"Autumn?"

The deep voice called out from the front of the house as Mathias extended his hands to help her up.

His eyes rolled of their own accord. "That's my nickname."

Amber smiled at him. "It's my name. It's sweet that he's using it."

The thick, dark brow arched at her. A shrug was her response.

"I'm okay with it. I use it sometimes. Have for years. I lose who I am to whom sometimes."

Mathias pressed the world's quickest kiss against her brow. Of course it wasn't quick enough. Walt Longmire's long stride ate up the ground quickly and he rounded the corner to see them - - her hands still clasped in his, his precious daughter leaning into the strength of the other man, a tender expression on a face he was most used to facing in opposition.

"Whole lot of investigating going on here," he smirked. His daughter was a bright cookie. She was no cop.

Mathias sighed again and prayed for patience…or strength. He was never sure whether to ask the spirits to help him see the sheriff in a better light or if he should be seeking to get rid of his erstwhile tormentor.

"We're working our way back, Dad," Amber replied. "Heading into the last room now."

Mathias nodded. "It will be our last for today. We can come back and look deeper into the storage spaces and outside," he told the woman whose hands he still held. She was tired. His duty and request that she join him had taken its toll and he was eager now to get her out of the house. The ghosts of it would add to her nightmares as it was. And something about her wistfulness as she'd examined the poor woman's life tugged at his conscience.

Something wasn't jiving with the impressions he'd gotten of the couple and what Amber absorbed from the living spaces.

Her first impression of the back room…what most would be using as the master bedroom…was pretty bleak. She'd entered the room first, without flipping the light switch. The sun's beams warmed the opposite side of the house, leaving this last room in shadows. With the mounds and heaps of God-only-knew-what and the floor covered with drop cloths the dim light from the bank of windows only depressed her further.

When Macawi Mathias reached around her to shed light on the darkness she became entranced with magic.

Here. It was here that one of them worked. Struggled. Toiled & designed. Created.

One of them was compelled to create. This was evinced in the scattered projects- - several in various stages of production. A workbench along the short wall to her left held a beautifully carven piece of tree trunk, another huge limb denuded of its bark and sanded smooth and clean leaned against that corner. Scattered drawings littered a makeshift workstation balanced on two sawhorses. More were taped or tacked to the walls. Most of the space, however, including two mismatched bookshelves, seemed devoted to the beautiful wrought iron and stained glass creations.

"Holy God," she whispered. Her fingertips reached out to dance over piece laid out over a hand-drawn pattern on a heavy army-surplus style desk. She picked up a few pieces from a rusty old pail filled with coordinating colors. Yellow. Like sunshine and warmth and love. The piece under construction featured every shade of yellow, from palest eggshell in an almost opaque form to deep, deep honey tones as clear as the Amber she was named for.

"Who did this? Whose was this?"

Mathias didn't answer at first. He was trying to see it from her eyes.

"Him, we think," her father replied instead.

"It's his handwriting on the notations," the man nearer her added. "Although it looks like some of the other projects she was involved in. The woodworking stuff mainly. Her handwriting is on some of the notations for the designs. Looks like the same hand drew everything, though."

Amber turned to face him, her eyes dancing.

"He had such talent. He must have made the things in the other rooms, too!"

Neither man was impressed. An artistic temperament was fine. Choking the life out of your pregnant wife wasn't.

They watched her methodically scope out the different portions of the room. She frowned, crouching beside where pipework led from the attached bath to a bucket just beneath a floor-to-ceiling window. She tried the rusted hinges. Miraculously, it opened easily and she found herself looking out upon a small kitchen garden. A few anemic vegetables, a couple berries, and a plethora of herbs winked in the shade.

She tsked to herself as she drew the window closed. "These should have the morning sun. No wonder her tomatoes didn't do well over the summer. And that one poor, lone pumpkin…" Amber's voice was tender as she mourned a badly plotted summer garden that had not transitioned well into fall.

Walt huffed, then let it change to an amused laugh. He'd been the one to call it; she was no investigator. At least Mathias had the sense to outfit her in gloves before letting her touch everything. And, honestly, there wasn't much need anyway. No one else had been out here. None of what she touched had anything to do with the dead or the broken.

"I love this pattern," she told Mathias as she looked up at him from where she was. She twisted, resting on her haunches now, as she began to open desk drawers and then the bottom file drawer. She found no paperwork—only tools of a trade she only knew about in the most abstract of ways.

"It's funny to think of him as being the one to make these," she mused. "The lamp in her bedroom is rose petals. The pretty florals. The scene in the kitchen. This one here, with the stars and moonbeams and rays of the sun. This one is so elaborate. The one in the nursery, too." She paused.

"They are extremely well done," her lover admitted. He didn't think it was so fantastic a skill if the man so obviously struggled with finances.

"As far as hobbies go, this one is sexy as hell," she corrected.

"And expensive, too," he argued. "Money they could have used stocking the pantry and buying baby clothes."

She stuck out her tongue at him and went on to the cabinet behind her.

Longmire rested a hip on the heavy wooden workbench. "Any evidence that he ever took any of his work to sell? I didn't hear of any tradeshows or local patrons or anything in our investigation."

Mathias shook his head. "This didn't feature prominently in our rounds of questioning, either. They're lamps and trivets. Dustcatchers. We're looking for a killer, not looking into what the man did in his spare time. Nobody cares about how or why he makes stained glass pieces."

"Might ought to," Amber called from where she was nearly bellied up to the pipes that had been run haphazardly from the bathroom that was in the process of being retiled in a roughly sketched mosaic of what might have been the Garden of Eden.

Both men turned to look at her as she rose. She wiped a smear of rust on the thigh of her jeans. In the other hand she held a thin, dull piece of metal.

"Check the hospital and the morgue. Look for traces of lead poisoning."