He says, "You dump that stock like I told you?"

Chapter 9

It's the same William and Mary bureau cabinet. According to the note card taped to the front, it's black lacquered pine with Persian scenes in silver gilt, round bun feet, and the pediment done up in a pile of carved curls and shells. It has to be the same cabinet. We'd turned right here, walking down a tight corridor of armoires, then turned right again at a Regency press cupboard, then left at a Federal sofa, but here we are again.

Helen Hoover Boyle puts her finger against the silver gilt, the tarnished men and women of Persian court life, and says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

She killed Baker and Penny Stuart. She called them on their cell phones sometime the day before they died. She read them each the culling song.

"You think I killed those unfortunate people by singing to them?" she says. Her suit is yellow today, but her hair's still big and pink. Her shoes are yellow, but her neck's still hung with gold chains and beads. Her cheeks look pink and soft with too much powder.

It didn't take much digging to find out the Stuarts were the people who'd bought a house on Exeter Drive. A lovely historic house with seven bedrooms and cherry paneling throughout the first floor. A house they planned to tear down and replace. A plan that infuriated Helen Hoover Boyle.

"Oh, Mr. Streator," she says. "If you could just hear yourself."

From where we're standing, a tight corridor of furniture stretches a few yards in every direction. Beyond that, each corridor turns or branches into more corridors, armoires squeezed side by side, sideboards wedged together. Anything short, armchairs or sofas or tables, only lets you see through to the next corridor of hutches, the next wall of grandfather clocks, enameled screens, Georgian secretaries.