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let her know that by insisting I brief you in person, she wasn’t posing an inconvenience.”
    “She knows that, she figured you could use a break from the madding crowd.” Colin ignores the other tripwires in David’s minefield of comments and points him to the chair Laurel just vacated. “Drink? Have you had dinner?”
    “I could use a drink—whatever you’re having.” David’s only other deviation from his starched norm is to loosen his tie and open his collar. “By madding crowd you can only mean Rayce’s immediate family. Laurel said you were on the receiving end of some unpleasantness from Nicola and now it seems she’s inflamed the others. Ex-wives and old girlfriends are coming out of the woodwork, competing to assign blame, and brawling among themselves over the funeral plans. I’m well out of that, I can tell you.”
    David accepts a large whiskey without ice and drinks off a third of it at one go, “Am I to understand you’re at odds with some of the initial findings?”
    “That’s put mildly.”
    “Do you want to specify?”
    “No. Start at the beginning. Start with when you first heard and I’ll jump in when I have a question or can’t agree.”
    “So . . . from the beginning.” David crosses and uncrosses his legs, “I was called around seven-fifteen this morning by Rayce’s personal assistant. He was alerted by the housekeeper who found it odd that Rayce’s bedroom door was open and his bed not slept in when she initiated her early morning rounds. She might simply have decided he bunked in another bedroom for variety’s sake if she hadn’t noticed a light on in the bathroom of the master suite. To spare potential embarrassment, she announced herself, but there was no acknowledgement. She then knocked on the partially open door, called out again, and again received no answer. This caused her to enter the bathroom and discover him sprawled on the floor in front of the toilet.”
    “Bleedin Jesus, tell me he wasn’t found like—”
    “He wasn’t. He hadn’t been sitting on the toilet when it happened. The scene indicated that he’d just finished urinating and flushing when he was struck down, because the toilet seat was up, the water in the toilet bowl was clean, his fly was open, and his penis was exposed. To reinforce that supposition, there was no urine on the floor to suggest loss of bladder control at the time he went down.”
    “You saw him like that yourself?” Colin says.
    “No. I’m quoting from the police report. When I got there the body had been repositioned by the paramedics in order to assess his condition.”
    “But you saw the body.”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you know then that it was a dead body with no chance for resuscitation?”
    “Yes. Everyone knew. The housekeeper knew when she found him—he was cold to her touch—the medics had to know without turning him over, but certain basic procedures were nevertheless employed.”
    “Did you see the drugs they’re saying were found at the scene?” Colin asks.
    “No drugs per se were found at the scene. Nor any paraphernalia. Not even any baggies or wrappers. However, a drinking glass containing drug residue was found in his study and from that residue the initial determination was made.”
    “What’s meant by drug residue?”
    “In this instance, a mixture of water and cocaine hydrochloride—coke in soluble form—and enough was left to provide a reasonably accurate field analysis.”
    “What did that show?”
    “That the solution was remarkably potent. Alarmingly potent, I should say. It contained a very high ratio of coke to water, raising doubt that the mix was purely accidental. And the abnormality of ingestion rather than insufflation also lends credence to the suicide theory.”
    “Only in the minds of those who didn’t know him. Anyone acquainted with Rayce for more than fifteen minutes would never stand still for this bloody suicide rubbish.”
    “That describes what Laurel said when I called