Because they were the real deal—truly good people who were exactly as nice as they appeared to be. After Carter’s father died, Robin had left him casseroles twice a week for months. Stan, he suspected, was responsible for the miraculous fact that his old man’s lawn never once needed a mow until Carter started doing it himself after moving in. It had also been the Stansfields who had suggested that he could afford to keep his parents’ beloved home if he were to build a small guest house in the back for himself and rent out the main house during the summer to pay for the entire year’s expenses.

And they were always asking him over for movie nights and dinners, which, as sweet as they were, sounded to Carter like torture, because Carter was, sigh, an ass.

So in lieu of torturous dinners filled with mind-numbing chitchat, he found other ways to be nice to these extremely nice people. He remembered Stan coming to his door in tears four years earlier. Their daughter, Hannah, had come home from a date with her top ripped and a fat lip and wouldn’t tell him or her mother what had happened. Fortunately, the Stansfields’ worst fears had not come to pass, but likely only because Hannah kneed the guy in the groin and scrambled out of the car. Like so many victims in her situation, she did not want to press charges, but Carter had paid the guy a visit.

His loyalty to the Stansfields didn’t extend, however, to this new visitor, Lindsay Kelly. When he stepped out for the luminol kit, he’d made a quick call to the Hopewell, New Jersey, police department to see if the town might be small enough for someone to know Lindsay’s missing friend with the abusive ex. Turned out the whole story was bogus and that the woman who called herself Hope Miller had left town of her own volition. Starting over again in the Hamptons, she then suckered some real estate agent into giving her a $2,000 advance, as a second quick phone call—this one to the number on the Stansfields’ For Sale sign—had revealed. It was pretty clear to Carter that the woman was a grifter who’d moved on to her next mark.

But now here he was, stuck with a positive luminol test, in front of a stranger who, if he had to bet based on the way she talked and the things she knew, was a lawyer. “I’m sure there’s no reason to panic about your friend. Like I said, the spot could be anything.”

Robin snapped her fingers. “Wait! Before we left town, Stan cut himself with those damn gardening shears, trying to clear the front path for the open house. He was bleeding all over. It probably just dripped when he was running to the kitchen for a towel.”

“If it’s even blood,” Carter emphasized again.