I thought about the conversation I heard the day before through the cast-iron floor gates. It was Mia and Matthews, plotting about something, something that I was pretty sure concerned me. Was I sure it was Mia? I decided against sharing what I heard. I didn’t hear everything, and Ashland was standing next to me. I didn’t want to look like a backstabbing friend, even though I wasn’t. “Well, when we caught her up here with her friends, she tried to say that I gave her permission to be here, but I never did. I think they were having a séance—or something. I would never have agreed to that.”

“You say she was having a séance? Who were these other people?” Detective Simmons pursed her dark red lips as she waited for my answer.

“I don’t know exactly what they were doing. There was a lot of chanting, and it was just plain strange. Her friend was Henri Devecheaux, a local guy. He gave me his card.” I felt my pockets, but the card wasn’t in these jeans. “It’s at my apartment. I can call you with the information later. The other guy was William, William Bettencourt. He was a mutual friend of ours from Charleston.” I hadn’t yet told Ashland that William had been my sort-of boyfriend, and this was certainly not the right time to share.

The officials were carrying out Matthews’ covered body. As they passed us, I shivered and looked away, at the ground, at the sky, anywhere else. I had never seen a dead body before, at least not in my real life.

“Let’s go inside and get out of the sun,” Ashland offered. I followed him, and the detective walked behind me, but I was nervous about going in. I didn’t know how he had died and where. I didn’t want to be disrespectful.

From the way that police were moving up and down the hall, I could tell that whatever had taken place here had happened in the Blue Room. Many tragic events had played out there, against a timeless backdrop of beauty and perceived elegance. In the current restoration project, the Blue Room was ground zero for our operations. It was our computer center, where my team and I worked to produce layouts for each of the rooms and gather the antiques and supplies needed to set them up as a living museum in honor of Old Mobile. It was my temporary workplace; when we completed the project, our work area would be moved off-site, but this was how Matthews had wanted it. He wanted us to work here, in the house. I didn’t know why, but I was happy to oblige—this was a once-in-a-lifetime gig. Now the gray-haired lawyer with the cold gray eyes was as dead as those buried in the mausoleum just a few hundred yards away.

“Can you tell me if anything is missing from the house?” the detective asked. “I mean, I know it’s a big one and you’ve got a lot of boxes here, but could you and Mr. Stuart look around and tell me if anything is gone?”