“Meat. Pork, maybe. Could have been London broil, I guess.”

“And you took it upon yourself to walk right into the house.” He makes more notes, then the pen goes still and he looks up at her. “You know, that’s the part that I still can’t figure out.”

It’s the part she’s had a hard time figuring out, too, no matter how much she’s thought about it. What lie can she tell that will have the ring of truth?

“Like I told you over the phone,” she says, “I was looking for the owner and then started getting worried. Started imagining some rich old person barbecuing and all of a sudden having a heart attack. Why else would you put something on the grill and then disappear? So I kept calling ‘Anybody home?’ Then I found the laundry-room door open.”

“You mean unlocked.”

“Yes, it was.”

“The door next to the window where you said a pane of glass was missing and another pane was broken,” Investigator Turkington says, writing it down.

“And I went in, knowing I probably shouldn’t. But I thought in my head, What if that rich old person is lying on the floor after having a stroke?”

“That’s the thing—where you make hard choices in life,” Ashley says, his eyes jumping back and forth from the investigator to the camcorder. “Don’t go in? Or never forgive yourself later when you read in the paper that someone could have used your help.”

“Did you film the house, sir?”

“Filmed some porpoises while I was waiting for Madelisa to come back out.”

“I asked if you filmed the house.”

“Let me think. I guess a little bit. Earlier, with Madelisa in front of it. But I wasn’t going to show it to anybody if she couldn’t get permission.”

“I see. You wanted permission to film the house but filmed it anyway without permission.”

“And when we didn’t get permission, I erased it,” Ashley says.

“Really?” Turkington says, looking at him for a long moment. “Your wife runs out of the house afraid somebody’s been murdered in there and it occurs to you to erase part of what you filmed because you failed to get permission from whoever might have been murdered?”

“I know it sounds strange,” Madelisa says. “But what matters is I didn’t mean any harm.”

Ashley says, “When Madelisa ran out and was all upset about what she saw in there, I was desperate to call nine-one- one but didn’t have my phone. She didn’t have hers, either.”

“And you didn’t think to use the one in the house?”

“Not after what I saw in there!” Madelisa says. “I felt like he was still in there!”

“‘He’?”