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I tapped again. With more force.
More nothing.
I looked at Flores. She shrugged. Whatever.
The door’s handle was an old-fashioned key-operated affair, with a long scrolly grip and square push button.
I grasped the pull and thumbed the button.
The latch disengaged and the door popped open a hair.
I looked at Flores.
“Now here’s a bitch of a legal dilemma,” she said.
Fleetingly, I thought of legal dilemmas.
“I say we dime the cops.” Flores sounded adamant.
“How about we call out but don’t enter the premises?” I countered.
The vivid blues rolled. The rain was picking up and Flores’s enthusiasm, never monumental, was quickly fading.
Creating a six-inch gap, I shouted into the condo.
“Detective Musgrove?”
No response.
“Detective Musgrove.” Louder. “Ti? It’s Tempe Brennan.”
Silence.
I was about to yield to Flores’s undoubtedly wiser advice when the wind blew in a sudden hard gust, ripping the rain-slicked handle from my fingers. The door flew inward and smacked a wall.
Crack!
Sounds drifted out. A male voice, harsh with anger. A female reply, high and stretched and trembling with fear.
A scream.
I didn’t think. I rushed in.
The small, tiled foyer had a mirrored wall on the left, a sideboard on the right. A rubber floor mat sat beside the door. An umbrella stand occupied one corner. Ahead, a staircase rose to a second floor.
Though my heart was racing, my id was logging minutiae like a court reporter on steroids. Later I’d recall details I didn’t remember taking in.
The sideboard was a jarring electric blue. On it sat several framed photos: a dog on a bench; a horse in a paddock; a middle-aged woman in a sweater far too large for her frame.
The floor mat held sandals and boots, the latter the lace-up kind Musgrove and I had worn in the field. Cast-off sand surrounded the footwear.
The umbrella stand was ceramic and decorated with Chinese figures and symbols. The wordbrolliesscrolled across the front.
The staircase had a polished wooden handrail and a faux-leopard runner. Parallel tracks in the nap indicated recent vacuuming. Aframed poster for Prince’s 2007 Earth tour at London’s O2 arena decorated the wall beside the risers.
To the right of the stairs, across a narrow hall, an archway gave onto an expanded space. Through the opening I could see the arm of a sofa beside an overturned end table. Spilling from the table, a broken lamp, a shattered vase, scattered flowers.
The voices, much louder now, were coming from that room. Sounding affected? Melodramatic?
