“Can you hold the door open, Tink?” Derek asked as they wrestled the dresser off the bed of the truck and walked it across the grass toward the stairs. I scurried up the stairs to the front door and pushed it open. And I guess I can admit now that although I’d unlocked it earlier, I hadn’t gone inside by myself. Instead, I’d headed back down the stairs to talk to Derek, loath to go inside the supposedly haunted house alone.

The dresser must have been heavy, because I could see muscles bunching in both of their arms as they hauled the gleaming piece of furniture over the threshold and into the stripped-down living room. “Where to?” Lionel wheezed. Derek glanced at me.

“Master bedroom,” I said, “for now.”

“Down the hall,” Derek directed, and Lionel aimed his skinny posterior toward the doorway to the den. I minced behind them as they carried their burden down the hallway and into the big bedroom at the back of the house.

“You can just leave it in the middle of the floor for now. We’ll have to tear out the old sink from the bathroom before we can install it.”

“I’ll have to glue the top drawers shut and cut the holes for the basins, too,” Derek added, rubbing his hands together after putting the dresser down in the middle of the floor. Lionel did the same, looking around.

“Have you ever been here before?” I asked. He glanced at me.

“When Patrick lived here.”

“Right. Sorry, I forgot.”

He shrugged. “What’s that?”

“What’s what? Oh, just some boxes we found upstairs in the attic a couple of days ago. Some of Mrs. Murphy’s writing, old drawings that Patrick made, that sort of thing.”

One of the boxes was open, and a few pieces of paper were trailing out.

“ Brandon must have looked through them,” Derek said, obviously reading my mind.

“Why would he do that?” I answered.

He shrugged. “No idea, but he was in here yesterday. I guess maybe he saw the boxes and was curious.”

“You’d think he could have put the papers back where he found them, then. Instead of leaving them on the floor.”

“Maybe he was interrupted,” Derek said.

“Maybe. Did he know Patrick Murphy, I wonder? They’d be the same age…”

“Brandon Thomas?” Lionel said. I nodded. He shook his head. “He lived in the Village. Went to the elementary school in town. Patrick and I-and Holly and Denise-went to school out here. Wasn’t till senior high that we all ended up together. Patrick was long gone by then.”

“So Holly and Brandon didn’t know each other until high school? And Brandon didn’t know Patrick at all?”

Lionel shook his head.

“He went to live with family, right? Somewhere? After the murders?”

“Aunt and uncle, I think. Somewhere west of here.”

“Like Arizona? Or Nevada?”

“More like Ohio. Or Pennsylvania. Indiana, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you? I’ve seen pictures of Peggy and Brian, but I haven’t seen one of Patrick. Someone told me he looked like his mother, but I’d like to see a picture.”

Lionel looked like he wanted to object, but he refrained. I was grateful, because I wasn’t sure I could explain. “I think so. You want it now?”

“If it isn’t too much of an imposition,” I said. He shook his head.

“I’ll go look for it.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “That way you won’t have to walk back up here.”

Derek arched his brows. “I’ll come, too,” he said.

“Did you know Venetia well?” I asked on the way down the street, after having ascertained that Lionel had heard about the latest murder. He shrugged.

“She’s been living here since before I was born.”

“I don’t suppose you have any idea who could have killed her?”

He shook his head. “What do the police think?”

“As far as I know,” I said, with a glance at Derek, “they’re working on the assumption that whoever killed Holly killed Venetia Rudolph. She lived right next door, and she’d kept an eye on the place, seeing who came and went. Maybe she knew something she didn’t realize she knew. Or maybe she saw Holly with someone before she died, or something.”

Lionel paled. “Someone she knew, then? Someone around here?”

I nodded sympathetically. The thought was unpleasant. Bad enough to be killed by someone just randomly passing through; worse somehow to have someone you trust turn on you like that. “Either someone she knew or someone she thought she could trust.” I explained my cop-or-preacher theory.

“Makes sense,” Derek admitted. Lionel agreed, still looking pale.

“Excuse me,” he added. “I’ll go look for the picture of Pat.” He ducked into the house.

“I don’t want you to be alone with that guy,” Derek said as soon as Lionel was gone.

“Lionel? Don’t be silly.”

“He knew Venetia. She’d probably let him in if he knocked on the door. And he knew Holly, too.”

“But look at him!” I objected. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That’s what people said about Ted Bundy,” said Derek.

“Ted Bundy was good-looking and charming and a mass murderer. Lionel is none of those things. And why would he kill Holly? They were friends.”

“I don’t know why. But until this case is solved, I don’t want you to be alone with him. Or any other men. Except me.”

“Does that include Wayne?” I pointed down the street to where the chief of police was making his way toward us.

“Of course not,” Derek said. “If you can’t trust Wayne, who can you trust?”

“That may have been Venetia ’s mistake,” I answered. “Not Wayne, of course. I’m not saying that Wayne killed her. But somebody she trusted did. So maybe we shouldn’t trust anybody.”

Derek nodded. “Point taken. Until this is over, I don’t want you to be alone with anyone. That includes Lionel, and Ricky Swanson, and Brandon, and even John Nickerson. But not Wayne.”

“What about Josh?”

He pretended to think about it. “I think Josh is safe.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Wayne said, from a distance. “Safe from what?”

“Derek’s being silly,” I answered. “He’s telling me not to be alone with anyone but him until you catch Venetia ’s murderer.”

“And Josh?” Wayne stopped beside me and straightened his belt.

“I’m allowed to be alone with Josh. Derek doesn’t think there’s any chance he’s a murderer.”

Wayne measured Derek with a long, steady look but didn’t comment. “I’m sure Dr. Ellis is safe, too. And what makes you think it was a man who committed the murders, anyway? There was no evidence of sexual trauma. Impossible to tell on Holly, of course, but none on Venetia Rudolph. And it didn’t take special strength to commit either murder, so the killer might well be female.”

“Fine,” Derek said. “Until Wayne catches the murderer, Avery, I don’t want you to be alone with anyone but me, my dad, Cora, Wayne, Kate, Josh, or Shannon.”

I ignored him. “Do you really think it could be a woman, Wayne? Who?”

“This is speculation,” Wayne warned. “I have no proof or even a reason to suspect these people particularly. But according to Denise, Holly and her mom fought a lot. Linda has a drinking problem. And she’d be better able to forge a note with her daughter’s handwriting than anyone else.”

“Lord!” Holly’s own mother might have killed the girl?

“On the other hand, Linda said that Denise and Holly had had a falling out just before Holly disappeared. Something about a boy. Denise had known Holly all her life; she’d probably be able to forge Holly’s handwriting, too. Linda says she might even have had a key to the house. Not that Linda is particularly good about locking up. The door was open when I got there this morning, and she was fast asleep on the sofa. If it was the same thing four years ago, someone could have walked right in and taken some of Holly’s things and left the note. Unless Holly herself left the note and packed the bag, because she really was planning to leave, and then someone intercepted her.”