LITMIR.BIZ

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seized me. Was there any reason not to take a quick look?

      I pulled the door open further and peeked inside. Like the living room, the bedroom had an entire wall of glass looking out onto a forest of palm trees, shrubs, and flowers.

      My eyes fell on something I couldn’t make sense of. Was it a pole? I pushed the door even further open, letting more light into the room.

      It wasn’t a pole. It was a thick braided cord, stretched taut from the leg of the king-size four-poster bed. My eyes followed the cord to the top edge of a door that stood ajar on the other side of the room. Curious, I stepped into the room and crossed the carpet. I stumbled twice, first over an open suitcase and then on a high-heeled shoe. I think I knew before I laid my hand on the closet door that something was terribly wrong.

      Hanging from the other side of the door, her neck cinched in a loop of cord and her face bloody, was Marilyn Weaver. Her legs were buckled under her, and one was sticking out at an odd angle, the foot shoeless. Something made of metal jutted from Marilyn’s mouth. What was it? My mind struggled to make sense of it, though it hardly mattered.

      How long I stared at her, I don’t know. My heart crashing against my rib cage, I gasped for breath. A big part of me wanted to run away, but some other force—shock, maybe, or disbelief?—kept me glued in place.

      I should touch her, I told myself. She looks dead, but what if she isn’t? My heart still thudding, I forced myself to lay a couple of fingers on her arm. Cool but not stone cold. What if she could be revived? It looked impossible, but—

      “Sean!” I screamed, hoping he’d hear me. “Sean! Oh, my God! Come here!”

      I kept staring at Marilyn for the eternity—or was it five seconds?—that it took Sean to join me. Blood from her face had puddled on the floor, but it looked as though it had begun to dry. I couldn’t bear to look at the scene for another moment, and I also couldn’t tear my eyes away. Suddenly I recognized the object in Marilyn’s mouth. It was a slide bolt—the sort of thing you see on an old shed—

      “Copper! What’s the—?”

      Sean emerged from the bathroom to join me at the closet door. He gasped as the horrible scene in the closet came into his view, but he didn’t say anything. I clutched his arm and looked at him. His face had turned paper white, and his eyes were riveted on Marilyn’s body.

      “Do you think there’s a chance she’s still alive?” I said. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

      “She’s dead,” Sean said. “There’s nothing you can do about dead.”

      Even though he was obviously right, his words shocked me. I stared at him, but he still didn’t return my gaze.

      911, was all I could think. We’ve got to call 911. Releasing my hold on Sean’s arm, I turned to look for a telephone by the bed. I couldn’t see one on either nightstand, so I raced back into the bathroom and dumped out my backpack on the counter. I grabbed my phone out of the heap. I sucked air as I unlocked the screen.

      In an instant, Sean was at my side. He snatched the phone from my hand.

      “What are you doing?” I said, gaping at him stupidly. As he moved away from me a barrage of terrifying thoughts rushed into my head. Why was he preventing me from calling 911? Had he killed his mother and brought me here to find her? Was he going to kill me, too?

      “Hold on a second, Copper.”

      “What?”

      “You don’t have to be part of this.”

      Our eyes met.

      “What do you mean?” I said. “We’ve got to call.”

      “She’s dead,” Sean said. “There’s no rush.”

      “Sean, please,” I said. I looked toward the door to the hall. There had to be a phone out there somewhere.

      “Take your stuff and go,” Sean said. “After you leave, I’ll call the cops. You can forget this ever happened.”

      “What? I can’t do that.”

      “You can’t do it after you call, that’s for sure. It’s an option you have only right now.”

      I stared at him, my mind whirling with conflicting thoughts. Was he really trying to spare me the stress of dealing with a murder investigation? Or did he have some other, less altruistic motive? All I could be sure of was that I couldn’t undo what had just happened. I couldn’t drive away and play dumb for the rest of my life, even if I could get away with it.

      “I’m staying, Sean,” I said, surprised at the calm conviction in my voice, “and if you don’t call 911 right this second, I’ll go find a way to do it myself.”

      “Okay, Copper, okay,” Sean said, shaking his head. “I just wish—I mean I’m just sorry I got you into this.”

      “Call 911,” I said. “Now.”

      Chapter 8

      Silently, Sean tapped the numbers into my phone. Our eyes met as he waited for an operator to answer, but I couldn’t read his expression.

      “I want to report a death,” he said, still looking at me. “A murder.”

      That’s it, I thought, the news is out. And the call was being made on my cell phone, connecting me indelibly with the whole gruesome situation. For a fleeting moment, I wished I had acted on Sean’s suggestion. I could have been on my way to the Nash house instead of stuck in the middle of a crime scene.

      While Sean talked to the 911 operator, I glanced at the pile I had left sitting on the bathroom counter. I should get that stuff out of here, I thought. Who knew what might happen to it if I didn’t. It wasn’t evidence, but it could easily get mixed up with some. By the time Sean handed me my phone, I had crammed all my belongings back into my bags.

      “I’m going to put this stuff in my car,” I said. I left Sean standing in the bathroom and headed to the front door.

      The evening heat hit me like a blowtorch as I stepped outside, and with the jolt came a new realization of what had happened. Marilyn Weaver had been killed, and the only thing I knew for certain was that I hadn’t done it.

      Sean was standing motionless in the living room when I returned.

      “They’ll be here any minute,” he said. As if on cue, sirens sounded in the distance. The wail grew into an ululating chorus, and just as I was wondering how cops get inside gated communities, the sirens got even louder. A moment later, a sharp rap on the front door made it clear that electronic gates are no barrier to law enforcement. I stood next to Sean as he admitted two police officers, one male and one female.

      As though they had planned it before they arrived, the man attached himself to Sean and the woman began talking to me. As Sean disappeared down the hall to the bedroom wing, I found myself being escorted to the living room and seated at one end of a long brown leather sofa. The policewoman pulled up a footstool and sat down facing me.

      “I’m Officer Mendoza,” she said. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

      I took a breath and began describing the path that had led me to Marilyn Weaver’s closet door.

      “I met her yesterday,” I said. “At a fund-raiser for the Neon Museum.” God, it sounded strange! Two days ago I hadn’t even known the woman, and today I was snooping in her closet. But if my story seemed odd, the policewoman didn’t let on. She just kept prompting me to keep talking while she took notes.

      As I related how I had met Sean at the Anna Roberts Parks Academy, had a drink with him at the V, and ended up following him to his mother’s house, a swarm of public servants gathered. Half a dozen more policemen showed up, along with a squad of paramedics. I guessed the three guys carrying cameras and toolboxes were crime scene investigators, and several others looked like detectives or coroners. The scene

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