She looks considerably older than her sixty-some years. Her dyed red hair is disarrayed around her shoulders, her face haggard, her eyes dark pools of grief and something else I try to pin a label on before it’s too late.

“Get out.” Her voice trembles as she jabs a finger at me. “I want everybody out of my house.”

I feel her hatred and fury, and they’re not what I expect in a scenario like this. She just walked through a foyer spattered with her daughter’s blood, and there are no tears, only anger and indignation.

“The housekeeper,” Marino says to Benton and me. “There isn’t one.”

“What do you mean there isn’t one? Not at all?” I ask. “Then who did Hyde talk to when he first got here this morning?”

“I got no idea,” Marino says.

“Whoever the person is she knew Chanel.” Benton states it as a fact.

“There’s no housekeeper? Did your daughter clean the house herself?” I ask Amanda Gilbert this but it’s Marino who answers.

“Apparently Chanel hadn’t been here since the spring,” he says. “And she prefers to pick up after herself.”

“Where was she?” Benton asks her mother but I’m convinced he already knows, and it’s terrible to think about how badly I’ve been fooled and for how long.

“Who the hell are you?” she demands and he tells her.

Then he asks, “Did she have a red Range Rover?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“There’s one registered in her name. I guess you’re not aware of that either.”

“What are you implying? Identity theft?”

“Who notified you about your daughter’s death?” Benton asks and he’s definitely not implying identity theft.

What he’s hinting at is spying. The murdered woman might have been Chanel Gilbert. But she was also someone else. Her mother probably has no idea who and what her daughter really was.

“I found out because she e-mailed me.” Amanda Gilbert jabs her finger at me, and it’s not true. “The coroner e-mailed me. A politician in other words. And I’m supposed to trust a fucking elected official?”

I certainly didn’t send the e-mail, and Bryce swears our office didn’t either.

“I’m actually not a coroner. And I wasn’t elected. I wonder if you could let us see the e-mail,” I say to her quietly, carefully.

She finds it on her phone and shows it to Marino, and when he looks at me I know the truth. The CFC e-mail has been hacked. Possibly Carrie has hijacked my e-mail account and is in my office database, and if so that will be ruinous in ways I can’t begin to calculate. There can be no other explanation unless Lucy signed onto my e-mail account and sent a message to Amanda Gilbert. I seriously doubt that.