Multiples Mystery. Alice Sharpe

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      THE BASEMENT APPEARED untouched though it had acquired new furniture since Zac had seen it last. He checked out every closet, bypassing the untouched stack of cardboard boxes marked “Private, Keep Out,” in the corner. Nothing. No one.

      It annoyed the hell out of him that Olivia was blaming herself for doubting her husband. The man had done nothing but lie to her and yet she was still trying to give him a break. She’d apparently forgotten he’d been half an hour away the day after their children came into the world. What kind of excuse could pardon that behavior?

      And what had happened in this house? Why had it been searched, and that it had was obvious to him. So where was the guy, why hadn’t he reported this intrusion? The police had made a thorough check of every unidentified male victim in the last three days and none of them matched Anthony’s description.

      A muffled scream sounded from above. Taking the stairs two at a time, Zac reached the main floor and jumped over an overturned chair, sliding as he landed on a pile of books. His reaction had come straight from his gut, not professional at all, and he slowed down, reaching under his jacket for his gun.

      “In here,” Olivia called from the hallway, her voice shaky. She stepped out of the last room, the one before the bathroom. Her face was as white as the plaster wall she gripped. “Come look.”

      He joined her quickly and immediately saw what had alarmed her. The room had been ransacked like the others, but unlike the others there were blood spatters against the wall and desk front.

      “Stand right here while I check every closet. Don’t move.”

      Gun drawn, he made a thorough check of the house. Anthony wasn’t in it, nor was he in the car in the garage or the garage either, for that matter. Zac went back for Olivia, who was standing with her back against the wall, eyes closed.

      “We’re calling the sheriff’s department,” he said.

      Her eyes flew open. “I can’t just wait—”

      “We’ll sit in my car. Come on.”

      They carefully threaded their way through the house, trying to retrace their steps and not disturb anything more than they already had. As they left the house she said, “Let me have your keys.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I’m driving.”

      “Driving where? We’re staying right here—”

      “Give me your keys. Please, Zac.”

      He took his keys from his pocket and handed them over.

      “I’ll come back, I promise.”

      “I’ll go with you.”

      “No, you don’t have to—”

      “Olivia, let’s just do it.” Whatever it was.

      Once in the car, she opened the garage door again and sped backward down the narrow driveway, hitting the street and turning east on Queen.

      “The sheriff’s department is the other way,” he said as he took out his cell phone.

      “Make your call, do what you need to do.”

      “Where are we going, Olivia?”

      “I’m doing what I need to do.”

      He wasn’t sure what that meant, but Westerly was, after all, a small town and it soon became obvious what her intentions were. He called the sheriff’s office, identifying himself to Terry, who always manned the phone on weekends. “I want a crime scene team sent pronto to Olivia Hart’s house, 333 Queen Street.”

      “Capri,” Olivia said tersely.

      “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Olivia and Anthony Capri. Be advised there was a break-in, blood in the second bedroom. I’ll check in again in awhile. Call in Hoopes and Dilly.” He hung up before Terry could ask him what he was doing acting like sheriff, assigning duty and all the rest before he was actually sheriff or why he wasn’t sticking around at the scene to meet the cops at the house. He didn’t have answers to those questions.

      “You’re going to the new house,” he said as Olivia took a corner too fast and the rear end of the car swerved toward the verge. “Slow down,” he added. “You’ve always driven too fast.”

      “I’m a little anxious,” she said without taking her eyes from the road.

      “You also have four kids. They need you. Slow down.”

      She slowed but it really had little to do with him and more to do with turning off the main highway onto a dirt road. It meandered through the trees for half a mile before stopping in a clearing.

      Perched on the edge of the point with what he assumed would be close to a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of Puget Sound when the fog cleared, stood a huge house made of wood and glass, surrounded with covered tiered decks disappearing into the gloom.

      The land itself had yet to be groomed and looked like a construction site before the crew cleans up after itself. Remnants of roofing material, siding and concrete blocks littered the ground that would someday be sweeping lawns.

      “This is some mansion,” Zac said, and maybe for the first time, the scope of Anthony Capri’s wealth hit him full-on. The house looked more like a resort. It had to be at least six or seven thousand square feet.

      “Out in the middle of nowhere,” Olivia said as she turned off the engine. “Anthony says there’s a natural inlet right around the point. Not that you can see it with this fog.”

      “I just can’t get over how gigantic it is.”

      “He’d started on it well before we got together,” she said. “Well, at least it doesn’t look as though he lied to me about the house being finished. I mean the yard is a mess but we can…” her voice trailed off as though she didn’t know how to end that sentence. Given the events of the past few days, Zac couldn’t blame her.

      She slid out of the car, digging in her bag for her keys again. “I’m surprised there’s no security system,” he said as they walked up broad wooden stairs.

      “Anthony said there was some kind of factory delay. It’s supposed to be installed next week.”

      She opened the door, walked inside and he followed. They both stopped almost at once.

      It was like walking into a wooden beast, the inside simply a skeleton supporting the outside layer of siding and roof. Standing in what would someday be the spacious front room, they could see through the gaps between the hundreds of vertical two-by-fours to the shimmer of glass in the back.

      “He lied to me,” she said. “Again.”

      “He told you it was ready for occupancy?”

      “Yes.”

      Zac gestured toward a far corner. “I think I see something dense back that way.”

      “That’s СКАЧАТЬ