He was hunched over his drafting table, staring at a laptop that sat on top of a sheaf of drawings. Two coffee mugs were pushed into a corner. I TURN COFFEE INTO ARCHITECTURE and WORLD’S OKAYEST ARCHITECT. The coffeepot, which sat in a coffeemaker on a table behind him, was empty and the light switched off. His dark hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb recently and he was unshaven, wearing a faded Virginia Tech sweatshirt and old jeans.

As usual, a long, low table on one side of the room was piled with rolled drawings that looked like an incoming tide. The current architectural model he was building for a client—a beautiful, precise, miniature reproduction, as was his style—reminded me of Fallingwater. I could still smell the glue he’d used. Before the cold weather had set in, he’d bought an electric fireplace, plugged it into the wall, and designed and built bookcases on either side to match the mantel and surround so it looked as if it had always been there. Now the fireplace was turned on, taking the chill off the drafty room with its wall of windows where large doors had once been.

He looked up and stretched, swiveling in his chair so he was facing Quinn and me. “Hey,” he said, yawning, “what’s up?”

“We just finished talking to Bobby Noland,” I said. “Did you know Prescott Avery was murdered yesterday?”

When Eli was busy working on a project for a client, he could be oblivious to everything.

He didn’t know. “Jesus. Are you serious? Who did it?”

“If Bobby knew the answer to that, he wouldn’t have had to question us.”

Eli laced his hands behind his head and yawned again. “Don’t be a wise-ass, Luce. Let me rephrase. Does he think you know who did it?”

I avoided looking at Quinn. The answer to that was “maybe,” but I didn’t want to admit it to Eli. I’d pointed enough arrows at Victoria Barkley based on nothing more than the scent of her perfume.

I said, “No,” as Quinn said, “He wanted to know what we knew.”

“So which is it?” My brother looked from me to Quinn, reading both our expressions like open books. “Wait a minute, did this happen at the party? Somebody killed Prescott at his own party?”

Quinn nodded.

“We were there yesterday,” I said. “I was the last person he talked to before it happened. Well, next to last. And Quinn and I found him.”