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guess you know that, seeing the door was open. The alarm system, including the surveillance cameras, was turned off, and the keypad is on the inside. You need a remote to access it from the outside.”
    I turned to look at him. “Any kitchen knives missing?”
    “No. All accounted for. Plus, like I said, the blade was double-edged and rusty.”
    “Right.” I shivered at the thought of such a gruesome murder weapon.
    *   *   *
    My ’98 Jeep Wrangler was parked behind the East Hampton Town police station, keys in the ignition. I guess they figured no one in their right mind would want to steal it. Forensics had left black fingerprint dust on every surface.
    I arrived home and slapped together a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I added a few leaves of chocolate mint from my windowsill. I may not be a gourmet cook, like my father, but I know how to elevate the ordinary with herbs. I brought the sandwich to my desk and reviewed the decorating plans for my current project. The George III writing desk had a drop-leaf front and numerous cubbyholes. The desk’s delicate cabriole legs were fitted with brass castersthat made it easy to wheel around to face whatever ocean view I desired. Today it faced east.
    I propped a large corkboard against the wall and tacked diagrams of my client’s seven rooms, along with a few fabric choices for the Kittinger family’s former summer cottage, soon-to-be year-round home. Decorating was a conundrum. I fanned the contents of the file in front of me. The order in which they lay seemed haphazard, but everything had a rhythm. I grabbed whatever broke the flow and threw it to the floor. Once, when working on the cottage of my only cranky client, Jason Freid, I realized everything on the floor was better than what was on the corkboard. His personality was on the floor: bold colors and sharp corners. Who was I to question the fates? He ended up loving what I did and even mentioned me in
Dave’s Hamptons
, the local “who’s who” newspaper. Caroline Spenser had plenty of sharp corners too, but what could she have possibly done for someone to murder her so brutally?
    I worked till well past dinnertime. My great room looked like the scene of a printing press explosion. Open files scattered the floor, overflowing with torn pages from home and garden magazines. By the time I finished tidying, I decided to reward myself with a stroll on the beach, hoping my neighbor, Patrick Seaton had left his mark.
    I stopped in front of his cottage. The moon was a caricature of itself, belonging on the cover of a ’50s nursery rhyme book—chubby-cheeked with a winsome smile. The waves threatened to wash away the words from Emerson he had left:
    Sorrow makes us all children again,
    Destroys all differences of intellect.

CHAPTER

    FOUR
    Tuesday I followed Highway 114 into Sag Harbor, an old whaling port seven miles due north of East Hampton. White clapboard storefronts lined Main Street, housing artsy shops. The weather had taken a turn for the better and I could almost believe the winter doldrums were behind me. I turned right onto Sage Street until I came to a captain’s house with gingerbread trim and a widow’s walk that offered a full view of the harbor. At the side of the house was a wooden sign that read, MABEL AND ELLE’S CURIOSITIES .
    Elle’s antique shop was on the first floor of the house. She lived on the second floor and her bedroom was the garret room that opened to the widow’s walk. When I pulled up, Elle’s part-time employee, Maurice, was placing cushions on the furniture under the covered porch. Even though Maurice had lived in Sag Harbor for almost twenty years, the same amount of time he’d worked at Mabel and Elle’s, he still kept his posh Londoner accent. He was inhis midforties, tall and elegant with graying temples. He reminded me of Rex Harrison’s Professor Henry Higgins in the movie
My Fair Lady
.
    Maurice and his partner owned a small Victorian cottage in town,