Another woman stumbled in behind Jacqui. She had Billy’s freckles, or he had hers. The auburn curls he cropped close to his head stood out around hers, like the hair of an ungroomed poodle. So this was Annie Lisa, Billy’s mom. An older woman, encased in magenta silk, kept an arm around Annie Lisa as they waded through the heavy pile. We were never introduced, but I assumed she was the wife of the corporate counsel, Linus Rankin, since he came in a few minutes later.

I knew from my database that Billy’s mother was forty-eight, but she appeared more like a schoolgirl, with her uncertain, almost coltlike gait. She looked around with a puzzled face as if she didn’t know why she was on the planet, let alone this particular bit of it. When I moved across the room to greet her, her husband immediately went to her side as if to forestall her talking to me. He took her elbow and almost pushed her to an armchair as remote as possible from the middle of the room.

When everyone else was seated, and Sneedham had served weak coffee, Buffalo Bill stumped in, using his silver-topped walking stick like a ski pole to push himself through the high pile. He went to the heavier of the armchairs Mildred had moved; she took the one to his left. Mrs. Bysen sat on a couch and patted the cushion next to her for me.

“Well, young woman? Well? You’ve been trespassing on my warehouse, spying on me, so you’d better have a good explanation of what you’re up to.” Buffalo Bill glared at me and blew so heavily that his cheeks pouched out.

I leaned back against the thick cushions, although the couch was so deep it wasn’t very comfortable. “We do have a lot to talk about. Let’s start with Billy. Something happened at the company that upset him so badly he didn’t think he could talk to anyone in the family about it. What was that?”

“It was the other way around, Detective,” Mr. William said. “You were present the day Billy brought that ridiculous preacher up to our offices. We spent days trying to smooth over—”

“Yes, yes, we know all that,” Buffalo Bill cut his son off with his usual impatience. “Did you say something to him, William, to make him run away?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Father, you act as though Billy were as delicate as one of Mother’s roses. He takes everything too hard, but he knows how we run our business; after five months in the warehouse, he’d seen everything. It’s only been since he came under the thumb of this preacher that he started behaving so strangely.”