The pane he’d broken in the French door had already been replaced by a new rectangle of glass up next to the latch. He couldn’t help but stare at it a few guilty seconds. That pane was slightly clearer than the others—but no one would notice who wasn’t looking for it. The broken shards of glass he’d left behind had been swept up. Even the fingerprint technician’s black smudges seemed to have been scrubbed away. How quickly things were patched and painted over in this realm of the wealthy. Was there even a chalk outline back in the kitchen doorway? Or had every trace of Ormsby’s life and death already been sanitized and rinsed away?

Mrs. Ormsby took a seat in a wingback chair, and waved—a queenly, airy gesture—for Keegan to take a seat across from her on the settee. A mug of beige coffee sat next to a folded newspaper on a small table at her elbow. Keegan could tell by the typeface that it wasn’t The Times. The Wall Street Journal, no doubt. A pair of tortoise-shell reading glasses balanced on the chair’s arm, where she’d set them when she rose to answer the door. Mrs. Ormsby folded them shut and slipped them into the pocket of her dress. The cup she’d been drinking from was Pyrex glass in a red plastic holder—clearly not the good china—more the kind of thing Keegan’s mother would have bought with those Green Stamps she was always squirreling away. He should have visited her more often.

“And how may I help you?” the widow asked Keegan, once she was settled.

Keegan crossed his legs uncomfortably. “I actually dropped by to see Eve. Is she in?”

“She hasn’t come down yet,” Mrs. Ormsby said. “It was all quite a shock to her, as I’m sure you can imagine.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “She was actually here in the house when it happened,” she said. She shook her head with a kind of ghoulish shiver. “Imagine! Upstairs, asleep. The poor thing.” She leaned back and recovered her more formal tone. “We’re all hoping she’ll get some rest. She’s had no end of troubles recently.”

Keegan thought of the Nembutal bottle on Eve’s bedside table; she might still be in a fog after her triple dose. She was probably asleep right now. He’d try her again later.

The widow Ormsby had sunk into her chair now, as if she wasn’t planning on moving any time soon. She gazed absently at the tall windows, her lips moving wordlessly. Was she looking at the French door? What did she know? What might Lieutenant Moore have told her?

Keegan was perched too far forward on the settee to lean back. He was unsure what to do with his hands, so he held his crossed knee. He’d pay good money for a knock on the door or a ringing telephone right now—any reason to rise and excuse himself and take his leave. After a too-long silence he cleared this throat and said: “Well, let her know I stopped by.” He uncrossed his legs and stood.