“Right. Well, go on with your story.”

Manfred told Smith everything in meticulous detail. He had a good memory, which was helpful in his job, and he remembered almost everything Rachel had said.

“She had a big handbag with her?”

“Yes, she did.”

“What size would you say?”

Manfred shrugged and held up his hands, defining a space approximately fourteen inches by twelve inches, and four to five inches wide. “I guess around that big? It was full of stuff. She’d been sick, she told me. Pneumonia. I think she had to dig around in the purse to find her little package of tissues.”

“Did she always carry a bag that large?”

Manfred tried to remember. Finally, he shrugged. “I don’t notice purses, I guess.”

“When she came for previous sessions with you, did she open and close her purse a lot?”

Manfred stared at him blankly for a few seconds while he plumbed his memories. “She didn’t need to,” he said slowly. “She got out pictures of her family the first time, I remember. A picture of her deceased husband. Morton. But she hadn’t only prepaid her reservation fee, she’d prepaid in full, so she didn’t need to write a check. She didn’t ever ask me to do the touch psychometry. She liked the classic séance.”

“Which would be what?”

Manfred sighed, but he tried to keep it quiet. He didn’t like explaining himself, and he hated the incredulous looks he got from nonbelievers. But he couldn’t afford to be too righteous about it; he often made up findings that were not the result of any affinity for the world of the dead but the product of astute observation of the living. He believed that painters didn’t always have the inspiration for painting, writers wrote whole passages that were not muse-inspired, and that therefore it was natural that he, Manfred, didn’t achieve a connection with the supernatural every time he was asked to do so. But without a product, he didn’t get paid. So he did the best he could, and he always left the door open for genuine revelations. Manfred was pretty sure the sheriff wouldn’t see this in the same tolerant light that another practitioner would. With an inward shrug, he began his canned explanation.

“Normally, I hold hands with the person for whom I’m doing the reading,” Manfred said. “And they ask to speak to someone who’s gone over. I summon that person. It’s like flipping a switch to start a beacon flashing. Then I wait to see who comes. It’s not always the right person. Sometimes that person isn’t there. Sometimes there’s someone else who has an urgent message.”

Arthur Smith stared at Manfred, his hard blue eyes unblinking. It didn’t take a psychic to see that he was having a hard time keeping his expression open and nonjudgmental. “All right,” he said, finally. “So you’re holding hands with Rachel Goldthorpe. Her purse is where?”

“I’m trying to remember. I guess,” he said slowly, “that she had it on the floor by her chair. I know sometimes women will hang them on the back of the chair, if the bag has a shoulder strap. But Rachel’s purse didn’t.” He could see her carrying it into the room. It had been a beige bag, soft leather, the squashy kind. It had had the short straps. He heard again her labored breathing, saw the pallor of her face. “She didn’t set it on the table. So it must have been on the floor.”

“Did anyone else come into the room during your session with Mrs. Goldthorpe?”

“Oh, no. I usually offer clients a drink from the minibar, but she didn’t want anything. She had the bottle of water with her.”

“She what?”

“She had a bottle of water. Not Evian or anything. A black sports bottle, with butterflies on it. Her granddaughter had decorated it for her or given it to her or something.”

“What did she do with it?”

“She put it on the table. She took a big drink after she sat down. It helped relieve her cough.”

“She was coughing.”

“Sure. And breathing heavy. She told me she was recovering from pneumonia.”

“What happened to the water?”

“I have no idea. It was sitting there when the EMTs came into the room, and after that, it kind of vanished. I was moved from that room as soon as they’d had a good look at it; I only went back in to check that they’d gotten all my stuff out, and then I was in the room next door.”

“Were you by yourself in your original room, after they’d taken Mrs. Goldthorpe’s body out?”

“No, the bellman was with me.”

“Every second?”

“Yes,” Manfred said. “They’d told him to get me out of the room. In fact, I hurried more than I wanted to because he hovered around so much.”

“What had you so flustered?”

“The whole experience,” Manfred said frankly. “I was so shaken up. I got obsessed with making sure I had all my power cords. Last time I stayed somewhere, I left my phone charger in the hotel room. It’s inconvenient to have to get another one. Another time, I left my favorite tarot deck.” He spread his hands.

“Did you look in the trash can?” Smith was leaning forward intently, his pale eyes fixed on Manfred’s face. Manfred felt an absurd urge to feel all the rings in his eyebrow, make sure none of them were dangling.

“The trash? No. There was some stuff in the trash left over from the EMTs. But I didn’t look through it.”