Three Fates
get out of the way, Mr. Sullivan, before I call the police.”
“Yeah, she’s been drinking.” With his own temper rising, Gideon took Tia’s arm again. “Because I saw to it as it was the only way I knew to numb her enough for her to deal with having her closest friend murdered. Murdered because of the Three Fates, murdered because of Anita Gaye. You can walk away from that, Dr. Marsh, but it doesn’t stop you being part of it.”
“He’s dead.” Cleo’s voice was flat and dull, and in it Tia heard the ravages of grief. “Mikey’s dead, and hassling her won’t bring him back. Let’s just go.”
“She’s sick, and she’s tired,” Gideon said to Tia. “I’m asking for her, let us come in. She needs a place until I can think what to do.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Come in. Damn it.” Tia dragged a hand through her newly styled hair. “Come on.” She streamed in ahead of them, jammed the button for the elevator.
Didn’t it just figure that Malachi Sullivan would find some way to ruin her triumphant day?
“I’m grateful to you, Dr. Marsh.”
“Tia.” Inside, she jammed the button for her floor. “Since your friend’s very likely to pass out on my floor, why be formal? I hate your brother, by the way.”
“I understand. I’ll let him know next time I see him. I almost didn’t come up to you outside. Mal said you had long hair.”
“I used to.” She led the way down the hall to her apartment. “How did you recognize me?”
“Well, he said, too, that you were blond and delicate and pretty.”
With an unladylike snort, she opened the door. “You can stay until she feels better,” Tia began and set aside her purse and shopping bag. “Meanwhile you can tell me what you’re doing here and why you expect me to believe Anita Gaye murdered anyone.”
His face hardened, and in it Tia saw the resemblance again. Malachi’s had taken on that same look of barely restrained violence in her trashed hotel room in Helsinki.
They might be very attractive, musically voiced men, she thought. But that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
“She didn’t do it personally, but she’s responsible. Is there a place Cleo can lie down?”
“I don’t need to lie down. I don’t want to lie down.”
“All right, then, you’ll sit down.”
Tia frowned as Gideon dragged Cleo to the sofa. His voice was rough, she noted, not particularly kind despite the lovely lilt of it. But he handled the brunette gently, as a man might some fragile antique glass.
And he was right to get her off her feet, Tia decided. The woman was sheet-white and shaky.
“You’re cold,” she heard him say. “Now do what you’re told for once. Put your feet up.” He hauled them up himself, pulled the throw off the back of the sofa and tucked it around her.
“I’m sorry for this,” he said to Tia. “I couldn’t risk a hotel, even if I had enough of the wherewithal for one just now. I haven’t had time to think since everything happened. It was a quest, you see. An adventure, with some annoyances and expenses, to be sure, and a risk of a fist in the face or ass-kicking. But it’s different now. Now there’s murder.”
“I’m sick.” Cleo pushed off the couch, swayed. “I’m sorry. I’m sick.”
“There.” Tia pointed to a door on the left and felt a twist of sympathetic nausea in her own belly as Cleo lurched for it. Gideon was two steps behind her and got the door slammed in his face.
He stood, staring helplessly at it, then lowered his brow to the door.
“I guess it’s the whiskey. I poured it into her because it was all I could think of.”
He was grieving, too. She could see that now. “I’m going to make tea.”
He nodded. “We’d be grateful.”
“Come in the kitchen where I can see you, and start explaining.”
“My brother said you were a fragile kind of thing,” Gideon commented as he followed her into the kitchen. “He’s not usually so wrong.”
“He’s the same one who claimed one of New York’s most respected dealers is a thief. Now you add murder.”
“It’s not a claim, it’s a fact.”
With restless movements, he paced back to the doorway, looked toward the powder room door, paced back.
His brother, Tia noted, was more contained. At least, she amended, as far as she knew.
“She took what wasn’t hers,” Gideon continued. “And because she wants more, she’s upped the stakes beyond anything that can be justified. A man’s dead. A man I
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