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that.
    “Ginger, come here,” Peyton yelled to the girl in the tartan skirt. “They want someone to stay on the line until the police get here.” She thrust the phone at Ginger and then joined Mary and me.
    “Is there anyone else on the property?” I asked the two of them.
    “Peyton’s assistant is over in the office—in the farmhouse—along with a few administrative workers,” Mary said. “And we have a clerk in the shop.”
    I suggested that she call the entire staff and have them come over right away; it would be smart to have all staff immediately accounted for. Within a few minutes they all had arrived, their coats thrown hastily over their shoulders. While Mary, Peyton, and Peyton’s assistant, a small, dark-haired girl, conferred in a corner and the rest of the staff put food away, I sat alone at the table, a hard knot forming in my stomach. I hadn’t particularly liked Ashley, but I’d felt a bond of some kind with her, and it was horrible to think of her lying dead on the floor of the silo. As I looked around the room at the group of WASPy young women, all employees of the burgeoning Peyton Cross empire, I wondered if one of them could possibly be a murderer. I also wondered if I should have done something to secure the silo. But I figured that the police might be annoyed by any attempt at interference, so it was probably best I hadn’t.
    It was a good fifteen minutes more before help arrived—an ambulance, quickly followed by a black-and-white police car with a red stripe from the town of Greenwich. Peyton and Mary rushed outside and spoke animatedly to the two patrol cops. In unison they all turned toward the silo. After a minute more of dialogue, the two women scurried back in from the cold. “Detectives are already on the way,” Peyton proclaimed.
    We all stood bunched together by the door, waiting for things to unfold. About two minutes later an unmarked car pulled up. Two regularly dressed men, obviously the detectives, jumped out into the swirling snow and were greeted by one of the uniformed cops, who had emerged from the silo. He pointed in that direction and then back to the barn. The detectives nodded and then strode toward the silo, while the uniformed cop headed in our direction. He rapped once on the door and entered without waiting for us to answer.
    “Is everyone who works here accounted for?” he asked Peyton. He was short and baby-faced, like a little kid playing a cop in a school play.
    “Yes, yes,” she said impatiently.
    “And what about customers? Was there—”
    “There’s been no one here for an hour at least,” she said. “Because of the snow.”
    “Why doesn’t everyone have a seat for now,” he announced, turning his attention to the rest of us. “There are two detectives here already and they’ll be over after they’ve taken a look at the situation. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak among yourselves.”
    Most of the women withdrew reluctantly from the knot by the door and perched on the edges of chairs and stools around the room. For the next fifteen minutes—which seemed like an eternity—we waited. Peyton paced, stretching her neck as if she couldn’t bear having her head attached to her body. One worker sniffled from time to time, clearly distressed, and the others just sat there looking stunned. Finally the detectives arrived, their hair and shoulders dusted with snow.
    Because it was Greenwich and not any old town in Connecticut, I figured the detectives might be fairly spiffy, and it turned out they were. The older of the two, a burly guy with an affable face and a brown mustache streaked with gray, walked directly to Peyton, clearly recognizing her, and introduced himself as Detective Pichowski. The younger, Detective Michaels, was about thirty, a collegiate-looking guy with a corduroy sports jacket peeking out from under his long winter coat, as if he were headed to someone’s house for brunch and Bloodys.
    “What happened to her—do