Archie looked at his hands, hands that had held his children, hands that had moved over every part of Gretchen’s body. “It’s personal,” he said.

“Well, your personal issues affect other people personally,” Susan said. “Like Lisa Watson, for instance.”

Archie looked up. “Gretchen didn’t kill Lisa Watson,” he said.

Susan sighed audibly and threw up her hands.

Henry pursed his lips and stood silently for a moment, and then came over and sat down in the chair next to Archie. He scooted the chair close and folded his hands under his chin. “They were both on that island,” Henry said. “You said you talked to the victim.” He peered over his knuckles at Archie. “Maybe Gretchen saw you and got jealous.”

“Gretchen doesn’t kill when she gets jealous,” Archie said, frustration edging into his voice. He rubbed his face, searching for the words to explain it. “She sees it as a challenge. She wants to win. She wants me to choose her.” He thought of how carefully Gretchen had laid the groundwork for the collapse of his marriage. “In Gretchen’s mind, killing the competition would be cheating.” The more Archie thought about it, the more he was convinced that he was right. “It’s been fourteen months since she killed recreationally,” he added.

Henry lifted his salt-and-pepper eyebrows. “So we’re not counting the serial killer she dismembered two months ago after her escape from the nuthouse?”

“Or the nurse she slaughtered on her way out of that nuthouse?” Susan said.

Archie shook his head. They didn’t understand. “Those weren’t recreational kills for her. She didn’t kill those people for fun; she did it because she had to.”

“So it’s just, what, a crazy coincidence that Gretchen shows up at a party shortly before one of the guests turns up dead?” Henry asked.

“Think about it,” Archie said wearily. “Think of all the Beauty Killer victims we’ve seen over the years. Remember Sarah Jesudason?”

“The librarian,” Henry said.

They had found Jesudason’s decapitated body in the back of her 1997 Subaru Outback, and her head in the central library drop box a week later, with a note apologizing for it being overdue.

“Gretchen enjoys killing,” Archie said. “She stretches it out. She makes an art out of it. This didn’t have any of Gretchen’s creativity. Lisa Watson was stabbed and thrown in a lake. No. Gretchen would consider that crass. Below her pay grade.”