her. “Should I bring your dog?”
“Don’t touch Winnie,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “She’ll do her own thing.”
Sure enough, the instant Marley turned to walk back upstairs, Winnie followed, bustling past Gray and eventually leading the way for Marley, as well.
On the third-floor landing, a small recess held a door with stained-glass panels. Marley used an old-fashioned key on the lock then pushed the door open. “Come in,” she said without looking back at him. “Please don’t touch anything. My projects are fragile because they’re old. And they’re in bad shape. Or most of them are.”
From where he was looking, Gray didn’t see anything worth calling a “project.” Furniture, mostly with flaked finishes peeling off, a huge blurred mirror with a frame that had once been gilt, assorted picture frames with similar problems, boxes, chests, a grandfather clock—there were dozens of pieces jumbled around. Peeling surfaces in various finishes were all they had in common.
“I restore them,” Marley said, cutting off the obvious question. “Now, keep your voice down and tell me what the detective said to you.”
He wondered if she was naturally blunt. She as good as ordered him to spill information. “It’s dark in here,” he said, and didn’t add that it was dusty and smelled of turpentine.
“I like it that way.”
“Can we at least get away from the door?” he asked. “Better yet, we could go out for coffee. I haven’t had nearly enough yet.”
“Chocolate,” she said vaguely and her eyes lost focus.
“Okay, chocolate then. You have chocolate and I’ll have coffee.”
She snapped her attention back to him. “This way,” she said.
Almost running into the dog, he did as he was told and Marley led him to a furnished space at the far side of the junk. An old, brown leather recliner with a table beside it, a padded stool losing its stuffing, a large cabinet, and a workbench with a little red house on top were what he noted first. Jars of brushes, palette knives, pencils, jars of varnish and pigment and a host of other painting supplies, and dozens of tools overflowed from shelves and rested in muddled piles on the bench.
“How do you find anything in all this?” he said, then wished he hadn’t.
“I know exactly where my things are,” she told him tartly. “I’d only have a problem if someone tried to organize me, but that isn’t going to happen.”
The lamp she turned on cast minimal yellowish light over the chair and table.
She sat in the chair, a recliner, and pushed back to shoot out the footrest. He guessed that meant she wouldn’t mind if he used a stool beside her chair, which he did. Immediately Marley jumped up again and went to the cabinet. After rummaging around inside, she returned to make herself comfortable with a big box of chocolate- dipped pralines on her lap.
“Want some?” she asked, offering the box.
It was the friendliest sign she’d given him so far. He wasn’t a sugar guy, but he took a piece of the candy. Meanwhile, Marley rapidly ate a piece and washed it down with whatever was in a glass on the table.
“Mmm,” she mumbled, part of another praline already in her mouth. She put her shooting chair in reverse again, gave him the box of pralines and returned to the cupboard. More rustling followed.
“Here you are.” She exchanged boxes with him and resumed her seat. “Those are chocolate-covered coffee beans and they pack a wallop. They’ll keep your eyes open for a week.”
Gray doubted that, but smiled at her and chomped some of the beans. Maybe she was right—he did begin to feel a slight buzz. Or was that from the headiness of being alone with Marley Millet? He had difficulty not staring at her—especially at her legs, which were even more displayed now that she was sitting.
He studied a bean between finger and thumb. “We’ve both got the same addiction, y’know,” he said, waiving at the box of chocolates. “It’s all about caffeine.”
“There are different ways to get it,” she said, smiling, turning her expression into pure charm. “Chocolate is queen. Don’t argue, just take it from me. Now, what did the detective say?”
His plan had been to say just enough about the meeting at Ambrose’s to get her talking about what she thought she knew. “Why don’t we try to stay focused,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“Tell me more about what you actually…saw.”
She sighed and rested her head against the back of the chair. “I already told you. Liza and Amber. In a place I can’t locate.”
She chewed her bottom lip again and this time it suggested she had more on her mind than she was saying and it worried her.
“Shirley Cooper wasn’t a singer,” he said. “She worked as a maid at a club.”
“So she probably has nothing to do with Liza and Amber,” she said.
He wanted to be sure of that, but wasn’t, not entirely. “She could.” It would make him feel less of a suspect if the three were connected. Damn, he didn’t want to think about the other two being dead.
“Do they have any suspects in Shirley’s killing?”
He shrugged. “Sounds like her boyfriend has been told not to leave town, but that doesn’t mean much.”
She reached for the glass again. When she drank, her sleeve slipped up her forearm. Glaring red welts showed on the inside of her wrist.
“Those are nasty,” he said.
Marley looked blank.
He turned over the hand that rested on her thigh. More wide scrapes disappeared beneath her cuff.
“What?” She seemed confused.
He was confused. “How did you do this?” Where he touched her, his fingers throbbed faintly.
“Don’t you know you’ve scratched yourself badly?” he said. Gently, he ran his hand along her arm. Last night he’d put his hands on hers to show her he was cold. As soon as he did it he wondered why he felt compelled to touch her, and why he didn’t pull back right then. Instead of letting go, he had held tighter and felt tingling, but nothing like what he experienced now.
The sensation quickly became intense, close to pain, like the heavy pulse of arousal when he was close to a climax.
“These must hurt you,” he said, and the huskiness in his voice was obvious, even to him.
The color of Marley’s eyes changed through shades of green, growing darker. He leaned closer, and he thought she moved nearer to him.
“They’re nothing,” she said, pulling away. She tugged her sleeves down, but her face had turned pale.
Gray took a deep, calming breath. “Did you clean them?” he asked.
As quickly as she’d paled, Marley’s face glowed red. He recalled that redheads blushed easily. She didn’t answer him and she probably wished he would forget what he had seen.
Could someone have deliberately hurt her? Women often denied abuse. He’d seen enough of that as a cop.
In one corner, a deep stone sink stood on metal legs. “Why don’t we wash those?” he said.
Marley sat quite still. “They’re all right. I don’t think the skin’s broken.”
He hopped to his feet and found the clean handkerchief he carried out of habit. There was only cold water. Sticking his head under the faucet sounded like a good idea, but he doubted Marley would be impressed. He soaked the cloth and returned to her. When she didn’t move, he took hold of her right wrist and dabbed the wounds.
No blood came off on the cloth. He repeated the process with the other wrist with the same result—no blood. Through his thin linen handkerchief he could feel the swollen welts.
“Thank you,” she said when he finally finished. “I’d forgot. I slipped in the courtyard.”
Gray didn’t believe her and he wanted a closer look at her arms. She wasn’t going to let that happen. He didn’t recall seeing the same type of marks before.
The dog whined and Marley patted her lap. Winnie jumped up. A grown man shouldn’t envy a dog, but Gray just might. Having Marley stroke him all over could be heaven.
He got an instant, erotic reflex.
“I’m considering trying to do remote drawing,” she said quietly. “They use it a lot in law enforcement.”
