“And there’s a service entrance?”
“Yes, on the side of the property.”
“Who controls that door?”
“Maria. Always. If she stations somebody there, she keeps them in sight.”
“Has anyone else ever opened it during an event?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Would you have noticed?”
He hesitated. “I’d like to think yes, but to be honest—“
“Yeah.”
I added a question mark next to the service door.
“Who didn’t belong? In August, I mean.”
“They all belonged.”
Farrow shifted slightly at the window. He’d been quiet through Cabot’s account, occasionally rocking his weight back on his heels.
“You’re asking him what stood out,” Farrow said. “He’s telling you what fit.”
I didn’t look up from the sketch. “I’m building a baseline.”
“Your baseline assumes that the people in the room followed the usual rules. What if they didn’t?”
Wiley watched us. He set his pen down on the coffee table.
Cabot spoke again. “There was a man.”
We all turned our attention back to him.
“He wasn’t a guest? Well, I suppose he was, but not in the way the others were. He wasn’t formally introduced, and I don’t know a clear connection to any branch of the family.”
“What did he do?”
“He just moved around. He was present.”
“Who acknowledged him?”
“That’s the thing.” Cabot reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. “No one questioned him. At an event like this, that means everyone knew him, or everyone assumed someone else had invited him.”
“Describe him.”
“Late thirties, maybe early forties. Dark hair, neither short nor long. He wasn’t tall. He had an average build. There was nothing distinctive enough to fix him in my memory.” He paused. “Other than remembering him.”
I added a single dot to my sketch, off to the side of the floor plan, with no line connecting it to anything else. Then I drew a soft circle around it, lighter than the other marks.
Farrow walked over to me to look over my shoulder at my pad. I caught faint scents of cherry and vanilla. I’d identified them in the dark three weeks ago. It wasn’t something easy to forget.
I didn’t look up.
He read the page and stepped back.