“We were drinking, Detective. Not discussing art.”
“What about the other one. Your assistant—Madeleine Crane.”
Gillian’s face grew stubborn. “She was with me.”
“Not quite,” Ray said quietly, and Burke turned to him. “She and Gillian were together until about midnight. Then Gillian came up here, and Maddie stayed at the bar. We didn’t see her until this morning.”
“Was she alone?” Burke asked.
“You’ve seen her,” Gillian said tartly. “Do you think a woman like that has to spend a night alone if she doesn’t want to?”
“We don’t know,” Ray said, underscoring the words and giving Gillian a subtle but firm signal not to misrepresent what actually happened. “She was with someone at the bar when I escorted Miss Gray upstairs. She was alone when she walked into the suite this morning.”
“Who was she with at the bar? Did you know him?”
Gillian shrugged. “No.”
Burke tapped a finger on the coffee table, thinking. “Okay.” He rose. “I’ll talk to the bartenders, ask around. See if we can find Miss Crane’s mystery man.”
“Look—Maddie has nothing to do with these murders.”
“I didn’t say she did. But she’s your personal assistant, isn’t she? And she kept important information from us. So I’d like to talk to her.”
Ray checked his watch. “She should be here any minute.” And as if she’d timed it to his words, Maddie strolled in.
She scanned the room, gave Ray a cool glance, then turned to Burke. “Detective. Nice to see you again.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“You don’t have to answer,” Gillian said.
“What’s a little interrogation between friends?” She glanced at Burke. “Are you my friend, Detective?”
Burke looked flustered, but not enough to sideline him. “Why didn’t you tell anyone about the threats?” he asked.
She hesitated, then sighed. “Look, I didn’t take them seriously. And I thought they would upset Gillian. My job is to be a buffer between her and whatever distracts her from her work. The messages were a definite distraction.”
Burke turned to Gillian. “And you buy that?”
“Absolutely. Maddie is extremely overprotective.”
“I can be quite suffocating, actually,” Maddie said.
Burke looked between the two of them. From the expression on his face, he didn’t know if they were telling the truth or putting him on. A little of both, Ray thought.
“And where were you last night?”
“I told you,” Gillian said. “She was with someone. Sorry, Maddie,” she murmured.
“I was in the hotel.” Maddie gave Burke the room number, neither embarrassed nor hesitant about her one-night stand.
“Can anyone back that up?”
“I ordered room service. You can check the time with them. And I was there when it was delivered. I’m sure you can also verify that.”
No names, though. Like Gillian said, Maddie was protective.
Burke’s gaze lingered on her. “Okay, I’ll get on it.” He rose and turned to Gillian. “In the meantime, you let me know if anything or anyone suspicious happens, or if you remember anything that might be helpful.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Ray said, and accompanied him to the elevator.
“Look, Ray, you can’t pump me for information I don’t want to give.”
Ray acknowledged this with a slight nod of his head. “Can you tell me about the victim?”
Burke sighed. “Runaway. Got a mother in Portland with a string of bad boyfriends. Girl ran away a couple of times. Got her on a shoplifting charge last year. Juvie returned her to the family. She took off again, about six weeks ago. Girls on Dickerson Road said she turned the occasional trick to pay for food.”
“You have a profiler on this?”
“We do now.”
“Show him this.” He took out the crime-scene photograph he’d taken from Harley. “Look at the placement of the body, the wounds.”
“Where the hell’d you get this?”
“Shut up and listen. I drove out to the house today. Where Holland Gray was killed. Pretty little farmhouse out past Pasquo almost to the county line. I was looking at the house and at the photo, and something was bothering me. But I didn’t figure it out until just now. Killer stabbed her twice. Here”—he pointed to the picture, then to the left of his breastbone—“and here.” Again, he put his finger on the body in the photo, then pointed to the same place on his own stomach.
“So?”
“So get hold of a copy of Gillian’s photograph. The girl in the photograph has three stab wounds, not two.”
Burke looked interested for the first time.
“The first murder, the picture you showed us at the Gray’s. How many times did the killer stick her?”
“Twice.”
“That’s right. Twice. Just like Holland Gray.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“So if the killer was re-creating the photograph, why was his re-creation closer to the original murder?”
By early evening, Carleco had cleared Maddie’s computer. Although it took one suspicion off Ray’s list, no one could guarantee she hadn’t sent those messages from some other machine.
Burke had also called. Seems most of Maddie’s whereabouts the night before had been confirmed. She’d left the bar shortly after Gillian, though no one remembered seeing her leave with anyone. She’d booked a separate room, been given the key, and evidently stayed there. Alone. She’d ordered room service for one, and the person who delivered it saw no evidence of a roommate with her. So why hadn’t she said so?
When asked, she said, “It’s no one’s business who I sleep with or don’t. When I sleep with them, or don’t. Or why.”
Hardly a satisfying answer. Which left Ray still wanting her out of the way.
Luckily, her own safety was the best argument for doing so, and Gillian bought it. She closeted herself in Maddie’s room, and though he didn’t know what she said, when they came out around six, Maddie had her suitcase with her.
Ray was standing in front of the TV, gazing intently at the picture instead of Maddie’s closed bedroom door. Long lines at the Gray doubled and tripled around themselves as people waited to be among the first to see the controversial dead shots. Off to the side, protesters still carried placards and banners, harassing the line, but they weren’t keeping anyone away.
“I guess what they say is true,” Gillian said, watching a reporter stick a microphone in the face of a woman in line.
“No such thing as bad publicity,” Ray said, completing her thought.
He switched off the set and, without being asked, relieved Maddie of her suitcase. He told the guard outside to call for a bellhop and a cab, and alerted Landowe she was ready to be escorted out.
Maddie eyed him, and he faced her, doubts still circling. The fact that she was leaving was a check in the pro column. “Look,” he said, albeit reluctantly, “suspicion goes with the territory.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?”
“Of a sort.”
She pursed her lips, thought it over. Glanced at Gillian as though weighing her options for and against forgiveness.
Gillian held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. You’re on your own here.”
Maddie turned back to Ray. “I’ll think about it,” she said, and swept past him. At the doorway she turned, gave Gillian a rueful smile. “Take care of yourself, goofball.”
“I will.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
She cut Ray one last glance and turned to go. “He does have a nice ass,” she said over her shoulder. And then she disappeared down the hallway.
Landowe put Maddie in the back of a cab, where she sat quietly and let herself be driven to the airport. She even let the cabdriver unload her suitcase once they arrived. She paid him and tipped generously. If the police came snooping around, she wanted him to remember her.
A baggage handler approached her. “Check your bags, ma’am?”
“No, thank you.”
She wheeled her own suitcase through the glass doors into the building. Passed the crowded check-in lines for Southwest, and followed the signs for “baggage area,” then “transportation.” Stepping onto the escalator, she rode two levels down, then exited the building and walked to the taxi stand.
The first cab in line pulled up. The driver—a Sikh in turban and beard—swung her suitcase into the trunk while she got into the back.
When he returned, she gave him the name of a downtown hotel not too far from Gillian’s. If she had to, Mad-die could walk between the two. And knowing what she knew, she might have to.
The cab slid away from the curb, and Maddie sank against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to let Ray Pearce chase her out of town. Not when she had so much riding on what happened there.
An hour after Maddie left, Ray put Gillian in the limo and took her to the Grays’ for dinner.
A growing crowd of protesters and paparazzi had gathered outside the estate gates, which had been lifted off their rusted hinges and reconfigured on new ones that would allow the gates to close. The two men Carlson had placed at the estate had requested backup, so in addition, Ray brought Landowe along.
For once, Gillian seemed to welcome the extra protection.
The limo crawled through the photographers and placard carriers to the slowly opening gates. A couple of papa razzi slipped inside the property, and Landowe jumped out to round them up while others on the security team held the rest of the crowd back.
Meanwhile, the limo crept forward to the entrance, and Ray escorted Gillian inside. A maid showed them into the living room, where Chip presided over a bar cart, and Genevra gave Gillian a disapproving once-over, lingering on the thigh-high skirt and the knife-blade bootheels.
“Streetwalking today?” Genevra asked.
Gillian grinned. “Not in four-inch heels.”
Ray sensed a heightened awareness in the room, as if everyone knew chaos reigned just outside the walls, but no one wanted to acknowledge it. He took up his position at the doorway, where he could keep an eye on the room as well as the hall.
Gillian followed, grabbed on to his arm, and held fast. “Ray is joining us for dinner,” she announced.
He stared at her. “I don’t think so.”
“Of course you are. Genevra’s dinners are legendary.”
“The man is working, Gillian,” Chip said.
“He can’t protect you and cut his duck at the same time,” Genevra added.
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Ray can do anything.”
He looked from the gleam of amusement in Gillian’s eyes to her grandparents. “Will you excuse us?” He pulled her out of the room. “This why you didn’t kick when I brought Landowe?”
“He can stand guard duty for one meal.”
Could his hands actually meet around her neck? Were two hands even necessary?
“Look, I need the distraction,” Gillian said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be question, lecture, question, lecture all night.”
“Nothing like the bodyguard sitting down to a cozy meal with the whole family to deflect attention off you.”
She shrugged. “Food’s good.” She grinned. “Come on, Ray, help me out. Call Landowe on your Jack Bauer radio and tell him to take up his post here.”
Ray should have demurred. Not only was dining with his client unprofessional, but also getting caught in the Gray cross fire wasn’t his idea of a pleasant evening. But he had a few questions that only the Grays could answer. And it wasn’t likely he’d get a better chance to ask them.
Which is why he came to be seated across from Gillian at the Gray’s eighteenth-century walnut dining table, while Landowe stood guard at the room’s entrance.
“Everything all right?” Chip asked Ray in a lowered voice. And then with a fast look at his wife, “We understand there’s been another—”
“Charles,” Genevra barked.
Ray took the measure of the moment: Murder and mayhem did not make for appropriate dinner conversation. So he left out all the detail. “Everything is under control.”
“Well, except for the second murder, that is,” Gillian said, undermining the silent pact he’d just made with her grandparents.
“We will not discuss it at the table,” Genevra said.
“She was, what, sixteen? Or was it fifteen? Which was it, Ray? Fifteen or sixteen?”
“Sixteen,” Ray said curtly. “The duck is delicious, Mrs. Gray.”
“We have it sent from a farm outside Jackson,” Genevra said.
“They hack the necks off first,” Gillian said. “At least, I think they hack the necks off first.” She turned to her grandmother. “Do they hack the necks off, or do you take care of that personally?”
Ray remembered Harley’s words about Mrs. Gray and her refusal to talk about her daughter’s murder or admit there might be anything wrong with her granddaughter. That damn cold bitch, Harley had called her. Ray cut a glance at her. Cold, yes. But there was also something in her face Ray recognized. Defiance. A refusal to give in. Not unlike someone else at the table.