Silken Prey

yard.”
    •   •   •
    T HEY WALKED UP TO the front door, rang the bell. Del scratched his neck and looked at the yellow bug light and said, “I
feel
like a bug.”
    “You look like a bug. You fall down out there?”
    “About four times. We weren’t running so much as staggering around. Potholes full of water . . . I see you kept your French shoes nice and dry.”
    “English. English shoes . . . French shirts. Italian suits. Try to remember that.”
    “Makes my nose bleed,” Del said.
    The door opened, and Green looked out: she was still fully dressed, including the jacket that covered her gun and the fashionable shoes that she could run in.
    She took a long look at Del, and asked, “Where’re Dannon and Carver?”
    “Dead,” Lucas said. “Where’s Grant?”
    “In the living room.”
    “You want to invite us in?”
    She opened the door, and they stepped inside, and followed her to the living room.
    Grant was there, still dressed as she had been on the stage; she was curled in an easy chair, with a drink in her hand, high heels on the floor beside her. Schiffer was lying on a couch, barefoot; a couple of Taryn’s staff people, a young woman and a young man, were sitting on the floor, making a circle. Another man, heavier and older, was sitting in a leather chair facing Grant. Lucas didn’t recognize him, but recognized the type: a guy who knew where all the notional bodies were buried, a guy who could get the vice president on the telephone.
    When Lucas came in, behind Green, Grant stood up, putting her drink aside, and asked, “What? What now?”
    “Your pal Dannon murdered your pal Carver and took his body out in the countryside to bury it. We were tracking him, and when we approached him at the grave he was digging, he tried to shoot it out. He’s dead.”
    There was a moment of utter silence: Schiffer seemed to be the most affected, as she got to her feet, her face gone white, a hand at her throat.
    Grant recovered first, and asked, “What . . . does that mean?”
    “We were hoping you could help us with that,” Lucas said.
    “I don’t know what that means,” Grant said.
    “You sent me a message earlier tonight . . .” Lucas began.
    Grant put up a hand: “No. No, I didn’t. I already told you that.”
    Lucas took his phone out of his pocket, called up the message, stepped up to her and said, “Here’s the message. Is this your phone number?”
    She looked at the message and the number, and said, “That’s not right. That’s crazy.”
    “Is that your phone number?”
    “Yes, but my phone, I can’t find my phone. It’s gone. Somebody took it out of my purse. Marjorie had my purse . . .”
    She looked at the woman on the floor, who said, “I was really careful with the purse. It was zipped up.”
    Lucas said, “The call came in at ten-oh-six. You were still here at ten-oh-six, weren’t you?”
    Grant looked at Schiffer, who said, “Yes . . . we were still here. We left for the hotel around ten-fifteen.”
    Grant said, “Then the phone call came from here. My purse was back in the bedroom. In fact . . .” She looked at Schiffer. “In fact, you called me while I was back there.”
    They stared at each other for a moment, then Schiffer said, “That’s right,” dug around in her bag, pulled out her phone, and said, “I made that call at nine-fifty-eight. What’s that . . . eight minutes before you got the message?”
    “There was nobody in the bedroom but me. I went back there to get ready to go,” Grant said. To Schiffer: “I got the call from you . . . I put my phone back in my bag. My bag was on the chest of drawers.”
    Green stepped over to Grant and took her by the arm and said, “One second . . .” She pulled Grant off to one side, twenty feet away, stood with her back to Lucas and the rest of the group, and whispered directly into Grant’s ear. Grant looked at her, then nodded, came back and said, “I’d like to alter that statement a bit. Doug Dannon escorted me back there. We didn’t talk, I just wanted some privacy to pee. I was alone when Connie called, and I dropped my phone back in my purse and came straight out here. Then when we were ready to go, I went back and got my purse.”
    “Can we look at the bedroom?” Lucas asked.
    Schiffer said, “Maybe we ought to have a lawyer.”
    Lucas: “There’s a very good chance . . . actually, it’s not a chance, it’s a certainty, that this is a crime scene.