The house had a two-story entry area below the tower. I looked up and saw a wrought-iron chandelier hanging in the atrium. There were cobwebs on it, and I wondered if they had formed because the house had gone unused since the murders or because the chandelier was too high up and too hard to get to with a duster.

“This way,” Mrs. Albrecht said.

I followed her into the great room, which was larger than my entire home. It was a complete entertainment area with a glass wall on the western exposure that brought the Pacific right into the house.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“It is indeed. Do you want to see the bedroom?”

Ignoring the question, I turned the camera on and took a few shots of the living room and its view.

“Do you know who has been in here since the Sheriff’s Department relinquished control of it?” I asked.

Mrs. Albrecht thought for a moment before answering.

“Very few people. I do not believe that Mr. Elliot has been out here. But, of course, Mr. Vincent came out once and his investigator came out a couple of times, I believe. And the Sheriff’s Department has come back twice since turning the property back over to Mr. Elliot. They had search warrants.”

Copies of the search warrants were in the case file. Both times they were looking for only one thing — the murder weapon. The case against Elliot was all circumstantial, even with the gunshot residue on his hands. They needed the murder weapon to ice the case but they didn’t have it. The notes in the file said that divers had searched the waters behind the house for two days after the murders but had also failed to come up with the gun.

“What about cleaners?” I asked. “Did someone come in and clean the place up?”

“No, no one like that. We were told by Mr. Vincent to leave things as they were in case he needed to use the place during the trial.”

There was no mention in the case files of Vincent possibly using the house in any way during the trial. I wasn’t sure what the thinking would have been there. My instinctive response upon seeing the place was that I wouldn’t want a jury anywhere near it. The view and sheer opulence of the property would underline Elliot’s wealth and serve to disconnect him from the jurors. They would understand that they weren’t really a jury of his peers. They would know that he was from a completely different planet.

“Where’s the master suite?” I asked.

“It comprises the entire top floor.”

“Then, let’s go up.”

As we went up a winding white staircase with an ocean-blue banister, I asked Mrs. Albrecht what her first name was. I told her I felt uncomfortable being so formal with her, especially when her boss and I were on a first-name basis.