Mungojerrie squeezed through the narrow gap and vanished inside before
Sasha could have second thoughts.
“Death, much death, ” Roosevelt murmured, evidently communicating with
the mouser.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dr. Stanwyk had appeared at the door,
dressed in a bio-secure suit like Hodgson, face seething with hideous
parasites, a white-eyed crow perched on his shoulder. This man who had
once seemed wise and kind if eccentric now loomed ominously in my
imagination, like the uninvited party guest in Poe’s “The Masque of the
Red Death.” The Roger and Marie Stanwyk I had known for years were an
odd but nonetheless happy and compatible couple in their early fifties.
He sported muttonchops and a lush mustache, and was rarely seen in
anything but a suit and tie, you sensed that he longed to wear wing
collars and to carry a pocket watch on a fob, but felt these would be
eccentricities in excess of those expected of a renowned scientist,
nevertheless, he frequently allowed himself to wear quaint vests, and he
spent an inordinate amount of time working at his Sherlockian pipe with
tamp, pick, and spoon. Marie, a plump-cheeked matron with a rosy
complexion, was a collector of antique ornamental tea caddies and
nineteenth-century paintings of fairies, her wardrobe revealed a
grudging acceptance of the twenty-first century, although regardless of
what she wore, her longing for button-top shoes, bustles, and parasols
was evident. Roger and Marie seemed unsuited to California, doubly
unsuited to this century, yet they drove a red Jaguar, had been spotted
attending excruciatingly stupid big budget action movies, and functioned
fairly well as citizens of the new millennium.
Sasha called to the Stanwyks through the open kitchen door.
Mungojerrie had crossed the kitchen without hesitation and had
disappeared into deeper reaches of the house.
When Sasha got no answer to her third “Roger, Marie, hello, ” she drew
the . 38 from her shoulder holster and stepped inside.
Bobby, Roosevelt, and I followed her. If Sasha had been wearing skirts,
we might have happily hidden behind them, but we were more comfortable
with the cover provided by the Smith & Wesson.
From the porch, the house had seemed silent, but as we crossed the
kitchen, we heard voices coming from the front room. They were not
directed at us.
We stopped and listened, not quite able to make out the words.
Quickly, however, when music rose, it became apparent that we were
hearing not live voices but those on television or radio.
Sasha’s entrance to the dining room was instructive and more than a
little intriguing. Both hands on the gun. Arms out straight and locked.
The weapon just below her line of sight. She cleared the doorway fast,
slid to the left, her back against the wall. After she moved mostly out
of view, I could still see just enough of her arms to know she swung the
. 38 left, then right, then left again, covering the room.
Her performance was professional, instinctive, and no less smooth than
her on-air voice.
Maybe she’s watched a lot of television cop dramas over the years.
Yeah.
“Clear, ” she whispered.
Tall, ornate hutches seemed to loom over us, as if tipping away from the
walls, porcelain and silver treasures gleaming darkly behind leaded
glass doors with beveled panes. The crystal chandelier wasn’t lit, but
reflections of nearby candle flames winked along its strings of beads
and off the cut edges of its dangling pendants.
In the center of the dining-room table, surrounded by eight or ten
candles, was a large punch bowl half full of what appeared to be fruit
juice. A few clean drinking glasses stood to one side, and scattered
across the table were several empty plastic pharmacy bottles of
prescription medication.
The lighting wasn’t good enough to allow us to read the labels on the
bottles, as they lay, and none of us wanted to touch anything.
Death lives here, the cat had said, and maybe that was what had given us
the idea, from the moment we entered the house, that this was a crime
scene.
Upon seeing the tableau on the dining-room table, we looked at one
another, and it was clear that all of us suspected the nature of the