Winning number, aching gut. I’d found what I was looking for.

“Once Paul understood how serious Lauren and Lou were, I thought he’d finally let go. Sorry, stupid me again.” Anne unsuccessfully tried to bury her anger. “Paul’s more withdrawn and even tighter about money. Now he’s barely around.”

“Where does he go?”

“I thought the bastard was putting in overtime. Turns out he’s playing Mr. Fix-it at the goddamn Hacienda. The rest of the time he’s with Vivian. He visits her after work, comes home for dinner, then goes back to watch television. And sometimes he just vanishes.”

“Why does he spend time with Vivian?”

“He says he feels compelled to look after her, it’s Lauren’s mother, after all. But it’s a load of shit. I think the two of them just sit around feeling unappreciated.” Anne shook her head with disgust. “Mr. Goodguy, that’s my Paul, as long as it’s a female Rowe or Brown and not a Heywood.”

She heard her self-pity because she reached for the bottle. “You sure you don’t want any?”

“No thanks,” I lied.

She took another gulp. “Did Heather tell you much about the fight after your last visit?”

“Just that it had to do with the divorce.”

“When I confronted Paul he told me it was only a technicality. I asked him whether he understood that Lauren was planning to get married. Asked him if that meant he would finally spend time working on our house instead of the Hacienda. Fix our roof, clean out our basement, weather-strip our windows. Spend some goddamn time with me. If Lauren marries Lou, my significant other is out of a fucking job!”

Anne reached for another cigarette. “I have to give him credit, the son of a bitch stayed calm. I thought scaring him about Lauren’s marriage would shake him.”

“But it didn’t?”

“He told me if Lauren married Lou nothing would change.” Anne shivered as if she just felt a chill. “He backed off that one fast. Maybe he saw the look on my face.”

I watched her spill more liquor into her glass and onto the table. Paul’s response to the divorce, his access to the Hacienda, his unexplained absences: All of it opened a door. And a dark suspicion was walking through.

“Anne,” I asked calmly, doubling back, “I know Paul stopped giving Lauren money months ago, but you say he’s still tight.”

She placed her glass on the table with controlled care. “Lauren’s lying, or Paul’s been lying to me.” She took a long inhale but the cigarette had died and she halfheartedly tossed it toward the ashtray. “I don’t think it’s him. Paul lies to himself, not to other people.”

“You still care about him, don’t you?” I asked. My intensity was heating but tried to hide it. I’d just hit the curve in the road.

“I honestly don’t know what I feel. I became an adult with Paul and that’s impossible to write off.” Anne shrugged. “Truth is, we’re alike. Both of us are willing to go wherever the river leads.” She paused. “For Paul the river is Lauren and for me it’s Paul. I’ve been so angry these past months, it’s hard to admit how worried I am about him. He really has been acting strange.”

A bleak despair permeated the small room and it seemed right at home. The shamus in me tried to wriggle out from under the gloom. Anne wasn’t the only person hauling history. If I let it, this conversation would land me back on my couch.

But I couldn’t let it. I had a father-in-law to protect. If Lauren had been lying about the money and was still tied to Paul, what were her real reasons for being with Lou? Maybe Rowe and Brown weren’t as separated as Lauren wanted me—and everyone else—to believe. Maybe they weren’t really separated at all.

Cherchez le cash. It might be cynical, but I was wondering whether Paul and Lauren had a scheme to separate Lou from his money. A scheme using Lauren’s stalking claims to create an explanation if something happened to Lou—like a furnace accident. I was suddenly angry I’d never asked Lou whether he’d added her to his frigging will.

I felt my distrust of Lauren combine with all of my own baggage about relationships and deceit. The combination was lethal and I knew it, but I’d be damned if I was going to let Lou, at this stage of his life, walk a possible plank.

Anne leaned toward the table so I held out the pack of smokes. But she ignored the cigarettes and reached for my hand. “You’ve been kind to listen to all this,” she said, her fingers stroking my palm.

I tried to find a polite way to free myself. “You need more friends,” I said standing and helping her to her feet. “You’re locked into a very small circle. It would help having people to talk to.”

She walked around the table and leaned her thin body into mine. “Right now I don’t want to talk,” she whispered, the Jack Daniels washing my face. Tonight she had a different river pulling her downstream.

“You need a less incestuous world, not a new addition,” I said stepping back.

Anne’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. “You’re not interested in a loser.” There was no heat to her words, just drunken resignation.

“No law says you have to keep losing, Anne.”

“Are you kidding? No one gets out of this. Look at Paul, me, the children, Lou. Look at yourself.”

“Jim got away.”

Anne reached down to the table for the cigarettes, wobbled, pulled three, and handed me the pack. “Jim doesn’t even speak to his own daughter because he’s unable to face an entire portion of his life. You call that getting away? We all live in one big web. And Lauren is the spider.”