Brazen Virtue

now?”
    “They haven’t taken her away yet, have they? I should see her, before—”
    “Not now.”
    “I have to wait until they take her. I know I can’t go with her, but I have to wait until they take her. She’s my sister.” She rose then, but only to go to the hall and wait.
    “Let her be,” Ben advised when Ed started forward. “She needs this.”
    Ed thrust his own hands into his pockets. “Nobody needs this.”
    He’d seen others say good-bye to someone they loved this way. Even after all the scenes, all the victims, all the investigations, he couldn’t feel nothing . But he’d taught himself to feel as little as possible.
    Grace stood, hands cold and clasped, as they carried Kathleen out. She didn’t weep. She dug deep for feeling, but found nothing. She wanted the grief, needed it, but it seemed to have crept off into some corner and curled into itself, leaving her empty. When Ed’s hand fell on her shoulder, she didn’t jerk or shiver, but took a long breath.
    “You have to ask me questions now?”
    “If you’re up to it.”
    “Yes.” She cleared her throat. Her voice should be stronger. She’d always been the strong one. “I’ll make the tea.”

    In the kitchen, she set the kettle on, then fussed with cups and saucers. “Kath always keeps everything so neat. All I have to do is remember where my mother kept things, and …” She trailed off. Her mother. She’d have to call and tell her parents.
    I’m sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t here. I couldn’t stop it .
    Not now, she told herself as she fumbled with tea bags. She couldn’t think of it now. “I don’t imagine you want sugar.”
    “No.” Ed shifted uncomfortably and wished she’d sit down. Her movements were steady enough, but there wasn’t a breath of color in her face. There hadn’t been since he’d found her bent over her sister’s body.
    “How about you? You’re Detective Paris, aren’t you? Ed’s partner?”
    “Ben.” He put his hand on the back of a chair to pull it from the table. “I’ll take two teaspoons of sugar.” Like Ed, he noted her lack of color, but he also recognized her determination to see this through. She wasn’t so much fragile as brittle, he thought, like a piece of glass that would snap rather than shatter.
    As she set the cups on the table, she glanced at the back door. “He came in through here, didn’t he?”
    “That’s the way it looks.” Ben took out his own pad and set it next to his saucer. She was holding off the grief, and as a cop, he had to take advantage of it. “I’m sorry we have to go into this.”

    “It doesn’t matter.” She lifted her tea and sipped. She felt the heat of the liquid in her mouth but tasted nothing. “There isn’t anything I can tell you, really. Kath was in her office when I left. She was going to work. That was, I don’t know, six-thirty. When we got back, I thought she’d gone to bed. She hadn’t left the porch light on.” Details, she thought as she fought back another brush with hysteria. The police needed details, just as any good novel did. “I started to go into the kitchen and I noticed her door, her office door, was open and the light was on. So I went in.” She picked up her tea again and carefully shut her mind to what happened next.
    Since Ed had been there, Ben didn’t have to push. They all knew what had happened next. So he’d go back. “Was she seeing anyone?”
    “No.” Grace relaxed a little. They would talk about other things, logical things, and not the impossible scene beyond the office door. “She’d just gone through a nasty divorce and wasn’t over it. She worked, she didn’t socialize. Kathy’s mind was fixed on making enough money to go to court and win back custody of her son.”
    Kevin. Dear God, Kevin. Grace picked up her cup in both hands and drank again.
    “Her husband was Jonathan Breezewood the third, of Palm Springs. Old money, old lineage, nasty temper.” Her eyes hardened as she looked at the back door again. “Maybe, just maybe you’ll find he took a trip east.”
    “Do you have any reason to think the ex-husband would want to murder your sister?”
    She looked up at Ed then. “They didn’t part amicably. He’d been cheating on her for years and she’d hired a lawyer and a detective. He might have found out. Breezewood is the kind of name that doesn’t tolerate any grime attached to it.”
    “Do you know if he ever threatened your sister?” Ben sampled the