Once he was gone, I turned and went into Wendell’s office. I didn’t blame Detective Keegan for his wary attitude, and I wished there was some way I could assure him that I knew what I was doing, that I was fully aware of the principles of chain of evidence and the like. In time, I supposed, he would see that I wasn’t some incompetent Nancy Drew wanna-be, but a finely trained and meticulous detective. I smiled as I thought of Eli Gold, the man who had taught me everything I knew about investigations. Though he was now retired and living in Florida, he would always be very much a part of my life. Sometimes it almost seemed as if Eli were still looking over my shoulder, interpreting the facts and calmly explaining what I should do next.

Welcome back to the scene of the crime, I thought now as I walked around Wendell’s desk and looked down at the floor where his body had lain, dead, this very morning. The police had left a bit of a mess behind with fingerprint dust on walls and furniture and vivid white chalk marks on the dark blue carpeting. It looked as if they had been very thorough—as one would expect in a high-profile case of a wealthy man such as this.

Still, that didn’t mean there wasn’t more to find. I thought of Eli’s “crime scene checklist”—the 30 things I was supposed to try to ascertain right up front, beginning at the scene of the crime. Eli had made me memorize all 30, in alphabetical order, from Age of Victim to Wound Patterns. As I mentally worked my way through the list now, I knew that there were still a lot of unanswered questions.

Silently, I padded around the room, looking for things the police might’ve missed, reconstructing the events of the morning in my mind. From what I could remember when I first found the man on the floor, nothing had been amiss with either the victim’s clothing or his office. The only thing askew was the trash can, and its contents had since been removed by the police. The papers that had been on Wendell’s desk were gone now, too, as were his appointment calendar and the hard drive from his computer. I went through his drawers but found nothing unusual. I flipped through his Rolodex and noted that he did seem to have a lot of medical-type phone listings, from drug supply stores to dialysis centers. I made a note to ask Marion about any chronic medical conditions that he might have had other than his diabetes, knowing these numbers could either be work-related or personal.

Because I needed to see an appointment calendar, I headed back out to Gwen’s office and easily located hers. It was still open on the desk, the notebook-sized pages heavily penciled on, scribbled through, and otherwise edited. Flipping back a few days, I could see that previous entries were much neater. Turning back to today, however, which was a Monday, I saw that this entire week was kind of a mess. Though Wendell had had appointments scheduled every day this week, Gwen had drawn a large “X” on each day after today, and there were notations next to many of the names, like “left message,” “appt. cxed.” and “resched.” Obviously, she had been canceling and rescheduling his appointments for the week. I remembered her saying something earlier on the phone about Wendell going in for surgery. I wondered what the surgery was for, and I made a note to ask Marion about it later.