“I’m Duncan Pavone, and this is my partner, Eve Ronin. We’re detectives with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
Mapes said, “Everybody wants to know why you’ve had a patrol car parked in front of the McCaig place all night.”
“It’s a speed trap. Tell everyone to slow down or they’ll get a ticket.”
Eve took out her phone and found the screengrab of the pregnant woman. “Do you know who this woman is?”
Duncan took the phone from her and held it up to Mapes, who nodded.
“That’s Priscilla. She’s a cleaning lady.”
“Do you know her last name?” Eve asked. Mapes shook his head. “Is she here today?”
“No, she only works here once a week, on Tuesdays, for the Grayles up on Park Positano.”
Duncan took out his notebook and pen. “What are their full names?”
“Lester and Daphne Grayle.”
Duncan wrote it down. “Are they home?”
“Mr. Grayle left for work a few hours ago. Mrs. Grayle is home.”
“Can we have their address and phone number?”
Mapes looked it up on his computer and gave Duncan the information, which he wrote down in his pad.
“Thanks. You can open up the gate and lower the drawbridge over the moat. We’d like to go up and see them now.”
Mapes hit the button, and as the gate started to roll open, he said, “Do you want me to call ahead? We’re a gated community. People here don’t usually open their doors if they don’t know who is coming, especially after all the home invasions.”
“Sure, give her a call.”
Duncan thanked Mapes and they drove up to the Grayle house, which was the same model as the McCaigs’, only flipped and with a southwestern-style facade.
They walked up to the front door, careful not to sting themselves on one of the cacti in the rock garden along the path, and rang the bell. The door was answered by Daphne Grayle, an athletic-looking woman in her thirties, wearing a paint-spattered white T-shirt and torn, paint-spattered jeans. Her long brown hair was pinned up in a bun to keep it from getting in the paint.
“Please forgive how I look. I’m repainting the family room. What can I do for you?”
Duncan glanced at Eve, once again handing her the baton, as he often did with women. Eve introduced them.
“We’d like to ask you some questions. May we come in?”
Daphne stepped aside. “Of course.”
They walked in. The dining room and kitchen were to their left, but the family room was still in front of them. All the furniture in the family room was pushed into the center of the room and covered with bedsheets. The walls were mostly beige with white trim. But now half of the walls in the living room were mocha. Canisters of paint, a roller pan, roller, and brushes were on one of many tarps laid down to protect the hardwood floors.
“What prompted the redecorating?” Eve asked.
“I’m bored with beige. I thought a new color might liven things up.”
Duncan said, “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to begin before Priscilla came to clean and not the day after?”
“I didn’t have the epiphany until she left,” Daphne said. “It drives my husband nuts that I’m always redecorating. But he’s not the one cooped up here all day. Is this about Priscilla? Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“Not at all,” Eve said. “We’d just like to talk with her. Do you have her number?”
“Sure, it’s on my phone.” Daphne led them through the dining room and into the kitchen, giving Eve the chance to see what the McCaigs’ kitchen layout was like before their remodel, and in reverse. There weren’t as many cabinets in this kitchen and the appliances were in different locations.
Daphne picked up her phone off the kitchen island, which was half the size of the McCaigs’ new one, and scrolled through her numbers until she found the one she wanted. “Here you go.”
She held out the phone to them. Duncan entered the number on his phone, excused himself, and walked away.
Eve and Daphne settled into spots across the island from one another. “What’s Priscilla’s last name?”
“Alvarez.”
She took out her pad and started taking notes. “When did you last see her?”
“She left here on Tuesday, at one thirty, like she always does, so she could catch the two p.m. bus and be home when her kids get out of school,” Daphne said. “One of her kids is twelve but I think the other one is five or six, so she doesn’t like to leave them alone.”
Eve made notes, looking at her pad as she casually asked, “When do your kids get out of school?”
“I don’t have kids, not yet anyway. I’ve repainted the nursery three times, a fresh start each time we’ve tried in vitro.”
The comment startled Eve. Daphne was another woman in Oakdale who was struggling to have a child . . . and she just happened to be repainting her walls shortly after the day her pregnant maid entered the community and didn’t leave. Could Daphne be painting over the bloody evidence of a crime?