Hannah held her breath as Norman zoomed in and she let it out in a whoop. “it’s Brandi, all right! Now all we need to do is find a shot of someone following her.”

The next few shots yielded nothing, but three minutes later, in the background of a shot Norman had taken of a table of diners, the kitchen door was partially open.

“Hold on… .I’ll zoom in,” Norman said, and then he sighed. “It’s a woman, but she’s almost completely blocked by the foreground. The only thing I can tell for sure is that she’s wearing a black skirt.”

Andrea gave a little gasp of excitement. “But that’s enough! We solved another one, Hannah! All we have to do is look for a woman wearing a black skirt and we’ll have Brandi’s killer!”

“Not necessarily. The woman in the black skirt could have some perfectly reasonable reason for going into the kitchen. For all we know, she went in, washed her hands, and came right back out again.”

“So it all depends on how long she was gone,” Michelle said, looking thoughtful. “How long does it take to kill someone?”

Hannah shrugged. “She’d have to walk through the kitchen, go through the pantry, open the outside door, and follow Brandi all the way out to Martin’s car. That would take a couple of minutes. And then it would take another couple of minutes to stab her. This is just a ballpark figure, but I’d say that if she’s gone for more than five minutes, she’s definitely a suspect.”

“She’s definitely a suspect,” Norman said, and all three Swensen sisters turned to look at him. “While you were speculating, I’ve been running through the photos on the internal camera screen. It’s a lot faster that way. I’ve gone through five minutes and she hasn’t come out of the kitchen yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything after five minutes.”

“Why not?” Hannah asked.

“I moved on to take pictures of the jazz ensemble. And then I took a couple of the Plotniks in front of the Christmas tree. After that, I moved upstairs to do some photos of the miniature Christmas village. I’m really sorry, Hannah, but I don’t have anything in that area again until after you found Brandi’s body.”

“There’s no need to feel sorry. You gave us the only lead we’ve got.” Hannah turned to smile at him. “You’re a great photographer, Norman.”

“Thanks. So what do we do next?”

“We look at it logically. Either the woman in the black skirt is the killer, or she’s a material witness. If she didn’t stab Brandi, she knows who did because the killer must have passed right by her in the kitchen. The upshot is, we need to talk to her. And the caution is, we have to be careful because we don’t know if she’s Brandi’s killer, or not.”

“Make sense,” Michelle said, nodding quickly. “What do you want us to do?”