“Kate’s working tonight.” The bartender approached us, drying a glass with a Scottish tea towel featuring Queen Elizabeth’s somewhat damp face. “What are you drinking?”

I considered it. “A Henley Skullfarquar,” I requested.

The bartender and Jake exchanged a look; the bartender nodded as though conceding a point to me. “But you usually don’t get it by the glass, mate.”

“How does it usually come?”

“Usually make ’em up by the jug. They serve it during the Henley Royal Regatta. Not to worry. I’ll do it for you. You want soda water?”

“Do I? What’s in it?”

“Smirnoff Ice, Strongbow Cider, Pimm’s Cup, gin, grenadine, a slice of orange or lemon. You can add lemonade or soda water if you like.”

“Jesus,” Jake said. “Are you on antibiotics?”

“I won’t need them after this. No germ could survive that amount of alcohol.”

“At least it’s got vitamin C.” He asked the bartender what he had on tap and requested Bass ale.

I realized something that had been subconsciously bothering me. He had changed his aftershave. Not that I didn’t like this one. It was nice: a sharp, oriental, woody fragrance. But it made him smell…different. Alien. A stranger.

Of course, he was a stranger. That was the point.

Jake got his ale, took a long pull on it, and turned on his stool to face me. “So what makes you think Paul was the target last Sunday?”

I ignored the fact that our knees were brushing -- denim had never seemed like such a flimsy barrier -- that he was close enough for me to see that there was a little more silver at his temples than I’d realized. I told him about my lunch with Al January, and January’s belief -- which coincided with my own -- that the crime just didn’t seem to fit Ally’s profile. I said, “She just strikes me as the type to try to fake a burglary -- and do something like knock the windowpane glass out the wrong way. Or anonymously report the break-in from her own cell phone.”

“Maybe she didn’t come up with the idea,” Jake said. “Maybe the boyfriend did. He works as a personal trainer to a lot of people. He might have picked up heart meds from a client. It will take a little time, but we can check that out. It’s just a process of elimination.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But after I left January’s, I did some checking on Nina Hawthorne.”

“Hawthorne.” I watched him run it through the old memory banks. “The caterer?”

“Right.” I told him what January had told me about Nina’s youthful affair with Porter. “Except it turns out she had a lot of youthful affairs -- and one of them was with Paul Kane.” This was the difficult bit -- for a lot of reasons. I told him about the child who had played the role of Briseis to Kane and Hawthorne’s Achilles and Agamemnon.

He was silent as the bartender set my drink before me and departed.

“I know about Paul’s daughter,” Jake said quietly. “He was devastated.”

“That’s not the point though, is it?” I said. “The point is, does Nina blame him? And if she does, is she capable of committing murder in revenge for the death of her daughter?”

At one time there would have been no question. Wild child Nina would have dispatched Paul without a moment’s qualm -- although she might not have remembered it a few hours later. The old Nina clearly had the imagination and recklessness for this kind of crime. But Nina had been a solid citizen for nearly a decade.

I sipped my drink -- choked on what appeared to be pure alcohol -- and managed to set the glass on the bar before I started coughing. It hurt like hell, my ribs still very painful.

“Are you okay?” Jake rose, moving behind me, but was apparently reluctant to thump me on the back -- and that was fine by me. The last thing I wanted was his hands on me. I waved him away, and he ordered, “Put your hands up.”

Which -- don’t ask me why -- struck me as funny. For a spluttering, spiraling moment, I thought my last vision would be of Jake’s scowling alarm. But he rested a steadying hand on my back, and that warm weight between my shoulder blades drained all the laughter out of me. He smoothed his hand up and down my spine, and I got control, drew in a long, wavering breath.

“I’m okay,” I said, shrugging him off.

“What the hell is in that?” He picked up my glass, sipped from it. His eyebrows rose. “You’re not drinking that,” he said.

“Drink okay?” asked the barman, coming up.

“He’ll have a Harp,” Jake told him, and the man sighed at this disrespect to his creation and stepped away.

I sat back and examined Jake derisively. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘arrogant asshole’?” I inquired -- the effect slightly spoiled by my hoarseness.

“Once or twice.” He sat down again and grinned crookedly. “Come on, you didn’t want to drink that. Who are you kidding?”

“Not you apparently.” It was like I could still feel his hand lightly smoothing up and down my back -- cell memory or something.

He didn’t seem to have an answer.

The bartender slid a pint of Harp in front of me. I took a sip. Big improvement, I had to admit -- not that I would.

Jake said -- as though we had not been so rudely interrupted -- “I don’t think Paul would have used the Hawthorne woman to cater his company if there was bad blood between them. I’ll check on that, obviously, but even so, I can’t see how she would have introduced the poison to the vic. She wasn’t there -- unless she was there in disguise, which seems unlikely.”

“That’s the problem I keep running into,” I admitted. “How did the poison get into Porter’s glass? Especially if these Henley Skullfarquars are made by the gallon.” I gave him a questioning look.

He said matter-of-factly, “I wouldn’t know. I don’t attend parties at Paul’s.”

“But you’re friends.”

“We’re friends.”

“Old friends.”

He gave me a funny look. He said, “Let’s just say we travel in different social circles.”

No exchange of Christmas cards with naked Santa whipping naughty elves?

I said, “There were a lot of us grouped around the bar. Me, Porter, Valarie Rose, Al January. I don’t remember if Ally was standing next to us or not, but there were a lot of drinks lined up -- half empties, that kind of thing. I mean, barring someone reaching over and dumping poison out of his pinky ring’s secret compartment, I don’t think anyone would have paid much attention.”

Jake snorted. “I assume you didn’t notice any pinky rings in play?”

“No.”

He drank his pint in thoughtful silence, then said, “It’s not a bad theory. A little too Sherlock Holmesy maybe, but we’ll talk to the Hawthorne woman.” His eyes slanted to mine. “That was clever, making that connection.”

“I learned from the master,” I mocked. I actually hadn’t intended the double meaning, but it worked well.

He reddened. Turned a stony profile to me.

“The thing is,” he said curtly, after a moment or two, “the Beaton-Jones chick has a better motive, and she was on the scene.”

“I’m the last guy to underestimate the power of the almighty dollar, but I think blaming someone for the death of your child --”

“But that’s my point,” he interrupted. “After I talked to the PI, Markopoulos, I went to see Ally’s boyfriend.” His eyes met mine again. “According to Duncan Roe, he got Ally pregnant. Jones forced her to have an abortion.”

Out of the blue I remembered that little shiver Ally had given when I’d asked her about children. I’d taken it as distaste for the idea. But maybe it was something entirely different.

Yeah, that did sort of change everything.

Not only did Ally share an eerily similar motive to the one I’d ascribed to Nina, but her pain was a lot fresher -- nor was the forced abortion her only motive. And Ally had been at the party, even if I couldn’t remember her near the bar. Someone else might be able to place her there.

Following my own train of thought, I said, “Did Jones’s autopsy turn up anything to indicate he was terminally ill?”