned hand. "I didn't touch the gun. I was careful not to. I put it into an envelope and hid it. That's all. I didn't remove it from the premises."

She shakes her head and the cup descends back to the table, coffee untouched. "It doesn't matter. The courts have strict rules regarding chain of custody. Even if it turns out that Gloria's fingerprints are not on the gun, that the only prints belong to Mrs. O'Sullivan, if it becomes known that you moved the gun from its original hiding place, it may never be admitted as evidence in any trial."

"What about ballistics? The police have the bullet that killed O'Sullivan. I couldn't tamper with the insides of the damned barrel, could I?"

"No." She draws the word out as if sifting possibilities through her head before framing her next response. "Okay, Anna," she says. "Here's what we're going to do. I'll tell Harris about the gun. He'll ask how I know about it. I'll say confidential informant. We'll do a dance over that, but I think he'll get that search warrant. Once he has the gun, he'll have ballistics and fingerprints run. If we're lucky, and it's the murder weapon and it's registered to Mrs. O'Sullivan, he'll drop the charges against Gloria."

She gathers up her briefcase and takes one sip of coffee. "First, though, we go talk to Gloria. Let's hope O'Sullivan didn't take her target shooting or try to impress her by picking squirrels out of a tree. If she says she handled a gun in his house, even once, it may not matter what the evidence shows, the gun won't do us a damned bit of good."

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