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Kelly paused, catching her breath. Claudia could hear her gulping her cocktail, then she started talking, faster and faster until the words ran together. “I couldn’t get it out of my head, what she’d done with Sean; all the things she did. I thought about my wedding; about what she did to you. By Friday night I was going crazy. I thought... I thought, maybe if I saw her face-to-face, I could make her understand that... hell, I don’t know. I just went over to her apartment and started banging on the door. She wouldn’t open it; probably saw me through the peephole.
    “I could hear music inside. I started yelling and kicking the door. Shit, I know I was acting like a baby, but I couldn’t let her get away with screwing me over that way again. Sean was the last straw. I wanted to kick her skinny ass.”
    Under other circumstances, the idea of petite Kelly going ten rounds with the much taller Lindsey like a couple of mismatched boxers would have made Claudia laugh, but Lindsey’s death had changed so many things. She leaned her head back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “Did she open the door?”
    “No, but she was there.” With the stability of a yo-yo, Kelly’s mood shifted back to anger. “She called the cops on me! Must have taken them all of three minutes to get there. I guess you have to live in a penthouse to get that kind of service. They busted out of the elevator, pointing their guns at me and yelling! God knows what she told them. It was a nightmare. I thought they were going to shoot me.”
    “Holy shit, what time was that?”
    “What time?”
    “Yes, about what time were you pounding on her door?”
    “Around eight, I guess. Why?”
    “The police report would show what time they arrived and that they saw her alive then. Were you arrested?” Kelly would surely have told her if she’d gone to jail, even if it had been just long enough to post bail. But Kelly had kept surprisingly quiet about the entire episode.
    Claudia flopped full-length on the couch and put her hand over her eyes, as if that would blot out the scene that her friend had described. “Please tell me that this is the whole story. That you just turned around and left. You did, right?”
    “Well I had to leave. She kept laughing that stupid donkey laugh of hers. She said she wasn’t going to press charges... for what? I didn’t do anything! They escorted me downstairs and told me to go home. It was all so humiliating.”
    Kelly sounded humiliated, but Claudia wondered uncharitably if she hadn’t enjoyed the drama, just a tiny bit. “I have a sinking feeling there’s something else,” she said.
    Silence, then the sounds of a glass being refilled.
    “Kelly?”
    “Yeah, there’s more. I went back later. I...”
    “You went back? ”
    “I know, I know, it was a stupid thing to do. It was a couple hours later.”
    A couple of hours. That had given Kelly enough time to knock back a few more martinis.
    Media reports had put Lindsey’s death sometime between midnight Friday and dawn Saturday. The condition of the body had made it difficult for the coroner to be more exact. “I drove around for a while and just got madder.” Kelly gave a humorless laugh. “I went back and the police cars were gone. I was expecting the guy at the desk to stop me, but he was eating; hardly even noticed I was there. I went up and knocked on her door again. Not like before, just a regular knock. She opened up right away, like she was expecting someone. She was wearing this black satin come-fuck-me bustier and garter belt.”
    Claudia could visualize the scene: Lindsey flinging open the door, anticipating a late-night visitor, certainly not expecting to find Kelly on her doorstep again.
    “What’d she do?”
    “She was shocked to see me. I pushed past her and went inside. She asked what the hell I thought I was doing.”
    “And?”
    Long pause. “I said I was through with her messing up my life. I said... I said, if she didn’t