It wasn’t what you expected when you came to talk to a man about a dead girl.
His pocket buzzed. Marlow pushed himself off the cabinets and pulled his phone out of his pocket, a notification from Dr. Sun on the screen.
“The autopsy is finished,” he said.
Cade sat on the edge of Macroy’s desk, trousers pulled taut over his thighs as he crossed his legs at the ankles. Marlow glanced down at Cade’s feet. Boots this time, but same difference. In his opinion, it wasn’t fair that Cade in clothes was just as distracting as Cade without.
“And?” Cade asked.
“It was… umm…” Marlow glanced back at the screen and squinted at the aggressively abbreviated message. “Exsanguination.”
“Not natural causes,” Cade said. He sounded pleased with himself. “Shame I told Macroy it was, but it was the information I had at the time.”
That explained why someone from the Reserve had agreed to talk to the police without a whole legal team present to do the speaking for them. It raised the question of why Cade had stuck his neck out to make it happen.
Marlow pulled the pictures up. He had a good phone. The colors were bright and the resolution sharp. It was unforgiving. He’d seen worse.
“They cut off her hands,” he said. The sound of someone’s voice snapping orders as they approached down the hall filtered through the door. Marlow swiped the photos off the screen and tucked the phone back into his pocket. “Then left her to bleed out.”
Cade slid off the desk and pushed the sleeves of his jersey up his forearm. “When?” he asked.
“Sometime between midnight and three.”
The door opened, and a short, round woman in a sleek red dress that matched the chair walked in. She immediately begged for one more minute with her finger as she turned to the secretary who’d shown them in.
“Tell Ms. Griffin that we’ll pass along her husband’s ‘advice,’” she said, her fingers hooked in air quotes around the last word. “But the final decision is the director’s. Then trash his email and see if there’s any starlet from that mystery-girl show that just wrapped available.”
The secretary nodded, tapped assiduously on his phone, and closed the door behind him as he left.
“Ms. Farnham,” Cade said. “I appreciate you taking the time to speak to Officer Marlow about this. The quicker it’s resolved, the better for us all. Once Cold Winds can confirm that Mr. Macroy did due diligence in safeguarding his card, we’ll reassure the board at the Reserve that they don’t have to take action.”
She gave Cade a once-over, head to toe, and then did the same to Marlow as she gripped his hand to shake. He’d been eyed up before, but never quite so dispassionately. It felt more like being measured for a suit than anything else.
“Of course,” she said. “Mr. Macroy is in Canada right now, overseeing a production. But he’s instructed me to do whatever I can to help, although I’m not sure how. As I told your colleague earlier, that card is for the use of Mr. Macroy’s personal assistant… whoever that is. Mr. Macroy is a creative genius, and like many such men, he isn’t always easy to work with. His assistants rarely stay after the first bottle thrown at their heads.”
“You can’t get the work ethic these days,” Marlow said mildly.
Farnham raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him, then gave in with a dry smile and let herself be amused. “I don’t blame them,” she clarified. “But some only last a week. One didn’t even make it a full day. It was a trial to have to reapply for a new card, and one year Mr. Macroy burned through his entire allotment of visitor passes.”
“Who had it last?” Marlow asked.
“Me,” Farnham said. “Or at least I touched it last when I put it back into the file. Mr. Macroy doesn’t necessarily want everyone he works with to have access to his house. When he doesn’t need them to check on his appliances, make sure his TV was unplugged, or feed his fish, it stays in his safe. His latest assistant left two months ago, so the only one who had access to it was me. I go in once a month and make sure the place is locked up for the full moon.”
“You don’t stay up there yourself?” Cade asked. “A perk of the job?”
Farnham folded her lips in a tight smile. “Not much of a perk,” she said. “I’m null. Like Officer Marlow here.”
That made Marlow blink in surprise. His scars itched under his black T-shirt, and he scratched his shoulder without thinking about it.
“How did you—?”
“You look tired.” She tapped a finger against her cheekbone to call attention to the puffy skin under her eyes. “Even the most expensive eye cream doesn’t make a dent, does it?”
“Youwork Night Shift?” Cade asked. He didn’t bother to try and hide the doubt in his voice.
Farnham traded an amused look with Marlow and didn’t answer that question. She waved her hand toward the bookshelf, where an inset safe had been left open and empty.
“I checked it this morning after we spoke. The card was gone.”
