It appears to be a homemade sachet, and it seems more of the same. I’m reminded of the cold-pressed juices, the candles in the living room and the clocks being wound. Someone is industrious, working with fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs and homeopathic remedies but there’s no evidence any such concocting has gone on inside this house. Not any area we’ve searched so far.

It’s a skin regeneration preparation … Just use something so you don’t completely destroy your sweet tender skin, Carrie filmed herself saying.

She’s obsessed with her health, her youth and most of all her power, and she’s skilled at ranging about freely without leaving a trace. Unless it’s a trace we’re supposed to find. Like the recording device inside the silver box. Like latent blood that reacts to a reagent, and she knows I’d look. She knows how I think and work, and I’m suspicious about what all of this means and how dangerous it could be to remain inside this house.

She wants you here.

There can be no doubt about it.

You should leave now.

I pull the bedcovers back farther and look closely at the linens, a high-thread-count polished off-white cotton with a pale gray duvet. I pull the covers down the rest of the way and find a black silk pajama top inside out. Chanel was nude because she took her pajamas off. Or someone did, and where are the bottoms? They weren’t in the drawers or with the body. I ask Marino to remind me what the housekeeper Elsa Mulligan said. She claimed Chanel left here yesterday at around three or three-thirty P.M. I recall Marino telling me this and he confirms it. He says that’s what Hyde told him when we responded to the house the first time at around eight-thirty this morning.

“Like I already told you the housekeeper and Hyde talked for a few minutes,” Marino says. “That was it.”

“And then she was gone by the time we got here.” It seems an increasingly important detail. “What happens if you try to call her? Do we know if you can really reach her?”

“I haven’t tried yet. We’ve been a little busy. Allegedly she mentioned Chanel was staying in and working last night,” he repeats the same story. “Allegedly there was no indication she might be expecting anyone, and allegedly she’d broken up with a boyfriend last spring. Allegedly she and Chanel met in New Jersey a couple years ago.”

“That’s a lot of allegedlys.”

“Hell yeah there are. You got that right. At this point I don’t trust a goddamn thing.”

“Has anybody talked to her alleged former boyfriend? Do we know for a fact there’s a former boyfriend?”

“Carrie Grethen was in New Jersey two months ago, right before she went to Florida,” he repeats that point.