After I hang up, I lie back against the pillows, feeling my alarm balloon. If Guy’s boss has been murdered, there’s no way in hell this is a big coincidence. This has to have something to do with Guy. Perhaps he really has embezzled from the opera company and wasn’t able to keep a lid on it any longer. Brent might have figured it out and confronted Guy tonight. And Guy killed him.
Or what if it was Guy who was killed during a confrontation?
I can’t lie here endlessly speculating and waiting for thirdhand information—I’ve done enough lying around these past months. I have to see for myself what’s going on. Though showing up at another crime scene is surely a dumbass idea, I need to make sure that the victim isn’t Guy or someone he knows.
After throwing my clothes back on, I descend to the ground floor, this time using a back staircase I’ve noticed, which takes me closer to the parking lot. I input the address that Derek has given me, hoping that this time the GPS will cooperate.
It’s clearly rained again since I’ve been back from dinner. The streets are wet, and they glisten eerily wherever the street lamps cast their light. Ten minutes later, I reach Knoll Spring Park, a fancy-pants development of winding drives, big houses, and perfectly groomed lawns. All the homes are expensive, though some are more posh than others, their driveways protected by automatic iron gates.
I’m closing in on the address when I see the glow. The whole sky to the west is lit, as if there’s a traveling carnival or circus around the bend.
Finally turning unto Kintner Road, I discover that there practically is a carnival. Three or four houses down the street is an array of white TV news vans, each emblazoned with station call letters. Beyond that, from what I can see, is at least one ambulance and several police cars. There are people, too, a throng of them milling around.
I’ve made it as far as I can go by car, so I park along the side of the road, careful not to block a driveway. I step out of the car. The night is filled with the hum of the TV vans.
I take off on foot, moving closer to the action. There are probably forty people congregated on either side of all the vehicles—mostly neighbors, I assume, based on the worry etched on their faces and the fact that at least one woman is still in a nightgown with a light coat tossed over it. Farther ahead are TV reporters, mics in hand. It seems as if an invisible barrier is keeping everyone from surging forward toward the house, but as I reach the outside of the crowd, I see that the yard has been ringed with yellow plastic caution tape, just like at Eve’s. Please, I think. Don’t let it be like that. And don’t let it have anything to do with me.
Finally I see the house, visible from the street but situated at the far edge of a huge front lawn and illuminated courtesy of the TV lights. It’s made of clapboard, painted gray, with arched doors and windows, and a white chimney running up the front.
It’s not Brent’s house. His was much bigger, and made of stone.
I step even closer to the crowd and try to eavesdrop, but people are either whispering or standing in stunned silence, sometimes straining their necks in order to see better.
“Excuse me,” I say to a woman near me, keeping my voice hushed. “What’s going on?”
She turns to me, her eyes wide. She’s about fifty, dressed in sweats, but her hair is coifed, as if she’d changed into something casual after an evening out.
“A neighbor of ours was attacked tonight. It’s just horrible.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No. She’s dead. The body’s up there.”
She cocks her chin toward the front of the crowd, and I follow with my eyes, letting my gaze weave among the heads of rubberneckers. At last I see what she’s talking about. There’s a form in the driveway, covered with a white sheet. My stomach clutches. For a few seconds I’m back in Eve Blazer’s office again.
“She?” I whisper.
“It’s Miranda. Miranda Kane.”
Chapter 23
Her words are like a punch in the face. No, please, it can’t be true. It can’t be Miranda under there.
“Oh dear, is she a friend?” the woman asks. She reaches out and touches my arm as the man next to her turns to observe our exchange.
“Uh, yes. I mean, I know her . . . That’s her house?” I’d always assumed that Miranda might be struggling financially as a single mom with kids in college.
“Yes. She was bludgeoned right in her driveway. Someone said the person must have been waiting for her.”
Unbidden, my mind plays back the encounter with Guy in the park this morning. Me taunting him, asking what people at the opera company would think if they knew of his crime, and whether Miranda would still adore him. He’d grabbed my arm and demanded to know if I’d talked to Miranda.
Did Guy do this? Was he afraid I’d blabbed to Miranda about Dallas and that she’d make a beeline to Brent with it on Monday?