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looked like it had been reaching out…grasping for something. Someone.
    Was it possible that Patrice had been alive when put in that suitcase? How long had she tried to escape? How long had she been buried alive in her own house?
    I shuddered again and couldn’t help but wonder why someone hadn’t made a wish to find Patrice long ago. Not Elodie—that was impossible because she was a Wishcrafter. But why not someone else? It made me consider whether the people closest to Patrice hadn’t really wanted her found before now—or if they simply hadn’t considered the possibility that a Wishcrafter could have helped locate Patrice.
    “This is more shocking than any episode of
Law & Order
,” Yvonne mumbled. A breeze stirred a hanging fern. “Even the one where Claire Kincaid dies. And that was up there.”
    The technician from the medical examiner’s office took something out of the back of his van. My stomach rolled at the sight of the empty body bag. I tore my gaze from thetech as he went into Patrice’s house. I forced myself to focus on Yvonne. “Had you known Patrice long?”
    “Almost my whole life.” She rocked slowly. “We went to high school together, got married around the same time, right after graduation, bought houses across from each other, had babies the same year.”
    I wondered at what she
didn’t
say. No mention of being friends. I pressed for clarification. “You were the best of friends, then?”
    I didn’t know why I was being so pushy. Maybe I’d been hanging out with forensics-happy Harper too long. Maybe the last murder investigation I was mixed up in had whetted my appetite for solving crimes.
    I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I had the sudden hunger to find out who killed Patrice. And why. No one deserved to die the way she had, stuffed in that suitcase, reaching out for help.
    Help I couldn’t give her then, but I could possibly give her now by assisting Nick in figuring out who had killed her. Which would also help Nick…and I liked that thought very much.
    Yvonne must have noticed her hands were shaking because she suddenly gripped her glass so tight I was afraid it might shatter. “We were close once. Not so much by the time she disappeared…” Her voice trailed off. Softly she said, “By the time she died. Do you think she’s been in there the whole time she was missing?”
    The question had gone through my head, too. “I’m not sure.” The autopsy would probably be able to provide the answer.
    Two more police officers went into the house. Rocking faster, Yvonne watched them and said, “Patrice would hate her house being trampled through.”
    “Why?” I asked. It wasn’t the first time Yvonne had said so.
    “In public, she was very outgoing and friendly, but inreality, she was a very private person. Because of that, very few people were allowed into her home.”
    “Not because of the clutter?”
    “Patrice called it her treasure, and wasn’t embarrassed by it at all. However, she’d hate the thought of people touching things, moving stuff around.” She slowed to take a sip of water. “Patrice was very particular. It might look like chaos to us in there, but she knew where everything was. Down to every last mineral she ever collected.”
    “Who was allowed in her house?” I asked, again pushing for some answers.
    In my head I’d already started a suspect list. As of right now, there was no one on it. Harper, undoubtedly, would laugh if she knew I hadn’t come up with a single possible perpetrator.
    Thankfully, Yvonne was a talker and didn’t mind my nosiness. “Well, Elodie, of course. Connor. Me. My husband, Roger.” Her voice dropped when she said her husband’s name, and she picked at the loose rattan on the arm of her chair. “Roger kind of took over the man-of-the-house duties when Patrice’s husband, Geer, died. Fixed the broken gutter, helped plant the vegetable garden, that kind of thing.”
    Yvonne jumped onto my suspect list. There was a