Death Dines Out (14 page)

"I knew it. I just knew it." Quill put the Mercedes in reverse and eased down the driveway. "Didn't I tell you that someone was going to get Verger Taylor?"
"There's no body," Meg pointed out. She leaned back in the seat. "What an evening."
"It was awful. Did you pick up the message I did?"
"That we were harpies after the gold-dust twins? Yeah." Meg stared up at the sky. There was a frosty nimbus around the moon. The air was heavy. They drove in silence for some moments. Meg said, "What do you suppose she's doing now?"
"Cressida? Calling a platoon of lawyers, I expect. She couldn't be as unconcerned as she appeared. Evan and Corrigan found the body... "
"There wasn't a body," Meg said.
"Or the blood, rather, and you can be that the media will be on this like a flock of pigeons after bread crumbs in central Park. They always are."
"How much blood do you suppose there was?"
"Meg!" She reached the road, stopped, and put the car in drive.
"I mean, was the place awash with it? Was it human blood? Was it little drops that might come if you'd cut yourself and driven to the emergency room?"
Quill didn't answer for a moment. She pulled onto the road and drove in silence, then said. "There was a security guard, surely."
"Was there?" They looked at each other. Meg raised her eyebrows. "You know, we're coming up on his house in a moment. Let's go find out."
"We can't interfere in a police investigation."
"Quill, we've investigated how many murderers?"
"Four," said Quill glumly. "And a dozen corpses."
"And we've never worried about interfering in a police investigation before."
"Myles was in charge of almost all of those cases, Meg. I hardly think that the police here in Florida are going to welcome the services of two amateur detectives." She slowed. They were approaching Verger Taylor's mansion. The two gold lions shone brightly in the glare of the Mercedes's headlights.
"There's no one there!" Meg said in surprise.
"We were closer to the house than the Palm Beach County police," Quill pointed out. "They haven't had time to get here yet."
"Pull in," Meg said.
"Are you sure?"
"My investigative instincts have been roused. Let's just see what's going on."
Although there was absolutely no traffic, Quill signaled a left-hand turn and pulled past Verger Taylor's elaborate gates. The drive to the house was broad and straight. The front of the mansion was illuminated like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza.
"There's that little Jaguar of Evan's," Quill said. She came to a stop. They both got out and went to the front door. It was twice Quill's height, perhaps more, and made of heavily carved wood. A lion's head door knocker was placed squarely in the center. Quill hesitated a moment, then rapped the knocker sharply against the brass plate. The door opened almost immediately.
"Quill!" Evan said. He was pale. His hair stuck up in little tufts around his head.
"We wondered if there was anything we could do for you," Meg said. She pushed Quill firmly over the threshold and into the foyer. They had both seen photographs of verger Taylor's home, but the reality was overwhelming. The foyer was lined entirely in pink marble: floor, ceiling, and walls. Three enormous flower arrangements had been placed on pedestals with gold cherubs as the bases.
Meg looked up at Evan. "We thought we cold drop your two friends off at their home. Get them out of the way of the police."
Behind them, through the open door, the wail of a police siren was abruptly cut off as a cruiser swept up the drive to the door. Two uniformed policemen scrambled out of the vehicle and approached the foyer at a run. A second cruiser came to a halt behind the first. Two more uniformed policemen spilled out of it. One took off at a run around the west wing of the house; the other, gun drawn, proceeded at a more deliberate pace around the east end.
Meg pushed Quill through the other end of the foyer into a living room which, at a glance, was the size of a basketball court. This, too, was entirely lined in pink marble. The fourth wall of the room was a series of ornately framed sliding glass doors, overlooking the darkness and, Quill presumed, the beach. The glass door at the farthest end of the wall had been smashed in. Glass littered the floor.
Corrigan and two young girls were huddled on a large, navy blue brocaded sofa in front of the fireplace. The cherub motif had been continued here in the supports for the black mantel. Both girls were blonde, thin, and tanned. They were wearing tight spandex dresses that stopped well above the knee. The one in red was smoking nervously. The girl in black huddled in the shelter of Corrigan's arm."
"Hey, guys," Meg said. "What's going on?"
Corrigan automatically rose to his feet. The girl in black whimpered and curled into a tight ball on the sofa. Accompanied by Evan, the uniformed police jogged past them to a half-open door set in the west side of the room. The room beyond was dimly lit. Meg and Quill followed Evan.
This room had been a study, although, Quill thought, it looked more like the office of a Renaissance pope than that of the fourth largest real estate mogul in America. The room had a domed ceiling painted with scenes of the Annunciation. Bookshelves soared into the reaches of the dome on both sides of the room. Most of them were locked behind grilled doors set into the shelving.
A desk, which was at least six feet long, occupied the center of the room. A laptop computer lay shattered on the floor. The screen was cracked, but the monitor glowed eerily. A ten-line telephone had been tossed - or had fallen - next to it. The receiver was off.
There wasn't all that much blood. A small pool was next to the phone, and the handset had streaks of red on it. Quill narrowly avoided stepping in several splashes at the door. The younger of the two policemen - the one with a crew cut and wire-rimmed glasses - glanced at Meg. He barked, "Remain outside this area, please." The cellular phone at his belt beeped. He took it, flicked open the top and began to speak rapidly into it, his voice low and confidential. Meg moved into the shadow cast by a large statue in the Greek style - a copy, Quill thought - of Mercury in the Louvre.
Quill backed out of the office. She stepped carefully on the marble floor, watching for splashes of blood. There was a small but discernible trail of red linking the office door to the smashed glass at the beachfront side of the living room.
The glass had exploded inward. The shards sprayed out from the door in a parabola, which clearly demonstrated that at least two powerful blows from a heavy object had been struck from the outside. Remnants of shattered glass clung to the door frame. The most damage seemed to have occurred about four feet from the ground. Quill wished she had a tape measure.
A powerful flashlight swept the area immediately outside the door and a voice ordered Quill away. She backed up. One of the policemen outside yelled, "Ange! We got a body! Not Taylor, do you read? Not Taylor. Seems to be security."
The girl in red screamed. The policeman with the crew cut came out of the study and said calmly, "You're not on the radio, Kyle. I don't read you, I hear you just fine." His gaze swept over Quill - sharp, appraising, indifferent. "Out of the way, miss. Confine yourself to the fireplace area."
The policeman outside called for an ambulance. Quill went to Corrigan and sat down in the chair directly across from him. He had half-risen at the policeman's shout about the discovery of the body, then sat back when he'd heard it wasn't his father. He looked bewildered. Out of the comer of her eye, Quill saw Meg slip across the living room into the east part of the house. She spoke gently to Corrigan, who jumped nonetheless at the sound of her voice. "Did your dad have a large security force, Corrigan?"
"What? No. No. It was twenty-four hours a day, but it was just the one guard. He doubled as a chauffeur. I mean, there was a whole group of them, but only one at a time." He bit nervously at his thumbnail. "What do you think happened? Do you think my father's dead?"
The girl in black started to cry, not, Quill judged, from grief, but from sheer nervous tension. The one in red stubbed out her cigarette, lit another, and jiggled her left leg up and down.
"Just the one guard, Corrigan? Surely somebody like your dad had better protection than that."
"Well, sure. The whole place is wired for security," He pointed upwards. "Cameras all over the place. The guard didn't even have to patrol, just watch the video monitors."
"When did you four come to pick up Mr. Taylor?"
"About nine-thirty. Ev and I went down to get Shirl and Beth just after dinner, and we came straight here."
Quill addressed both girls. "How far away do you guys live?"
"Shirl's here for the weekend, at Beth's house," Corrigan said.
"Is your house here, Beth?"
"I live in Juno," the blonde in black said sullenly. "Why the fuck do you want to know, anyway?"
"Officer!" The shout came from the part of the house where Meg had gone. Quill jumped to her feet.
"Officer!"
"That's Meg!" Quill said.
"She must be in the kitchen," Corrigan said. "What the hell?"
Quill ran ahead of the others to the east wing archway, skidding on the floor in her high-heeled shoes. "Meg? Meg!"
"Down there," Corrigan said from behind her. "Take a right. The kitchen's beyond the solarium."
Two policemen ran past Quill, their guns drawn, Ange in the lead. "You civilians stay back," he ordered.
"That's my sister," Quill said, and then immediately felt silly. She dropped back behind the cops and followed them into the kitchen. Verger Taylor's baroque tastes hadn't stopped with his pink-marble living room. This area was almost exclusively black granite and cherrywood, At first glance, there appeared to be no appliances at all, just a huge granite-topped island in the center of the floor. Meg was standing at it, her arm around a cowering, terrified maid.
"Maria was locked in the pantry," she said.
"You let her out?" Ange demanded.
"Of course I let her out. She was kicking her heels against the door, poor thing."
"She was tied up?"
"With clothes line and duct tape," Meg said. She pointed to the detritus on the floor. "It's all right there."
"You," said Ange sternly. "Don't leave. I'm giving myself a good hard think about arresting you for interfering with evidence." He scowled. "Step away from the witness, ma'am."
Meg saluted smartly. "Yes, sir, officer, sir."
Quill gave an exasperated tcha! and pulled Meg aside. She looked for an appropriately secure place to yell at her sister and found one in the maid's room. It was just off the kitchen, next to what Quill realized was a set of triple ovens concealed by cherry paneling. She shoved Meg into the room. It was small, with a neatly made twin bed, wicker chest, a print of the Scared Heart on the wall, and a small television set. Quill closed the door firmly and sat down on the bed. Meg prowled restlessly around the room. "Good idea, Meg, pissing off the police."
A look familiar to Quill - mulish in the extreme - spread over Meg's face.
"You know why it's not a good idea to piss off the police? Because if you get arrested, you can't present your potted rabbit at the banquet on Friday. And good-bye third star."
Meg's face cleared. "You've got a point."
"Of course I've got a point. Now what did that poor maid tell you before you called us in?"
"I called you in right away," Meg said indignantly. "I know you, Meg. You grabbed the chance to question her, didn't you? What'd she say?"
"That she didn't know anything was happening until she heard the glass door smash."
"Did she know what time that was?"
"About six-thirty."
"Good Lord. That's just after we met him. This must have happened just after we left."
"I know. It's horrible."
"Is she sure about the time?"
"How should I know? Anyhow, she ran to the living room, thinking maybe a seagull had hit the door or something."
"A seagull?"
"She said it's happened before. And she said the security alarm hadn't gone off. The whole place is wired, Quill. The robbers must have disconnected it somehow."
"You're making a highly speculative assumption that they were robbers, Meg."
"No, I'm not. I'll tell you why in a minute. Anyhow, Maria said she thought a seagull came through the glass."
"Meg, there's no way a seagull could smash those thermal pane doors. Not even a three-hundred-pound seagull."
"I'm just telling you what she said. Will you shut up and listen? She ran to the archway leading onto that womb with a view..."
"Pretty funny, Quilliam."
"All that pink marble, Quilliam. Ugh! Anyhow, she saw two men struggling with Verger Taylor. Burglars, she said."
"Did she recognize them?"
"Of course she didn't! What self-respecting burglar would burgle with his bare face hanging out? Both of them had those arctic masks on their faces. You know, the woolly thing you wear to keep the cold out when you ski."
"How were they dressed?"
"I couldn't get that out of her. She screamed, ran back to the kitchen, and hid in the closet."
"She didn't call 91l?"
"She was too scared."
"Oh, dear."
"Anyhow, she hid in the closet and said the burglars came looking for her."
"How did she know that?"
"Because they were calling, 'come out, senorita, come out. We will not harm you if you come out.' Devils, she said."
"Were they hollering in Spanish?"
"They must have been. Her English isn't very good. Anyway, they flung open the door of the closet, found her, blindfolded her, tied her up, and left her for dead. She says. But as far as I can tell, they didn't mean to harm her at all. She was tied up pretty tightly, but she could breathe. And she wasn't beaten or anything. Then one burglar came back."
"Came back?"
"That's what she said. She was lying there, scared out of her wits, crying, and praying when she heard this devil come back. 'This devil, snapping like the flames of hell.' That's her words."
"This was all in Spanish, Meg?"
"Yes. What of it?"
"Your Spanish sucks, that's what of it."
The door to the bedroom flew open. Ange the policeman stood there. His face was red. He called over his shoulder, "Here they are!" and stepped back. "Out."
He motioned with one hand. The other was on his pistol. "Out now. The sergeant wants a word with you two."
He shepherded them back to the living room. As huge as it was, it had become crowded. An ambulance team waited with a stretcher. Five or six forensic technicians were crawling around the floor, vacuuming, taking pictures, and otherwise gathering evidence. Two men in dark three-piece suits conferred by the fireplace with Evan and Corrigan. A policewoman sat with Shirl and Beth. The intact door next to the shattered one where the robbers had entered was open, and a man and a woman in plain clothes were headed towards it.