“Okay,” Lila said, but she came into the bedroom anyway, picked up one of the other pillows and shook it out of its case. “Spit, spot. We’ll have this room shipshape in short order.” She went to the closet and grabbed an armload of clothes from the floor. Dumped them on the bare mattress and started to fold.

“Stop,” Emily snapped. Lila dropped the pants she’d been folding and froze. “Sorry,” Emily said. “It’s just that I was giving those away.”

“So what can I do?” Lila asked, hands on her hips.

“Nothing.”

Lila surveyed the disarray in the room with a jaundiced eye.

“It all feels contaminated.” Emily’s throat closed. She tried to swallow. “I have to do laundry.”

Her mother came over and put her arms around her. “It’s all right,” Lila said, though Emily knew it was anything but. “Sometimes we all need to do laundry. Here.” She gave Emily a tissue.

Emily sat on the bed and Lila sat next to her. “I see they gave you back your car,” Lila said.

“My car,” Emily said. “Yes, they did. But they think I used it to kill that man in the storage unit and move his body.”

Lila’s jaw dropped. “Why on earth would they think that?”

In a rush, Emily told her about the CCTV stills taken in the dead of night. When she finished, Lila got up and stepped to the window. She stood there, staring out for a few moments. Then she turned back to Emily. “Darling, can I tell you the one thing that’s bothering me most about all this? From the moment you opened up that storage unit the first time and were astute enough to realize that something was off, there’s been a chain of bad events, one after the other. Your car gets hit. Your client’s husband goes missing. His dead body turns up in that infernal storage unit. I know you feel as if you did something to trigger the chain, but you didn’t.” She put her hand under Emily’s chin. “Right? Keep telling yourself that. So the question is, what did?”

“And the answer?”

“The answer is . . .” Lila paused and thought. “I don’t know what the answer is, but I have an idea where to look. For starters, I’d go back to that storage unit. It began there, didn’t it? The police are allowing us to go back in, and I promised Ruth that I’d meet her there in the morning. Becca’s meeting us there, too. If nothing else, getting out of here will do you a heap of good. God knows you need to, or before you know it you’ll be power-washing the driveway.”

Emily gave a weak laugh. As always, Lila’s logic was impeccable.