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      LINDSAY BECKHAM PUT DOWN the phone in her office carefully as if the receiver harbored an explosive. The calls from Gina were always surreal. On television blackmail was a dramatic high-stakes affair—threats, strong language, wrung hands and curses. Or excruciating, calculated and cruelly exciting.

      These talks were bizarre simply because they were so ordinary. Gina was an old friend—or so Lindsay had had the typically poor judgment to think—so their exchanges were familiar, and while not exactly warm and fuzzy anymore, neither were they hostile. Gina treated her “salary” as if she were providing a service Lindsay should feel thrilled to purchase and chatted about personal matters as if their friendship hadn’t taken this baffling turn several months ago when, in the middle of a catch-up phone call, Gina had blurted out, “Did you know there is no statute of limitations on murder?”

      Wouldn’t the press be interested to find out that a few years back Gina Nelson had seen Lindsay Beckham, the hot new owner of Boston’s hot new bar, Chassy, kill her boyfriend? Forget the press, wouldn’t the police be interested?

      And Gina had gone on to point out, wouldn’t potential investors in Chassy’s planned expansion be interested to learn the woman angling for their money had run away from her adoptive family at seventeen and lived a large part of her adult life high on whatever she could find, going from man to man, searching for love and her own identity the least likely way she could find either?

      Needless to say, after that the call had hurtled downhill faster than an Olympic