“I was taken off the Marcy Bassinger case, and that was reassigned to another detective. Chief wanted someone with more experience handling this one,” he says.

  “What’s going on in there?” I ask. “A friend of mine, Celeste Brewer, was at the party tonight and apparently found the body. She called me and asked me to come up here.”

  “Looks like a stabbing,” he tells me. “You say your friend found the body?”

  “Yeah. She didn’t give me a lot of details. She was pretty frantic when she called. I know this is a major case, but I’m happy to offer my assistance in any way that I can,” I say.

  “Just like I was with Marcy, I’m happy to accept your help,” he tells me. “Again, I know your reputation, and now with three killings across the two areas of the department, I feel like I could definitely use the help. If you feel like you’re up to it, I welcome any assistance you can give.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Let him through,” Detective Branson tells the officer guarding the line. “Dean is now an official consultant on this case.”

  I duck under the rope and join the detective as he walks toward the house. As we approach, I notice people in party clothes—many holding masks—standing around on the massive porch, the steps, and down in the circular driveway. Many of them appear drunk, some are crying, and others look angry and on edge. Officers move from group to group, person to person, trying to calm them down and get initial statements. This is going to be a massive undertaking. Everybody who’s at the party is going to need to be interviewed either now or as soon as possible.

  I remember how daunting that prospect had been when I went to the Christmas party last year at Vance’s house and ended up in the middle of a twisted investigation. This party is much larger, with far more people, and I’m relieved to see how many officers have responded. The sooner we’re able to talk to as many of the guests as we can, the better. While time sometimes does give people the opportunity to calm down and clear their heads, usually the best information comes quickly after something happens. We don’t want them to forget details they might not even realize are important right now.

  “Show us where the body is,” Detective Bronson says to another officer just inside the door.

  We walk through a room filled with even more revelers, and I scan the faces to find Celeste. I finally see her and reach out to stop Detective Bronson.

  “Give me just a second,” I say. “I need to go tell Celeste that I’m here.”

  “Let her know we’ll need to interview her tonight,” he says.

  “I will,” I say.

  I go over to Celeste, and she immediately jumps into my arms. I can feel her shaking as I embrace her.

  “I can’t believe this,” she says into my shoulder. “I can’t believe I found him.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m so sorry you had to see that. I’m going with the detective into the room where the body is. After we do some initial scanning of the scene to get our bearings, we’re gonna need to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Does that mean you’re part of the investigation? Officially?”

  “Yes,” I say. “The detective handling the case is the same one who was handling the missing person I’ve been investigating. That case has been transferred to someone else, so Detective Bronson has made me a consultant on this case. I’m going to help with the investigation as much as I possibly can.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” she says. “I’m so scared, Dean.”

  “You don’t need to be scared. Everything’s going to be all right. Just stay here, and the detective and I will be over to talk to you in a little while,” I say, giving her a final squeeze before letting go and heading back to the detective.

  I try to take in everything around me as we move through the house, taking note of windows and doors that might have allowed in an assailant. Eventually, we find ourselves outside of the office. More police tape and an officer standing guard prevent anyone else from going into the room. The officer greets Peter Bronson, who gestures toward me.

  “This is Dean Steele,” he says. “He’s a private investigator acting as a consultant on this case. He should be given full access to me and any information about the case at all times.”

  “Yes, sir,” the officer says.

  “The medical examiner hasn’t gotten here yet,” Detective Bronson says. “So, the body is still here.”

  We go in and see Joseph Palmer lying on the rug in front of an impressive mahogany desk. He hasn’t been covered. While bodies found out in public are often immediately covered to protect the public from seeing the corpse and to shield the privacy and dignity of the deceased, it’s preferable not to cover a body with anything if the situation allows for it. Covering the body can compromise the scene before the medical examiner is able to inspect and photograph it before transport.

  Joseph is lying on his back with his face up toward the ceiling. A knife is sticking out of the center of his chest, and blood has soaked his entire white shirt. I remember what Celeste told me about the dress code requiring all the men at the party to wear black pants and white shirts. I’ve seen the compliance with that guideline among the shattered revelers as we walked through the house.

  “It looks like this may be the only wound,” Detective Bronson says, crouching down beside the body. “I don’t see any other cuts in his shirt or signs of other sharp-force trauma.” His head tilts to the side as he examines something on the floor beside the body. “What are these?”

  I look and notice tiny green balls on the rug.

  “Beads,” one of the officers says. “It looks like a broken strand of Mardi Gras beads.”

  “Was there a fire in this fireplace?” I ask, glancing across the room. “The air smells smoky.”

  “Yes,” one of the officers says. “We put it out when we came in.”

  I go over to the fireplace and immediately notice the fireplaces are real, not faux gas versions. I also notice it isn’t just logs inside the fireplace.

  “Bronson,” I call over. “Come look at this.”

  “What did you find?” he asks, coming over from the body.

  I pick up a fireplace poker from the iron display stand on the hearth and use it to gesture toward partially burned objects among the burned wood.

  “It looks like someone threw things into the fire. This looks like fabric. And this…”—I gesture at a coil of metal—“looks like the spiral out of a notebook.”

  “This piece looks like a folder,” the detective says, pointing toward a burned manila fragment at the bottom of the fireplace.

  “Someone definitely tried to get rid of stuff in here,” I say.

  “Somebody make sure every bit of material that isn’t wood is collected out of this fireplace,” the detective commands. “I want it all available for examination as potential evidence.” He turns back to me. “Why would someone want to burn clothes, a notebook, and a folder after killing someone?”

  “Unless it wasn’t someone else. Maybe Joseph Palmer put those in the fire himself.”

  Detective Bronson and I go back out into the main house, and I find Celeste again. We bring her into a quiet parlor that has been set aside to speak with the partygoers so they can answer us freely and not be distracted by anyone else.

  She is clutching a cup of hot tea, and I realize it isn’t just the people in Joseph Palmer’s party tonight who need to be interviewed. There are also all the workers who came in to make the party happen. They’re not there anymore, but I can tell just by the aftermath of the party still spread out across the living room that it was catered and had an elaborate bar set up. That means waiters, bartenders, and likely an entire crew to clean up.

  “How are you doing?” I ask as we sit down in the parlor.

  “I just still can’t believe it,” she says. “I keep telling myself it can’t be real. That it had to have been some sort of hallucination. I didn’t drink very much tonight, but maybe somebody put something in my drink or… It just can’t be real.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with any of this. But I saw his body. This is real, Celeste. And that means it’s now a murder investigation. You’re going to be a huge help to us, okay? Just tell us everything that you know, and answer our questions the very best that you can.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this,” she says. “I didn’t kill Joseph.”

  “We don’t think that you did,” I tell her. “But you did find the body. And you told me that you know him. Well enough that he invited you and let you invite me to the party. We’re going to need you to give us as much information as you possibly can about Joseph, the party, and what you saw when you found him. All right?”

  Celeste nods, drawing in a breath that pulls her shoulders up to her ears, then letting it out slowly.

  “Good,” Detective Bronson says. “Now, I know you’re tired and it’s been a really difficult day for you, but I need you to concentrate. Do you know if there are any cameras around the property? Something that could show us somebody entering or that covers the inside of the house and could have shown what happened?”

  “Yes,” Celeste says without hesitation. “Yes, there are cameras. Joseph had them all over.”

  “Do you know how to access them?” I ask. “Or where he might have the controls?”

  “There’s a security room,” she says. “I’ve never checked the cameras myself, but I know that’s where the computer is, where he controls the cameras and checks the streams when he needs to. I was over here one time when some kids on a dare came up from the water and threw rocks at the house. He called the police and went to see if he got them on his cameras so he could show the footage to the officers when they got here.”

  “Can you show us where the security room is?” the detective asks.

  “Sure,” she says. “But I don’t know if it will be locked.”

  “We can check. If it is, we’ll get a warrant to have it opened and access the footage.”

  Celeste leads us to the security room, and I immediately notice the door is not only unlocked but standing slightly open. This strikes me as odd, and I feel a tingle along my skin as Detective Bronson pushes the door the rest of the way open and peers inside, his hand poised over his gun.

  “It’s clear,” he says.

  We go into the room, and I notice a large monitor, but it’s off. Bronson goes to the equipment and looks it over.

  “They’re off,” he says. “It looks like all the cameras covering the house have been turned off.”

  “Can you see the last time they were on?” I ask.

  He fiddles with the equipment for a few seconds before an image pops up on the screen. The still image that shows the last second before the camera was turned off was clearly from during the party. While most of the small images showing the footage captured by cameras in and around the house show nothing happening, one displays the living room filled with partygoers.

  “We can scan backward and watch the time stamp to watch the footage just of the party,” he says.

  He starts to scan backward through the footage, but I stop him after a few moments.

  “Go back. Look.” I point to one of the screens that shows the hallway near his office. “That looks like Joseph Palmer.”

  I only have the description I know of him from seeing his body, but the person walking down the hallway with a phone pressed to his ear looks like him.

  “You’re right,” Detective Bronson says. “That must be when he was headed here to turn off the cameras.”

  “Track his movements backward,” I say. “See what he was doing before this.”

  We go backward until we see Joseph Palmer at the party among all the guests. He doesn’t look like he’s having as good of a time as the rest of the revelers, looking over his shoulder and only cracking a smile when others come up to talk to him. He is standing off to the side of the party when he pulls a phone out of his pocket and presses it to his ear. Almost instantly, he rushes out of the room. He pauses for a few seconds in the hallway outside of the living room, then hurries toward the security room.

  “Something about that phone call made him turn these cameras off,” Detective Bronson says. “We need to find out who he was talking to.”

  We leave the security room and go back to the parlor to talk to Celeste.

  “Think about the entire party,” I say. “Everything from when you got here to when you found Joseph. Can you think of anything strange that happened? Anything that stood out to you?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Not really. I mean, Joseph was a little bit distracted, but I just assumed that was because of Scott Russo’s murder. It was hard to really get into the festive atmosphere.” Then her face changes, her eyebrows going up and her mouth turning into a little o as she seems to remember something. “Wait. Yes. There actually was something that I noticed. Or someone. There was a man here. He was wearing this massive peacock mask. A full headdress. I didn’t know who he was, and it seemed like nobody else did either. A couple of people asked me who he was. Not that I knew everybody at the party, but for the most part, I could at least recognize them,” she says.

  “If everybody was wearing masks, how could you recognize them?” Detective Bronson asks.

  “Not everybody was wearing masks,” she says. “Most people were, but even those, you could recognize them by their voice, or they would come up and introduce themselves. This man just seemed strange. I don’t know how to explain it other than that. He was just kind of walking around and occasionally stopping to talk to people. It was like he wasn’t really part of the party. I didn’t talk to him myself, but I know a few people did.”

  “Can you direct us to them?” the detective asks.

  “Absolutely,” she says.

  She goes back into the living room with one of the officers and comes back with three people. Each of them says they had conversations with the man in the peacock mask, but it doesn’t take long for us to realize something is off about the man and his interactions with the other guests.

  The first woman we talk to tells us his name was Garrett, and he knew Joseph Palmer from their college days.

  The second woman immediately contradicts her, saying he told her that his name was Garrison, and he knew Joseph from high school.

  The man agreed that they knew each other from college but said that his name was Harrison.

  “The music was loud,” Celeste says. “And everyone was talking and laughing. Maybe they just didn’t hear him right.”

  “Possibly,” I say. “Thank you for your statements. We might need to talk to you again.”

  The three nod and walk out together, going back to the living room where people are starting to fall asleep on the floor as they wait to be told they can leave.

  “Or maybe he couldn’t keep track of what he was saying and ended up telling them the wrong thing. You three probably aren’t the only ones he talked to tonight. He might not have planned out what he was going to say if people asked about him if there was a reason for him to lie about who he was. And planning on killing the host of the party sounds like a very good reason,” Detective Bronson says.

  “Exactly what I’m thinking,” I tell him. “We need to look through that footage more carefully and see if this person in a peacock mask comes in through the side entrance or anything. If not, that means he entered with the rest of the guests. He knew the details of the party and was confident enough to just walk in with the rest of them.”

  “I wish he hadn’t turned the cameras off,” Bronson says. “What’s the good in having your entire house swamped with security cameras if you’re going to turn them off at the very moment they are most needed?”

  “I might know someone who could help,” Celeste says. “I don’t know him well, but there’s a vlogger who was here tonight working on content for his channel. I think he got quite a bit of footage.”

  “A vlogger?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “He does little human interest and local news stories about Twilight Cove and sometimes Echo Harbor. He was at the party, and I saw him with his camera in his hand a lot. I can’t guarantee it, but he might have gotten something that would be helpful.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” I say.

  “Can you introduce us?” Detective Bronson asks.

  “Sure,” she says. “I saw him in the living room. I’ll go get him.”

  “Thank you, Celeste. While we’re talking to him, maybe the detective can have another officer get your statement so you can go get some rest,” I say.

  “That wouldn’t be a problem,” Bronson says. “Just know that you would still need to stay available for other interviews as needed.”

  “Of course,” she says.

  Celeste goes into the living room and comes back with a young man clutching a camera. He looks slightly confused as he reaches out to shake the hand I’m offering him.

  “This is Seth Powers,” Celeste says. Then she heads to the other side of the room with another officer to give her initial statement.

  “I already talked to one of the officers,” he says. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No,” I tell him. “I’m Dean Steele. I’m a private investigator consulting on this case. This is Detective Peter Bronson. He’s heading up the investigation. We’re asking for your help.”

  “My help?” Seth asks. “I’m happy to do anything I can, but I’m not sure…”

  “Your footage,” I say. “Celeste told us that you were taking video of tonight’s event.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Yes, I was. I’m a content producer. I have an online video channel that covers events, activities, and news around the community. I was covering the festivities today and got some footage of the party. I didn’t record the entire thing, but you’re more than welcome to everything I have.”

  “Anything you have could be useful,” I tell him. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for exactly at this moment. We just want to see everything we possibly can that happened at the party.”