Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

“Cecca? Are you in here?”

Movement again, the creak of a floorboard—definitely footsteps, hurrying. He went ahead to the archway. Just as he stepped into it, a swing door on the far side of the kitchen opened partway, cautiously, and Cecca's head appeared. There was a frozen moment as they stared across at each other. The look of her changed his edginess to alarm: Her face was milk white, her eyes wide and dark with fright.

“Oh, Dix!”

He went to her, yanked the door all the way open. She came up hard against him, put her arms around his waist and her head tight to his chest. There was a thin quivering in her body, like a wire vibrating in a high wind. He held her for a few seconds, then took her arms and moved her back away from him. Her skin was cold, and when he glanced down he saw that her arms were rough with gooseflesh.

“Cecca, what is it, what's happened?”

“ God ,” she said.

“Where's Louise? Why didn't you answer the bell?”

“I was on the phone to the police. I didn't know it was you. I thought … I was afraid he'd come back.”

“The police? What—?”

“The front hall,” she said, “the stairs …”

He started to turn her so she could show him. She balked. “No, I'm not going back in there.”

“All right. Wait here.”

He crossed a formal dining room to the hallway beyond. The palms of his hands were moist; his mind seemed to be working in stuttering fashion, thoughts coming too fast and then not at all. The hall led him past a staircase to the upper floor. Two paces into the front foyer, he came to an abrupt standstill. There was no surprise in what he saw there, only a sick feeling of helplessness. His gorge rose; he swallowed to keep it down.

Louise Kanvitz lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, hips and legs twisted upward over the first three risers, veined and mottled flesh showing where her skirt had hiked up. Her head and shoulders were on the carpeted floor, head twisted at an impossible angle. Blood from a smashed nose streaked the lower half of her face. One eye, wide open, bulging goiterlike, stared sightlessly up at him.

Fell down the stairs, he thought. Tripped somehow … an accident …

But it wasn't. He knew that as unequivocally as he knew her neck was broken.

He retreated until he could no longer see her, then turned and ran back into the dining room. Cecca wasn't at the swing door; he found her in the kitchen, splashing her face with handfuls of cold tap water. He tore off a long section of paper towel from a hanging roll, gave it to her so she could dry off. There was a little color in her cheeks now. She seemed to have a better grip on herself.

She said, “He killed her, Dix. He killed her to keep her from telling who he is.”

Dix nodded grimly. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long. A few minutes before you rang the bell.”

“Why did you come alone?”

“She called me at the office this afternoon. She said she wanted to talk, she had something to tell me.”

“About Katy's lover?”

“She wouldn't say. But it's obvious, isn't it?”

“You should have let me know.”

“I tried to. You'd already left the university, so I called you at home, left a message on your machine.… You didn't get the message?”

“No. I didn't think to check the machine.”

“Then why are you here? You weren't going to try to force the truth out of Louise—?”

“That's just what I was going to do.”

“You can't admit that to St. John,” she said. “We'll tell him you did get the message, you drove over to meet me—”

“St. John. Jesus, he'll be here any second.”

“Dix, did you hear what I— Dix!”

He was already running. Out through the front of the house because it was faster that way, even though it took him a few seconds to fumble the door open. He could hear the sirens then—close, very close. Off the porch, across the yard, into the Buick. He had just enough time to lock the Beretta inside the glove compartment before the first police car turned into Buckram Street and came racing uphill.

St. John was angry. “I told you people to stay away from Louise Kanvitz. Didn't I tell you that?”

“And I keep telling you,” Cecca said, “she called and said she wanted to see me. What was I supposed to do?”

“You should have notified me.”

“If she'd wanted to talk to you, wouldn't she have called you instead? I was afraid she wouldn't talk at all if the police were here.”

“You notified Mr. Mallory. Or claim you did.”

“I did .”

Dix said, “The message is still on my machine. We can go up to my house and listen to it if you like.”

“You could have faked it.”

“Faked it? Why in bloody hell would we do that?”

“I didn't say you did. I said you could have.”

“You don't think we had anything to do with Kanvitz's death?”

“Did you, Mr. Mallory?”

“No! Cecca told you the woman was dead when she got here.”

“Can anybody else corroborate the fact?”

“There was nobody else here! Dammit, St. John—”

They were sitting at a Formica-topped table in the kitchen; St. John slapped it with the palm of his hand, a pistol-shot sound that made Cecca jump. “Don't come on hard to me, mister,” he said to Dix. “You're on shaky ground as it is. The woman who owns this house is dead in the front hall—maybe an accident, maybe not. You two have no good reason to be here, especially after I warned you against it. At best you're guilty of trespassing—”

“And at worst we're murderers, is that it?”

“I'm going to tell you one more time in a polite way: Answer my questions truthfully and don't give me any more crap. Otherwise you'd better call your lawyer. Understood?”

Dix struggled to put a leash on his emotions. There was the harsh taste of frustration in his mouth. “Understood,” he said thinly.

“Good.” St. John took a cigarette from his shirt pocket, began his rolling routine on the tabletop. “Let's go through it again, Ms. Bellini,” he said to Cecca. “What time did Louise Kanvitz call you?”

“About three-thirty.”

“Was she calling from here or her gallery?”

“I don't know. She didn't say.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“That it was time we had another talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“Katy Mallory.”

“What specifically, concerning Mrs. Mallory?”

“I asked her that, but all she said was that I should come here after five-thirty. Then she hung up.”

“What did you think she had in mind?”

“I wasn't sure at the time. But she sounded angry.”

“At you?”

“I don't think so. At the man she was shielding, blackmailing, whatever. They must have had some sort of falling out.”

“Over what?”

“Money. She wanted more to keep quiet … something like that. That's why he killed her.”

“If he killed her. If anybody killed her.”

“Have it your way.”

“What time did you arrive here?”

“A little before five-thirty. Five minutes or so.”

“And Mr. Mallory wasn't here yet.”

“No, he wasn't.”

“Why didn't you wait for him?”

“I don't know. I … I was nervous, I wanted to get it over with, to find out what she knew.”

“Why did you go inside the house?”

“The front door was ajar and her car is in the driveway. I thought she must be here, that she hadn't heard the bell for some reason. I stepped into the foyer; I was going to call out her name.”

“And that's when you saw the body.”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch her, touch anything in the foyer or on the stairs?”

“No. Just the door. I think I shut it.”