“For the sake of the argument,” Marino replies, “let’s assume it’s Chanel Gilbert because who else would it be? Her mother is going to ask a shitload of questions.”

“My answer is simple. I’ll say we need to confirm identification. We need more details and reliable witness accounts. We need undisputed facts that tell us when her daughter was last seen alive, when she last e-mailed or made a phone call. That’s the missing link. We find that out and I have a better chance of knowing when she died. The housekeeper is important. She’s the one who may have the best information.”

I hear myself using words such as reliable, fact and undisputed. I’m being defensive because of what I sense from him. I feel his doubt. I feel it like a glowering mountain looming over me.

“I’m suspicious of the housekeeper to tell you the truth,” he says. “What if she’s involved and is the one who turned off the air-conditioning?”

“Was she asked about it?”

“Hyde said it was already like that when he got to the house. She didn’t seem to know anything about why it was so hot.”

“We need to sit down with her. What’s her name?”

“Elsa Mulligan, thirty years old, originally from New Jersey. Apparently she moved to this area when Chanel Gilbert offered her the job.”

“Why New Jersey?”

“That’s where they met.”

“When?”

“Does it matter?”

“Right now we have so many questions everything matters,” I reply.

“I got the impression Elsa Mulligan hadn’t worked for Chanel all that long. A couple years? I’m not sure. That’s about as much as I know since she wasn’t still at the house when I got there. I’m passing on what Hyde said. She told him that when she let herself in through the kitchen door she could smell this horrible odor like something had died, and yep something sure had. The house was hot as shit and she got a whiff and followed it into the foyer.”

“Did Hyde feel she was being truthful? What’s your gut tell you?”

“I’m not sure of anything or anyone,” Marino says. “Usually we can at least count on the dead body to tell us the truth. Dead people don’t lie. Just living people do. But Chanel Gilbert’s body isn’t telling us shit because the heat escalated decomp, confusing things and I wonder if a housekeeper would know something like that.”

“If she watches some of these crime shows she could.”

“I guess so,” he says. “And I don’t trust her. And I’m getting an increasingly bad feeling about the case and wish to hell we hadn’t walked out on it.”

“We didn’t walk out on it, and you’ll be the problem if you keep saying that.”