“I shouldn’t be saying this, but I want your help, and I need to be honest with you. I think the Spalter case was a double murder. And I don’t think Kay had anything to do with it.”

It seemed to take her a few seconds to absorb this. “You’re going to get her out of prison?”

“That’s my hope.”

“Wonderful!”

“But I need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

“I assume you have security cameras here?”

“Of course.”

“How long do you retain the video files?”

“A lot longer than we need to. In the old days, we had those clunky video cassettes we had to keep recycling. But the capacity of the new system is huge, and we never physically touch it. It deletes the oldest files automatically when capacity becomes an issue, but I don’t think that happens for about a year—at least not with the files from the motion-activated cameras. It’s different with the files created by the cameras that run continuously in the gym and in the nursing care unit. Those deletions happen quicker.”

“Are you the person in charge of making sure it’s all working the way it should?”

She smiled. “I’m the person in charge of everything.” Her ringed fingers smoothed an imaginary wrinkle on the front of her silk blouse.

“I bet you do a very good job.”

“I try. What is it in our video files that interests you?”

“Visitors to Emmerling Oaks on the day Mary Spalter died.”

“Her visitors specifically?”

“No. All visitors: delivery people, repairmen, maintenance crews—anyone who came onto the property that day.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“How soon do you want Kay to get out of prison?”

Gurney knew he was implying an immediacy in results that was, charitably speaking, an exaggeration, even if the video files contained the sort of smoking gun he hoped to find.

Carol set him up at a computer in a room that occupied the rear third of the bungalow. She then went to another building and emailed several large video files to Gurney’s computer. When she came back she gave him some navigation instructions, leaning over his shoulder in a way that made it hard to concentrate.

As she was about to return to the front office, he asked again as offhandedly as he could, “How do you like working for Spalter Realty?”

“I probably shouldn’t say anything about that.” She gave Gurney the kind of playful look that suggested she probably could be talked into any number of things she shouldn’t do.

“It would help me a lot to know how you feel about the Spalter family.”

“I do want to help. But … this is just between us, right?”

“Absolutely.”