Let the Dead Sleep

He approached the woman, speaking in a reasonable voice. “Bertie, listen. You don’t know me. All you know about is an old reputation. I’m here to help Gladys—I swear it. We have to search for her. She’s not in her right mind.”

Bertie’s lashes fell over her eyes and she looked downward quickly; she did know that he was speaking the truth.

She looked up at him again. “I have no idea where she is. She’d gone up to her room. Now, she isn’t there.”

“Which room?” he asked.

“Up the stairs, go down the balcony, first door to your left.”

He hurried past her and took the stairs two at a time.

Walking along the balcony, he saw that he was passing the spot where Hank Simon must have hurled himself from the upper level to the floor beneath, breaking his neck. An accident? No...

“Gladys! Gladys, where are you?” he called. “I’ll get the bust out of here right now! Gladys!”

No reply. He dashed into the woman’s room.

Genteel, pleasant, charming. There was a white knit cover on the bed and the pillows were plumped high. An old-fashioned dressing table stood on one side of the room, while a more masculine set of drawers, matching in wood and design, stood against the far wall. White chintz curtains covered the window that overlooked the courtyard. Oils portraying different aspects of Jackson Square and the river graced the walls.

“Gladys?”

The breeze ruffled the curtains. Nothing more.

“Mr. Quinn!”

Bertie hadn’t followed him up the stairs. Her voice wasn’t panicked, nor did it sound relieved. He walked back out to the balcony that looked over the foyer below and leaned against the rail.

It was solid.

Bertie was standing just inside the entry, but she wasn’t alone.

Danni Cafferty had arrived.

“We may be too late,” he said.

Bertie let out a gasp.

Danni frowned, gazing up at him with her deep blue eyes. “Too late?”

“Bertie, go through the rooms downstairs. Look in every closet,” Quinn said. “You—” he pointed at Danni “—get up here with me and start going through all the rooms on the second floor. Bathrooms, storerooms, closets, you name it.”

“Mr. Quinn,” Bertie said indignantly. “Mrs. Simon doesn’t make a habit of hiding in the closet!”

“Just do it!”

Bertie was worried; that much was obvious. She pursed her lips, not happy taking orders from him but willing at that moment to do anything.

Danni, still frowning, made her way up the stairs. He ignored her and returned to the room Gladys had shared with her husband.

He checked in her bathroom and the huge walk-in closet that had probably been another room or a nursery at one time. He peered under the bed. Then he hesitated, studying the open window. Dreading what he might find, he walked to it, stepped out on the inner courtyard balcony and glanced down.

He sighed in relief. There was no broken body on the patio stones below. He inhaled. Had the woman slipped out the back and gone for a stroll?

Danni came in. “I’ve been in a study, two guest rooms, a sewing room and an office and there are no more rooms. I opened every closet door—and checked the other two bathrooms. There’s no one here.”

“It’s all wrong,” he muttered.

“Why are you so sure of that?” she asked.

“I’ve seen what the bust can do,” he told her. And he had. He’d seen the madness in Vic and he knew what Vic had done.

“The bust is just an object!”

He brushed past her. There was a garage on the other side of the courtyard with an apartment above it. There had to be some kind of entry via the bottom of the U—the traditional design of the house—that surrounded the courtyard. He started down the hall but then paused, noting that the trapdoor to the attic wasn’t completely closed.

He cursed, barely aware of Danni standing behind him, watching him as if he should be in a mental ward.

Quinn pulled down the stairs that led to the attic and quickly climbed up them.

At first, he could see nothing. The attic was lit only by a single dormer window and his eyes had to adjust.

Then he heard a scream of horror behind him. Danni had followed him up. She was pointing.

He blinked, and then he saw it. In the shadowed space that fell just to the side of the window, there was a body swinging from the rafters.

He rushed to it, lifting the slim form of Gladys Simon so that the rope around her neck could no longer strangle her. He held her, dug in his pocket for his knife and cut the thick cord, easing Gladys down to the wooden floor. He straddled her, desperate to perform CPR.

But he’d been a cop—and he’d been around.

Gladys was gone.

He kept up his efforts, anyway. He could be wrong....

He vaguely heard Danni calling the police. And he felt her hand on his shoulder.

“She’s dead,” Danni said softly.

He knew it was true.

He sat back on his haunches, bitterly ruing the time it had taken to reach her. When Danni touched him again, he jerked away.

At that moment, he hated her as much as he hated himself.

* * *

Danni felt disjointed.

Horrified and disjointed. The morning had started out like any other—and now she was sitting in the parlor of an uptown home while police and paramedics moved in and out, listening to Bertie cry and Quinn speak with a detective in controlled tones. The way he’d looked at her when he’d given up on resuscitating Gladys had cut her to the core. She felt tremendous guilt, and anger that she should feel that way. She had come when he’d told her to come. She couldn’t have known the woman was going to commit suicide! And she had called the police, and they’d promised to send social services out to investigate.