Out of Body

Clive Millet, Antiques, on Royal Street.

When he finished, Nat had forgotten his coffee and stared from one wall to the next. He drummed his fingers on the desk, made to get up, but changed his mind.

“Great,” he said at last. “Just great. They’ve got the kid. You think so, too, don’t you?”

“I do now. I didn’t when I came in here—I hadn’t even considered it.”

“Stay away from Pipes,” Nat said. “She’s probably being watched. We can’t risk the little girl.”

“I don’t have any plans to dog Pipes’s footsteps,” Gray said.

“Good. I’ve got to wear glass shoes on this one. I want to watch her for a day or two and if we don’t get any useful information, I’ll bring her in for questioning.”

“And that won’t put Erin at risk?”

“She’s at risk now. Take it from me, Gray, we don’t dare wait long. Why do you think the mother behaved the way she did with you today?”

Gray wished he was sure of the answer to that one. “You tell me if you want me to do something and I’ll do it.” He decided not to lead Nat back to the obvious: Pipes was looking for someone at the antique shop and the only possible candidate was Marley.

He wanted to get back to Royal Street. What he was starting to feel now came with the spikes of cold he had come to dread. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me up to date.”

“I haven’t,” Nat said. “That’s just the minor stuff. I want to talk to you about the best way to get Marley’s cooperation.”

“She is cooperating,” Gray said, not missing a beat. Those shivery spikes made their way up his spine, vertebra by vertebra.

“You like her a lot,” Nat said and Gray wanted to congratulate the man for superunderstatement. “But you hardly know her.”

That’s what you think.

“That piece of T-shirt has changed the whole complexity of our case.” Nat held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt me. You don’t know what I’m going to say. I’ll start by telling you we don’t have any final forensic results. It’s too early. Well, it’s not too early for the obvious stuff, but some things take too damn long for my health.”

Gray rubbed his hands together. Foreboding locked his jaw and he flared his nostrils to breathe. He wanted to be with Marley.

“I’m taking you over to see Blades. He’s going to stay till we can get there.”

That loosened Gray’s tongue. Nat’s announcement sounded like some sort of death sentence. “Why? What does he want with me?”

“He doesn’t want anything to do with you, but he’s agreed to put up with having you there.”

Gray looked at the ceiling. “Dr. Death has no sense of humor.”

“Don’t call him that today, please.”

“I don’t intend to see him today.” He didn’t believe he had time.

“Yes, you will, Gray.” When Nat’s face was expressionless—listen up. “A couple of days ago Blades told me something I didn’t believe. I’m going to tell you now, but if you ever say I did, I’ll find a way to make you wish you hadn’t.”

Gray wanted to tell Nat to keep his secrets to himself. Curiosity got the best of him. “Okay. I don’t have a history of flapping lips.”

“Just listen,” Nat said. He talked about the corpse of Shirley Cooper and the preliminary conclusions Blades had reached about the composition of material found in wounds on the body.

No brilliant comeback came to mind for Gray. He formed one comment after another, only to discard them all as pointless. “Blades has got to be joking,” he said finally.

“You know Blades,” Nat said. “Does he seem like a joker to you? You ever hear him crack even a little funny, or smile, for crying out loud?”

Gray shook his head. “But it’s not possible.”

“Dammit, don’t you do a Beauchamp on me.”

“Maybe what they found had nothing to do with the perp.”

“It did and does. Blades was sure before—even though he’s waiting for final word from Quantico—and I don’t think anyone’s going to move him now.”

Gray swallowed hard.

“That bit of Marley’s T-shirt. Blades is sure he sees traces of the same stuff he found deep in Shirley Cooper’s wounds on the fabric.”

“But—”

“No, Gray. Blades says the composition of the specimen is closest to saliva. Sort of. And most of Shirley’s wounds were inflicted through bites, some were scratches. Blades thinks the bites are the killer’s—I don’t know why. Marley’s arm was scratched—or that’s what I decided. But Blades is sure the owner of the teeth and claws doesn’t have anything resembling DNA—not as we know it. We’re looking for a killer who isn’t human…or anything else we know of.”

“You think Marley…She could have this poison or whatever it is.”

Nat studied Gray. “Blades says he found saliva on the fabric. But Marley doesn’t show signs of any bites. Also, Blades says the victim died pretty quickly after being bitten—within hours. Marley’s going to be okay.”

Gray scrubbed at his face. He felt sick.

“Love hurts sometimes,” Nat said. “I still think it’s worth having.”

Chapter 42

What Marley wanted most was to leave her workroom, lock the door behind her and find Gray.

“You do not run away.” The Ushers started a new attack and she shook her head. “Keep working,” they told her.

“Do you know where this is?” Marley said to them, indicating the house. “This is why it was given to me. Because it’s a replica of the place where those missing women are. Please help me find the real house, or whatever it is.” She had asked them before, but got only hushed gabbling in response.

The same agitated, rising and falling sounds made her light-headed. “Hush. Answer my question.” She couldn’t bear the noise.

“You push and fuss,” they told her. “Work on the house and be ready to travel. Soon.”

Unwillingly, she faced the bench and selected a tool. She began the painstaking task of removing flakes of varnish and laquer from the wall facing the front gate. She had closed the back of the house again, unable to look at that cupboard and the stairs, or to remember the pounding she had felt when she was last there—and the cries she’d heard.

The flakes came away more easily than she expected and she lowered her goggles over her eyes again. Perhaps the refinishing wasn’t as old as she had thought. The longer materials remained in place, the more they tended to cling, one layer to another, and be hard to remove.

This was not an item she would ever sell—in fact the sooner she could be rid of it, the better. Belle, whoever she may have been, must have recognized Marley as a sister-traveler and hoped the dollhouse would become her portal.

A small, very sharp-edged chisel wouldn’t have been her usual choice for the job, but she took up the tool and began sliding it beneath the red outer coat. It lifted in remarkably large pieces and beneath each one she found more of the faded terra-cotta-colored finish that appeared to have been stippled to look like stucco.

She worked steadily for half an hour before standing back to look at her efforts. Now she knew that in addition to the added door at one corner of the building, galleries had probably been removed from an upper story. The marks where they had been could be seen now, together with the remnants of flowers painted on the walls as if hanging down—to depict the way the pretty local balconies were loaded with plants.

Surely there had been a front door. She started lifting flakes in the center front, only to have pieces of green