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She steps closer and offers the tray. Dry toast. Again. The woman has declared war on joy and chosen bread as her weapon.

I take one piece because refusing would make her look more closely. “Thank you.”

“You look pleased,” she says. “Should I be concerned?”

“About my mood? Always.”

“About what caused it.”

I smile at her. “That depends on what you think caused it.”

She studies me for a moment. Teresa has the sort of eyes that could belong to an excellent interrogator if she had been born into a profession less respectable than housekeeping. She sees too much. More importantly, she knows when seeing should become silence.

“Dinner at seven,” she says finally. “Youwilleat something with substance.”

“Is that a request?”

“No.”

“How comforting.”

She moves past me. I continue. Only once I reach my room do I take the copied receipt from my sleeve and place it on the desk beside the other pieces of evidence. There aren’t many; that’s been the problem.

A mention of Dante arguing with my father the afternoon before the killing, delivered by a kitchen girl who thought grief made me harmless enough to speak near.

A notation in a transport log, placing Dante’s car out of rotation for three hours longer than reported.

A staff whisper, half-swallowed, about broken glass in one of the outer garages that was repaired before morning.

And now this receipt.

Receipt. Fight. Car.

Not enough.

But enough to suspect. Enough to know.

I draw the road. Mark the station. Mark the private entrance where my father’s car was found. Mark the distance. Mark the time. 21:14.

If Dante bought gas then, he was not where official reports placed him. If he was near the road at 21:14, he had time. If someone saw him after that, there is a fracture in the story.

Find the fracture. Widen it.

I start with staff. At dinner, I ask Teresa whether the kitchen keeps regional supplier lists because I am “trying to understand the household accounts.”

“No, you aren’t,” she replies.

“No,” I agree. “But I’m asking.”

She serves me soup. “The kitchen keeps lists,” she says after I swallow a spoonful. “Not the one you want.”

“How mysterious.”

“You want drivers.”

“Do I?”

She nods. “Drivers know roads. Mechanics know cars. But men who sell cigarettes at gas stations know everything.”