“Huh. Really? Okay, then. Call Chief Bruyn and show him where you think I broke into. I’d love to see it. I figured it was just a rumor, but it seems not.”

His whole face froze now, dismay in his eyes.

“So Megan does practice Santeria.” I scribbled in my notebook. “Is she an iyalorisha or just a practitioner?”

“A practitioner,” he said slowly.

“Seems like an odd choice for someone like Megan, but maybe not. She’s here, so she obviously has some yearning for the spiritual. Santeria has a strong role for women, which she’d appreciate, but you should tell her that’s more true of the Americanized version. The true Santerian traditions coming from Cuba are definitely slanted toward the guys. If she wanted a more feminist version of voodoo, she would be better off with Candomblé.”

As he stared at me, his smooth veneer fell away, his gaze sliding to the door as if mentally willing Megan to barrel through and kick me out. A man with the charisma, but not the balls, to be a leader.

“Actually, I was the one who brought Megan to Santeria,” he said, picking his words carefully. “She came to a meeting with a friend of hers, a researcher. Megan and I went home together. And this”—he opened his hands, indicating the house—“was the result. The perfect blending of the spiritual and the commercial.”

Spiritual for him. Commercial for her. A fortuitous meeting all around. I doodled in my book as he explained. I already knew what attracted him to Santeria, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that despite what Vee said, Alastair was the true devotee, not Megan. As a religion, Santeria suited him. It was mystical and New Age, and slightly shocking. Exactly the image he wanted to project.

Megan would go along with it because Alastair was the Pied Piper who brought girls to her workhouse. It was in her best interests to not only keep him happy, but hold a blackmail-worthy secret over him. Ah, true love.

Time to change the subject. “I saw you gave DNA to the sheriff’s department?”

“Of course. If it eliminates me from the list of suspects, then that benefits everyone here. We have enough prejudice to combat without suspicions like that.”

“They took samples from the victims, too,” I said.

“Yes, I suppose they would, in order to eliminate them from any samples found at the scene.”

I nodded. “There wouldn’t be any need to compare them to the samples taken from the suspects.”

His shoulders tightened, then he forced himself to relax. “I don’t know where you’re going with this, Ms. Levine. Did they finally find DNA at the scene of Claire’s murder? I hope so, if it helps them solve it. She was a lovely girl.”

“And Ginny? Was she a lovely girl, too?”