“Sure.”

  “First, though, we’ve been talking to a few people about a specific guest at the party tonight. We haven’t been able to track him down and would like to talk to him about what he might have seen,” the detective says deftly, carefully skirting around any suspicion we have so that it doesn’t start to spread around.

  “All right,” Seth says, looking back and forth between us. “Who is it?”

  “He’s been described as wearing an elaborate peacock mask,” I say. “Does that sound familiar to you?”

  “A peacock mask? Most people were wearing masks tonight, and I’m pretty sure I saw a few that had peacock feathers,” Seth says.

  “Apparently, this was a really elaborate mask,” Bronson says. “A whole headdress version, like a hat.”

  “Yes,” Seth says. “Now that I think about it, I did see that. I’m pretty sure I got him on camera, but I didn’t get a chance to interview him. I wanted to talk to him about his mask, but it seemed like I couldn’t quite catch up with him. Like maybe he didn’t want to be on camera.”

  “So, you didn’t talk to him?” I ask.

  “I exchanged a few quick words with him. Nothing significant. I asked if he was from Twilight Cove, and he told me no, that he was visiting a friend. I was going to ask him more, but someone else got my attention, and he walked away when I turned to talk to them. Like I said, though, it could have just been that he didn’t want to be on camera. Some people are really camera shy and just don’t want to talk in front of one,” he says. “I’m sure I have some footage of him though, if you want to see what he looked like and was doing.”

  “That would be great,” Detective Bronson says.

  “Just let me get my equipment.” He stands up and seems to notice the strand of red beads hanging around his neck. He pauses and takes them off, looking down at them draped across his palm. “I got these at the parade earlier. I thought I’d wear them tonight as kind of an homage to Scott Russo. That seems really ridiculous now.” He shakes his head and tosses the beads onto the coffee table. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “We’re going to figure it out,” I tell him.

  He nods, choking back emotion. “I hope so.”

  When he comes back into the room, he’s looking into the screen of a black camera and has a small bag over his shoulder.

  “If you could just get it to the beginning of your footage from the party,” I say, “that would be great.”

  Seth takes a second to cue up the footage and hands the camera over to me. Detective Bronson comes to stand beside me so that we can watch through it together. We scan through the footage quickly, just looking for the man in the peacock mask. That’s the only thing that interests us right at this moment. It takes a moment before I catch sight of him. We stop scanning and go back slightly to get a glimpse of him. As Celeste described, he seemed to be hovering around the edge of the party, observing it rather than really being a part of it.

  “He came into the frame from behind the camera,” I point out. “Do you remember where you were standing when you took this?”

  “We can go into the living room and compare and see the right spot,” Seth suggests.

  We follow the suggestion and go into the living room. It’s been partially cleared out, and people are still making statements. I can see the exhaustion on their faces, and I know they want nothing more than to take showers to wash away any feeling of the party and go to sleep. Holding up the camera to look at the screen, we move around until we find the spot where the objects in the room line up with what we’re seeing.

  “I must have been right here,” he says. “I do remember kind of hanging around here quite a bit. It gave a good view of the party but was further away from the speakers so I could actually hear myself. If I was going to release this footage, I would have to use a voice-over anyway, but I still like to have some speaking in it, at least while I’m editing.”

  I turn around and look at the area behind where we’re standing. There’s a door leading out toward the dining room, bathroom, and lounge where the overflow of the party went when the guests weren’t interested in the dancing and loud conversation.

  “Is there any other way to get to those rooms?” I ask. “Other than going through this way?”

  “I’m not sure,” Seth says. “This is the first time I’ve gotten to come to this party. I’m not very familiar with the house.”

  “I think you can go around the other way,” Detective Bronson says. “But we’d have to check.”

  “All right, so that gives this man two different directions. He could have left the room and then come back through this way. But you didn’t catch him leaving.”

  “I’m sorry,” Seth says.

  “No need to say you’re sorry. You didn’t know any of this would be important for anything but your content. We really appreciate you being this helpful,” I say.

  “Well, that at least makes me feel a little better. I’m embarrassed I even took the footage. It feels so frivolous and disrespectful now. I shouldn’t have even considered doing a piece on Mardi Gras after what happened at the parade,” he says.

  “You can’t let yourself worry about that.”

  The detective and I go back to scanning through the footage and see a couple more instances of the man, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious or unusual.

  “Did you hear or see anything that you would describe as strange or possibly threatening?” the detective asks.

  “Not that I can think of,” Seth says. “Everything seemed fine to me. But it does have me thinking. Maybe this does have to do with Scott Russo.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Maybe someone was really upset that the party still went on even after he was murdered. They could have come here to confront Joseph Palmer about it, and it just went wrong,” Seth says.

  Detective Bronson and I exchange glances. The possibility sounds logical. It’s just a matter of figuring out who would have done it and how.

  Seth agrees to send us the complete footage so that it can be further reviewed, and Peter and I join the other officers in interviewing people from the party. The brief sleep and hours of investigating have gotten to me, and I find myself yawning widely after getting a statement.

  “Why don’t you go back to the hotel and get some sleep,” Peter says.

  “No, I’m all right. I can keep helping,” I say.

  “Dean, go get some rest. There’s going to be more than enough for us to do in a few hours. I’m going to make sure this is under control and get some sleep myself. Why don’t we plan to meet up at the station in a few hours,” he says.

  I want to continue to argue with him. I don’t want to feel like I’m letting him down by leaving when there are still people to talk to, but he insists, and my exhaustion is really dragging on me. I know I need the sleep if I’m going to be any good on anything I’m investigating come tomorrow.

  By the time I’m back to the hotel, the sun is up and breakfast is laid out in the alcove off the lobby. I take a few minutes to fill up two plates and bring them upstairs, balancing cups of orange juice along with them. It’s a teetering process, but I manage to get them both up to Xavier’s door and knock on it with my foot.

  “X, it’s me. I’ve got breakfast.”

  I know that, even though he heard my voice coming through the door, Xavier is going to look through the peephole to ensure that it really is me and I’m not under duress. The door opens, and he takes the juice from me. I carry the food inside and drop down at the table near the window. I’d like to sit on the unused bed, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll end up falling asleep mid-bite.

  “What happened at Joseph Palmer’s house?” Xavier asks. “I thought you said you didn’t think they’d even tell you anything.”

  “That’s what I thought, but it turns out Detective Bronson was switched away from Marcy’s death to Palmer’s murder, and he is willing to have me help him as a consultant on the case. I couldn’t really turn that down. Especially with Celeste, as upset as she is. She actually found the body. From what she told us, he usually does a speech at the end of every Mardi Gras party, and this year no one was able to find him leading up to midnight, when the party promptly ends because Mardi Gras is over and Ash Wednesday has begun. Midnight passed and no speech, so she decided to go look for him because she was worried about him. She ended up going into his office and finding him there. He was stabbed to death,” I tell him.

  “Any leads on who would want him dead?” Xavier asks.

  “Not yet. But there were a couple of odd things about the scene. He has cameras all over his house, but we were able to see the footage, and he leaves the main party room on the phone, then goes and turns the cameras off. Every camera in the house. And when he was found in his office, there was a fire in the fireplace, and it looked like someone had tossed a bunch of stuff in there to burn.”

  “Like what?” he asks.

  “There were some fabric fragments and what looked like a burned folder and then a coil of metal, like the spiral out of a spiral notebook,” I tell him. “The only thing that anyone at the party seemed to notice that they said was odd was this man in a peacock mask. No one seems to know who he actually was, and the people we found who talked to him had different stories of who he was and what his name was. Like he was lying and couldn’t keep up with it.” I finish eating and let out a heavy breath. “I’m going to try to get just a few hours of sleep, and then I’m supposed to meet Detective Bronson at the police department. You doing okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “Cupcake and I are having a coffee date in a bit. Can you show me how to use the coffee maker again?”

  I smile. “Sure.”

  Xavier can craft incredible gadgets and mind-boggling inventions, but just as easily be confounded by a poorly designed hotel room coffee maker.

  When I’m confident Xavier will be able to make himself his coffee for his video date with Cupcake, I go through the adjoining door into my room, pull the shades to block out completely the light from outside, and crawl into bed.

  I’m not able to sleep nearly as long as I’d have wanted, but I take a fast shower that helps to wake me up. Then I down a couple of cups of coffee on my way back to the ferry. I feel like I’ve spent more time on this ferry during my time here than anywhere else.

  The island seems extremely quiet after the day before. As I drive past the village, I notice the Mardi Gras decorations have already almost all disappeared. The business owners must have been out here extremely early to take everything down so that the village would look back to normal today.

  I notice there aren’t even any signs sitting outside the businesses offering new sales or events. It’s like everyone has buried their heads and is trying to stay unnoticed. I get to the police department and go inside. Detective Bronson must have already spread the news about my involvement in the case because as soon as I introduce myself to the receptionist at the desk, he ushers me into the back.

  Detective Bronson meets me in a conference room with an armful of folders.

  “We got the report back from the initial investigation of the body,” he tells me. “Remember those green beads that were spread around on the floor around the body?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “They looked like a strand of Mardi Gras beads.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what they were, and they were torn off the killer. Palmer had a couple of them in his hand when he was examined.”

  “All right. That helps some. We look for someone who was wearing green beads during the party,” I say. “I know the vast majority of the people I saw were wearing beads in a bunch of different colors. Looking through Seth Powers’s footage more might help narrow that down for us,” I say.

  “Speaking of footage, I was able to get a warrant this morning for the footage from the camera, and we’ll be able to pick it up today. That way we can watch everything from the party. The angle isn’t the best. The camera in that room seems to be focused primarily on the door leading to the outside, but it shows some of it,” he says.

  “Enough that we were able to see Joseph Palmer answer that phone call,” I point out.

  “That’s true.”

  “What can you tell me about Scott Russo’s death?” I ask. “What Seth Powers said about Palmer’s murder being someone associated with him who got upset that the party continued even after his death interested me.”

  “Right now, there aren’t any particular leads. No one has come forward to say they saw anything, and no one who’s been interviewed has any valuable information. What we know is that he was beaten or shot with a very small caliber bullet that caused almost no external bleeding. That’s why it wasn’t immediately obvious. The medical examiner says she believes that he was alive for at least part of the parade based on signs on the body. Everyone on the float is pretty traumatized and said that they figured he was fine and just already in place when they got started. One of them glanced down into the hold and saw him sitting on the throne, so they just went ahead and joined the parade,” Detective Bronson says.

  He pulls out crime scene photos and slides them over to me.

  “He was tied to the throne pretty tightly,” I say, looking at the closeup images of the ropes lashing Scott’s wrists to the arms of the throne. “Maybe they thought he was going to survive or at least thought there was a possibility and didn’t want him to get up.”

  “Or they just wanted to make sure the corpse didn’t fall over when it rose up out of the float,” Bronson says.

  “But why would that matter?” I ask. “They wanted a spectacle, clearly. They intended for everyone to see him and to find out he was dead right then. Why would it matter if he fell off the throne?”

  “I don’t know,” the detective admits. “Maybe it’s part of the performance. Whoever did this wanted him to still look like the king when he came up out of the float and for there to be bigger shock value when it was finally revealed that he was dead.”

  “What do you think about the two murders? Do you think they are linked?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure. It seems like there’s a possibility they are. That vlogger’s theory makes a lot of sense. But there’s also always an increase in crime around the festivals. It’s certainly unusual to have two prominent members of the community brutally murdered so close together, but I can’t lock myself into one train of thought. I have to look at different angles and possibilities, or I might miss something,” he says.

  “That’s true. So, what’s next?” I ask.

  “We make the request for Joseph Palmer’s phone records. The last thing we saw him doing was talking on the phone, and it seemed like something in that conversation agitated him a lot. We need to find out who he was talking to and what they were talking about,” he says. “Oh, before I forget, I wanted to mention to you that the new detective handling the Marcy Bassinger case, Casey Balboa, wants to meet with you at Bruce’s house this afternoon. She needs to speak with the family and thinks it would be good for you to be there. I filled her in on the assistance you’ve already provided, and she’s willing to continue working with you. If you’re still going to carry on with the case.”

  “Of course I am,” I say. “That’s what brought me here. I need to see that through as well.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I know that’s going to be a lot of work for you, but it seems like the family trusts you. They’ll appreciate that you’re still there for them,” Bronson says.

  “You know,” I say cautiously, not wanting to offend the detective with what he was about to say, “both of us kind of brushed the situation off in a way.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “We both all but guaranteed she had just gone off on her own for her own personal reasons and was just taking some time away from the family and everything going on in her life,” I point out. “I feel bad that I wasn’t more receptive to what they were saying.”

  “You have nothing to feel bad about,” he says. “I can’t think of another private investigator who would actually care as much as you do about his case. You might have thought she had just gone off, but you clearly thought something was wrong and wanted to make sure she was all right. That’s a lot more than I can say about other investigators. We didn’t know what was going to happen to her. We both did what we could to find her. You know that.”

  I nod. “I do.”

  A couple of hours later, I’m back on the mainland to go to Bruce’s house. I hate having to go back and forth so much, and since the investigation on Twilight Cove is so much more intense right now, I think when the reservation I’ve already extended at the Echo Harbor hotel ends, I’m going to move to one of the hotels on the island. That will keep me closer to the Joseph Palmer investigation and the scene of Marcy’s death, but not keep me from going back to the mainland to talk to the family if I need to.

  Only the cars belonging to Bruce, Stephanie, and Clayton are at the house when I arrive, so I assume I’ve gotten there before the detective. Stephanie answers the door when I knock. She gestures to welcome me inside, and I step into a heavy atmosphere. Clayton and Bruce are sitting in the living room amidst a mess of coffee cups and plates.

  “I can barely get him to eat,” Stephanie says. “He’s just been sitting here drinking coffee, refusing to sleep or do anything. He says he won’t until they’re able to tell him what happened to Mom.”

  “That’s normal,” I say. “He’s going through a major shock.”

  “All of us are,” Clayton says gruffly.

  A knock at the door stops me from responding, and Stephanie goes to it again. This time she lets in a woman wearing a detective’s badge over a white T-shirt and black jeans. She reminds me of my cousin Emma.

  “Hello,” she says. “I’m Detective Casey Balboa. I’ve taken over this investigation from Detective Bronson.”

  “I’m Stephanie Bassinger,” Stephanie introduces herself. “And this is my brother Clayton and my father Bruce.”