lawyer present and all that stuff. This might save dragging things out. Do you want Ethan? I can get him right here.”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “I bet you can. It’s not necessary. I haven’t done anything wrong. And Nat won’t do anything to hurt me. Poor Nat,” she said and closed her eyes.
Finding out why it was “poor Nat” would have to wait.
“I’ll come with you,” Ben said. He raised his voice, “Okay if I come, Nat?”
Nat gave a defeated shrug. “You two seem joined at the hip anyway, so why not? Just don’t answer questions for her.”
Knowing his distraction techniques were futile, Ben attempted to keep Willow from looking at sprays of minute blood spatters on the walls and more blood smeared on banisters, by pretending great interest in paintings higher up.
He felt her go inside herself, and she climbed up the stairs after Nat as if she had closed down her emotions.
She started, and turned back, looking around the foyer. Ben did the same, but couldn’t guess what she was looking at. She met his eyes.
“Tell me,” he said.
Willow shook her head. “I don’t know. Everything’s happening to me too fast. It’s all falling over itself. I think someone here is glad Chloe’s dead, but I can’t tell who. It’s not the same as what I usually feel. It’s not… human.”
Upstairs, the evidence of Chloe’s injuries was not so obvious. It was as if the wounds had really started bleeding when she collided with the railings and fell.
Willow went ahead, leading the way to the rooms at the end of the corridor.
She hung back then, but Nat walked in. “There was a strange light,” she told Ben. “Do I tell him?”
Ben pulled her against him. “What kind of light?” he asked, very low.
“Bright. Blue. A little spot high up on the wall behind where Chloe was standing.” She drew a breath. Despite all she had been through, she was ethereal and completely beautiful to Ben. “Then it slid behind the drapes.”
He considered. “Could it have been a flashlight?”
“That’s what I thought, but where—”
“Are you two coming in to share your wisdom with me?” Nat asked, poking his head back out. “I need anything I can get right now. I don’t want to scare you, but if my publicity hound of a boss shows up looking for a way to make points with the folks, it isn’t going to be pretty. Let’s get on, shall we?”
It would be impossible not to see Willow’s reluctance to enter the room. She went slowly, looking at only one spot—an area where a modern rosewood desk stood. Ben took in the area rapidly. The drapes she had mentioned must be the dark blue linen ones behind the desk and pulled back from French doors. He automatically looked at the wall. He didn’t expect to see any pinpoints of light, and he was right.
Willow launched into an explanation of her last conversation with Chloe and how she had offered her these rooms to live in—or to use as she wished. She gave Ben a questioning glance, and he nodded before she explained about the light.
Nat checked carefully behind the drapes, looked at the doors and said, “They’re open. Were they like that before you left the room?”
Willow frowned and said, “I don’t know.”
Immediately, Nat’s attention switched to a leather-bound black book lying open and facedown on the pale blue rug. Nat squatted to take a closer look. He took out a pair of glasses and pushed them on, getting even nearer to the book.
“What?” Ben said.
Nat didn’t answer.
“That’s the daybook,” Willow said. “The Brandts’ social calendar is kept in there. Chloe wanted me to take over keeping it up.”
“Did she give it to you?”
Willow frowned. “No. She put it on the desk.”
“Don’t touch it,” Nat said. “Don’t touch anything. Do you want to say anything else about the book, Willow?”
Ben didn’t like the phrasing of the question, but kept quiet.
Willow said no hesitantly. “It couldn’t have killed her.”
“Why would you make a suggestion like that?” Nat asked.
Ben wanted to tell her to keep quiet.
“There’s blood on it,” Willow said, as if she were above the scene, looking down. “The brass corners. Someone hit her with them again and again. Jabbed her.”
“I can’t see blood,” Nat pointed out.
Ben could see it, too, but didn’t say so. Sykes would see it, or Pascal, Marley…. And now, Willow.
“It’s there,” she said. “Find who did it, quickly. They’ve only just started. There’ll be more victims.”
“This has been too much for Willow,” Ben said. “You don’t need her here anymore, do you, Nat?”
“Yeah. But I’m not going to make her stay.”
Heavy footsteps approached, and Nat’s eyes closed slowly. “Keep your mouths shut,” he said. “You don’t know anything. Don’t mention lights, or what you can
“Commissioner,” Nat said, deference dripping. “Thank you for coming over, sir. This is Commissioner Molyneux,” he said to Ben and Willow, waving vaguely.
“Of course,” Ben said, hoping he hit the right note. He’d heard plenty about this man from Gray Fisher, who used to work for him.
“You’re a Millet,” Molyneux said to Willow, by way of an accusation. Big, on the overweight side, red-faced with small eyes a little too close together, he pronounced
“I am,” Willow said. “This is my friend, Ben Fortune.”
“Fortunes Club, yes, I know. We’ve met you and your family before.”
Ben didn’t remember the occasion.
“I should mention something to you, Ms. Millet,” Molyneux said. “I’ve seen quite a bit of your family in recent months. You haven’t made my life easier. Two people died yesterday, and you or your people were in both places. Now we’ve got another DB downstairs, and here you are again. Wherever you go, ridiculous rumors follow. I’d like that to stop, quickly. If it doesn’t, I shall have to consider what your real part is in all this talk of things that go bump in the night.”
All expression left Willow’s face. “Do they?” she said. “Go bump in the night?”
Molyneux’s mouth set in a tight little line. He turned his attention to Nat. “Sergeant Deneuve thinks the woman was attacked up here.” He looked around, then at the book lying on the floor.
“She was,” Willow said. “I must have been the last to talk to her, and she was fine when I left.”
Ben almost groaned aloud.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Molyneux said. He crossed his arms and worried his bottom lip with a finger and thumb.
Ben met Nat’s eyes and shook his head slightly. He waited for the Commissioner to announce that he was having Willow taken into custody.
The man gave a gusty sigh. “This crime scene will be battened down tighter than a puritan’s ass, Archer. Everything relating to findings will be on my desk in the morning. You are responsible for knowing where all these…” He waved a hand in the direction of Ben and Willow. “Make sure you can get to them if we need them. Get to it. You’ve got a long night ahead of you. Don’t miss anything. I’m calling a press conference for noon tomorrow.
“I’ll talk to Blades on the way out.” He looked at his watch. “Get all this sealed off. I’m late for a dinner appointment. Make sure you two are where we can find you,” he said as his parting shot to Ben and Willow.
Nat walked Molyneux to the corridor, and Ben could hear low conversation between the two. He felt a draft and turned back to Willow. She had opened the French doors wide and stood outside on a small platform at the top of a flight of stairs. When he approached, she backed down several steps, never taking her eyes from something that held her attention at the top of the doors.
