“Still nothing,” I said.
Stephen examined the interior. “Oh dear. Not again. How strange. I warded the closet.”
“Did you ward the rest of the condo too?”
“No, only the closet. I was sure it was secure this time.”
“This time? How many times have you lost him?”
“Only once. Now twice, I guess. I left him loose until Darlene died, only out of an abundance of caution,” he added pointedly. “Then he got out the day before yesterday when I opened the closet door to get my golf shoes, but I managed to find him and contain him that night.”
“And now he’s gone again.”
“He likes his freedom,” Stephen said apologetically.
Didn’t we all?
I searched the condo from end to end. There was no sign of Stephen’s shadow. Great, the killer shadow was back on the loose. As if my life wasn’t complicated enough.
I moved to stand directly in front of him. “Stephen, I need you to listen to me. Whether you acknowledge it or not, your shadow killed Darlene. Right now, I need to make sure he doesn’t kill again. In order to accomplish that, it would help to know why he targeted Darlene. If you have any theories, I’d love to hear them.”
Still remarkably calm, Stephen seemed to choose his words carefully. “I complained about her the day she died.”
Finally, we were getting somewhere. “Why?” The woman had been unproblematic. What could Stephen possibly have found to complain about?
“It was silly, really. She was in the pool one morning. All the other lanes were taken by an aquatic aerobics class. Darlene seemed like she was about to finish when she saw a dog.”
“Little Lord Ruffington?”
Stephen shot me a confused look. “I have no idea. It was a dog. Anyway, she ended up bringing the dog into the pool in his ridiculous inflatable chair, so I didn’t get a chance to do laps and had to leave. Then I managed to miss badminton because I got a flat tire on the way home to change from the pool I didn’t get to swim in.”
“And you think your shadow killed her because ofthat?”
“Badminton was a championship match. There was a trophy and a gift card to the Neighborhood restaurant of your choice.”
“Still not hearing a viable reason for murder.”
“My shadow doesn’t have the capacity to view things on a spectrum. Anything negative I say, he deems a threat to our survival. He’s a black-and-white thinker.”
“Well, heisa shadow, so that tracks.”
“I told him what happened, but I didn’t intend for him to act on it. I was only sharing my day with him, as you would with a friend. It gets lonely sometimes, without that sort of relationship.”
“Is that one of the reasons you chose that particular experiment? To have a ride-or-die companion?”
“Possibly. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
A thought occurred to me. “Would you mind showing me the spell you cast?”
“You have an interest in magic, Director?”
“My father was a mage.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize. You said ‘was.’ He passed, then?”
“When I was young, but he taught me basic spells. He thought it was important for me to learn magic.”
“Did it stick?”
