Joanna’s breath caught in her chest. She pressed two fingers on the warm skin of Luke’s neck. Nothing. She’d never been very good at reading a pulse. She reached for his hand, then pulled back. Bradley Stroden had been poisoned. Luke appeared to have been reading a letter when he died, a letter that might also have been poisoned. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat at his elbow, too.
Calm dropped over her like a chiffon veil. She wasn’t sure if the house had a landline, but Luke’s phone was facedown on the table. She picked it up and was confronted with a prompt for a passcode. She set the phone aside and hurried in search of a house phone.
A central area, like the hall, was her first choice, but there was no phone there. She’d have seen it. She passed through the hall and parlor to the library. Her breath was measured, her thinking even, but her fingers felt cold. On the desk sat a classic Bakelite phone with a dial. She silently thanked Stroden for his old school sense of style. She lifted the heavy receiver and dialed 9-1-1.
As the dispatcher answered, her gaze fell on a drawer that was ajar. “Yes,” she told the dispatcher, “there’s been an emergency. We need an ambulance right away. And the police.”
She gave the address and hung up the phone. Should she sit near Luke? It didn’t matter now. The house was dead silent. Her eyes returned to the desk drawer. Using her skirt to mask her fingers, she nudged the drawer open further. There it was, a fat bundle of double-spaced pages. “Scandals Between the Scenes,” the title page read.
This was it. The memoir. She glanced through the arch to the parlor. She was alone. In a minute, the police would be here. Again using her skirt, she lifted the manuscript and opened it to the middle. Marks in blue pen crossed off one whole paragraph with Joan Crawford’s name in it. The next page was paper-clipped and Callie Rampton’s name was circled along with David Sipriano’s—the Big Sip. Interesting. Joanna opened the manuscript deeper in, looking for a mention of Starlit Wonder. There were no marks here—perhaps Stroden hadn’t edited this far before he died. She flipped to the last page. It ended mid-story. He hadn’t yet finished.
A grating sound caught her ear, and she dropped the manuscript to the drawer and pushed it shut with her knee. Except for the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears, she heard nothing. Must have been a branch rubbing against the window, or the creaks of an old house settling.
A siren in the distance grew closer. She rubbed her palms against her cheeks and took a deep breath, then crossed to the entry hall to wait. Within seconds, an ambulance pulled up on the street below with a fire engine close behind.
“Up here,” she shouted. Two firemen ran up the stairs. “The last room on the right.”
Through the arched doorways she saw the taller man push Luke’s head back while the other man knelt at his side. She fell onto a stiff chair in the entry hall. Curiously, the smell of violets seemed to intensify. She closed her eyes and opened them a moment later to more uniformed people lugging a portable gurney. Right behind them was Detective Roscoe, his gray curly hair more frantic than ever.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the vintage clothing lady. Two visits, two bodies. That’s quite a record.”
“I was meeting Mr. Stroden’s secretary when—”
Behind the detective, Stroden’s sister elbowed the detective aside, her face white with emotion. Joanna tensed. Here it would come, another barrage of yelling.
Instead, Mary Pat collapsed on the floor in tears.
“I had an appointment,” Joanna said. She and Detective Roscoe stood in a puddle of sunlight cast through the library windows.
“As you did last time, if I remember right,” the detective replied in a tone of voice that indicated that he did, in fact, remember right.
“No, really—”
The detective took her elbow and steered her to a chair. “Start at the beginning.”
She told him about her call from Luke—“If you don’t believe me, you can trace it,” she said, not knowing if this was something done only on TV—and meeting him to buy Stroden’s clothes.
“Were they his to sell? Probate should just be getting started.”
“He said Stroden’s sister said it was all right.”
“Is that so?” He’d be checking on that, she was sure.
“I loaded the car and came back to get a receipt. I found him just like that.”
“That’s all?” Roscoe said. “You didn’t touch anything else?”
She fastened her lips and shook her head.
He stared at her a moment. “Is that all?”
“Did you know Stroden was writing his memoir when he died?”
“You’ve only brought it up, oh, half a dozen times.”
Joanna ignored his tone. “Well, it crossed my mind that he may have been blackmailing someone. He or Luke. Stroden dictated his memoir to Luke, and he was privy to Stroden’s secrets. I bet Luke blackmailed someone and pretended to be Stroden.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I asked a few questions while I was looking at the clothes, and Luke threatened me. He said that unless I backed off, he’d tell you I killed Stroden.”
Roscoe nodded slowly. “So, you were asking questions, were you?”
She hesitated. “I saw a copy of the memoir. Maybe you’d like to take a look at it.”
Roscoe pulled at a corkscrew curl that had lodged in his glasses. “I have a copy of the memoir on a flash drive but haven’t gotten to it yet. The digital copy will tell us when sections were added to the manuscript.”
“Lou?” One of the uniformed policemen yelled over the banister from upstairs. “The sister is calling for Joanna Hayworth. That’s her?”
Anticipating a tongue lashing, Joanna shrank.
“Why would Stroden’s sister want to talk to you?” Roscoe asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe because of the dresses?” The shock of finding Luke dead that had kept her so calm was beginning to wane. Her hand trembled, and she sat on it. She wished she were anywhere but at the Stroden mansion. At the same time, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“Really? She wants to talk to you about old dresses?”
“I don’t need to go up there,” Joanna said. “You probably want to talk with her first.”
“You mean you don’t want to go upstairs.”
“She’s grieving. This, after her brother? She needs professional help, not me.”
Roscoe watched her without reply. A long moment passed.
“All right,” Joanna said finally. “The last time I was here, Mary Pat freaked out and accused me of killing her brother. I’m not sure I’m up for more of that.”
“Roscoe?” the cop upstairs yelled again. “She coming?”
“You’d better go,” the detective said. “See Ms. Stroden. If it gets rough, remember there’s a uniform in the hall. I’ll be in touch.” He turned for the morning room.
Her legs were shaky as she rose from the chair. There was no question of sneaking upstairs and tucking the manuscript under her arm now. Her bag was too small to hide it—vintage purses were marvels of craft, but generally tiny—and a fresh load of police was coming through the front door.
“Joanna, right? She keeps asking for you,” a uniformed cop said from the upstairs landing.
She took a deep breath and stood straighter. “I’ll be right there.”