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McCord’s laughter cracked like a pistol shot.
The phone on Dr. Winters’s receptionist’s desk rang and the answering machine clicked on. McCord got up and restlessly studied a picture on the wall behind his chair.
“I’m surprised Dr. Winters doesn’t use an answering service,” Sam remarked quietly.
“She probably switches her calls over to one when she leaves,” McCord replied, his voice lowered, too. “That’s what my brothers-in-law do.”
“Are they doctors?”
“Two of them are.”
“Two of them? How many sisters do you have?”
He slanted her an amused sideways glance and silently held up one hand, the thumb folded back against the palm.
“You have four sisters?”
He nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets, his face toward the picture, his gaze slanted downward to her. “Until I was ten, I thought shower curtains always looked like legs with feet.”
Sam grinned. “Panty hose,” she concluded; then she said, “Did that brown tweed jacket you were wearing the first day really belong to your brother-in-law?”
Nodding again, he said, “The apartment above mine caught fire while I was on vacation. When I got home, everything in my place reeked of smoke and had to be cleaned and treated. The clothes in my suitcases were the only things of my own I could wear.”
The phone rang again, and McCord turned, glancing impatiently at his watch and then the answering machine. “Dr. Winters is running almost ten minutes late. Shrinks are very clock conscious . . .” As he spoke he walked toward the door of her office.
He knocked.
No answer.
He reached for the knob and turned it as Sam put down her magazine. “There’s nobody—” he began, standing in the center of the office; then he turned right and disappeared from Sam’s line of vision. “Shit! Call for EMS!” he shouted.
Grabbing for her cell phone, Sam raced into the office, but all she saw at first glance was McCord’s back as he crouched down near the back corner of the psychiatrist’s desk.
“Never mind the ambulance,” he told Sam grimly over his shoulder, “call Dispatch and tell them to get CSU over here.”
Leaning over him with her cell phone to her ear, Sam did as he instructed, her gaze riveted on the corpse of the woman she had spoken to only hours before. Sheila Winters was sprawled facedown on the floor, her body behind her desk, her face peeking out around it, her eyes wide and staring, as if she were looking at the doorway. Her bright yellow dress was stained vermilion across the back where blood had poured from a gaping wound.
Careful not to alter the position of the body, McCord lifted Winters’s left shoulder so that he could see the wound from the front; then he released his grip and stood up. “That’s an exit wound in her back,” he told Sam; then he gestured toward the blood spattered on the wall behind the desk. “She was probably standing near her chair when she was shot, and the impact slammed her against that wall; then she fell forward on her face.”
Sam was about to answer him when McCord’s cell phone rang. He grabbed it and opened it, and then listened for a moment, an odd expression crossing his face. “What’s her home address?” he asked; then he said, “I’m at Sheila Winters’s office, and she’s a corpse. Get over here and sit on this crime scene until CSU arrives. I don’t want any uniforms tramping through the place, destroying evidence.”
He snapped his phone shut, and looked at Sam, his blue eyes restless and intent. “Shrader got a hit on Jane Sebring. She rented a car on Sunday and returned it Monday. Guess how many miles she put on it?”
“Enough to get her to the Catskills and back?” Sam speculated, her heart beginning to pound.
He nodded, glanced impatiently at Sheila Winters’s body, and reversed his decision to wait there until Shrader arrived. Opening his phone, he ordered the closest patrol car sent to their address.
Two officers came running into the anteroom a few minutes later, and McCord backed them out of it into the hallway. “Stand outside this door,” he ordered them, “and don’t open it for anyone except Detective Shrader or CSU. You got that?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
“And don’t touch the damned doorknob!” he warned over his shoulder.
Sam kept pace with him, but even with her long-legged strides it wasn’t easy in high heels, and she cursed herself for wearing them today, of all days.
In the car, McCord put his emergency light on the dashboard and slammed the car into gear.
Chapter 67
* * *
Once Leigh had publicly announced two nights ago that she was having dinner with Michael, the number of reporters hanging around outside her building, hoping for something inflammatory to print, dropped abruptly. She’d handed them their inflammatory story and they were running with it.
There were only two reporters huddling in their coats outside the lobby windows when Joe O’Hara pulled the limo to a stop at five P.M., but he escorted her inside anyway.
“Hey, Leigh!” Courtney Maitland called, rushing inside right behind her. When Leigh turned to talk to her, O’Hara touched Leigh’s elbow and said, “Hilda has some things she needs me to pick up. I’ll go on upstairs, get her list, and run her errands so I can get back in time to take you to the theater at six-thirty. Is Mr. Valente going to ride with us?”
“No, he’s going to come later from his place. I have to be at the theater at seven, and there’s no point in him waiting around there before the show starts. Jason Solomon will only make both of us crazy. He’s in rare form today. Oh, and, Joe—” Leigh called a moment later as he headed around the potted trees in the lobby toward the elevators. “I h
ave a ticket for you tonight, too.”
He grinned at her and saluted, and Leigh turned to talk to Courtney, who was wearing an oversize coat that looked as if it came from a thrift store and a long red wool scarf that dropped below her hem.
“I’m absolutely going to use Michael Valente as the subject of my interview,” Courtney explained in a rush. “Do you think you could get him to talk to me about really important things? I mean, I’ve already got some good personal stuff about him, but it’s mostly from eavesdropping and playing cards with him that one night. I’d like to write about the man he is instead of the way other people see him. . . .”
Upstairs, Joe turned his key in the lock of the apartment’s side door and walked into the kitchen. “Hilda?” he called, surprised that the apartment was dark. “Hilda?” he said, walking down the hallway that led to her room. He tapped on her door. “If you want me to do your errands, you’d better give me your list.”
When she didn’t answer his knock, O’Hara headed back into the kitchen, then through it, turning on lights as he went. He flipped on the dining room chandelier and saw the housekeeper’s prone form near the table, blood seeping from her head into the carpet. “Hilda. Oh, no!—” Bending down, he felt for a pulse; then he straightened and ran into the kitchen. He picked up the phone and pressed nine-one—
His entire body seemed to explode with a pain radiating from his chest. With a groan, Joe O’Hara slid down the wall, clutching the receiver while the world turned black.
LEIGH PUT HER KEY in the front door, opened it, and walked into the living room, pausing to hang her coat in the closet. Anxious to lie down for a few minutes before she showered and got ready to leave for the theater, she headed directly to her bedroom.
The bed was already turned down, Leigh noticed as she walked into the bedroom from the hallway. Hilda never forgot anything, she thought with a smile, including Leigh’s habit of grabbing a late afternoon catnap when she was performing. Intending to undress and put on a robe, she walked past the bed and glanced ahead of her at the large mirror above her dressing table. A woman was coming toward her in the mirror, a woman who was wearing the same red dress and ruby pendant Leigh had worn to her party. Except the woman was standing behind her, raising a heavy stone vase. . . .
