As Gurney pondered this, another aspect of Paulette’s mini-reenactment was eating at him—that the ultimately fatal scenario was played out within arm’s reach of two individuals who could benefit enormously from Carl’s death. Jonah, who would achieve full control of Spalter Realty. And Alyssa, the spoiled druggy in line to inherit her father’s personal estate—assuming Kay could be gotten out of the way, as in fact she had been.

Jonah and Alyssa. He had a growing interest in meeting them both. And Mick Klemper, as well. He needed to get face-to-face with that man soon. And maybe Piskin, the prosecutor, as well—to get a sense of where he stood in this fog of contradictions, shaky evidence, and possible perjury.

There was a crash in the kitchen. He grimaced.

Funny thing about crashes in the kitchen. He once considered them an indicator of Madeleine’s state of mind, until he realized that his interpretation of them was really an indicator of his own state of mind. When he believed he’d given her a reason to be less than delighted with him, he heard the crash of dishes as a symptom of her annoyance. But if he felt that he’d been behaving thoughtfully, the same dropped dishes would seem a harmless accident.

That night he wasn’t comfortable with his having been nearly an hour late for dinner, or with his inability to remember the names of her friends, or with his leaving her in the kitchen and scurrying off to the den as soon as the last set of taillights receded down the hill.

He realized this last offense was still correctable. After making a few final notes from the most extensive of the neurological websites he’d come upon, he shut down the tablet, put the autopsy report away with the case file, and went out to the kitchen.

Madeleine was just closing the dishwasher door. He went to the coffeemaker on the sink island, set it up, and pushed the BREW button. Madeleine picked up a sponge and a towel and began wiping the countertops.

“Odd bunch of people,” he said lightly.

“ ‘Interesting’ people might be a nicer way to put it.”

He cleared his throat. “I hope they weren’t taken aback by what I said about the criminal justice system.”

The coffeemaker emitted the whooshing-spitting sound that ended its cycle.

“It’s not so much what you said. Your tone has a way of conveying a lot more than your words.”

“More? Like what?”

She didn’t answer right away. She was leaning over the counter, scrubbing a recalcitrant stain. He waited. She straightened up and brushed a few dangling hairs away from her face with the back of her hand. “Sometimes you sound annoyed at having to spend time with people, listen to them, talk to them.”