Dying to Please by Linda Howard Page A

be locked. I could hear the television on, and I wondered why the light was on upstairs when he was still in the library.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I went to the library door and looked in. He was in his recliner, his head tilted as if he'd fallen asleep.”
    He waited, not wanting to direct her now.
    “I noticed the smell,” she said faintly. He knew what smell she was talking about. “And I thought he might have had a stroke, or heart attack, and soiled himself. Just one lamp was on, so the light wasn't good; but when I stepped inside, the angle was different and I saw the . . . the blood. And the other side of his head. The splatters . . .” Her voice trailed off.
    “I was afraid he was still in the house. Upstairs. That's why the light was on. I thought about going up there . . .” Again she trailed off.
    “I hope you didn't.”
    “No. But I wanted to,” she whispered. “I wanted to catch him. Instead I came back to the kitchen and got my pistol and cell phone, and stood in the corner while I called nine-one-one.”
    “Where's your pistol now?”
    “In my purse. I put it there when the first car arrived.”
    “May I see it?”
    “It's on the cooking island.”
    “Would you get it for me, please?”
    She got up and went into the kitchen, moving like a zombie. He followed and watched as she retrieved the pistol. It was holstered, and when he checked the clip he saw that it was full. “I always reload after I've been to the range,” she said, rubbing her forehead.
    She hadn't cleaned it—not yet, though he bet she did on a regular basis—and the smell of burnt gunpowder still clung to it. The ballistics wouldn't match, he knew; she was too smart to make a mistake like that. He didn't think she had killed the old guy, but he couldn't afford to totally dismiss the possibility. People were most often killed by those closest to them, so until she could be ruled out as a suspect, she was definitely on his short list.
    She watched him, her face expressionless, her eyes blank. She was totally closed in on herself; some people handled stress that way, by almost shutting down.
    “Let's go sit down again,” he suggested, and she obeyed. “Have you had any more gifts in the mail, or strange phone calls?”
    “No, just that one gift. Nothing else. I did think someone was following me once, but he wasn't.”
    “Are you certain?”
    “He turned off. And he was in a white Jaguar. You don't follow people in a white Jaguar.”
    “Not unless that's the only car you have.” But if someone could afford a Jaguar, he could almost certainly afford some other kind of car, too. Jaguars were just too noticeable.
    So she probably wasn't being stalked. That was the first thing she had thought of, though, when she came inside and found Judge Roberts's body. “You mentioned before that Judge Roberts had received death threats. Do you know anything about them?”
    “His family will have the details. I know the basics, but it all happened before I came to work for him. His family—God, I have to call them.”
    “We'll notify the family,” he said, gentling his voice, because she suddenly looked shattered at the idea. “Do you have their names and numbers?”
    “Yes, of course.” She rubbed her forehead again. “He has two sons and one daughter.” She gave him their names and numbers, then lapsed into silence, staring at the tablecloth again.
    “I'll be back in a minute,” he said, and got up. He wanted to check out the scene in the library himself and look through the rest of the house.
    He was almost to the door when she asked, “Was he upstairs?”
    He stopped. “No one else was in the house when the patrolmen checked.” He already knew that from the report he'd received in transit.
    “He didn't climb out an upstairs window, or something?”
    “There wasn't any sign of anyone in the house. No open windows, nothing out of place.” He couldn't tell her any more than that.
    “I hope he wasn't upstairs,”