“Try this on for starters, asshole. It looks like she set the table for herself, meaning she was in here probably not all that long before she died and then something happened because she didn’t get around to eating.” Marino’s face is deep red. “Plus the Doc’s found an indication that someone may have tried to clean up blood in the foyer, maybe staging something. Meaning you need to get your ass back here and secure this place like a damn crime scene. I don’t give a flying fuck what the neighbors think of our tying this place up in a big yellow bow. Do it!”

“Ask him what was in the trash as best he knows,” I say as he continues to chew out Hyde over the phone.

“He doesn’t know.” Marino looks at me as he ends the call. “He says he didn’t touch the trash yet. He didn’t take it and has no idea what was in it. That’s what he says.”

“Well it appears someone took it.”

“He says he’ll find out. Either Vogel or Lapin must have it. Goddamn it!”

Vogel is the state trooper. Lapin must be the gray-haired Cambridge cop I’ve seen writing tickets around here, the one who went to a seminar and is now a bloodstain expert by his way of thinking.

“Maybe check with Lapin?” I ask. “Make sure he did something with the trash? Because this is disturbing.”

“I can’t imagine he would take it.” But Marino calls him next.

He asks him about the kitchen trash. He meets my eyes and shakes his head as he slips a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket of his cargo pants. Vintage wire-rim military aviator Ray-Bans I got him for his birthday last month. He puts them on, blacking out his eyes. He ends the call.

“Nope,” he says to me as he walks to the door that leads outside. “He says he’s not aware of anybody doing anything with the trash yet, and he didn’t touch it. Didn’t see it even. And he sure as hell didn’t take it with him. Well somebody did because it wasn’t like this when I first got here.”

We walk out into the sultry summer morning, the wind light and hot as it stirs the old trees in the side yard.

“Maybe the housekeeper took out the trash before she left.” I suggest the only other possibility that comes to mind. “Did anybody actually see her leave and notice if she had anything in her hands?”

“That’s a good question,” he says as we go down three wooden steps that end on the old brick driveway.

To one side of them flush against the house are two supercans and Marino opens the heavy dark green plastic lids.

“Empty,” he says.