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She shook her head. “Commune, muse… Though I suppose it’s possible. We can make a note to ask Celeste. But there aren’t any rental statements lying around. Besides, she had a lot of space here with living on her own.”
“The muse can be a demanding son of a—” He closed his mouth; she was smiling.
Pockets of light reprieve aided in keeping one’s sanity at a murder scene, but she said, “All right, let’s be serious here.”
“Sorry. You’re right.”
Silence fell between them, and they headed back downstairs to find that the medical examiner, Hans Rideout, and his assistant, Liam Baker, had arrived. Both were near Felicity’s body. Rideout was hunched just outside the blood pool.
Amanda approached from the dining room side. “Afternoon,” she said to them.
Both returned the greeting, but Rideout didn’t take his eyes from the body. Amanda let her gaze dip over Felicity to the surrounding floor where the sun came through the front window and kissed the wood. It accentuated an area that was lighter than the surrounding planks.
She indicated what she’d noticed to Trent—a spot about five feet by seven feet.
He stepped up next to her. “There might have been an area rug here at one point.”
At one point… Amanda suspected her mind was reading too much into that. “Don’t remember the rug, but I recall a coffee table in front of the couch.”
“Now that you say that, me too. It was a long one.”
But where did this trip down memory lane take them? Did the missing items factor into what had taken place here? And really what was she suspecting—that the killer packed up Felicity’s paperwork, table, and rug? For what purpose? Either way, they’d talk to Celeste about all of this, see if she had any answers.
“Time of death was approximately between ten and midnight last night,” Rideout said, cutting into her concentration.
“Then she was alive when the pizza guy knocked on the door at six-oh-five.” It might be best not to give too much thought to what had transpired between then and ten o’clock. “Cause of death?” It felt counterintuitive to ask given the knife in her chest, but it might not be what had killed her.
“One would assume it was due to this”—Rideout gestured toward the knife—“but if so, I’d have expected far more blood.”
“What are you saying? It was added after the fact?” It wouldn’t be the first time a killer had staged things to look the way they wanted. Could that be the case here?
“I’m not concluding anything at this point. I’ll only know definitively once I have her back at the morgue. But, preliminarily, the lack of blood tells me her heart may have already stopped beating when the knife was put in her chest.”
“Nothing disturbing about that,” Trent muttered.
“When do you expect to perform the autopsy?” she asked.
Rideout gestured toward Liam.
“The morgue is quite busy these days,” Liam said as he took out a tablet, presumably consulting Rideout’s schedule. “It won’t be until tomorrow afternoon at three.”
“Twenty-four hours from now?” Things took time, but this delay seemed excessive.
Liam pressed his lips. “Sorry, but that’s the soonest.” He tapped on the screen, likely adding Felicity’s autopsy to the calendar.
“Let’s load ’er up, Liam. We’ve seen all there is to see here.” Rideout rose to full height, groaning as if he were going on eighty and wasn’t just forty-something.
Amanda moved back to make more room and looked around. Her eyes landed on the mantel of the fireplace, and it prompted her memory. Before she was distracted by Malone’s arrival, etcetera, she had noticed something on the hearth.
She walked over there now, watchful of the placement of her steps. As she drew up next to the fireplace, she pulled out her phone, turned on the flashlight, and set the beam on the grate. And sure enough… Ash. She hunched down and rolled some between her gloved fingers. Cool to the touch, but she’d still wager the fire had been rather recent. “Trent, come here.”
He lowered next to her.
“She had a fire recently…” She met his gaze and was curious if his mind was headed where hers had gone.
“Could it explain the missing paperwork? But why would she burn all her manuscripts and research?” Trent’s brow furrowed with confusion.
“She might not have set the fire. I’m thinking maybe her killer did.”
