Fatal Reaction

and washed his blood down the sink. Because whoever it was didn’t want anyone to know that he had ever been there.”
     
    As soon as Elliott and Blades left, I picked up the phone and tried to reach Stephen only to be told by the officious Rachel that he was in yet another meeting and she didn’t dare disturb him. Aggravated, I left another urgent message and tried to get back to work, but I found rt impossible to concentrate. Flashes of Danny’s apartment kept running through my head like a disturbing movie whose images were impossible to forget. As unsettled as I’d been while I was in Danny’s apartment, I’d at least felt sure of what it was I was seeing. Educated by the movies, inured by the news, I had been certain I was Poking at the aftermath of a violent and bloody crime. Now, like stepping in front of a fun-house mirror, Joe Blades’s revelations had twisted those assumptions around to the point where I didn’t feel certain about anything I’d seen.
    The phone rang and I jumped. I looked at my watch. Cheryl must have gone while I was still meeting with the two detectives. On Thursdays she had class at five. I was hoping it was Stephen, but instead it was Mimi Sheraton, the decorator. She was calling on her cellular phone from the new apartment. In her own restrained and aristocratic way, she sounded terribly upset.
    “Oh, Kate. I’m so glad I was able to reach you. I’m here with Dick Brimstead, the architect, and I’m afraid he’s found something that you need to have a look at right away.”
    “What is it?” I asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was really not sure I could handle any more bad news.
    “It really would be better if you could come and see it for yourself. Is there any chance you could run over here now?”
    “I’m right in the middle of something,” I ventured, staring helplessly around my office at everything I needed to get done before I called it a day.
    “It would take only a few minutes,” she pressed.
    I looked at the pile of faxes from Takisawa still sitting in front of me, unread. “I’ll catch a cab and be right over,” I sighed.
     
    Arriving at the apartment, I found Mimi waiting for me in the foyer with Dick Brimstead, a distinguished man of sixty with close-cropped gray hair and watery blue eyes.
    I took a deep breath, forced myself to smile, and made a determined effort to not seem brusque. “So,” I said. “What seems to be the trouble?”
    “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” announced Mimi brightly, leading the way up the graceful curve of the David Adler staircase. We trailed her along the upstairs gallery and through the French doors into the ballroom.
    It was my favorite room in the apartment. It didn’t matter to me that it was a complete waste, that Stephen and I would never have a party big enough to fill even half of it. Whenever Stephen asked me what I was going to do with it I always told him I planned on taking up roller skating. The truth is, the only thing I wanted to do with it was own it.
    If it is possible for an architect to give expression to his genius in a single room, then this was David Adler’s. A masterpiece of proportion, it was a completely gorgeous, lavishly perfect space, lit by a mammoth confection of a crystal chandelier and lined with gracefully arched windows which overlooked the lake. My grandmother had commissioned an artist to paint cherubs on the ceiling, and he’d used my brother Teddy, my sister Beth, and me as models. In subequent years Teddy had grown into a troubled teenager. He’d committed suicide when he was fifteen, but when I looked up at the ceiling in this place I still saw him looking down on me from beneath his halo, an impish smile on his face.
    “It will be easier to see it if we turn off the lights,” said Brimstead. Mimi obliged and the room went dark. In the distance I could see the beacon of the lighthouse on the lake and, to the south, the glittering lights of the Ferris "'heel at Navy Pier. Dick Brimstead produced a powerful flashlight from his pocket and shone it up at the ceiling.
    “There, can you see those deep cracks right along the line of the light?” he asked. “And there?”
    “Yes. I see.”
    “They follow the line of the structural beams that support the ceiling,” added Mimi, switching on the light.
    “So does this mean we’re going to have to replaster the whole thing?” I inquired uncertainly. As much as I hated to admit it, I wished my