“This is the drawing room,” Helen Van Slyke explained.

“Oh,” Myron said. He’d always wanted to know what a drawing room was. Now that he was in one he still had no idea.

“Would you care for some tea?”

“No thanks.”

“Do you mind if I have some?”

“Not at all,” he said.

She sat demurely and poured herself a cup from the silver set on the table. Myron noticed that there were two tea sets on the table. He wondered if that was a clue as to the definition of drawing room.

“Kenneth tells me you’re on medication,” he said.

“Kenneth is full of shit.”

Big surprise.

“Are you still investigating Valerie’s murder?” she asked. There was almost a mocking quality in her voice. Her words also seemed just a tad slurred, and Myron wondered if perhaps she was indeed being medicated or if she’d added a little home brew to her tea.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you still feel some chivalrous responsibility toward her?”

“I never did.”

“Then why do you do it?”

Myron shrugged. “Someone should care.”

She looked up, searching his face for a shred of sarcasm. “I see,” she said. “So tell me: what have you learned from your investigation?”

“Pavel Menansi abused your daughter.”

Myron watched for a reaction. Helen Van Slyke smiled semi-teasingly and put a sugar cube in her tea. Not exactly the reaction he had in mind. “You can’t be serious,” she said.

“I am.”

“What do you mean, abused?”

“Sexual abuse.”

“As in rape?”

“You may call it that, yes.”

She made a scoffing noise. “Come now, Mr. Bolitar. Isn’t that a tad extreme?”

“No.”

“It is not as though Pavel forced himself on her, is it? They had an affair. It’s hardly unheard of.”

“You knew about it?”

“Of course. And frankly, I was quite displeased. Pavel showed poor judgment. But my daughter was sixteen years old at the time—maybe seventeen, I’m not really sure. Anyway, she was certainly of legal age. Calling it rape or sexual abuse, well, I think that’s being a tad overdramatic, don’t you?”

Maybe both medication and booze. Maybe even mixing them. “Valerie was a young girl,” he said. “Pavel Menansi was her coach, a man of nearly fifty.”

“Would it have made it any better if he was forty? Or thirty?”

“No,” Myron said.

“So why bring up their age difference?” She put down the tea. The smile was again toying with her lips. “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Bolitar. If Valerie was a sixteen-year-old boy and he had an affair with a beautiful female coach who was, let’s say, thirty—would you call that sexual abuse? Would you call that rape?”

Myron hesitated for a second. It was a second too long.

“I thought so,” she said triumphantly. “You’re a sexist, Mr. Bolitar. Valerie had an affair with an older man. It happens all the time.” Again the playful smile. “To me even.”

“Did you have a breakdown after it was over?”

She raised an eyebrow. “So that’s your definition of abuse?” she asked. “A breakdown?”

“You entrusted your daughter to this man,” Myron said. “He was supposed to help her. But he used her instead. He tore her down. He destroyed and discarded her.”

“Tore? Destroyed? Discarded? My, my, Mr. Bolitar, we are out for shock effect, aren’t we?”

“You don’t see anything wrong with what he did?”

She put down her tea and took a cigarette. She lit it, inhaled deeply with her eyes closed, and let it all out. “If it makes you happy to blame me for what happened, fine, blame me. I was a lousy mother. The worst. Is that better?”

Myron watched her calmly smoking her cigarette and sipping her tea. Too calmly. Did she really buy this crap she was peddling? Or was it an act? Was she just deluding herself or …

“Pavel bought you off,” Myron said.

“No.”

“TruPro and Pavel are paying—”

“That’s not it at all,” she interrupted.

“We know about the money, Mrs. Van Slyke.”

“You don’t understand. Pavel blames himself for what happened. He took it upon himself to remedy the situation in the only way he could.”

“By paying you off.”

“By providing us with some of the funds Valerie may have earned had her career continued. He didn’t have to do that. The affair wasn’t necessarily the cause—”

“It’s called hush money.”

“Never,” she said in a near-hiss. “Valerie was my daughter.”

“And you sold her for cash.”

She shook her head. “I did what I thought was best for my daughter.”

“He abused her. You took his money. You let him get away with it.”

“There was nothing I could do,” she said. “We didn’t want to make it public. Valerie wanted to put it behind her. She wanted to keep it confidential. We all did.”

“Why?” Myron said. “It was just an affair with an older man. Happens all the time. To you even.”

She bit down on her lip for a moment. When she spoke again her voice was softer. “There was nothing I could do,” she repeated. “It was in everyone’s best interest to keep it quiet.”

“Bullshit,” Myron said. He realized he was pushing too hard, but something inside of him wouldn’t let him back off. “You sold your daughter.”

She was silent for a few moments, concentrating only on her cigarette, watching the ash grow longer and longer. In the distance they could hear the low rumble from the funeral crowd. Glasses clinking. A polite titter.

“They threatened Valerie,” she said.

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Men who work with Pavel. They made it very clear that if she opened her mouth she was dead.” She looked up, pleading. “Don’t you see? What option did we have? No good could come from talking. They’d kill her. I was afraid for Valerie. Kenneth—well, I think Kenneth was more interested in the money. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but at the time I believed it was the best thing.”

“You were protecting your daughter,” Myron said.

“Yes.”