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care facility, then headed to Treasure Island, leaving the city and its twinkling lights behind as we approached the Bay Bridge.
    “So what was that all about?” I asked him, finally breaking the silence between us.
    He turned toward me. “What?”
    “What do you mean ‘what’? That whole thing with Jonathan.”
    He shrugged and looked out his side window again at the dark water below.
    “You’re acting like a kindergartner.”
    “He’s a jerk,” he mumbled. “I don’t trust him.”
    I was tempted to say that Jonathan probably felt the same way, but didn’t want to make things any worse than they were. After all, the three of us would be working together—if Brad didn’t change his mind and bow out.
    Not that I really needed him.
    Because I didn’t.
    Seriously.
    Okay, now I was being the kindergartner?
    “What do you know about Jonathan Ellington?” he said, still staring out the window.
    “Not much. But then, I’m just hosting an event for him. What do I need to know?”
    Brad said nothing, but I could feel his eyes on me as I approached the exit from the bridge.
    “Do you seriously think he had something to do with his employee’s suicide?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. All I know is, when I was there to clean up after the body had been removed, Jonathan came into the guy’s office and started going through his desk and filing cabinets. When he found what he was looking for—a bunch of papers—he left in a big hurry.”
    “He claimed you were the one snooping through the guy’s desk.”
    “I was checking it, making sure I didn’t miss anything. Jonathan’s paranoid.”
    “Are you sure you didn’t say anything to him?”
    “Look, the guy seemed . . . furtive. You know, like he was sneaking in and taking things that maybe he shouldn’t have.”
    “He does own the company,” I said. “What exactly did he say to you?”
    “He asked me what I was doing there, although I thought it was fairly clear.”
    I drove down Macalla, into the parking lot of Building One, and turned off the engine. “Didn’t you say George hung himself? So there wouldn’t necessarily be any blood to clean up, right?”
    “No blood.”
    “Then what exactly did you clean up?”
    “You don’t want to know.”
    I had an idea what he was talking about and dropped that line of questioning. “Okay, what else did you two talk about?”
    “He said something like, ‘What are you doing here?’ I told him I was cleaning up the room. He made a face, like my words didn’t compute; then he went to the guy’s desk to look for whatever he was so anxious to find. He probably thought I was just some random custodian.”
    “You must have said or done something to upset him,” I insisted.
    “Nope. The guy was acting weird—not like a concerned boss who’d just lost a valued member of his company. He was acting more like a guy who was anxious to find something.”
    “You sure you aren’t being overly suspicious? Maybe you’ve been hanging around Detective Melvin too much,” I said. Neither of us moved to get out of the car. Finally I asked, “Anything else?”
    “No.” He paused. “Well, I might have given him a look or something.”
    “Or something?”
    “Okay, I may have said something as he was leaving.”
    “Oh God. What exactly did you say?”
    “You know, something like ‘Sorry about your loss.’ ”
    I raised a suspicious eyebrow. “That seems harmless enough. Are you sure that’s all?”
    “Yes. Then he stopped on his way out the door and asked me what I’d just said.”
    “And?”
    “I repeated my condolences.”
    “That’s it?”
    “Mostly. I might have added something like, ‘Find what you were looking for?’ ”
    “Oh my God, Brad!”
    “You should have seen his reaction. Grinding his jaw. Balling his fists. I thought he was going to slug me.”
    “But he didn’t?”
    “Nope. He got up in my face though, and said something like, ‘Just do your job, shut up, and quit snooping