Harmony 03 After Glow (23 page)

“I see,” Lydia said neutrally. “In other words if Sandra was Wyatt’s mistress for any length of time, she should have been able to afford to live in a better neighborhood.”

“Yeah.”

“You said that Wyatt stopped seeing Sandra nearly two years ago. Maybe she ran through whatever money and jewelry he gave her.”

“Hey, maybe that’s why she called Mr. Wyatt the other day,” Verwood volunteered. “To tell him she was broke. Probably knew she could get more cash out of him if she gave him a good sob story.”

“If that was the case, I doubt she would have shot him in the back before identifying herself,” Lydia said. “Hard to get cash out of a dead man.”

“Huh.” Verwood raised both hands. “She’s got a point, Boss. Maybe we’re off the mark a little here. Maybe Sandra Thornton didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“But there are other reasons besides money why a woman might want to kill a man,” Lydia said quietly.

Emmett glanced sharply at her but he could not read her expression in the darkness.

“Well, we’re not going to get any answers standing around out here,” he said. He started toward the front door of the apartment house. “Let’s go ask her.”

He led the way across the narrow street, Verwood immediately behind him. Neither of them made any noise but Lydia’s high heels rang faintly on the pavement.

Emmett went up the steps and tried the front door. It was locked.

“I’ll take care of it, Boss.” Verwood stepped in close to the door, took a pick out of his pocket, and applied it to the lock. Ten seconds later the door opened.

“That lock-pick gadget can’t be legal.” Lydia did not bother to conceal her disapproval. “Do all hunters carry one?”

“Uh—” Verwood broke off and looked quickly at Emmett, seeking guidance.

“What lock-pick gadget?” Emmett asked. “I didn’t see any lock-pick gadget.”

He moved through the doorway into a dimly lit hall. Lydia and Verwood followed.

Emmett examined the hand-lettered plaques on each door he passed. He stopped at the one that read
S. Thornton.

“Let me knock,” Lydia said. “It will be a lot less threatening.”

She was right, Emmett thought. He stepped aside.

Lydia rapped her knuckles lightly against the panel and stood directly in front of the peephole.

There was no response.

She tried again, louder, sharper, more authoritative this time.

When there was no answer, Emmett took Lydia’s place. He ignored her frown and knocked once.

“Ms. Thornton? This is Emmett London. I want to talk to you about Mercer Wyatt. This is a Guild matter.”

“Oh, hey, that’s real subtle,” Lydia told him. “If I were her, I’d be climbing out the rear window about now.”

No, you wouldn’t, he thought. You’d fling open the front door and start chewing me out for having the nerve to wake you up at this hour.

“You want me to go downstairs and watch the alley in case she tries to sneak out that way, Boss?” Verwood asked.

“No.” Emmett was about to order him to use the pick again but he remembered to try the door first. It turned easily in his hand.

“Sheesh.” Lydia shook her head. “I can’t imagine leaving your front door unlocked in this neighborhood.”

“Neither can I.” This was not a good sign. He eased the door open. “Ms. Thornton?”

The unnatural stillness and the scent of burnt spice told its own tale.

Verwood wrinkled his nose in disgust. “She’s into Chartreuse. Well, that explains how she went through whatever cash and goodies the boss gave her when they split.”

“Something’s wrong,” Lydia whispered. “It’s too quiet in there.”

Emmett went through the doorway first with Verwood on his heels. He opened all his senses, listening for the slightest sound and feeling for any trace of psi energy, but he caught nothing. He glanced back at Lydia and Verwood. They both shook their heads.

The light from a single floor lamp slanted across a small living room that was nearly empty of furnishings.

Verwood surveyed the space with disdain. “She must have sold everything to buy the dope.”

Emmett went down the short hall, glancing into the tiny bath before continuing on into the bedroom.

The smell of death mingled with the smoky scent of the Chartreuse.

Another weak lamp was lit in this room. It revealed a woman dressed in a scarlet nightgown. Her head was turned away from them, facing the window. Blond hair tumbled across the pillow.

A small Chartreuse burner sat on the table beside the bed.

They all looked at the body.

“Dear God, not again,” Lydia whispered. She put her hand on her stomach.

Emmett went to the bed and touched the cold skin of the woman’s throat. “She’s been dead for several hours.”

“Just like Professor Maltby.” Lydia’s gaze was riveted on the woman.

Emmett did not like the sound of that. “Do me a favor and don’t get started on any new conspiracy theories, Lydia. Maltby and Thornton were both Chartreuse users.”

“I know, but you’ve got to admit this is something more than a coincidence.”

“I don’t have to admit anything of the kind.” He was about to tell Verwood to make the call to the cops when he saw the sheet of paper lying on the nightstand beside the drug apparatus.

There was a note written in an extremely shaky hand. He did not pick it up but he read it aloud to Lydia and Verwood.

My beloved Mercer:

Please forgive me. You always said that I was impulsive, didn’t you? You told me that it was one of the things that you loved about me. I doubt that you expected that I might someday try to kill you on impulse, though, did you?

The papers say that you will probably live. Believe it or not, I’m glad to know that I did not succeed. But I can’t go on any longer seeing you with her and knowing that I will never have you. I was good enough to be your mistress but not good enough to be your wife.

Farewell, my love.
Sandy

“I told you there were other reasons why a woman might try to kill a man,” Lydia whispered. “Obsession and jealousy are right up there at the top of the list.”

“It explains a lot of things,” Emmett said, “like why Wyatt went out alone late at night to meet her and why he kept insisting that it was not Guild politics.”

“Looks like we’ve got the shooter,” Verwood said. He sounded relieved and satisfied.

Emmett nodded. “Better call Martinez.”

I
T WAS AFTER
two in the morning before they got back to the town house. Martinez had had a lot of questions and she was, as Emmett had expected, not real happy with him. The detective had made several pointed remarks about how nice it must be to have the financial resources and the manpower of the Guild at one’s disposal and how pleasant it would be to be able to conduct an investigation just once without worrying about budgetary constraints.

“You owe me for this, London,” had been her parting remark. “I hear the Guild always repays its debts. I’ll be waiting.”

But despite the grumbling, he knew that Martinez had been deeply relieved to be able to close the high-profile case.

Emmett folded his arms behind his head and contemplated the night view of the Dead City through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The spires and towers that rose above the high walls were bathed in moonlight tonight. The effect was surreal, mysterious, and always compelling.

What was it about the magnificent ruins that called to people like Lydia and himself, people who resonated on the psychic plane with the psi energy that spilled from the ancient colony?

Beside him Lydia stirred, turned onto her side, and propped herself on one elbow. Fuzz, nestled between them at the foot of the bed, opened one of his four eyes and then promptly closed it.

Lydia put her palm on Emmett’s bare chest. “Can’t sleep?”

“I wonder where she was during the past two years,” he said.

“Sandra Thornton?”

“Verwood says that it’s as if she disappeared right after the relationship with Wyatt ended. Then, nearly two years later she reappears and tries to murder Wyatt. A couple of days later Verwood gets an anonymous tip that she’s living in a run-down apartment in the Old Quarter. And a short time later she’s dead from an overdose.”

“Maybe she left Cadence for a while. She might have been living in Resonance or Frequency or one of the smaller towns.”

He thought about that. “I’ll have Verwood keep looking. I’d really like to know where Thornton spent the past couple of years.”

There was a short silence during which Fuzz wriggled around a little and made himself more comfortable.

“I’ve got a few questions of my own.” Lydia settled herself back on the pillows. “I can’t get past the fact that Sandra Thornton checked out the same way Professor Maltby did. An overdose of Chartreuse in both cases seems like too much of a coincidence to me.”

He thought about that. Okay, he had problems with her anti-Guild attitude and her tendency to blame ghost-hunters for anything and everything that went wrong underground, but he had learned the hard way to respect her intuition.

“What possible connection could there be between Maltby and Sandra Thornton?” he asked.

“There’s one real big connection. Us. You and me, Emmett.”

He turned his head to look at her serious, shadowed face. “What are you talking about?”

“Think about it,” she said earnestly. “We were on the scene both times the bodies were discovered. Doesn’t that strike you as good grounds for a conspiracy theory?”

“No,” he said flatly.

“Okay, then how about this one? A lot of people seem to have disappeared in both cases.”

“I’ll admit that Sandra Thornton apparently dropped out of sight for a couple of years but she eventually turned up again. Who have you got on your list?”

“Everyone who was close to Troy Burgis fifteen years ago.”

It was his turn to prop himself up on one elbow. “You’ve got my attention. Now tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

“I told you that I contacted Troy Burgis’s alumni association. Well, this morning I got a call from someone who knew Burgis in college, Karen Price. Turns out that within a few months after he vanished into the catacombs beneath Old Frequency, the other three members of his band, his girlfriend and two ghost-hunter buddies, were supposedly killed in various accidents.”

“Supposedly?”

“Get this: None of the bodies were ever found. What do you say to that?”

He wanted to tell her that she was letting her imagination run off with her common sense but for some reason he couldn’t seem to summon up a logical counterargument.

“Huh,” he said instead.

“Admit it, London. It’s pretty darn weird that all four of them disappeared within a few months, isn’t it?”

“Okay, it’s weird, I’ll give you that.”

“While we’re on the subject of a conspiracy theory,” Lydia said, “there’s something else that’s been bothering me about Sandra Thornton.”

“I’m listening.”

Lydia’s brows came together in a perplexed frown. “If she was so obsessed with Mercer Wyatt, why wait nearly two years to try to kill him? You’d think that the fires of passion would have cooled after so much time apart.”

What was she talking about? he thought. Didn’t she understand?

He leaned over her, trapping her beneath him, savoring the warmth and softness of her, losing himself in the hot rush of need.

“Don’t know about Sandra and Wyatt,” he said. “But I can guarantee you that two years apart from you wouldn’t do a damn thing to cool this fire.”

The huge vase filled with flowers was waiting for her the next morning when she walked into her office. It sat right in the middle of her desk. The glorious blooms and lush, artfully arranged greenery spilled out over the top in a massive waterfall of color that covered the entire surface.

Lydia’s heart leaped. After-the-ball flowers from Emmett.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Melanie called, hurrying toward her down the hall. “They arrived just before you got here. I took the liberty of reading the card. Couldn’t resist. Guess who loves you and worships the very ground upon which you walk?”

Lydia smiled and walked to the desk to cup a dark pink orchid in one hand. “It was very sweet of him. He’s so busy these days, I can’t believe he found the time to order the flowers.”

“Don’t know how busy he was before you wore
Midnight
to the ball last night, but he’s sure gonna be a whole lot busier from now on, thanks to you.”

Lydia stopped smiling and picked up the card.

Midnight becomes you. I am your devoted slave forever.

Yours in gratitude,
Charles

“You should have seen yourself on the rez-screen last night. You were fabulous. It was so exciting to watch you and Emmett walk into Restoration Hall. Just take a look at these pictures in the papers.” Melanie waved a handful of tabloids. “That dress was perfect and Charles is now the hottest designer in the city.”

Lydia took the copy of the
Tattler
from her and examined the photo that covered the front page. It showed her walking along the red carpet on Emmett’s arm, heading toward the doors of the ballroom. He looked great, she thought. Cool, confident, totally in control. Power formed an invisible aura around him. He could have stepped right out of one of the ballroom murals, a modern-day Jerrett Knox leading the forces of good against Vincent Lee Vance’s evil legions.

She, on the other hand, had the glassy-eyed gaze of a deer caught in the headlights. Probably the fault of all those camera lights, she decided. But she had to admit that the dress looked good.

“Amazing what the right clothes will do for a woman,” she said.

“I’ll say.” Melanie inhaled the fragrance of one of the blooms. “All right, pal, let’s have the whole story. Remember, you promised me every little detail.”

“Don’t worry, I took notes.” Lydia started to toss the
Tattler
aside but paused when she noticed the second glaring headline.

Wyatt Shot by Ex-Lover. Woman Takes Own Life. New Guild Boss and Bride Find Body