Labyrinth (19 page)

“Kitty,” she said in a soft voice, but the animal didn’t move.
“Ki-tty.”
Still nothing.

She started toward the bed, then realized the light from the hallway wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the interior of the room and hurried back into the hallway, heading for the nearest sconce. Margot lifted the wrought iron sconce from its holder and strode back into the room.

She crossed to the bed, but stopped short at recognizing the
thing
she had mistaken for a cat.

Margot stared at the skull, white bones framed against dark hair spread across a cream-colored linen pillowcase. Black hair reached to hip length, hair
like Cat’s
. What in God’s name had prompted this morbid twist to the dream? Maybe she wished Cat in hell where she would spend eternity with the demons she hoped to conjure? Margot cursed under her breath. That was some death wish. When had she turned into one of the sick fucks from whom she had sworn to preserve and protect the populace?

She drew back the covers. A red bustier lay limp against the skeleton’s ribs. Margot glanced at the drawers lying on the foot of the bed. Why had the underwear been on the floor? She grimaced. When she got back home, some shrink was going to have a field day with this one. Margot turned to leave, but her gaze caught on a broken wine glass on the night stand. She brought the sconce closer and found a dried wine spill marring the top of the nightstand. A second glass lay on the rug between the bed and nightstand. She straightened. The bustier, underwear on the floor, and wine all pointed to a night of romance.
Or seduction
.
A chill swept through her.

Margot hurried from the room.

The next door came into sight. She stopped in front of the room and stared at the play of light off the black, metal handle before finally trying the door.
Locked.
She placed the sconce in the holder near the door and pulled the lock pick from her pocket. A moment later, the lock clicked open just as the other had and she pushed open the door. Except for a navy blue quilt, the room and four poster bed were identical to the last.

She lifted the sconce from its holder and entered the room. “Hello?”

No answer. She crossed to the bed and drew back the quilt. Another skeleton lay on pristine sheets, this one, naked. Brunette hair reached breast length. White fabric peeked from beneath the pillow beside the skeleton. Using the edge of the sconce, Margot dragged the fragment forward until it became recognizable as a linen nightgown. She glanced around the room, but found no other signs of
romance
as there had been in the other room.

Margot strode from the room and down the hallway. Another door came into view up ahead on the right. She stopped, tried the handle, found the door locked, and kept going around the corner into the second hall. She stopped at a door five feet ahead on the right and had the lock opened even quicker than the last.

In this room, the fireplace sat to the left, and the bed to the right. Sconce in hand, Margot started toward the bed, but halted four paces into the room. The morbid cheesy smell emanating from the bed caused her heart to thump with a ferocity that took her breath. She knew that smell; butyric acid. The flesh on the body was in the early stages of decay.

She forced back a gag.
Jesus-fucking-Christ
.
Why had her mind created
this
? She continued to the bed, grasped the edge of the quilt, and yanked it back. The stench gusted upward and she fell back a step, burying her nose in the crook of the arm holding the sconce and waving wildly with her free hand.

“Stupid,” she wheezed. Any cop worth their salt would know better than to yank the quilt off a decaying body.

Margot stepped closer to the bed. Bile rose at sight of flesh decaying from the chest cavity outward. Contrasting the bloated flesh was the pale pink of the gown bunched about the woman’s waist. A glint drew Margot’s attention to the mother-of-pearl buttons dotting the strip of lace that ran the length of the bodice. The delicate buttons reminded her of white-columned porticos, mint juleps, and hand fans waving in front of beautiful female faces in an effort to stir the heavy summer air. A lump formed in her throat. The crumpled satin nightgown with pink ribbon belonged to just such a woman, like those genteel southern ladies of her home state.

“Wake up,” she muttered. “Wake the fuck up.”

The room didn’t change. The bloated corpse remained on the bed, far too real.

Reverend Johnson would say this dream was payment for the fornication of the earlier dreams. She had never been one to believe in sin or righteousness, heaven or hell, but then, she’d never come quite so close to Hell.

Margot studied the body. Who knew the time spent at the Body Farm in
Tennessee
learning about decomposing corpses would come in handy during a dream? Fluid darkened the bed around the body where mold had grown as a result of contact between flesh and bedding. If she remembered correctly, butyric fermentation took place twenty to fifty days after death. This woman hadn’t died long ago.

She thought back to the other two corpses. Only a forensics expert could pinpoint how long ago each had died, but their state of decomposition was far beyond the butyric fermentation stage into the dry state where the corpse had been reduced to bone and hair.

She’d seen
no sign of violence in any of the rooms, which didn't mean the killer hadn't arranged the bodies as he'd wanted after killing the women
. Each seemed to have been sexually active before their deaths. Margot froze. Had that been the case with Donny? Margot knew that Cat had enticed him with her stunning looks. She had used her looks with all men, not that Margot blamed her, what woman didn’t use her looks? But Cat was more beautiful than the average woman, knew it, and felt it was her right to use her beauty to get what she wanted.

Anger tightened Margot’s stomach. Cat hadn’t needed to resort to murder. Donny would have given her anything she wanted, probably would have put up with anything she dished out.
But Cat didn’t want to be shackled with a man, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to lose a single penny of his money in a divorce.

“When I get out of this, Cat, you’re going to jail," she murmured.

Margot crossed to the door, then paused and looked back. Long dead ashes scattered the brick in front of the fireplace. Had a fire like those in her earlier dreams burned in this hearth? Had that fire welcomed the woman as it had welcomed her to Colin Morrison’s room?

Margot strode from the bedroom.

She stopped in front of the third and final room in the hallway. The lock opened as easily as the last, and she dropped the picks back into her pocket, took the sconce from its holder where she’d placed it, and firmly pushed open the door.

The stench of rotting flesh hit her with all the force of a gale. Margot stumbled back, gagging. She seized the lower edge of her skirt and covered her nose and mouth. Her stomach roiled. She spied the window on the far wall and hurried to it. Extending the sconce, she searched for a lever or lock, but found none. She swore, then turned and started for the bed, but halted. When had she ever
dreamed
smells? When had she ever dreamed of dead bodies?

"Fuck," she cursed, and continued to the bed.

Margot took a shallow breath, released her dress, and carefully drew back the silver colored quilt that covered the body. Despite knowing what she would find, she couldn’t repress a gasp at sight of the collapsed body that showed black exposed surfaces with flesh the consistency of cream. Black putrification; the body was between ten and twenty days dead.

The woman wore a low-cut black teddy, with thong panties. Margot paused. The undergarment was a strong contrast to the others. The bustier the first victim wore was different than those in Victoria Secret. Because, Margot realized, it wasn’t a modern bustier, but a corset, a simple corset with no breast cups because it wasn’t intended to lift the breasts, but to tighten the waist.

She recalled the unattractive white, linen nightgown, worn by the woman in the second room, cut in straight lines like those worn by women of the western days…or women who lived in a seventeenth century castle. The pink silk worn by the women in the last room represented romance at its height in the early twentieth century, and the teddy was modern erotic fashion.

Four dead women who had engaged in sexual activity before their deaths fit the scenario;
“The curse compels Colin to lure women into his bed.”

Corsets, linen nightgowns, and teddies.
Different time periods, different stages of decomposition.

Chapter Nineteen

“The last woman known to enter the castle and disappear was Rita Jones in
nineteen thirty-six
.”

Margot paused. That wasn’t right. Bree Cullen was the last woman known to disappear from Castle Morrison. But Cat hadn’t mentioned the young woman for fear Margot would piece together the truth. And Cat had gambled right, would have gotten away with it, if not for McNeil and his Scotland Yard buddy. She had to talk to McNeil. Margot reached into her dress pocket before realizing she didn’t have the Blackberry. This was a dream.

“Wake the hell up,” she ordered, but the room didn’t disappear, and she wasn’t sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace.

Margot started to leave, but paused and pulled the cover up over the corpse’s body. Stupid, but she couldn’t leave the woman like that, even in a dream. She turned, headed for the door,
then
halted at sight of a pink slipper on the floor between the bed and wall. She took three steps, squatted beside the shoe, and traced a finger up the two inch heel and along the side to the pink fuzzy on the front. She grunted a mirthless laugh. This was a nice touch. Her mind had created the scenario down to the last detail in Bree Cullen’s death.

A glint in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Margot lowered the sconce and illuminated a heart shaped locket and chain partially hidden under the bed. She picked up the locket and opened it.
Patty forever
was inscribed on one side. On the other was the picture of a young red haired, green-eyed man.

She rose and glanced around the room. Were there other clues here? She glanced toward the hallway. What about the other rooms? She’d taken no time to really examine them. Were there clues she had missed? Margot closed the locket and started to toss it onto the bed then, on impulse, dropped chain and locket into her pocket and left the room.

She turned the bend into the next hall. As expected, a door came into view on the left. She reached the unlocked room and opened the door. Welcoming warmth radiated from the fire burning in the fireplace. Soft candlelight played off the blades of the sword and dagger hanging over the mantle.

She shifted her attention to her left. The massive four poster bed was just as she remembered with drapes hanging from the posts, a lustrous quilt, and turned down sheets as white as snow. Her heartbeat accelerated. This room invited—compelled—the visitor to enter, rest, lie on the bed…make love. Had the other four women felt this way when they’d found themselves in those rooms? Margot shook herself. This was a dream
.
Those women weren’t real, Colin wasn’t real.

As if she’d conjured him with the thought, he appeared in the open doorway as he had that first time. Her breath caught. Despite having seen him three times before, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight of him. How could she conjure such gruesome scenes as those four dead women, then this magnificent man? A tremor rocked her belly. She hadn’t conjured him. This
was
Colin Morrison—or was what he had looked like. How had she known that?

“You,” he said in a whisper.
“But how?”

Margot gave a strangled laugh. “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, sugar.” She started toward him then remembered the sconce she still gripped, and scanned the wall for a holder.