Private investigator Ian visits his friend unannounced, only to discover the man lying in bed, not asleep but dead. Ian resolves to find out how his friend died and, if he was murdered, to bring the killer to justice. But the details of the case are bizarre: the door of the condo unit is locked and the only other occupant is a bodybuilder, Horst, found sitting on the living room couch, half asleep or drugged. Ian calls 911 and the cops, when video footage showing no one entered or left the condo around the time of death, fixate on Horst as the most likely suspect. Ian is convinced Horst is innocent and offers his services to help the police solve the mystery of his friend’s death. But the situation is complicated, not only by the self-contradictory nature of the physical evidence, but by the fact that Ian increasingly finds himself drawn to Horst. Worse, the lead police detective shows increasing signs of interest in Ian himself. Love and death become strangely intertwined, their resolution not easily discovered. Is Horst as innocent as Ian believes? Can Ian help solve the locked-room mystery?

Bliss

When we had finished our drinks, he took me on a tour of the condo. I was struck not just with how tidy everything was—like something out of Architectural Digest—but how cleanit was too. I mentioned this, and Horst chuckled.


“Yeah,” he said. “I was kinda the housekeeper. I cleaned, among other things.” He shrugged. “I like doing that. And Quentin gave me a really good rent, so I liked keeping things nice for him.”


I nodded, but I thought about Detective Solomon not having said anything about fingerprints. Perhaps it was a lack of them had kept him from charging Horst. And, given what the big man had just admitted to me, it made me feel a little uneasy. It didn’t look good.


“Did you clean allof the rooms? Even Ted’s bedroom?”


“Oh, yes. That was a condition of Ted living here.”


Down the hallway, the first door on the left was an exercise room, with mats, barbells, and several exercise machines. And full-length mirrors along one wall. And everything in it was neat as a pin.


Chapter 16