She did not say anything else. They waited in silence for a minute or two.
“I thought the assistant told you that this was an emergency,” Jake said.
She pressed the doorbell again. Again there was no response.
“Maybe they’re having breakfast out on the patio,” she suggested. “It’s a big house. They might not hear the bell.”
She started walking along a flagstone path that led through the gardens to the rear of the villa. Jake followed without comment. He had been in a grim, somber mood since finding the cigarette butts and the matchbook, but there was a new level of tension in the atmosphere around him now.
“This vacation is not doing a lot for your nerves, is it?” she said. “I’ll bet your doctor would be very unhappy if he could see you today.”
“I don’t plan to tell him.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said. She raised her voice. “Miss Leggett? Madam Zolanda? It’s Adelaide Brockton. I have your Enlightenment blend.”
She and Jake rounded the back of the house and stopped at the edge of the large concrete patio. Some lounge chairs, a table, and an umbrella furnished the garden retreat.
There was also an untidy bundle of what appeared to be vividly colored silk scarves.
Adelaide stopped abruptly.
“No,” she said very softly.
Madam Zolanda had been a tall, dramatic figure in life. She looked so much smaller in death.
Chapter 17
“Stay here,” Jake said.
He touched Adelaide’s shoulder briefly as he moved around her, silently reinforcing the command.
She watched him crouch beside the body. Something about the swift, efficient manner in which he moved told her that this wasn’t the first time he had dealt with the dead. She thought about Raina Kirk’s opinion of Jake’s old line of work. The import-export business has been known to cover a multitude of illegal activities. And then she remembered what Raina had said about the death of Jake’s wife. Mrs. Truett hanged herself in the basement. Truett found the body.
“She’s been dead for a while,” Jake said. He got to his feet. “Several hours, I think. Her neck is broken.” He looked up at the roof of the house. “She must have jumped. Or else someone wants us to believe that’s what happened.”
Adelaide looked up at the high parapet that decorated the roof of the villa. “Someone wants us to believe she jumped?”
“If I’m right about Zolanda, she was collecting blackmail secrets from a lot of people. It’s possible that one of her victims tracked her down and silenced her.”
“I understand.”
It made sense, but dark memories of the night that Dr. Ormsby, hallucinating wildly, had leaped through the arched window at the Rushbrook Sanitarium ghosted through Adelaide’s head. It must be a coincidence, she thought. Just a horrible coincidence.
She realized Jake was watching her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not. But I’m not going to faint, if that’s what’s worrying you. Jake, this makes no sense. Thelma called me a short time ago. You said Zolanda has been dead for quite a while.”
“I think so, yes. I want to take a look around inside before we call the police.”
“You’re hoping to find that diary that you said Zolanda was using to blackmail your friend.”
“It’s a long shot, but I have to check it out.”
Jake was already moving toward the open doors of the conservatory attached to the back of the mansion.
Unable to think of anything else to do, she trailed after him. The glass room was furnished with green wrought iron benches and a lot of potted plants. Jake took in the surroundings with a quick, assessing glance and kept going.
He opened another door and led the way along a wide, arched hall. At the far end he started up an elegant staircase.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
He disappeared on the landing.
Adelaide realized she was still clutching the packet of Enlightenment tea. She turned slowly on her heel and looked around. From where she stood she had a view of the grand living room with its high ceiling, arched windows, and dark wooden beams.
The interior of the villa was as exotic as the outside. The walls were painted a rich ocher. There was a lot of colorful tile work around the hearth. The furniture was mostly covered in saddle brown leather and accented with throw pillows in jewel-toned fabrics.
The turban that Zolanda had worn during her final performance sat on a coffee table. It looked as if it had been tossed there in a careless manner. A tuxedo coat was draped over the back of a chair. It looked too small for a man. Adelaide concluded it was probably the jacket that Thelma Leggett had worn in her role as Zolanda’s assistant.
For some reason Adelaide found herself drawn to the turban. She studied it for a long moment and thought about Zolanda’s last prediction. Mark my words, someone in this theater will be dead by morning.
There was an empty glass next to the turban, a small residue of what looked like whiskey inside.
She could hear cupboard doors opening and closing overhead. Jake was making his way very quickly through the upstairs rooms.
She wandered around for a time with absolutely no idea what she was looking for.
She was about to give up on the living room and try her luck in the kitchen, when she caught the glitter of what looked like a chunk of broken glass on the floor beneath the bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet. The shard was a deep blue color.
There was a lot of glassware in the cabinet but none of it was cobalt blue.
She took a handkerchief out of her handbag, crouched beside the cabinet, and started to reach for the piece of glass.
She froze when she realized that she was not looking at a shard of blue glass. She had been about to pick up the elegant stopper of a cobalt blue cut crystal perfume bottle.
She stared at the stopper in disbelief. All she could think about in that moment was the black velvet case on Ormsby’s office desk, the case containing a dozen cut crystal perfume bottles. She had been trapped at Rushbrook long enough to learn a number of things about the inner workings of the asylum. She knew that Ormsby didn’t distill perfumes—he crafted illicit drugs. Some of those drugs ended up in elegant crystal perfume bottles.
She reminded herself to think logically. Zolanda had done very well in the psychic business. She had no doubt owned several bottles of expensive perfume.
She used the handkerchief to pick up the glittering crystal object. She brought the stopper close to her nose and sniffed very cautiously. There was no scent, no trace whatsoever of perfume. How long did the fragrance of a perfume cling to crystal? She had no ready answer. But she knew a lot about the drug called Daydream. It was odorless and tasteless.
She took another look around the living room. There was no sign of the other portion of the perfume bottle. Only the stopper remained.
It could not be one of the bottles in the black velvet case, she told herself. How could a fake Hollywood psychic possibly be linked to the Rushbrook Sanitarium?
She had to get control of her growing paranoia. She was starting to sound a lot like the other inmates on ward five. The blue perfume bottle stopper was just a blue glass object. It had obviously been part of a very expensive bottle of perfume, but there were probably thousands of bottles just like it.
However, if the police concluded that Zolanda had been murdered, and if they discovered a link between the sanitarium and the psychic to the stars, and if they discovered that there was an escaped mental patient working as a tearoom waitress in Burning Cove, said escaped patient would probably become the number one suspect in the murder.
There were a lot of ifs involved, but if they proved to be true, she would have to be prepared to disappear again.
She put the stopper back down on the floor beneath the cabinet where she had found it. The police might notice it but she doubted that they would see it as significant. It was just part of a perfume bottle.