to welcome the services of two amateur detectives.' She slowed. They were approaching Verger Taylor's mansion. The two gold lions shone brightly in the glare of the Mercedes's headlights.
'There's no one there!' Meg said in surprise.
'We were closer to the house than the Palm Beach County police,' Quill pointed out. 'They haven't had time to get here yet.'
'Pull in,' Meg said.
'Are you sure?'
'My investigative instincts have been roused. Let's just see what's going on.'
Although there was absolutely no traffic, Quill signaled a left-hand turn and pulled past Verger Taylor's elaborate gates. The drive to the house was broad and straight. The front of the mansion was illuminated like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza.
'There's that little Jaguar of Evan's,' Quill said. She came to a stop. They both got out and went to the front door. It was twice Quill's height, perhaps more, and made of heavily carved wood. A lion's head door knocker was placed squarely in the center. Quill hesitated a moment, then rapped the knocker sharply against the brass plate. The door opened almost immediately.
'Quill!' Evan said. He was pale. His hair stuck up in little tufts around his head.
'We wondered if there was anything we could do for you,' Meg said. She pushed Quill firmly over the threshold and into the foyer. They had both seen photographs of verger Taylor's home, but the reality was overwhelming. The foyer was lined entirely in pink marble: floor, ceiling, and walls. Three enormous flower arrangements had been placed on pedestals with gold cherubs as the bases.
Meg looked up at Evan. 'We thought we cold drop your two friends off at their home. Get them out of the way of the police.'
Behind them, through the open door, the wail of a police siren was abruptly cut off as a cruiser swept up the drive to the door. Two uniformed policemen scrambled out of the vehicle and approached the foyer at a run. A second cruiser came to a halt behind the first. Two more uniformed policemen spilled out of it. One took off at a run around the west wing of the house; the other, gun drawn, proceeded at a more deliberate pace around the east end.
Meg pushed Quill through the other end of the foyer into a living room which, at a glance, was the size of a basketball court. This, too, was entirely lined in pink marble. The fourth wall of the room was a series of ornately framed sliding glass doors, overlooking the darkness and, Quill presumed, the beach. The glass door at the farthest end of the wall had been smashed in. Glass littered the floor.
Corrigan and two young girls were huddled on a large, navy blue brocaded sofa in front of the fireplace. The cherub motif had been continued here in the supports for the black mantel. Both girls were blonde, thin, and tanned. They were wearing tight spandex dresses that stopped well above the knee. The one in red was smoking nervously. The girl in black huddled in the shelter of Corrigan's arm.'
'Hey, guys,' Meg said. 'What's going on?'
Corrigan automatically rose to his feet. The girl in black whimpered and curled into a tight ball on the sofa. Accompanied by Evan, the uniformed police jogged past them to a half-open door set in the west side of the room. The room beyond was dimly lit. Meg and Quill followed Evan.
This room had been a study, although, Quill thought, it looked more like the office of a Renaissance pope than that of the fourth largest real estate mogul in America. The room had a domed ceiling painted with scenes of the Annunciation. Bookshelves soared into the reaches of the dome on both sides of the room. Most of them were locked behind grilled doors set into the shelving.
A desk, which was at least six feet long, occupied the center of the room. A laptop computer lay shattered on the floor. The screen was cracked, but the monitor glowed eerily. A ten-line telephone had been tossed - or had fallen - next to it. The receiver was off.
There wasn't all that much blood. A small pool was next to the phone, and the handset had streaks of red on it. Quill narrowly avoided stepping in several splashes at the door. The younger of the two policemen - the one with a crew cut and wire-rimmed glasses - glanced at Meg. He barked, 'Remain outside this area, please.' The cellular phone at his belt beeped. He took it, flicked open the top and began to speak rapidly into it, his voice low and confidential. Meg moved into the shadow cast by a large statue in the Greek style - a copy, Quill thought - of Mercury in the Louvre.
Quill backed out of the office. She stepped carefully on the marble floor, watching for splashes of blood. There was a small but discernible trail of red linking the office door to the smashed glass at the beachfront side of the living room.
The glass had exploded inward. The shards sprayed out from the door in a parabola, which clearly demonstrated that at least two powerful blows from a heavy object had been struck from the outside. Remnants of shattered glass clung to the door frame. The most damage seemed to have occurred about four feet from the ground. Quill wished she had a tape measure.
A powerful flashlight swept the area immediately outside the door and a voice ordered Quill away. She backed up. One of the policemen outside yelled, 'Ange! We got a body! Not Taylor, do you read? Not Taylor. Seems to be security.'
The girl in red screamed. The policeman with the crew cut came out of the study and said calmly, 'You're not on the radio, Kyle. I don't read you, I hear you just fine.' His gaze swept over Quill - sharp, appraising, indifferent. 'Out of the way, miss. Confine yourself to the fireplace area.'
The policeman outside called for an ambulance. Quill went to Corrigan and sat down in the chair directly across from him. He had half-risen at the policeman's shout about the discovery of the body, then sat back when he'd heard it wasn't his father. He looked bewildered. Out of the comer of her eye, Quill saw Meg slip across the living room into the east part of the house. She spoke gently to Corrigan, who jumped nonetheless at the sound of her voice. 'Did your dad have a large security force, Corrigan?'
'What? No. No. It was twenty-four hours a day, but it was just the one guard. He doubled as a chauffeur. I mean, there was a whole group of them, but only one at a time.' He bit nervously at his thumbnail. 'What do you think happened? Do you think my father's dead?'
The girl in black started to cry, not, Quill judged, from grief, but from sheer nervous tension. The one in red
