“I can remember them putting their arms around me, and it seems like they were right about my height, maybe a little bit taller,” she says.

  “All right. Great. That’s helpful. Were they really strong?” I ask.

  “Strong enough to overpower me before I got a chance to defend myself,” she says. “But they said I was hit on the head, so I don’t know.”

  Before I ask anything else, the door opens, and a doctor comes in.

  “Well, it looks like you are doing well and recovering nicely. You haven’t shown any signs of additional complications or infection, so I’m going to do one more vitals check, and if everything still looks good, I’ll go ahead and sign your discharge papers,” he says.

  “That would be amazing,” Celeste says.

  “If you could step out for just a minute,” he says to us, and Xavier and I step out of the room to wait in the hallway.

  Soon the door opens again, and Celeste is dressed and perched at the edge of the bed, removed from the IV that had been dripping into her and looking like she can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t blame her. I try to avoid stints in the hospital as much as I possibly can, though my career has made that a challenging pursuit at times.

  “If you aren’t comfortable staying at your house by yourself, you’re more than welcome to come to the hotel,” I tell her. “Xavier and I have two rooms, and I could move into his so that you can use mine.”

  “No, that’s okay, I… Really?” she asks. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Not at all,” I say. “I don’t want you to get home and immediately be afraid. You can stay with us until you feel better.”

  I went over the plan with Xavier while we were waiting in the hallway, so it’s not a surprise to him that I’m offering. He doesn’t mind as long as I’m moving into his room rather than the other way around.

  We go by Celeste’s house, and I go from room to room to reassure her before she starts collecting some things to bring with her to the hotel.

  “Do you mind if I get a look at that basement door?” I ask.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “The door is in the kitchen.”

  I go down the steps into the basement, which feels more like another room in the house than a true basement, and immediately see the door to the walkout. It opens easily, and I check the doorknob. As I expected, the knob is locked from the outside, making it so that it automatically locks but can be opened from the inside. Unlocking the knob so that I can get back in if the door closes, I step out and look around. The door is fairly hidden, though anyone who knows it’s there will be able to see it. I can’t see any of the neighbors’ doors or windows clearly, meaning they won’t be able to see me either.

  This has to be how whoever attacked Celeste got away without being noticed.

  I confirm it to Celeste when she has brought her things out to the car and we’re on our way back to the hotel.

  “I never thought I needed a camera to cover that door,” she says. “I guess I do.”

  “But how did they get into your backyard?” I ask.

  “Probably the same way you did,” she says. “Through the gate. There’s no telling how long they were waiting behind that shed. They could have snuck in while it was still dark and been waiting there since. But that means they had to know my routine.”

  With that thought hanging over us, we settle Celeste into my former room and decide to order in for an early dinner. Later, when Celeste is resting in the other room and I’m going through all my notes, I have a sudden thought that gets me on the phone with Detective Bronson.

  “I need to see Palmer’s house again,” I tell him. “Is it still available?”

  “Of course,” he says. “We still don’t have a next of kin to release it to. No one has been inside other than investigators.”

  “Good. I’ll head over there. I still know the code,” I say.

  “All right,” he says.

  I leave Xavier at the hotel just in case Celeste wakes up and needs company, and then I head for Palmer’s house. I need to look at the living room and the office again. Something in the back of my mind is telling me I’ve already seen the answer. I just have to figure it out.

  It’s dark by the time I get to the house, and without any lights on, the place looks heavy and foreboding. I use the flashlight on my phone to illuminate my path as I walk up to the front door and see the lockbox so I can get the key out to open the door. Once I’m inside, I turn on the lights to get me into the living room. I take my phone and stand in different positions, looking through the camera and then looking around to see what’s around me.

  Satisfied, I head for the office. I’m standing at the fireplace when I hear something behind me. Before I have a chance to react, something hard hits me in the back of the head, bringing me to my knees.

  I roll to the right out of instinct, and my back presses against the wall. It gives me some bearing about where I am as I try to see through my dizzying vision. I can taste blood in my mouth, and the back of my head is throbbing as I try to get to my feet. I’m only halfway there when a dark, blurry image lurches at me, hands outstretched.

  I feint to the left and pivot hard with a punch to the ribs, or at least where I’m hoping the ribs are. The figure reacts by crumpling, but their momentum still carries them into me. I shove them off and stumble back, wiping the back of my hand against my eye to get rid of the water that had collected there when I was hit. A smear of blood on the wall where I had been standing tells me I was hit harder than I even thought.

  The figure, which I can see better now, struggles to their feet, and I charge, launching a kick to their chest and sending them back into the wall. I land a few more shots to the body and one to the jaw of the ski- masked attacker, sending them stumbling away from me. I go to chase them and trip over a lamp that had been knocked over at some point, going down to one knee.

  Just as I hit the ground, a sound from somewhere outside the room catches both of our attention. It’s a door being opened, and a voice is calling out. Before I can get my feet under me, the attacker bolts, diving through the door and out of sight. I jump to my feet, still a bit unsteady, and run for the door myself. As I get to the doorway and into the hall, I see Detective Bronson coming toward me, eyes wide in surprise.

  “Where the hell is he?” I demand.

  “Who?” Bronson asks. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Someone just attacked me. I got a couple of shots in, but he got me one good time and I was seeing stars. I couldn’t chase him when he ran off. He must have heard the door when you got here.”

  “I thought I’d come see what you were doing and if you needed anything,” he says.

  “I’m glad you did,” I say. “I can’t believe I left the fucking door unlocked. I just told Celeste what a good thing it was that she never leaves her door unlocked and that she should get extra cameras.”

  “Why would you have any reason to think anyone was going to come into a house that’s being held as a crime scene?” he asks. “I would have left it unlocked too. Did you see who it was? Anything about them?”

  I shake my head. “No, they were wearing a mask and gloves. But I think I know who it was.”

  I storm past him toward the front door.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be driving,” he says. “It looks like you have a nasty cut on the back of your head. Let me bring you to the hospital to get checked out.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m not waiting. I’m fine.”

  “I’m following you,” he says.

  “Fine.”

  I get in my car first and take off, not caring that I’m speeding with the detective following close behind me, or that a trickle of blood is falling down the back of my neck. It doesn’t even feel like I’m thinking. I’m going by memory and pull up in front of the apartment building, searching for Seth’s car. I don’t see it, but I run up the steps to his door and pound on it. He opens it without hesitation and stumbles back when I storm in.

  “What the fuck do you think you were doing back there?” I ask.

  He looks at me in bewilderment, watching as I pace through the living room.

  “Where?” he asks.

  “Dean, what are you doing?” Bronson asks, rushing into the apartment. “Why are you here?”

  “It was Seth at the house,” I say, whipping around to face Powers as I’m saying it. “He was in a mask, but I could tell by his size…”

  My voice trails off as I look at Seth Powers’ face. There isn’t a hint of injury on him. I know I didn’t pummel my attacker, but I got a couple of good punches in, and one of them hit so hard on the jaw there would be no mistaking it this soon after. Yet there’s nothing. His face is perfectly fine, and his hair is wet like he just got out of the shower. He looks confused and glances from me over to Detective Bronson.

  “Do you know what he’s talking about?” he asks. “What house? I wasn’t anywhere tonight. I haven’t left the apartment since this morning.”

  “Shit,” I mutter, stomping toward the door.

  The detective chases after me as I stalk back toward my car.

  “What is going on with you?” Bronson demanded. “Why would you come and confront Seth Powers about attacking you?”

  “I thought… Damn it, it looked like him and…” My voice trails off.

  Something in my head clicks into place, and I grab my phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Bronson asks.

  “Detective Balboa,” I tell him. “I think I just solved Marcy Bassinger’s murder.”

  Balboa doesn’t look happy when I walk into the diner to meet her. She’s hunched in the corner of a booth, her hands wrapped around an old, white coffee mug and glaring at the menu like she’s daring it to come up with something she might want to eat.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” I say when I slide into the booth opposite her. “I’m sorry I’m late. I had to go back by my hotel and get my notes.”

  She looks at me with a quizzical expression. “You look like shit. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I got in a fight,” I tell her.

  “Don’t you think you should be somewhere sleeping it off? Or maybe a hospital for that makeshift bandage on your head?”

  “No,” I tell her, reaching up to check and make sure the bandage I put on hasn’t moved much. “Because I think I figured out who killed Marcy Bassinger, and you’ll want to take them into custody.”

  “Them?” she asks, sounding surprised.

  “I’ve been back through everything from the case half a dozen times, and it didn’t fall together until tonight. After this,” I say, gesturing at my face. “It finally occurred to me. Every time something changed in the investigation, both Stephanie and Clayton were around to hear me talk about it. Whether I was talking to them directly or I was telling their father, they always knew when there were developments, and suddenly something else would change.

  “Like with the financial transactions. I asked Bruce about them, and he explained to me that Marcy used her own account, but then suddenly, there were transactions on the joint account that Bruce could check and track. I believe that this really did start out as a potential missing person. I think Bruce and Marcy did have a major argument, and Marcy did leave. Bruce didn’t know where she was, but I think Stephanie and Clayton only pretended to think there was something seriously wrong. They were in touch with her the entire time.

  “They already admitted that the other times when she left home and was gone for an extended time, she would stay in touch with them but not with Bruce. I think that’s what happened this time, too. Maybe she had another phone, I’m not sure how, but I believe they were communicating, and there was no point where either one of those children genuinely thought she was missing. They met up with her at the hotel, and then they got together and concocted their plan.

  “They killed her and carried her out of the hotel. Probably in large luggage. Marcy Bassinger was not a big woman. In fact, she was quite small and could easily pass for much younger. Which is how they pulled this off. Marcy was always known to wear a hood and a lot of makeup. Put that on Stephanie, and she could confuse a lot of people. And that’s exactly what she did. She started posing as her mother to keep up the ruse that she was still alive for another couple of days. They had to make it look like she just wanted to be away, but they had to make sure that her body was found and that it did not look like suicide. Because that was the entire motive behind it all. They wanted the insur ance money. And if it looked like suicide, then the insurance wouldn’t pay out.

  “But if it looked like an accident, their father would get the bulk of the money. They wanted to frame their father so that he would be out of the picture and they would inherit everything. They towed the smaller boat out into the water, lit the boat on fire with their mother’s body on it, then booted back to shore. Writing the names down on the rental guest log was purely to throw you off. To start suspicion on Bruce.”

  “And the fire was to destroy evidence and cover up the fact that she had been dead for longer than it seemed,” Balboa says, obviously following my theory. “It’s good. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of proof, but it’s good.”

  I reach for the coffee cup in front of me before remembering that I haven’t ordered any and see the confused look cross Balboa’s face. In that instant, I know my night isn’t over.

  “I need to go,” I tell her, standing up from the table. “Call me if you need me.”

  I’m on the phone with Bronson before I’m even out of the diner.

  “How fast can you get to the police station?” I ask.

  “Why?”

  “I just need you there. I need to go over some of the footage, and I think I figured something out,” I say.

  I get off the phone and call Celeste.

  “Do the colors of the beads at the parade change from year to year?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “The ones at the parade are always purple, gold, and green, to go with the decorations on the businesses.”

  “Perfect. Thank you. How about the ones at Palmer’s party?”

  It takes far too long for me to get back to the police station, but when I finally meet Bronson in the war room, he pulls up the footage we got from Seth Powers.

  “What are you looking for?” he asks.

  “Watch for the man in the peacock mask,” I say.

  “Him again? We still haven’t been able to confirm his identity,” he says. “No one has been able to tell us who he is.”

  “I’m not looking to try to identify him,” I say. “I want to see what he’s wearing.”

  “What he’s wearing?” he asks. “A peacock mask, black pants, and a white shirt.”

  “What color of beads?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure,” he says.

  “We need to find out.”

  We scroll through the footage until the first sighting of the man in the mask and pause. It’s near the beginning of the party, and I can clearly see that he is wearing a strand of green beads. We continue to look through the footage until the next time that we see the man and confirm he’s still wearing the green beads. It’s at the very end of the footage, the short segment that was taken after the party should have ended, that it changed.

  “Look,” I point out. “Red beads. He isn’t wearing green and red, just red. Think about what was found with the body. There were green beads in his hand and around the body. Probably ripped off his killer while he was being stabbed. Now think about when we were interviewing Seth Powers. He took off his beads.”

  “They were red,” Bronson says.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “He said he got them at the parade and wore them to the party because he thought it would be a nice way to honor Scott Russo. But that couldn’t have happened. There weren’t any red beads at the parade. There were only green, purple, and gold. When I went to his place and looked at the footage from the parade, you can actually see him reaching out and grabbing a strand of green beads.”

  “But if he got green beads at the parade, why would he replace them with red ones and say they were the same ones?” Bronson asks.

  “Because he didn’t realize they were a different color,” I say. “While I was at his house, we had similar coffee mugs, but they were different colors. He picked mine up. I think Seth Powers is color blind. He got the green strand at the parade, just like he said, and he wore them at the party. But then when he killed Joseph Palmer, they got ripped off his neck. He grabbed a strand that Joseph was wearing—I’m sure if we go through other pictures, we’ll find one of him wearing red beads. Celeste told me that there were other colors at the party, including red. He must have been wearing a strand, and Seth couldn’t tell that they weren’t the same color, but he didn’t want to go back out to the party not wearing any because he knew it would look suspicious. He just didn’t realize he was advertising his own guilt with the ones that he was wearing.”

  “But he took this footage,” Bronson says. “How would there be images of the man in the peacock mask if he was the one taking the shots and the one in the mask?”

  “Deception,” I say. “He was able to slip in and out of the party, removing his mask and putting it back on as needed so it looked like he was two different guests. If you look carefully at the footage when the man in the peacock mask is visible, it’s extremely still. Earlier, when I was at the Palmer house, I was looking at the different angles the footage was taken at, and there is a piece of furniture or a surface near each one that would be perfect for putting a tripod on. There’s also a moment…” I scan through the footage to find the right second. “…where the footage suddenly jostles. I think that’s someone hitting the tripod. I bet if we ask for other people’s videos of the party, we would be able to find at least one that caught a tripod with Seth Powers’s camera on it right at the same time there’s footage of the man in the mask.”

  “I’m following all of this, but what I don’t understand is why? Why would Seth Powers want Scott Russo and Joseph Palmer dead?” Bronson asks.