“And Edgar Allan Poe.” Bruxton pointed to a row of slender, cloth-bound volumes. Those used to be mine, I almost blurted out. It was rare for Claudia’s interests to intersect with mine, but we both loved Poe, especially his verse. I’d memorized some of his poems, and Claudia used to ask me to recite them for her. It had been a long time since she had done that.

“So she’d go slumming on Park Avenue?” asked Renfrew.

“Exactly,” I said, remembering the Irving Berlin song she was referring to. “Claudia has no interest in pop culture or the bourgeois.” I held up a Sex and the City DVD. “Not her style.”

“All right, what else?” prompted Renfrew. But as I went through the rooms it was hard to put into words what was out of place. She would never have bought the three bottles of Perrier Jouet “La Belle Epoque” rose champagne that were in the fridge; her beverage of choice was whiskey, preferably Jack Daniel’s, neat. But that was nothing next to lack of mess, smell, and chaos I associated with Claudia. The apartment had become too sterile. By the time I got around to pointing out the shoeboxes in the closet, I felt as if I’d bored the detectives to tears.

“Claudia and I wear the same size shoe, a seven,” I said. The brown box that held the Christmas present from me was cast off to the side, where I’d left it. “These are size nines. They might fit that woman at the morgue, but not my sister.”

“Maybe your sister was selling shoes on eBay,” Bruxton said. He gestured at one wall. “Why are there three empty picture frames hanging here?”

I looked at the antique carved wood and realized that some things I took for granted would seem odd to anyone else. Claudia’s talent was for drawing, and she was good enough to have her work included several shows at small galleries around New York. I’d framed some of her less disturbing, gothic-inspired subjects, but she’d torn them up one afternoon without explanation. She had apologized and promised to replace them, and I left the frames up as a reminder. Before I could explain any of this to the detectives, Mr. Pete spoke.

“Shoes could be for cousin,” he said. He was holding a dyed-pink python pump and examining it seriously. “Cousin have big feet for girl. Big girl, overall.”

“We don’t have a cousin, Mr. Pete,” I said.

“Yes, Miss Claudia, cousin.” Mr. Pete gestured with his open palms upwards, as if this made everything clear.

“But Mr. Pete, Claudia is my sister.” I’d been impressed with how sharp his mind had seemed downstairs, but maybe it wandered off to pasture at intervals. “My parents were both only children. They didn’t have other relatives in this country. There was just Claudia and me.”