“What about boyfriends?”

Willard shook his head harder. “No dating ’til she’s sixteen. . we agreed on that.”

Louis slid his notebook out of his jeans. “You and your daughter were close, Mr. Jagger?”

He looked at Louis, a slight frown on his waxy face. “Huh?”

“You cared about each other?”

A small smile tipped Willard’s lips and he nodded. “Kitty took care of me,” he said. His eyes wandered back to the blank TV. “After Rosalie died, Kitty took care of me. Washed my shirts, made me grilled cheese sandwiches, took care of Rosalie’s flowers.”

Rosalie was Kitty’s mother, Louis recalled from the police reports. She had died when Kitty was twelve.

“What was Kitty like, Mr. Jagger?” Louis asked.

Willard looked at Louis. “Like? Like her mother, I guess.” He smiled, his eyes brightening for a moment. “Pretty. God, Rosalie was pretty.”

Louis shut his notebook with a sigh. He rose, his eyes traveling one last time around the room. This was such a lonely house, filled with shadows, memories and ghosts.

He had a thought. “Mr. Jagger? Could you show me Kitty’s room?” he asked.

Willard looked over at him, like he was seeing him for the first time. Then, he hoisted himself out of the lounger and started off down a hallway. Louis followed.

They stopped at a closed door. There were some bright green and orange flower decals on the cheap wood. Louis waited, but Willard was just standing there, staring at the decals.

“Close the door when you’re done,” he said, leaving Louis alone.

The door stuck; Louis had to put a shoulder against it to open it. The air wafted out, musty but strangely sweet.

The curtains were shut, casting the room in a pink glow. Louis reached inside and flipped on the light.

Small, maybe ten-by-ten. Pale pink everywhere. A single bed, a tiny night stand and dresser. A small wire stand in the corner holding a record player.

Louis went in. The bed was unmade, a nightgown left in the tangle of pink chenille and flowered sheets. A tattered sock monkey and a stuffed pink cat lay at the foot of the bed. A pile of clothes lay on the floor, mixed in with some scuffed white tennis shoes, a geography textbook and a blue looseleaf binder.

His eyes swept over the walls. A poster of the Beatles in Gay 90s bathing suits, another from the surfing movie The Endless Summer, a garish psychedelic poster for Moby Grape at the Fillmore, and one from the movie Goldfinger.

He went to the night stand. A tiny white lamp, a cheap transistor radio, two bottles of pink nail polish and a magazine. Louis picked it up. It was the February, 1966 issue of 16 Magazine: BEATLES 66 WOW-EE PIX! DC5 ON THE LOOSE! PETER amp; GORDON’S UNTOLD SECRETS!

Louis put the magazine back in its place. He turned to the record player. It was an old model that played only 45s. Louis craned his neck to read the top one on the spindle. Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.”

The sweet smell was getting to him.

He turned to the dresser. The top was a mess of brushes, rollers, makeup, perfume bottles and plastic jewelry. Spilled white dusting powder covered everything like a fine layer of snow.

He slowly opened the top drawer. Maybe there would be a diary; girls wrote secrets in diaries. He picked carefully through the tangle of jewelry and junk. Nothing. He went on to the second drawer, gingerly moving aside the underclothes. The third drawer was just more clothes. Nothing. .

He turned his attention back to the mess on the top of the dresser. There was something touching about it, like all the paraphernalia was the stuff of some grand experiment. Girl metamorphosing to woman.

Louis picked up a tube of lipstick. Yardley’s Peppermint Kiss. He slowly twirled it open. Frosty pink, like the inside of a shell.

He set it down and picked up one of the half a dozen perfume bottles. It was called Heaven Scent. He brought it up to his nose and drew back.

It was cloying sweet. It was the smell that still clung to the room after twenty years.

He set the perfume down, letting out a long breath.

Jesus...

Time had stopped. He could almost see her, jumping out of bed, late for school, coming back and dumping her books, changing into her uniform before hurrying off to work.

His eyes traveled slowly around the tiny room again. They had just left everything. Why hadn’t anyone packed her things away? And that old man sitting out in his lounge chair, like he was still waiting for her to walk in the door and make grilled cheese. It would be sick if it weren’t so damn sad.

What about you, Kincaid? What are you doing in here, lurking around like some vulture picking at the bones?

The sweet smell was making him sick. He wanted to get this over with and get out.

But get what over with? He didn’t even know what he was looking for. He rummaged through the mess on the top of the dresser again. There was a small jewelry box. It was one of those boxes with the little twirling plastic ballerina inside, but the figure didn’t move when he opened it.

More junk. Buttons. Flower Power. Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty. I Am a Human Being: Do Not Bend, Spindle or Mutilate.

Snapshots at the bottom. Louis pulled them out. There were five, mostly shots of another girl, a plump redhead, taken at a beach. Louis briefly considered keeping them and trying to track down the girlfriend, but discarded the idea as futile.

He stopped and pulled in a slow breath.

It was a color snapshot of Kitty Jagger. She was laying on her side on a towel in the sand. Her skin was tan and she was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, pink checks with a band of ruffles across the bra top. Large brown eyes, full lips. Her hair hung in long yellow ribbons over the pink ruffles. She was smiling up at whoever had snapped the picture, her head propped up by one hand, her other hand draped over the deep curve of her bare brown waist.

Louis eased himself down onto the edge of the bed, staring at the picture.

Fifteen. .

This was the first real picture he had seen of her. The blurry copy from the old newspaper article, that had shown a pretty girl in a sweater smiling obediently for a class photo.

But this. . this was not a girl.

Louis squeezed his eyes shut. His head was starting to hurt from the smell. He opened his eyes.

It would have been a seductive pose. If she had known. But Kitty Jagger didn’t know. He was sure; he could see it there in the guileless smile. She had absolutely no concept of her power.

He rose slowly from the bed. He started to put the photo back with the others in the jewelry box. He hesitated, then slipped it in his back pocket.

The bedroom door would not close. He had to give it a hard shove. When he went back out in the living room, Willard Jagger was still sitting in the turquoise lounger. The television was on to a soap opera, the sound turned low.

Willard looked up at him blankly. Louis was afraid he wasn’t going to remember him.

“You still here?” Willard said.

Louis nodded. “Mr. Jagger, do you remember Kitty’s friends?”

Willard just looked at him blankly.

“Kitty had a girlfriend with red hair?” Louis prompted.

Willard blinked several times, like something had suddenly registered. “Joyce,” he said.

“You remember Joyce’s last name?”

Willard just stared at him. “Joyce,” he said softly. The light went out in his eyes.

Louis look a last look around the small living room. “I’m leaving now, Mr. Jagger,” he said. “Thank you for talking to me. And for letting me in her room.”

“Did you close the door?”

“Yes.”

Willard nodded, his eyes locked on the television.

Louis quickly let himself out the front door.

His head was pounding as he got in the Mustang and headed back downtown. He couldn’t get that sickly sweet smell or the picture of Kitty out of his head. Or the idea that had just started to build. Did Kitty have another side to her that others didn’t see? Could she have elicited her killer somehow? A boyfriend, an unknown admirer? Shit. . or Cade?