Chapter Three
Now
HE IS DRUNK, AND HE IS DREAMING.
That explains it. Malcolm has always been prone to vivid dreams, especially when he’s overindulged.
Once he dreamed that he was on an old-fashioned hunt, foxes and hounds—foxes, fucking foxes—hoofbeats pounding and horns on the air, and when he woke clutching the sheets instead of reins, it took a solid ten minutes for him to be sure he was awake.
The dream was still clinging to his senses, and every time he closed his eyes, he could see the fields racing by, hear the barking, smell the damp earth. Some dreams are real enough to touch.
So maybe that’s what this is, and—
“Jesus fucking Christ!” shouts Jaxon.
He looks up in a daze to see Kenzo and Jaxon standing on opposite sides of the staircase, Kenzo fully dressed in his usual black and Jaxon nearly naked, in nothing but a pair of boxers. Judging by the look of horror on Jaxon’s face, Malcolm isn’t dreaming after all.
Millie’s still crying, as if she has more right to grief than he does. Jaxon looks green around the gills. Cate and Priscilla, shocked but steadfast. Kenzo, sad but stoic.
Priscilla says something about going to wake Rufus, down in the cottage, since he must have a phone.
But Malcolm isn’t listening, not really.
He’s staring at the floor, and thinking about the fact that he’s made it fifty-odd years on this earth, writing crime no less, and this is the first time he’s ever seen a dead body.
Sienna was never squeamish. She could visit a morgue or a crime scene and never lose her calm, and that one time Malcolm stepped on a rusty nail, she’d been more than eager to pull it out rather than waiting until they got to urgent care.
It was rather embarrassing, actually, how stoic she was compared to him.
He’d told her he had a condition, but the truth was Malcolm simply never had the stomach for gore of any kind.
He doesn’t even like the sight of blood.
And there’s so much now.
On the landing.
On the rug.
On the typewriter. The keys, flecked red, one whole corner shining wetly where it met Sienna’s skull.
“Who did this?” he growls, looking at them all. “Which one of you did this?” His voice begins to rise. They stare back at him, all of them, and they have the nerve to look surprised. As if he’s the mad one for saying what they should be asking, too.
“One of you murdered my wife!” he roars, voice breaking on the final word.
Millie sniffles. Jaxon’s eyes go wide. Kenzo shakes his head.
“Malcolm,” he says, “I’m pretty sure this was an accident.” He takes a cautious step toward the stairs. Toward Sienna. Toward Malcolm. He tips his head, as if studying a puzzle. “It doesn’t look like she was bludgeoned.”
“How do you know?” demands Malcolm.
Kenzo frowns. “Well, the denting on the typewriter, for one. It’s not localized, the way it would be if the force was concentrated on a single or repeating blow.
The damage suggests it crashed down the stairs as or immediately after she did.
And I doubt someone would have relied on the accuracy of bowling it in her wake and hoping for a strike. ”
“How can you tell all that, just by looking?” asks Cate.
He sighs. “Because it’s my job.”
“Wow,” says Jaxon, “you must take your research pretty seriously.”
Kenzo shakes his head. “I’m not talking about writing.” He reaches the landing and carves a cautious path around the body. He crouches so that he’s almost eye level with Sienna’s face. “I’m talking about my day job.”
Malcolm wants to push him away. Even as the words register.
“What exactly is your day job?” asks Cate.
“Forensic technician.” He cracks his neck. “I study crime scenes.”
“Wait,” says Millie, “so you’re basically that super weird guy who was like an expert at blood spatter and then murdered bad guys on the side?”
“If you mean Dexter, then yes,” says Kenzo flatly. “Aside from the serial killing. And the fact that he is fictional.”
“Um, and you didn’t think to mention that you had a whole other life?”
“Very sus,” adds Jaxon as Malcolm reaches for Sienna’s hand. He’s not actually planning to take it, can’t bring himself to feel the warm, smooth skin, already beginning to cool, but it doesn’t matter. Kenzo catches his wrist.
The horror writer meets his gaze. “Malcolm,” he says calmly. “Please don’t touch the body.”
Indignation flares through Malcolm “How dare you tell me what to do? That body belongs to my wife.”
A hand settles on his shoulder.
He didn’t hear Cate coming, but she’s kneeling beside him now, speaking softly, in that lovely Yorkshire tone that always struck him as gentle, homey. Like strong cups of tea and slabs of cake, warm from the oven.
“Malcolm,” she pleads, “why don’t we go downstairs? Come on, nice and slow, that’s it.”
He finds himself standing, not because he wants to leave Sienna, mind, but Cate’s so young, she shouldn’t have to see this. And she won’t move away till he does, so he lets her lead him.
Fourteen steps, from the landing to the foyer, but it feels like four hundred, legs leaden with grief.
A moment later, Kenzo follows. Jaxon is the last one to come down, and he keeps his back pressed to the wall, putting as much distance as he can between himself and the body on the floor, as if it might spring up and grab him.
The body. How abstract. How distant. Not Sienna’s body. That would suggest possession. A house where the tenant was still home. And she’s not. She’s gone.
He braces himself against the foyer table and bows his head, trying to erase the image from his mind.
He tries to swallow, but his mouth is so dry.
He could use another drink.
Climb back behind the safety of that wall. A cool breeze rolls over him as the front door swings open and Priscilla returns, cursing under her breath. “Rufus Beaumont is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” demands Jaxon.
“The cottage is empty, his bags aren’t there. It looks like he took off.”
“Why would he do that?” whimpers Millie.
Priscilla scrubs her face. “I honestly have no idea.”
“What about the boat?”
“Gone.”
“Fleeing the scene . . .” Malcolm mutters.
“Doubtful,” Priscilla counters. “But without him, there’s no way to phone the mainland, and we won’t be able to get our own devices back for another”—she checks her watch, and the air hisses through her teeth—“thirty-six hours.”
Millie begins rocking back and forth. “What if whoever killed Sienna got to him, too?”
Priscilla’s brows shoot up. “Nobody killed Sienna, Millie. She obviously fell.”
The other heads all turn toward Kenzo.
“What?” demands Priscilla. “What did I miss?”
“Kenzo here’s been keeping secrets,” says Jaxon.
Kenzo straightens and rubs the back of his neck.
“Choosing not to volunteer irrelevant information is not the same as withholding it.”
“Seems pretty relevant now,” murmurs Millie.
Priscilla sighs. “Someone please explain.”
“I have a day job,” offers Kenzo, “which, last time I checked, was not a crime.”
“Right, except your day job is in crime,” counters Jaxon.
“Crime scene analysis.”
Priscilla blows out a breath. “Okay. So, in your professional opinion, was it an accident?”
Kenzo waffles. “Without more evidence, it’s almost impossible to know. Hypothetically someone could have pushed her. Or she could have simply slipped.”
Malcolm shakes his head. Sienna was many things, but clumsy wasn’t one of them. She’s always had a dancer’s grace. He’d come into their kitchen and find her standing on one leg, the other folded up like a bird’s. He was the one always knocking into things. She was the one always righting them.
Righting. Writing.
He stares at Sienna’s curled fingers. Beneath the flecks of blood, he can see the telltale smudge of ink. Remembers the look on her face last night. The electric brightness of a new idea. Was it good enough to kill for?
If she had simply stayed with him.
If she hadn’t been so proud.
“But given that we’re the only ones here,” says Kenzo, “and I don’t think any of us are murderers, I’d say this was a terrible accident.”
“Or that’s what it’s supposed to look like,” says Malcolm.
“Not helping,” warns Priscilla.
“What would help,” says Jaxon, “is getting our shit back so we can call for help.”
The romance writer sighs. “Mr. Knight is right. We need to get into that safe . . .”
Malcolm hears them go, the shuffle of bodies moving toward the office, but he’s made the mistake of looking again.
At the stairs. At Sienna. He hears Millie sniffling—she must have stayed behind, sweet girl—but he can’t tear his gaze from his wife’s left hand, the fingers curled gently around nothing.
Quiet settles like a veil. A shroud. An overused image, but he can’t think of anything clever. Description is her forte. Was. The tense is a missed step, a lurch in his stomach. Is that what Sienna felt, when she—
Malcolm tears his gaze away, and realizes Millie’s gone. He’s alone now. He doesn’t want to be alone. He drifts toward the hall, and the half-cocked door of Fletch’s office.
Unlike the foyer, with its painful stillness, this room is a riot of activity. Most of it concerning the safe.
“We’ve got to get it open,” says Cate.
“There’s no way to guess the code,” counters Priscilla. “If there even is a code. After all, it’s a time lock safe.”
“Right,” says Millie, “Wouldn’t a code defeat the point?”
The time on the screen reads 35:42:07.
As he watches, the seconds tick past. 06. 05. 04 . . .
“Every system has a back door,” says Jaxon. “A way to override.”
“We might as well try,” says Millie. “Maybe it’s like, deceptively simple? Like how most people’s phone passwords are just all zeroes. Or 123456.”
Kenzo’s voice rises from the floor behind the desk. “Doubtful . . . Aha.” He straightens, holding the cord of a landline. “I knew there had to be one. Now I just need to find the phone . . .” He starts tugging open the heavy oak drawers.
“Anyone know Fletch’s birthday?” asks Jaxon.