Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“Five minutes,” she snapped. If he scented fear in her, like a wild animal he would chew her up and spit her out. “And if my client shows before then, you leave. Understood?”
Arrogance propelled his smile, and she wanted to slap it from his face. “I thought you’d see it my way,” he said.
Kaye opened the door wider and her visitor stepped across the threshold. Hands flat against the door as she closed it, she took a deep, calming breath. This would all work out. If she was careful, if she used the right words, she could talk her way out of anything. After all, she was Kaye Winslow. She possessed the gift of gab, the power of persuasion. It was what had allowed her to rise so quickly from a nothing little secretary to a respected real estate broker, somebody in whom people like the Worthington heirs were willing to place their trust. As long as she remembered that, as long as she kept a cool head and made no missteps, her carefully constructed little world wouldn’t come crashing down on her head.
Raising her chin in a gesture of defiance, she turned and crossed her arms. Back pressed firmly against the closed door, she said, “I’m listening. Start talking.”
One
Doug Policzki was late for the party.
Here on Comm Ave, where town houses routinely carried seven-figure price tags, the presence of a half-dozen emergency vehicles had brought out the neighbors. They stood in small, hushed clusters, chatting quietly and casting nervous glances toward the house. One of the local TV stations had already caught wind of the situation. If this had been Dorchester, where kids were shot dead on the street daily—black kids, of course—the media wouldn’t have bothered to show up. Murder in Dorchester wasn’t news. But to nobody’s surprise, murder in this staunch bastion of WASP prosperity was deemed newsworthy. Policzki recognized the on-air reporter, a striking redhead who stood with shell-pink compact in hand, checking her makeup before the camera started rolling. She glanced up, met his gaze and studied him for a little longer than was necessary before she decided he was nobody of any importance, and returned to checking her makeup.
The house was impressive, one of those brick and stone monstrosities that the wealthy had built before the turn of the last century as a stronghold against the plebeian masses. He paused to gaze up at it for a moment before he showed his ID to the uniform whose job it was to keep away anybody who didn’t know the secret password. “Policzki,” he said. “Homicide.”
The uniform waved him on. Policzki climbed over the yellow tape that had been used to secure the scene, and sprinted up the granite steps.
At the broad double door, another uniform glanced without interest at his ID and gave him a curt nod. Policzki opened the door and stepped inside the house. Above his head, a massive chandelier threw a million crystalline particles of light over a foyer bigger than Rhode Island. Brass wall sconces highlighted the most spectacular staircase he’d ever seen. Most Boston homes of this vintage had narrow stairways steep enough to test the hardiest Puritan constitution. Whoever had built this house had deviated from the norm, building a wide, graceful spiral that seemed to hang in midair of its own free will.
The rooms were empty. Following the echo of voices to the back of the house, Policzki took in the scene in a single, sweeping glance: the corpse that lay in a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor, one arm outflung, palm up as if pleading for mercy; the forensic tech who whistled tunelessly as he dusted the briefcase on the broad granite island for prints; the paunchy, middle-aged man in a Ralph Lauren suit who sat, seemingly forgotten, on a folding canvas stool, mopping his bald pate with a snow-white linen handkerchief.
Two women knelt beside the corpse, studying it with clinical detachment. As Policzki approached, Lorna Abrams said without looking up, “About time you got here.”
Policzki crouched beside the body and studied with interest the hole drilled into the dead man’s temple. Beneath the man’s head, a pool of blood had started to congeal on the slate floor. “No need to be testy,” he told his partner. “Our friend here’s already dead.”
Neena Bhatti, the doe-eyed assistant M.E., glanced at him, eyes alight with humor, and made a valiant, if unsuccessful, attempt to suppress a grin. “Hey, Doug,” she said.
He was always surprised to hear that nasal Queens accent coming from the lovely and exotic Bhatti. It was like expecting Princess Grace and getting Fran Drescher instead. “Neena,” he acknowledged. “What do we have here?”
“What we have here,” Lorna said briskly, “is a John Doe.”
Policzki raised an eyebrow. “No ID?”
“No wallet, no wedding band, not so much as a sticky label on his shirt that says, Hi. My name is Bruce.”
“As you can see for yourself,” Neena said, “it appears that he died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Small caliber. Nice, neat entry hole. Exit wound’s a little messier. The bullet tore off a chunk of his skull on its way out.”
“Nice visual,” Policzki said. “Any idea who he is?”
“Not a one,” Lorna said. “But the house is for sale. The guy over there in the corner? His name’s Philip Armentrout. He had a two-thirty appointment with Kaye Winslow, of Winslow & DeLucca Realty, to look the place over. He was running a little late, got here at approximately two forty-eight. The house was unlocked, so he walked in and found Mr. Doe here. What he didn’t find was Ms. Winslow.”
Policzki rocked back on his heels. “Any indication of where she might be?”
“Nope,” Lorna said cheerfully. “But the briefcase O’Connell’s dusting for prints belongs to her.”
Policzki glanced briefly in the direction she indicated and said, “So she was here at some point.”
“It sure looks that way.”
Which they both knew thrust Kaye Winslow into the unenviable position of prime suspect, a position she shared with Philip Armentrout, at least until the evidence cleared one or the other of them. Policzki had learned early in his career to take nothing at face value, to question everything, no matter how it looked on the surface. Just because Armentrout said he’d stumbled across the corpse didn’t mean he was telling the truth.
Doug gave the body another long, searching glance and said to Neena, “Do we have an estimated time of death?”
“Need I remind you that fieldwork is an inexact science? I can give you a more accurate assessment once we get Mr. Doe into the lab.”
“Ballpark?” Lorna asked.
“Couple of hours, tops. I’d say he died no more than a half hour before Mr. Armentrout found him.” Neena stood and pulled off her rubber gloves with a snap. “I’m done here.”
“Thanks,” Lorna said. To Policzki she added, “And I actually thought I might get home on time tonight.”
“With your vast experience, you of all people should know better than that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Thanks for setting me straight. I have to get somebody out there to talk to the neighbors. Find out if anybody saw or heard anything. Then we’ll try to locate Ms. Winslow. If we don’t find her lickety-split, we’ll have to issue an APB. She could be the perpetrator. Or…” Lorna paused, met Policzki’s eyes and shrugged.
The message that passed between them was unspoken, but clear. If Winslow wasn’t the perpetrator, chances were good that she was either dead or in serious trouble. “Want me to talk to Armentrout?” he said.
“Have at it. After that, you can check Winslow’s ID for next of kin.”
While