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too.
    “And of course the Clancys have keys,” she said.
    “The owners.”
    Caren nodded. “Leland and his two sons, Raymond and Bobby. Leland is nearly bedridden these days, and Bobby rarely comes around. Raymond is the one who runs the plantation’s LLC. But he hardly ever comes out here either,” she said.
    Lang pointed toward the main house.
    “We came in that way,” he said. “That’s not the main entrance?”
    “No, the main gate is actually around back, by the parking lot.”
    It was a common mistake, she explained. The front of the big house—which faced the water and was visible from the “river road,” a paved street that shadowed the Mississippi like a plain and faithful twin—hadn’t been used as the plantation’s main entrance for more than a hundred years, back when the river was the primary mode of travel into or out of Belle Vie. These days, nearly everyone entered through the back gate.
    “And that’s the only way in or out? I mean, besides the house?”
    “Yes.”
    “And they would have both been locked last night, the gate and the house?” he said, glancing at his notes. “The last event was midday, a luncheon, you said.”
    “That’s right,” she said. “Everything was locked last night.”
    Lang nodded, jotting this down. “I didn’t see any cameras out here.” He nodded in the direction of the main house, the cottages, and the manicured grounds.
    “There are actually two security cameras,” she told him. “They’re both fixed to the main house. But they were both inoperative when I took the job, and Raymond Clancy has repeatedly declined to repair them.” Lang glanced again at the grounds, the multimillion-dollar view, making a humming sound at the back of his throat. “I’ve seen people put floodlights and spy cams on a mobile home,” he said.
    She shrugged. “We haven’t had any problems out here.”
    “Sure, I understand.”
    A few feet away, his partner was still talking to Luis and Miguel. Miguel was staring at the ground, and Luis had his ball cap pressed to his chest, shaking his head.
    Caren felt bad for both of them.
    “And who all was on the grounds last night, ma’am?”
    “I was the only one here,” she said. “I live on the property.”
    “Alone?”
    “It’s me and my daughter.”
    The detective nodded, writing.
    The deputy in uniform was just now returning with a white-haired man whom Caren took for the coroner, Dr. Frank Allard. She voted for him in last year’s election, even though she’d never seen the man in person. He’d actually run uncontested, but it was 2008, and she’d felt weird about leaving any of the spaces blank. She didn’t want to lose her say on a technicality. She’d gone over that ballot three or four times, standing alone in the booth, tracing a finger under the first line, the word President . She wondered what her mother would have made of that, if she’d lived to see it.
    Dr. Allard was wearing tan ropers and slacks, and he carried a leather satchel in his right hand. He nodded to the moonwalkers in white before bending deeply at the waist, peering down at the body, its nose down in the dirt.
    “How long have you lived here?” Lang asked.
    She’d already decided she would answer only the literal questions put to her; it’s what she would have told her clients. No need then to bring up her childhood, Belle Vie as her playground, or her mother’s three decades of service to the Clancys.
    She would not say her name out loud.
    She hadn’t in years.
    “Since 2005,” she said.
    Four years, she thought, and I’m still here.
    She turned away from Lang, glancing again at the coroner. He was lifting mud from the back side of the corpse, using a tool like a small paintbrush, working in tight, tiny circles. “And all of your staff is accounted for?” she heard the detective ask.
    There was, of course, one person who was missing.
    She actually hesitated before mentioning his name.
    “Donovan Isaacs, one of our