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“In Montana. On leave.”
“Perfect. Then you can fly out.”
“I can’t—”
“Sure you can! Regan, you have to. You just have to. You can stay with me. Or Collette.”
“No.” The thought of spending days with either of her siblings was out of the question.
“Our sister is dead. Dead! Someone came into her bedroom and shot her in the head. While she was sleeping. Do you hear me?” Sarina demanded, nearly screaming. “Brindel was murdered. Murdered! Oh, my God, Regan, I can’t believe you won’t help.”
“Sarina!” Regan snapped. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. Now, calm down. Okay? Just calm down. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help, but I’m not staying with either of you. . . . If I come I’ll get a hotel . . . or something.”
“If? Just get here. This is so horrible! I can’t believe it!” She began to wail again.
“Pull yourself together,” Regan said, her own shock dissipating a little as she began to think like a cop. “Take a couple of deep breaths and then, slowly, tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know. That’s just it, and the cops—the police—they’re not saying much. I haven’t even talked to the detective in charge yet. His name is Anthony Paterno, but I’ve only talked to a uniformed guy and he was pretty tight-lipped and pissed me off!”
Paterno? Why did that name ring a bell?
“So far Paterno won’t talk to us. And I get the feeling, you know, that they, the police, don’t trust us. Like we all might be suspects or something.”
“We all?”
“Me and Collette. She’s here too. Devastated.”
Regan pictured Collette, the oldest of the Connors sisters. Tall and pale blond with sharp features that matched her wicked tongue, Collette bulldozed her way through life, always got what she wanted, just like Brindel. An image of her sister came to mind and she had to deliberately set it aside to keep her emotions at bay. “The police will rule you out right away,” Pescoli said, hoping it was true.
“Oh, God. I don’t even know what happened. All I know is that Paul and Brindel were killed at home in their bedrooms.”
“Bedrooms. Separate?”
“Yes, yes. It’s . . . it’s how they lived. You know, separate lives. Dona, their housekeeper, found them this morning. Brindel in her bedroom; Paul in his. Both in bed, at least I think so. I—I’m not really sure about that. Oh, dear God, I don’t know. But poor Dona, to have walked into that—” She started to wail again.
“What about anyone else? Their kids? His boys? Brindel’s daughter?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know,” Sarina blubbered. “The boys—Macon and Seth—they’re away at school. Maybe? I’m not sure about anything. Brindel isn’t . . . wasn’t close to them.”
“And Ivy?” Regan prodded.
“Ivy . . . Oh, Jesus. I think Ivy is missing!”
Chapter 3
Anthony Paterno, senior investigator for the San Francisco Police Department, surveyed the bedroom again while the ME’s office was zipping up a body bag and loading the body of Brindel Latham onto a wheeled stretcher. Unfortunately, her sister had arrived and was having an emotional meltdown.
The crime scene guys were spread throughout the huge house, searching for trace evidence, photographing the rooms, vacuuming the carpets in hopes of finding hairs or tiny bits of evidence, dusting for prints, and going over all six-thousand square feet of the old house. The ME ha
d finished with the bodies and now they were being hauled off to the morgue. No other victims had been found. No sign of the kids. In fact it seemed that the Lathams had been alone before being murdered.
The girl’s room looked like it had been recently occupied, the bed unmade, but her purse and phone were missing along with her. Had she been kidnapped? Had she left of her own accord? He’d stared at her room as the techs had gone through the bedding and unhooked her computer. What the hell had happened to her? Hopefully nothing bad, but he’d thought about child/sex trafficking or the fact that she could be dead somewhere else. God, he hoped not.
Paterno had walked through the house carefully, disturbing nothing but eyeing it all. The home itself was grand, built in an era of pitched roofs, thick columns, mullioned windows, and the like. Over a hundred years old and upgraded with modern features that looked as if they’d been crafted in a previous century. Smooth tile, glossy marble, ancient hardwoods, grand chandeliers.... Still, the people inside, a man and a woman, were dead, killed in their beds—in their separate bedrooms though they were married. Dr. Paul Latham had been killed wearing only boxer shorts, the back of his skull destroyed, and his wife, Brindel, lying face up, a round bullet hole in the space on her forehead above her nose, the old “right between the eyes” shot, had been totally nude. Was that how she normally slept? Maybe. Had something sexual gone on first? Again, a possibility. There was evidence of a robbery, a safe in the library open and empty, a second one in the doctor’s bedroom unlocked and cleaned out as well. On top of all that, Latham had a built-in armory, a gun closet with a sliding door, which seemed like it had housed a bevy of weaponry. It, too, was empty, the door left open, lights illuminating empty cases and racks.
So were these homicides the result of a burglary gone bad, he wondered, as he stepped outside and surveyed the gardens in the back of the house. Obviously that was what the police were supposed to think—the simple answer—but something was off. The victims were in their beds as if they’d been sleeping. Had they been killed before their valuables had been stolen, just to make sure nothing went wrong during the robbery, collateral damage as it were? Or was the robbery a mask for the murders?
He didn’t know yet, he thought, glancing up at the gray sky, clouds with dark bellies moving steadily inland, the chill of a brisk winter wind piercing his rain jacket. The grounds were neatly tended, a fenced, sloped yard, boxwoods and other greenery, a gate that opened to an alley that ran between the backyards of half a dozen houses as grand and ornate as this one.
