“Doesn’t look like anyone broke in,” Frank said. “Not through the window, anyway.”

  Ava studied the bedroom door. She tested the knob and found that it turned freely. The lock itself, fashioned with a keyhole and just two bolts to hold it into the door, looked undisturbed. The hinges were also in solid condition. “The door doesn’t look to have been forced either, assuming she may have locked it.”

  Frank looked to the bed, his arms crossed over his chest. Ava, meanwhile, looked the rest of the room over. The bureau against the left wall looked very old, the mirror scuffed and hazy but in a way that added to its allure. The little table by the edge of the window was just as tidy, the pen and pad sitting on it perfectly, as if deigned to sit there and never be used.

  I’m curious,” Ava said. “I never headed Clarence talk about break-ins or robberies in neighborhoods like this. Does it not happen often?”

  “It happens from time to time, but it’s rare. Even crooks are smart enough to know that if you get caught breaking in around here, the courts are going to treat you like shit. The owners of these sorts of places tend to have friends in high places—banks, courts, things like that.” He gave her a brief smile and added, “Why do you ask?”

  “There’s no forced entry into the bedroom. It makes me think whoever killed her must have already been in the house. And with that party being planned, and so many people coming in and out, it doesn’t seem too unlikely. I think we might need to talk to the maid again.”

  Frank nodded, already heading for the door. “I’ll get her. George Pickett’s reaction to a female detective doesn’t make me think he’s going to be much help if you go asking.”

  Frank stepped out and Ava continued to look around the room. She got down on her hands and knees, looking under the bed for any clues that might be there. But there was nothing. Not even strands of loose hair or dust, proof that the maid was very good at her job. Yet just as she was about to get back to her feet, she caught sight of something on the other side of the bed, against the wall. Viewing it from the lowered position while looking under the bed, it seemed rather obvious. But when she regained her feet and looked to the floor from a standing vantage point, what she had seen wasn’t clear at all.

  She walked over near the window and again got on her hands and knees, almost lying down on the floor. Sure enough, she was able to see it again. It was some sort of grease, just a smear of it no larger than one of her fingers, on the floor. It was a very light brown in color had gone unseen while standing on her feet because of the way the morning sunlight spilled across the hardwood floors. The sun made it almost transparent.

  Ava touched her finger to the edge of the smear of grease and then placed it to her nose. It was mostly odorless, with the faintest traces of an odd, earthy smell. She supposed it could have been something overlooked by the maid and if that were the case, there was no telling how long it had been there. Of course, given the nature of what had recently happened on this room, Ava wasn’t going to rule anything out.

  As she again got back to her feet, Frank came back into the room. The maid, Evelyn, came in behind him. She looked a little shaken to be returning to the room, looking around as if she thought this might all have been some elaborate joke and they were finally going to let her in on the punchline.

  “Thanks for coming up,” Frank said, turning to Evelyn. “As I’m sure you can appreciate, we wanted to speak with you without the possibility of interference or objection from the family.”

  “Of course.”

  “When was the last time you saw the girl?” Frank asked.

  “Penny was on the stairs, sketching something. She always liked to draw, though she wasn’t very good at it.”

  “Do you know what time this might have been?”

  “Shortly after nine last night,” she said. “It was right before I left for the day.”

  “Is that when you usually leave?” Ava asked.

  “Yes ma’am. I’m usually here between six in the morning and nine at night.”

  “Were both Mr. and Mrs. Pickett here when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Penny have any siblings?” Ava asked.

  “An older brother, name of Kelvin. But he’s been out on his own for about a year or so now. Way I hear it, he should be on his way over here right now.”

  “And what about the people downstairs with the Picketts?” Frank asked. “Who are they?”

  “Well, the people that are hugging on them and trying to help them make sense of it are the Duvalls. Mack and Betty. They have two sons floating around here somewhere.”

  “And what about the others that have come in and out for the party this morning?” Ava asked. “Do you have any idea about how many there have been?”

  Evelyn took a moment to think it over. Ava appreciated the fact that the woman seemed to be doing her best to get every single detail right. “I’d say no more than eight. Decorators, a baker wanting to get details on a cake, a seamstress to check to see if Penny’s dress needed to be taken in.”

  “Have you spoken with Mrs. Pickett at all since you found the body?” Ava asked. “Do you know when they last saw Penny alive?”

  “Mrs. Pickett says she knows she was still awake and alive at nearly midnight because she could hear her pacing around a bit. She said Penny was quite nervous about this party.”

  “Has there been any sort of written record concerning the people that have been coming in and out of the house?” Frank asked.

  “No, sir. But they started coming in around seven. I’d already been here for a bit. But I think I can get the names of everyone, if that’s what you need.”

  “I think it might just come to that,” Frank said. “Thank you so much for your help. You’re free to get back to the family.”

  Evelyn made her exit, giving a polite little nod. Frank looked to Ava and said, “What do you think?”

  “I think the killer might very well be in this house right now” Ava said. “And I have an even worse suspicion that it might have been a family member.” She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Oh, and then there’s this.”

  She stepped aside and pointed to the smear of odd grease on the floor. Frank squatted on his haunches and looked at the smear, doing the exact same thing Ava had done—touching it and then smelling it.

  “Any idea what it is?” Frank asked.

  “No. I was hoping you’d know.”

  “I don’t think it’s any sort of mechanic’s grease. It’s not some weird sort of makeup I don’t know about, is it?”

  “No,” she said, unable to suppress her small smile.

  “You see it anywhere else?”

  She shook her head, and they started scanning the room for more of it. When it was clear they weren’t going to find more, Frank shrugged. “Could be hundreds of different things. But I think the fact there’s hardly any means that it may not be important.”

  Ava thought this was the case, but hated to simply ignore it outright. With no clues, it felt irresponsible to rule the smear of grease out completely. She stored it in the back of her mind and then looked to the doorway.

  “Time to start asking questions?”

  “Yeah, I believe it is,” Frank said. “And I won’t even lie to you; men like George Pickett are not going to take kindly to it, especially with a woman detective involved.”

  “I think I’ll be okay. I’m pretty tough.”

  He grinned at her said, “Oh, I know. Just…remember I warned you.”

  They headed downstairs and Ava was glad that George Pickett was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was Millie, still weeping. Frank gave Ava a gentle nudge in Millie’s direction. Apparently, he’d caught on to the apparent truth that women tended to respond better when she was asking the questions.

  “Mrs. Pickett, where would be the best place to conduct interviews with everyone currently in the house?”

  She shrugged but finally managed to say, “George’s study I suppose.” She pointed a shaking finger down the hallway. “George is already in there.”

  Frank started in that direction right away. And though Ava hated to leave poor Millie Pickett to her sorrow, she knew a pesky detective in her ear was likely the last thing she needed. She followed Frank down the hallway and came to the first open door along the hallway. Ava was almost irritated with how beautiful the room was.

  George Pickett’s study was gorgeous and spacious, but it was also a fitting illustration of his tendency towards extravagance and pretentiousness. His desk was the size of one of the smaller boats that came in and out of the harbor. It was made of a dark wood that Ava could not identify and looked as if it were polished every single day. A thick ledger sat on it, as well as an ornate lamp. There were bookshelves on each wall, many of the spines glossy and new, showing that they had never been opened and had likely been purchased for nothing more than decoration.

  George Pickett, though, seemed like a perfect fit for the room. He stood behind the desk, ignoring the chair completely, and lorded over the room like a king. His grief and anger seemed to project throughout the room as Ava and Frank also opted to stand rather than sit down in the five other chairs placed around the room.

  “Let me make sure I am understanding you perfectly clear,” George said. He was trembling with fury. “You are accusing me and my wife of killing our daughter?”

  “No, not at all,” Frank said. “I’ve not accused anyone at this point. But given that your wife states that Penny was moving around and very much alive just shy of midnight, we have to go by what we know. And that is that in the eight hours that passed between midnight and nine this morning, someone murdered her by strangling her. There are no signs of forced entry in her room or at the front door. That leads me to believe that the killer was someone within the house. And being that so many people have come in and out in the last few hours, I think it is very important that anyone in the house right now is not allowed to leave.”

  “I’m no fool,” George said. “Yes, I can see that clearly. But what that does is place my wife and myself in the pool of suspects.”

  “Technically, yes,” Ava said. “But an alibi would clearly free you of suspicion.”

  “Well, the only alibi I have is that I was in bed shortly after eleven last night. I then woke up just after six and started tending to this party.”

  “And was your wife in bed with you the entire time?”

  “Likely not. She gets up to relieve herself about two times a night. I assume that’s when she says she heard Penny moving just shy of midnight. And if you—”

  He faltered here and the fury on his face morphed into sorrow. His arms went rigid as his palms rested on the desk. It looked to Ava like he was struggling to hold himself up—as if being questioned in such a way had brought the full realization of the morning on him. He looked to both of them as if he’d just been physically attacked and then left the desk to make his way across the room. Before he reached the door, he’d started weeping. He covered his face, as if the act of crying might make him weaker in the eyes of anyone that might see. The sounds of his crying faded as he hurried away down the hall elsewhere into the house.

  “As far as alibis go, it’s not a very strong one,” Frank said.

  “Not even if the wife can back it up,” Ava added. “Even if she’s a light sleeper and woke up if George got out of bed, would she tell us if she thought it might make him look bad?”

  “Doubtful.”

  Ava was about to suggest they go speak to the Duvalls, who had not objected when they’d been asked to stay. But before she could get the thought out of her mouth, two people came in through the office door. The first was Millie Pickett. Though she looked much better than she had when Ava and Frank arrived half an hour ago, she was still shaky and weak. She was being escorted into the room by a young man that bore a striking resemblance to George. This, Ava assumed, was the older son Evelyn had mentioned.

  Millie fell into the first chair she came to, and the young man stayed by her side, holding her hand.

  “You’re the son, I take it?” Frank said.

  “I am. Kelvin Pickett. And look…I know you have a job to do, but you can’t just accuse my parents like this.”

  “As I’ve been saying over and over this morning,” Frank said, “I’m not accusing anyone. We’re just trying to get the story straight. Kelvin, where do you live?”

  “A little town about an hour away from here. Wyatt River.”

  “And you’ve just arrived here?”

  “Yes. I’ve been here for about three minutes. Long enough to see and hear my father break in half over this.”

  Ava could see that Kelvin had some of his father’s stubborn defiance in him and thought she might be able to use it to their advantage. All she had to do was swing it so that Kelvin truly didn’t think he or his parents were being directly targeted. She stepped a bit closer to the chair where Millie sat and lowered her voice.

  “Kelvin, how well do you know the Duvalls?”

  Kelvin looked confused for a moment but then Ava saw the shift she’d been expecting. He looked to his mother for just a moment before looking back to Ava. “I know Mack pretty well, I guess. I don’t know his wife at all, really. Mack and my father are competitors in the business world, but they’ve always been really good friends. They would—”

  Millie Pickett took her son’s hand and patted it affectionately. “You don’t need to answer their questions,” Millie said. “I hate that you’re even caught up in this. You need to be…you need to be grieving…”

  At this, she also broke into a fresh bought of weeping. Being brand new to this sort of scene, Ava had never been forced to speak to someone so soon after losing a loved one. It made her think of how she felt when she’d learned of Clarence’s death. It had taken her several days to fully accept that he was gone, that he was simply no longer a part of her life—of this world. It made her feel a little wretched to be questioning this family less than three hours after losing their daughter and sister.

  “I’m taking her out of here,” Kelvin said. He sneered at them but Ava thought she saw something very close to respect in his eyes, She wondered if he might be the only one in the family that realized they were asking these questions because they were trying to find the person who killed his sister.

  “Kelvin,” Frank said, “would you please send in the Duvalls?”

  “Yes,” he said quickly. Ava could see the emotion riding under his calm façade and wondered how much longer it would be before it broke. He hurried his mother out of the room, her head sinking into the crook of his shoulder.

  “If Kelvin has a home in Wyatt River,” Ava said, “I’d say he has a pretty solid alibi.”

  “Better than I was asleep all night, that’s for sure,” Frank added. “I do find it sort of interesting that Mack Duvall and George Pickett are direct competitors yet also on a very friendly basis.”

  “Friendly sure,” Ava said. “But friendly enough to hang out at the house even after your friend’s daughter has been murdered?”

  “Yeah, it seems a little strange, doesn’t it?”

  Before either of them could comment on this further, the Duvalls arrived and stormed through the doorway. Mack Duvall had the same I-dare-you look on his face that Ava had seen on George Pickett. She took a deep breath and prepared herself, keeping in mind that with this rich crowd before her, any cross word out of her mouth might very well cost her the detective position she’d miraculously earned.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Frank didn’t like the look of Mack Duvall. He was just the sort of man that looked arrogant at first glance—the sort you just knew was going to turn out to be a grade-A asshole. His wife walked sheepishly behind him, dressed in a delicate white gown that Frank supposed had been intended as her wardrobe for Penny Pickett’s coming out party.

  “I certainly hope you have some answers,” Mack Duvall said. “Because if you intend to even suggest that we had anything to do with this, I’ll have to contact your direct supervisor.”

  Oh, and I’m sure you would, too, Frank thought. Instead, though, he said, “Not at all. As you can imagine, the Picketts are distraught over Penny’s death and we were hoping to get information out of you so we wouldn’t have to burden them with it.”

  “Of course,” Betty Duvall said.

  Mack Duvall looked to her with a distrusting glance. Apparently, the Duvall home was the sort where a woman was to be seen, not heard. As Mack regarded the detectives, another figure came in through the door. Frank could tell it was a Duvall right away; the boy had the sharp nose and strawberry blonde hair of his mother.

  “James, you don’t need to be in here,” Mack said. “Go on out and see what you can do for the Picketts.”

  “They sent me in here. They want to be alone, Father.”

  Frank wasn’t sure why, but it seemed that Mack did not like this bit of news. He looked awkwardly between his son and his wife, fuming. Beside Frank, Ava started the line of questioning, and he was nervous for her. He had no idea how she might react if a wealthy man like Mack Duvall or George Pickett said something inappropriate or sexist to her.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Duvall, can we assume you were simply here to support the family during their big day for Penny?”

  “That’s right,” Mack snapped. “We got here shortly after eight o’ clock to see if there was anything we could do to help.”

  “Kelvin Pickett told us your families are very good friends,” Ava said.

  “We are. George and I have been good friends ever since our college days.”

  “But you’re competitors at work. Yes?” Frank asked.

  “We’re bankers at different establishments,” Mack said, speaking as if he were explaining it to a five year-old. “Yes, there is always competition, but it is all in good fun.”

  “How often would you say your families get together just to spend time and enjoy each other’s company?” Ava asked.

  The look on his face made it quite clear that Mack Duvall did not like the idea of a woman questioning him in such a way. He looked almost disgusted by it, but he still managed to answer.