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its extra-wide headboard in tufted suede that her mother had custom-built two summers ago. Mom was sprawled on the left side—face down, her arms splayed out beside her, her hands balled up into fists, her legs hanging indecorously off the edge so that her ankles twisted to the side, exposing the red soles of her shoes.
    Gretchen blinked. This wasn’t possible. She couldn’t reconcile the lifeless body on the bed with the woman she had talked to just a few hours ago. She could see the warm smile, the legs peeking out from her black dress when she walked, the honey-colored anklet shifting as she moved. Gretchen’s wide eyes flashed again at her mother’s twisted ankles. They were bare.
    A gentle hand fell on her shoulder.
    It was Tina, pulling her away from the door. From behind her she could hear urgent voices, the crackle of a radio, heavy steps on the stairs. Men in uniforms were pushing past her, carrying bags and equipment. Their voices sounded muddled and far away, as if under water.
    Forty-five-year-old female
.
    “Come on, Gretchen,” Tina said softly, leading her away.
    Dead on arrival
.
    “Let’s go downstairs and make you some tea.”
    Neck wounds consistent with strangulation
.
    “Your dad wants to talk to you.”
    Homicide detectives on their way
.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The day of the funeral was bright and sunny, the type of perfect California day that Octavia Harris had always loved. Gretchen could just picture her mom throwing open the curtains and insisting that they all go do something outside because a day like this was too good to waste. As she sat in the backseat of the hearse with her father, Gretchen stared out the window and wondered if sunny days would make her sad now for the rest of her life.
    The detective assigned to her mother’s case had no suspects and no leads. He had interviewed everyone who’d been at the party, but it was impossible to pinpoint exactly where each guest had been at the crucial moment. Nobody remembered seeing her mom arguing with anyone that night, either. In fact, nobody even really remembered seeing her mom at all, aside from when she greeted them at the front door. A few different people reported seeing a shadowy figure running out of the side yard shortly after they heard the scream, but their descriptions were too vague to be of any value.
    Gretchen, however, was not about to let things drop so quickly. There was a nagging voice in the back of her head, and it kept telling her that the detectives had missed something. Rather
someone
: Ariel Miller. Gretchen was positive she’d seen Ariel sneaking in through the kitchen door that night.
    Of course, at Gretchen’s insistence, the detectives had questioned Ariel, but they had come back with nothing. Her story was solid, they explained. She went out to an early dinner with her mother, then the two of them went home and watched a movie together. They’d questioned both Ariel and her mother separately, and both had provided the exact same story. Besides, the detectives reasoned, there were dozens of people in the kitchen the whole night. If Ariel had snuck in, someone would have noticed her. Not a single person at the party could recall seeing her there.
    What they said made sense, but still, Gretchen wasn’t convinced.
    She held her father’s hand as they walked through the cemetery toward the fresh mound of earth that had been removed from the ground to make space for her mother’s casket. Her father broke into heavy sobs as they approached the grave site, but Gretchen just stared straight ahead. It had been four days since her mother was murdered, and still, she hadn’t cried.
    My mother is dead. My mother is dead. My mother is dead
.
    She’d been repeating this to herself every night as she lay in bed staring at the ceiling. While her brain knew it to be true, the rest of her just didn’t—couldn’t—believe it. She had no emotions, just questions. Who would want to do this? Why? And most of all, what had