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Changing tack, Josie asked, “Did you know her sons?”

“No. Well, I’ve seen Carter around because he attends services every Sunday and often picks up his girls from daycare, but we hadn’t actually spoken to one another until today.”

Josie tried to imagine how Carter and Dean must have felt. This man, not much older than them, showing up for their meeting to plan their mother’s funeral and announcing he had been in some kind of serious romantic relationship with her. No wonder tempers had flared.

“You were with this woman for four years,” Turner stood up, “and your relationship was a secret? From her kids and the entire church?”

Fisher looked at where Turner’s feet had just been. “She didn’t want anyone here knowing. Said everyone would gossip. People knew we were friends, so if they saw us out for coffee or that sort of thing it wouldn’t bear talking about, but if we were going out on dates, she liked to go to the other side of the city or to a town right outside of Denton. She said we could tell people about our romantic relationship when she felt ready.”

Josie didn’t think Sylvia was ever going to be ready. One quick look at Turner confirmed he was thinking the same thing. The question was why. Had the age gap been a factor? Four years was a long time to keep a committed relationship secret, especially from her own family. There had been no evidence in Sylvia’s phone records that she’d been seeing anyone else. Josie wasn’t sure she had ever intended to go public with Louis Fisher. But why?

“Did you two ever talk about a commitment?” asked Josie. “Marriage?”

“Marriage was out of the question. Sylvia made that clear early on. Her husband abandoned her and then…” Louis’s eyes flicked around the room, landing on the table near the door. “Maybe you didn’t meet her in real life but perhaps you saw pictures of her or parts of the interview. Your sister was the one who conducted it, wasn’t she?”

“She was.”

“Sylvia is—was—a very beautiful woman at fifty-four. She was even more stunning as a younger woman.”

“You saw her back then?” Turner said.

“Oh, no, no.” Louis retrieved a stack of napkins from beside the coffeemaker and used them to wipe at the chair Turner’s feet had been on. “I only saw photos. My point is that when she was in her late twenties and her thirties, she worked as a doula, going from family to family, house to house, and she often got hit on by the fathers of the babies she was taking care of. Some of them could be very persistent. She said it always made her feel uncomfortable and eroded her faith in the institution of marriage.”

“I guess with all the secrecy, Sylvia’s trust issues, and her aversion to marriage, moving in together was out of the question,” said Turner.

Josie thought about the state of Sylvia’s home compared to the glimpse she’d had of Louis’s—he’d left the blinds open in two of his first-floor windows. From what she and Turner had seen, he was almost compulsively neat. Orderly. Maybe it was a holdover from his stint in prison, although she couldn’t see him forming that kind of habit in the short time he was there. Maybe it was because he simply didn’t have much. Regardless, their homes couldn’t have been more different. Now, watching how he straightened up the meeting room and the way his discomfort grew each time Josie or Turner moved something out of place, she couldn’t imagine him in Sylvia’s space.

“Have you ever been to Sylvia’s house?” Josie asked.

“Once or twice,” he said, looking relieved by the distraction from Turner’s question. “She didn’t like people in her home.”

“Did you spend a lot of time there?” she pressed, trying to figure out if he’d ever made it past her living room. “Cook together? Eat in the dining room?”

He scrubbed at an imaginary piece of dirt. “I told you, she didn’t like people in her space.”

Had Sylvia really managed to date Louis Fisher for four years without him finding out about her hoarding?

“She was afraid one of her sons might stop by,” he added.

“So you spent all of your time together at your place,” Josie said slowly.

He nodded and stuffed the napkins into his pocket.

“How did you expect to get some big commitment from this woman when she didn’t want you in her home?” Turner asked.

“It’s not that she didn’t want me there,” Louis bristled. “She was private. I respected that.”

“Did you, though?” Josie said. “Is that why you made seventeen phone calls to her the night before she was murdered?”

Twenty

Fisher went very still. The air in the room felt stagnant and moist, like the air conditioning was laboring to keep up with the August heat. From somewhere outside came the shouts and giggles of children. The sound of a door opening and closing echoed through the hall, then came footsteps. As they passed the meeting room, Josie heard snippets of a conversation between two women about a Bible study group.

“Mr. Fisher,” Josie said. “I’ll ask you again. Why did you make seventeen calls to Sylvia West the night before she was murdered?”

“I was worried about her. I wanted to know how the interview had gone. I thought maybe she needed company.”

Turner tutted. “Doesn’t look like she answered any of those calls. I’m pretty sure when a woman declines seventeen calls, she’s not looking for company.”