As usual, Guidry looked like he was about to give last-minute instructions to the lackeys who ran his mansion. Black linen jacket that I could imagine being cut by an Italian tailor with a thin mustache and an attitude, chocolate trousers with enough wrinkle to let you know they weren’t made from the cheap crap that doesn’t crease, and a soft charcoal shirt open at the collar. I hated that look. It made me want to go open his jacket and lay my ear to his heart just to listen to it beat. I should have been locked up.
When he heard me and Mazie scuffing up the walk, he looked up and gave me a slight nod. He looked grim, and all the questions I wanted to ask him turned to dust in my throat.
He said, “I’m just verifying some information from Mr. Madeira, and then I need to talk to you.”
My heart skipped a beat, but I waited demurely while he and Pete went on with their conversation. It only took a second to know Guidry was asking him about seeing Laura on the day she was killed.
Pete said, “She had a cap pulled down low, one of those baseball caps women wear with their ponytails sticking out.”
“You saw a ponytail?”
Testily, Pete said, “I didn’t say I saw a ponytail, I said that’s what women do. Unless they have short hair.”
His voice became uncertain as he remembered Laura’s short hair. Guidry waited, watching Pete’s face.
Pete said, “You know, it may not have been her after all. Come to think of it, I think I did see some hair poking out of that cap. Not a ponytail, but more hair than Laura had. I guess it was some other woman going for a run. They all look alike, with their caps and jogging shorts.”
Guidry snapped his notebook closed. “Thanks, Mr. Madeira. That clears up a point we couldn’t understand.”
Pete looked embarrassed. “Don’t think it’s because I’m old that I mistook one woman for another. It’s the way women dress nowadays.”
He and Guidry looked my way, and I drew my knees together under my cargo shorts and T-shirt, and above my Keds—the same kind of running clothes that Laura wore. But I never wore baseball caps.
Guidry said, “It’s an understandable mistake.”
He gave me a pointed look that meant it was my turn to be questioned.
I handed Mazie’s leash off to Pete, told him I’d be back in the afternoon, and waited until he and Mazie had gone inside the house.
Guidry said, “Tell me again when you had dinner with Laura Halston.”
“Early Sunday night. I left sometime around seven-thirty, seven-forty-five.”
“Pasta?”
“Fetuccini Alfredo and salad.”
“Do you mind going in her house and see if you notice anything missing?”
I minded very much. “Guidry, I was only in her house that one time.”
“That’s one time more than anybody else.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Numbly, I walked down the sidewalk beside Guidry, waited while he noted the time on the Contamination Sheet by the front door, and then stepped into the house.
Except for black print-lifting dust on every surface, everything in the living room looked pretty much the same as when I’d left Sunday night. In the kitchen, every evidence of our dinner had been cleaned and put away. No wineglasses sitting out, no pasta pot, no salad bowl. Our lipstick-smeared napkins had disappeared, and I didn’t need to open the dishwasher to know that our plates were neatly rinsed and filed inside. Women who live alone don’t run their dishwashers every day.
On the counter, a box of dried cat food, with a Post-it note attached. The note had an exclamation point on it, a memo Laura had left herself to buy more. My eyes burned at the memory of how alive Laura had been, how we had both laughed and talked and eaten and drunk as if we had infinity stretched before us.
Guidry looked closely at me. “What is it?”
I cleared my throat. “Nothing. I don’t see anything unusual or out of place.”
“What’s the deal with the cat food?”
“She’d run out, so she put the box there to remind herself to buy more.”
He said, “What was she wearing that night?”
I took a minute to think. “Drawstring pants, T-shirt. She was barefoot.”
His jaws worked for a second as if he were gnawing on invisible gristle. “That was in the clothes hamper in the bathroom.”
I had to ask the question. “Where did he get her?”
“In the shower. Looks like she was taken by surprise.”
“He stabbed her?”
“Yep.”
I took a deep breath and asked the question I already knew the answer to.
“There was more, wasn’t there?”
A shadow crossed Guidry’s face, and his lips tightened as if I’d uttered the unsayable. He said, “Her face was disfigured.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away from him while I fought to control hot tears that had suddenly filled my eyes. Deputy Morgan had thrown up after he’d seen Laura, and Sergeant Owens had wanted to spare me from seeing her. Laura had been an unusually beautiful woman. Whoever had killed her had wanted to destroy her beauty along with her life.
Carefully, Guidry said, “The mutilation was done postmortem.”
I said, “Laura Halston’s husband is a sick, sadistic surgeon. He throws scalpels at the ceiling for fun. Mutilating Laura’s face is the kind of thing he would do, and have fun doing it.”
Guidry didn’t respond, just looked at me with level gray eyes.
I said, “She wasn’t raped?”
“No rape. And no theft that we know of. She wore some gold and diamond bracelets, and we found a diamond necklace that was pretty valuable.”
I understood the implication. Her killer hadn’t been a robber or a rapist, he’d been somebody who killed in a furious rage. But the ritualistic cutting was something else. That wasn’t rage, it was psychopathic deliberation. And where there is psychopathic ritual, it points to a serial killer. Laura might not be the first person this killer had murdered, nor the last.
I cleared my throat. “What about prints on her body? Deep-tissue X-rays?”
“Negative and negative. Most likely the killer wore gloves.”
I closed my eyes against the image of Laura in the shower. She had probably left the bathroom door open, the way women do when they live alone. The killer had probably slipped in while she was showering, pushed the shower curtain aside, and stabbed her while the water continued to run. Laura would have tried to shield herself, would have put up her hands to deflect the blows, but it would have been too late.
It was every woman’s nightmare, to be killed at home in her most vulnerable moment.
Guidry said, “Dixie? You all right?”
I said, “Sunday night, there was a noise outside the living room window. A cracking sound, like wood snapping. We thought it was a squirrel knocking a limb against the house, but it could have been somebody outside, somebody waiting for me to leave.”
He touched my shoulder lightly. “You couldn’t have prevented this, Dixie.”
“I want to help find the person who did this. If her husband did it, I want him caught and put away for life.”
Guidry’s gray eyes were too steady. He was keeping something from me.
I said, “Has anybody talked to the husband yet?”
“We have somebody working on that.” His voice was too careful.
“What about her family?”
Guidry started maneuvering me to the front door. “Her sister arrived late yesterday and identified the body. She’s at the Ritz.”
I would have expected her sister to stay at a less expensive hotel, but for all I knew the sister was loaded.
I said, “I should let her know where Leo is.”
“Leo?”
“Laura’s cat. I took him to the Kitty Haven. I could pick him up for her when she’s ready.”
Guidry said, “She’ll come to the house after Bill Sullivan has finished up here.”