“Any hesitation to the knife wounds?”

  “None.” Harry’s mouth flattened in a grim line. “He knew what he was doing. The wounds were all strategic locations. They would have hurt like hell but been slow to kill. The techs have the knife and the ropes, but I can tell you from looking at the knots, he must have been a Boy Scout.”

  “Did you ever watch the show?” Kevin asked. “Both twins were Eagle Scouts.”

  “Their characters were,” Farah interjected. “Doesn’t mean they knew anything in real life.”

  “I’m lost,” the medical examiner said. “What show?”

  “Story Farm,” Kevin explained. “It was a religious kids’ show, popular about twenty years ago. It’s how Hugh and Trent Iverson became famous.”

  Harry’s blank expression remained, and Farah had to remind herself that if someone didn’t have kids or if they weren’t young enough, it was possible they hadn’t heard of Story Farm—though it had dominated youth pop culture for more than a decade. Trent and Hugh had been adolescent heartthrobs who’d grown into megastars, and Farah’s daughter had been in love with the twins, even though they were ten years older than her.

  “Any other questions?” the doctor asked.

  Kevin turned to Farah, who shook her head. “No, but put a rush on everything,” he said. “The chief wants this prioritized.”

  “Oh yeah, I get it.” The doctor bobbed his head. “And I’ll run the tests myself. I know how things seem to walk away or leak in these situations.”

  “Appreciate that.” Kevin glanced at Farah. “You ready to talk to the big man?”

  “Let’s do it.” She glanced up, but Hugh’s window was now empty, and it was disarming, not knowing where the actor was. “I’m dying to see what light he sheds on this.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE DETECTIVE

  On their way back to the house, Farah and Kevin took the path by the pool. The white limestone deck surrounded an indigo-blue lagoon-shaped pool that glowed in the late-morning sun. Four teak chaise lounges framed the water, each with its own white umbrella and red pillows on white cushions, creating a resort-like oasis surrounded by towering palm trees and lush tropical plants. A massive cabana framed the far end and was the current location of the Iverson staff.

  The employees were scattered throughout the covered space, and it looked like they were segregated by uniform type, with the maids reclining back on the white sectional, the kitchen staff perched at the bar’s island, and the maintenance workers standing by the right row of columns. They were all in dark-green attire, but each with a distinct style for their position. As they neared the cabana, Farah made a quick appraisal of the group, who all seemed to be impeccably put together with ironed uniforms, bright-white sneakers, and professional hair and makeup. “I don’t see a single cell phone,” she murmured to Kevin.

  The conversations quieted as they passed, and a tall dark-haired woman stepped away from the columns and approached, introducing herself as Xiying Lee, a landscaper. “May I speak to you in private?” she asked. “There are some concerns among the staff.”

  Well, that had been quick. Farah wondered at her need for privacy, but Kevin nodded as if it were common practice. “Sure,” he said easily. “Let’s move into the shade.” He gestured to the side, where there was a small alcove under a clump of banana trees.

  Once they were alone, the woman tucked her short hair behind her ear, exposing a pearl earring. “We haven’t had access to a phone, but we’d like to call an attorney and understand what we can and can’t talk about.”

  We. A union, already formed and united. Farah’s patience took a nosedive. “We aren’t arresting any of you,” she said. “We just need some information to aid in—”

  Kevin held up his hand, halting her explanation. “What do you think you can’t talk about?”

  “Well, we all signed confidentiality agreements. Very strict confidentiality agreements.”

  He shook his head. “Those are void in the case of a crime.”

  “Only if the information is related to the crime,” Xiying argued. “We don’t know what you’re going to ask us, and—no offense—you aren’t going to know what you should be asking us without fishing in a lot of empty waters first.”

  “Do you know where we should be fishing?” Farah interrupted.

  The woman ignored her, and for a landscaper, she sure seemed to have a strong handle on the law. “We’d like to speak to an attorney and will want them to be present during our questioning.”

  Shit, this was going to take forever. “Does everyone feel this way?” Farah asked.

  “Yes, and we’re all under the same contract.” The woman met her gaze squarely, and if this was how tough she was with law enforcement, Farah would have hated to see her against a hydrangea.

  “What does the contract specifically forbid?” Kevin asked.

  “Discussing anything that occurs on this property or that we are exposed to at any point in our employ, including off property. Sometimes we travel with the primaries or go with them on location. Not me, of course.” She shrugged, and Farah tried to place her age. She looked twenty-five but carried herself with the quiet maturity of a woman twice that. “But the other staff does.”

  Kevin looked at Farah with a scowl, and she could match his frustration tenfold. If the employees were all forbidden from talking about anything on this property, they would be dealing with a houseful of mutes. They’d eventually get them to talk, but it would require a judge’s stamp of approval, and in Hollywood, who knew which judge they’d get.

  Kevin pointed toward the house. “If Hugh Iverson tells us you can talk, will you?”

  She glanced toward the cabana, where her fellow employees were lined up along the edge as if waiting for a firing squad. “I can’t speak for them, but personally, I won’t.”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE KID

  When things get tough, you get tougher! That’s what Big Billy on his favorite cartoon always said. It was time to get tougher. Being tougher sounded exciting, which was good because he was bored. He had tried to practice his numbers by counting the boxes in the room, but he couldn’t remember what came after thirteen.

  Then he tried pretending that the cord coming out of a big white box thing was a snake. That was pretty fun for a while but then got old. Getting tough sounded fun; the only problem was . . . he didn’t know how to do it. Whenever Billy got tough, he just made a fist and punched it into the air and then had a great idea that solved whatever the problem was. Billy had never been locked in a room in the dark, but he did once fall down a hole. He had torn his shirt into thin pieces and tied them together and made a rope and somehow used it to climb out.

  That was a cool idea, but he wasn’t in a hole. He was in a room, one without any windows and with just one door. The handle was locked, and he’d tried to take off his shirt, but that didn’t seem to help with anything.

  Get tougher.

  He took a deep breath, but a sharp pain shot through his head and he couldn’t remember when he’d last had his medicine. What if he had a seizure, right here? Who would help him? He was starting to feel scared, and to distract his tears from coming, he pulled Mommy’s notebook out from his book bag. Almost all the pages were filled with her squiggly cursive writing, but the backs of the pages were empty, and he pulled off the cap of the pen and started to draw Big Billy being tough, his hand resting on the lines of text on the opposite side of the page.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE MOM

  Dear Kyle,

  If you’re reading this letter, I’m probably already dead. If I’m not dead, please close this journal right now, stick it back where you found it, and just call and ask me about it.

  Are you still here? I’m serious—don’t read any further if I’m alive and well. I’ll never have sex with you again if you keep reading on.

  I mean it.

  Stop reading and respect my privacy or I swear to God I’ll tell your parents that we had to file bankruptcy because of your online poker addiction.

  Okay. You’re still reading, so I guess I am dead.

  There are two things you need to know, from the start.

  I’m not the first dead one. At the time that I’m writing this, there have been at least four of us killed.

  And second, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t show this notebook to anyone or tell anyone about what’s in it, not until you have a chance to read it all.

  After that, once you know everything—it’s up to you.

  I love you, and I always have.

  Kerry

  CHAPTER 17

  THE DETECTIVE

  “The staff seems scared.” Farah stood in the middle of the Iverson living room, her voice soft.

  “Yeah, I got that too. But of what? Getting sued, or something else?” Kevin placed his palms on his butt and leaned back, earning a pop somewhere in his lower back.

  Farah glanced up, listening for sounds from the second floor, but this house was built like a bunker. Supposedly Hugh was coming down, but it had been—she glanced at her watch again—twelve minutes since Nora had gone to get him, and this was getting ridiculous. Screw the kid gloves and the confidentiality agreements. Two dead people deserved justice, and someone needed to start answering some damn questions. She was about to say that when Hugh Iverson rounded the corner and strode into the living room.

  The cameras, as it turned out, didn’t do the man justice. Farah forgot her irritation, her line of questioning, and her marriage vows at the entrance of Hugh, who met her gaze head-on, with eyes that were slightly red. “You must be Detective Anderson.” He shook her hand—nice strong clasp—and then turned to Kevin, who seemed oblivious to the stunning specimen before them. “Detective Mathis?”

  “Should we take a seat?” Kevin asked, looking around the pristine room.

  “Sure, anywhere you like. And blame Nora’s designer for the chairs. They’re hell to sit in.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Farah chose a white number with wooden arms and a backward tilt that forced her to do a crunch just to stay upright. Kevin looked equally miserable on a square armchair, while Hugh looked like a model, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, an arm slung over the back. He was in a cream cashmere sweater that clung to his athletic build and dark-wash jeans. His feet were bare, and it felt strangely intimate to have a glimpse of Hugh Iverson’s feet.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come down earlier. This is—ah—hard.” He swallowed, and the line of his jaw grew more pronounced. Farah forced herself to look away before she could be accused of gawking. “Especially given the situation and the fact that another person is involved.”

  “You’re referring to the woman?” Kevin asked, and rearranged his position, trying to find a more comfortable one.

  “Yes. Who is she?”

  “We haven’t made an ID yet. Your fiancée wasn’t familiar with her, but do you know anything about her? Did you meet her last night?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I saw my brother out by the pool, but he didn’t have anyone with him, at least not that I saw. One of the employees mentioned his car was still here this morning, so Nora had someone go down and invite him to breakfast.”

  Given that he’d been asleep during those events, Nora must have given him a play-by-play of the morning. Farah frowned, not happy, but also not surprised, that they had discussed and probably collaborated on their stories.

  “You talked to him out by the pool?” Kevin asked, and now the little notepad from his breast pocket was out, and his pen was moving. From Farah’s viewpoint, it looked like a doodle of squiggly boxes.

  “We shot the shit a little. Talked about the USC game. Maybe five minutes’ worth. I invited him to watch a movie with us, but he declined.”

  “How did he seem? Nervous? On edge? In a hurry? Anything suspicious?”

  “If I had to guess, Trent was high last night.” He shrugged. “Though whatever blood tests you run might say differently. But he seemed a little hyperfocused. Tense. Not any way I haven’t seen him before.”

  “From the appearances of the scene, it looks like your brother tortured this woman, then killed himself. Does that seem to fit with his character?” Kevin asked.

  Hugh sighed. “I don’t think anyone wants to think that someone they love would do something like that. But to answer your question, my brother was always a big fan of the Old Testament. Isaiah 1:17 and all that.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that verse,” Kevin said. “Enlighten us.”

  “It’s about delivering justice. Believe it or not, my brother had a very strict moral code. He didn’t get his kicks off hurting people. If you’re saying he tortured that woman, then she must have deserved it—at least in his mind. And maybe then he couldn’t handle what he’d done.”

  It was a lot to absorb, and Farah tried to stay ahead of the information. “So you think she might have been guilty of something? This woman?”

  He grimaced. “I don’t know. I hate to cast suspicion on some woman I have no idea about. All I can speak on is my brother and what I know about him. You asked if a murder and suicide fit with his character, and I’m telling you the only scenario I can come up with for how and why he would have tied someone up and stabbed them to death.”

  Kevin had stopped with the doodling. Farah could see only half his pad, but it looked like he had written down the Bible verse and the word GUILTY followed by a question mark.

  “What time did you talk to Trent by the pool?” Kevin asked.

  “It was late. Maybe eleven.”

  “And after that you went down to the theater?” Farah asked.

  “Yeah. Nora and I watched the movie, had a few glasses of wine, and I fell asleep in the theater.”

  “What movie?” she asked.

  He gave her a long look before answering. “Brothers of Sam.”

  It was a Western, one that was still in theaters. Her husband had been wanting to see it, but between their work schedules and the guest bathroom retile project that seemed to be stretching into next summer, they’d never make it. “What’d you think?”

  He shrugged. “Entertainingly mediocre.”

  She stowed away the answer for future personal use. She would never be able to share the origins of it but would always, for the rest of her life, tie that phrase in with this moment, when she sat in Hugh Iverson’s living room and talked about movies and his dead twin brother.

  “So you slept until Nora woke you up. Did you wake up at all during the night? Hear anything?”

  “The theater is pitch dark. It’s easy to get disoriented without the sunlight coming in the windows. I think I woke around six or seven, then rolled over and went back to sleep.”

  “And is it normal for you to sleep so late?” She glanced at her notes. “It was, what? Around nine thirty when Nora woke you up?”

  “It’s not, actually.” He met her eyes, and his direct gaze was like a warm spotlight of attention, one she didn’t look away from. “I’m normally up by six thirty or seven during the week. But I do tend to sleep later on the weekends, and like I said, the theater is dark.”

  Nothing too suspicious about that. Still, Kevin made the notation. He cleared his throat and jumped back into the fray. “Prior to last night, when’s the last time you spoke to Trent?”

  Hugh’s dark brow pinched in concentration. “Tuesday—no, it was Wednesday. He came by to get something from Nora. We talked in the driveway for a bit.”

  “What did he need from Nora?” Farah leaned forward, and the strain on her lower back eased.

  “I don’t know.” Hugh shrugged. “You’d have to ask her.”

  “Were you and Trent close?” Kevin asked.

  The question seemed to sadden Hugh, and he took a moment to collect himself, studying his ankle before turning his head and staring out the window. By the time he spoke, his face was composed, but a tremor of emotion existed in his voice. “My brother is—was—a very complicated man. There are traits that we have in common and many things that we differ in. I chose to handle the difficult things in my life one way; he took a different path. We disagree over those paths, frequently. But there is always—has always been—love and support there. I don’t understand why he does certain things, but I’ll help him however I can. No, we weren’t close.” He cleared his throat. “We were more than that. We were one. I’ve lost a part of me, and I have to learn how to function without that part. To be frank? Right now, I want to die, and that woman upstairs is the only thing that is keeping me living.”

  A weaker woman would have swooned, but Farah was too cynical for that. The monologue was flawless, and she critically analyzed the tone, the energy, the man before her, whose perfect edges were fraying and cracking before their eyes.

  If he was acting, he was the best actor in the world.

  But that right there was the problem. He was.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE LEADING LADY

  Nora Kemp stood in the house’s two-story library, her cell phone pressed to her ear, and listened to their attorney drone on about legal processes. As soon as he took a breath, she cut in. “I just want to know if we can keep them quiet.”

  “Well, it depends. About what?” Jeff Bourdin had an infuriating way of speaking as if he had all the time in the world and his clients were whiny babies waving their pacifiers in the air.

  “About everything!” she snapped. “Does it matter? I don’t want our personal staff blabbing things about our lives. If they didn’t see Trent, and they weren’t here when the murder happened, I don’t understand why they’re even being questioned.”

  “In the police’s defense, Nora—they don’t know what the staff did or didn’t see, or who was working when.”