Brian Freeman: The Bone House

Mark exhaled in a loud hiss. 'Ah, shit.'

'Tell me.'

'Yes, she kept asking me to have sex with her. I said no.'

'I get it,' Hilary said. 'Look, we both know Glory is the wild one compared to Tresa. I'm sure she liked the idea of trying to seduce the man her sister was in love with.'

'Nothing happened,' he insisted.

'You already said that.'

'Most of it was just talk, but the one thing she did — she took her bikini top off.'

Hilary closed her eyes. 'What did you do?'

'Nothing. That was it. I gave up trying to get her to go back to the hotel with me. I left.' He added, 'Things were getting out of control, Hil. I just needed to get away.'

'Don't blame yourself,' she told him.

'I do. I should have told someone she was out there, but she was threatening to say we had sex. She said no one would believe me, and she was right. I couldn't take the risk, not after last year. I couldn't put myself in the middle of it. Or you.'

We're in the middle of it anyway , Hilary thought, but she didn't need to say it out loud. Mark knew the score.

'They're going to come after me,' he said. 'They know I'm in the hotel. The police are going to paint a bullseye on my chest.'

'You're probably right,' she acknowledged, 'but let's not panic, OK? Did anyone see you leaving the room? Did anyone see you on the beach or see you when you came back?'

She watched him mentally retrace his footsteps. 'I don't know. There may have been a hotel employee on the patio when I left our room, ibut that's a couple hundred yards away. I'm not sure whether he saw me or would recognize me.'

'Did you see anyone with Glory on the beach?' she asked. 'Someone killed her. Whoever it was may have been watching the two of you.'

Mark shook his head. 'I didn't see anyone.'

She heard hesitation in his voice. 'But?'

'I don't know. I felt like we were being watched. I felt like Glory saw someone, but I didn't see anyone there.'

'Did she talk about anyone else?'

'Just Tresa,' he said. 'And her boyfriend. Troy Geier.'

'What did she say?'

'She talked about Troy being jealous. And she said — well, she said

Tresa saw the two of us during the competition, and she got rattled. That was why she didn't do well.'

Hilary nodded. She'd actually felt guilty being in the audience during Tresa's performance. Despite everything that had happened, she still liked the girl, and she hated to see her do poorly.

Mark leaned back into the sofa and stared at the ceiling. The room was gloomy and cold. 'So what do I do?'

'Right now, nothing,' Hilary said.

'I should tell the police what I know,' Mark insisted. He paused. 'Or do you think I should shut up? I mean, if no one saw me…'

He let the thought drift away, but she knew what he was thinking. If no one saw him on the beach, should he really put his head into the lion's mouth by admitting he was out there with Glory?

'We need to talk to a lawyer,' she said. 'Right now. Today. Until we do, I think you shouldn't say anything. We don't lie, but we don't volunteer. OK?'

Mark nodded. 'OK.'

'We'll get through this,' she said.

He frowned and said what she was thinking. 'It's going to be just like last year, Hil, you know that. Everyone's going to think I'm guilty.'

'You're not.'

'I'm not sure how much more of this we can take.'

'I know.'

Mark leaned over to embrace her, but before he could, their heads snapped around. Someone rapped sharply on the door of the hotel room.

Without looking through the peephole, Hilary already knew. It was beginning.

Cab Bolton had to knock twice before the attractive blonde woman answered the hotel door. When she did, he made a show of checking his notes. 'Mrs Bradley, is that right? Hilary Bradley?'

She smiled politely at him without saying yes or no. 'May I help you?'

'My name is Cab Bolton. I'm a detective with the Criminal Investigations Division of the Naples Police Bureau.' He flipped open the leather folder for his badge and handed it to her to review, which she did.

'What is this about?' she asked.

'You may not have heard, but there was a serious crime committed on the beach outside the hotel overnight. A teenage girl was murdered.'

He looked for surprise in her face and didn't see any. She knew exactly why he was there. You could always see intelligence in the eyes, like a window on to the machinery of the mind. Hilary Bradley was a smart woman.

'That's awful,' she replied, 'but I'm not sure how I can help you.'

Cab pointed one of his absurdly long fingers over her shoulder at the glass doors leading to the beach. 'Your room looks out on the area where the crime took place.'

'I see. Well, come in. I don't have much time, though, and I don't believe I can help you.'

Cab ducked his head as he went through the doorway, which was what he had to do with most doorways. Behind him, Hilary Bradley let the heavy door swing shut. As he walked into the center of the room, he was conscious of the closed bathroom door and the noise of the shower. He noted two open suitcases pushed against the wall, half-filled with clothes. Laid messily on top of one suitcase was a bright yellow man's tank top with a logo that read DC. He continued past the unmade king-sized bed to the far end of the room, where he had a view through the patio doors out on to the Gulf. The beach was sheltered by a web of palm trees with drooping fronds. He saw the crime scene team at work near the water. He recognized Lala's jet-black hair.

'Beautiful view,' he commented.

Behind him, Hilary said nothing. He slid open the door and stepped on to the square stone patio, which was dusty with sand and featured two lounge chairs and a metal table. From the patio, you could walk down two steps to a walkway that led to the beach. He eyed the hotel rooms on either side of him, which all had similar waterfront access. It would be easy to come and go undetected in the middle of the night.

When he went back inside the hotel room, he noticed that both suitcases were now closed. Hilary Bradley waited with her arms folded over her chest. She made a point of not sitting down and not suggesting that he sit down. She wasn't interested in prolonging his visit.

'The guests in this wing are all potential witnesses,' Cab told her. 'We're interviewing everyone.'

'I'm afraid I didn't see anything.'

'Nothing at all?'

'No, I didn't look out overnight.'

'Did you hear anything?'

'I was asleep.'

'Did you get up at all during the night? Did you go to the bathroom?'

'No, I didn't.'

Cab nodded and let the polite dance play out between them. He wanted to put her at ease and not imply that there was anything special about his visit. She and her husband were two of many guests looking out on the beach, not suspects with a connection to the victim. Even so, he had little doubt that she'd already seen through him and was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He studied the woman in front of him. Hilary Bradley was smart, and she was pretty, too, in a mature, self-confident way. He figured she was a few years older than he was, maybe forty, or maybe knocking on the door. Her face was rounded, with blue eyes and thin black glasses, and dangly earrings that looked like red sour balls. She wore a simple burgundy top, tan slacks that emphasized her long legs, and sandals. Despite her shoulder-length blond hair, she wasn't a classic bombshell, and he didn't imagine she ever had been one, even when she was younger. Nonetheless, she had the sexiness of a woman who knew she was two steps ahead of you in just about everything.

She looked up at Cab. Based on his height, almost everyone did. He could feel her taking his measure, even as he did the same to her. Most people underestimated him. They thought he was a spoiled beach bum; he didn't look like a man who'd graduated from UCLA in three years. They saw the pomade in his hair, the exfoliated complexion, the earring, the suit, all of it on top of a lean body that made the ceilings look low, and they wrote him off as a shallow metrosexual. He didn't care. He also didn't think Hilary Bradley was the kind of woman who would make that mistake about him. Her face was a mask as she stared at him, revealing nothing, but she had the look of someone who didn't misjudge an enemy.