“Maybe Chanel Gilbert bottled it herself. Like I said it sort of looks homemade.”

“Then we need to find a juicer, a food processor, a Ninja. And I don’t see anything like that here in the kitchen.”

“Well maybe she was into vampires in addition to all the occult shit everywhere,” he says sarcastically.

“It appears that she or someone was vegan and on a gluten-free diet.” I’m looking in the pantry now. “Nothing with wheat. No cheese, fish or meat in her refrigerator or freezer. Lots of herbal teas and nutritional supplements. Again there’s nothing perishable except the juice.”

I refrain from telling him about Chanel Gilbert’s gastric contents. Vegans would abstain from shrimp or any seafood and yet that seems to be the last thing she ate before she was murdered. Was she out at a restaurant last night? Was the food delivered or brought to her by someone she knew? Are remnants of her last meal in the trash that’s missing? Was she really vegan? I don’t give voice to such questions. I don’t want anyone spying on us gifted with autopsy details.

I retrieve an evidence bag from the scene case, deciding to take a bottle of the red juice with me because it’s inconsistent with the context. The juices are fresh. Nothing else is. It’s as if nobody has been living here for a while and yet someone has been. I’m seeing things that contradict each other. I’m picking up mixed signals. Suddenly and in unison the clocks begin to chime. It’s three P.M. Next there’s a burst of radio chatter.

Marino turns up the volume, adjusts the squelch, and there’s a report of a fight in progress in a parking lot on North Point Boulevard.

“Two white males, possibly juveniles in a late-model red SUV. One has on a baseball cap, the other a sweatshirt with a hood, apparently intoxicated and arguing outside the vehicle …,” the dispatcher is saying, and a marked unit responds that it’s in the area, then another one does.

Marino tucks the radio back in a pocket. “Come on, Doc,” he says to me with a sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”

WE HEAD DOWN a hallway of wide board pine flooring that I suspect is original to the house.

The walls are stucco and hung with more old dark English art. A doorway leads into an oak-paneled library that’s a gallery of underwater photographs illuminated by vintage mirrored sconces that have been electrified. Built-in bookcases are crowded with more antique leather volumes most likely purchased as decor, and for a moment I stand in the doorway conducting my usual high recon as Lucy calls it.