"What?"
"The woman was strangled. It took force. The killer would have been marked, or disarranged. The police haven't gotten a warrant for your rented clothes, but Delia tells me that Deja-Vous says that you have them."
"You want them?"
"I have access to private labs. Better we know any damaging evidence first."
"Be my guest." I brought him inside and gave him the big white box when we got to my cottage. A silver bracelet slid down my wrist with the gesture of surrender, a bangle of pink cubic zirconias. Snow was so predictably partial to pink. Until now, I'd had no idea he could add jewels to my silver gewgaws. Hmm.
"Meanwhile," Perry said before leaving, "don't speak to the press. Call me if the police approach you for any reason. And let my office do the investigating."
I nodded twice, but sat the fence on the third condition.
"Don't worry about a thing, Delilah. From what you've told me that detective is the one in trouble."
There was one thing I wasn’t going to tell Perry Mason or anyone else, because it might make me very unconvincing: that I'd glimpsed an apparition of a woman in my hallway mirror the night before the little green delivery elf and Detective Haskell had barged into my cottage this morning. But the more I thought about it, the more I recalled about that apparition of a woman. Woman? She had been a girl and she'd worn blue velvet with a sweetheart neckline. At least the bodice was blue velvet. The long skirt and short petal-shaped sleeves were blue taffeta. Definitely a late-forties get-up.
Her hair had been light brown, pulled up and puffed out at the sides to resemble the the sixteenth century heart-shaped headdress seen in portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. She'd been as doomed as that beheaded queen of Scotland, but she was a child of the 1940s, every detail screamed that. She was the dead body from Sunset Park, sure as God made little green cacti, and she was dressed exactly as I'd known she had been clothed.
How did I know this? I'd sensed some of it the day when Ric and I had met and melded dowsing for the dead…with mental medium tricks…with passion by proxy.
Yet it shook me all over again, to see her standing in my hall mirror. Details I'd sensed when Ric and I found her-wrist corsage, sterling silver heart locket at her throat, beseeching baby eyes, everything-had reassembled whole in my own hallway. Had even replaced my own reflection. She couldn't have been more than seventeen and was about to be mowed down like Bambi's mother.
Somehow, I understood she came here because her spirit knew I was trying to identify her, but the vivid memory of an apparition wasn’t evidence I could use with others, except Ric. I felt angry and helpless. And I knew from her lost, plaintive eyes that she had just felt helpless, which made me even angrier.
So. What solid facts did I have? I had the information I'd copied off the microfilm reader, and I had the testimony of the ghost in my mirror, mute for the moment, but plenty eloquent anyway. I was free to keep investigating for now. My lawyer (I did kinda like that term) had said the police evidence against me was only circumstantial, but a black hair had been found on one of the three Deja-Vous hairpins and I knew DNA testing would prove it was mine, although it would take time.
Thank God.
Perry Mason took the dress box. I thanked him profusely for all his help and eyed Quicksilver, hanging back by the oleander bushes bordering the estate fence. He'd been keeping up with a lot of Detroit steel today.
I pushed the code to open the gate for Mr. Mason to drive out. As soon as his car's shark-sharp tail fins had vanished, Quick was at my side, slurping my hands and growling in alternate rhythm.
"I know. Our hands and paws were tied, boy, but it's over."
I had a brain-splitting migraine, my wrists and shoulders were sore, and my soul was soiled.
Otherwise, I'd come out of the ordeal pretty well.
When we walked back into the cottage, Godfrey was waiting. He must have used the rear kitchen door.
"Welcome back, Miss. Mr. Nightwine has ordered dinner in for you. Not to worry, it's from the Bellagio. Medallions of beef for you and a fine steak, very rare, for Master Quicksilver, as well as a soup bone from the Paris hotel. My master also left this written message and bade me not to keep you from your recuperation."
Godfrey refused to stay for thanks, but bowed his way out immediately.
Quicksilver sat salivating over his napkin-covered silver tray, so I wafted off the linen and let him have at it in the kitchen.
Godfrey had left the other tray, bearing a single white rose in a sterling silver vase, on the breakfast table. The mellow Las Vegas dusk was tinting my window rose-gold. I pulled a damask napkin off a nouvelle cuisine feast of tender beef and garlic mashed potatoes to die for and chocolate mousse, but read the note before I ate.
My Dear Miss Street,
Godfrey has left, along with these culinary offerings, a tape of the recent events in the cottage I have allowed you to use. A copy of said scene rests in my private safe. Any trace of these events has been erased from the streaming tape in my central security system. No one will ever see or know of these distressing events save you or I. I am only keeping a record for prosecution purposes, should the need arise and should you wish to pursue such a course.
I am most distressed that the authorities in any form should violate my property and your rights in this brutish fashion. All of my resources are at your command should you decide to proceed against this creature in any manner.
Your devoted servant, Hector Nightwine
Okay. I sniffled a little with my dinner, which was superb and didn't move unless I did it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I woke up in the middle of the night, a teasing trickle of ice water cascading over my breasts. The invading cold made me sit upright, clutching for the ebbing neckline of the old-fashioned brushed-cotton nightgown that I'd found in the closet, now far enough off my shoulders to suit a Gothic heroine.
Then I understood what was happening. A couple dozen alien, icy metal snakes were writhing over my collarbones, nipping at my breasts with needle-sharp fangs! I switched on the bedside lamp and jumped out of bed, hopping to escape the nasty feeling. I only agitated the metal-scaled serpents into a faster, colder dance over my flesh.
The mirror above the dresser flashed back a chorus-girl sparkle. I was wearing a glittering rhinestone Egyptian-type collar from the base of my throat and down my cleavage, writhing serpent-chains that ended with arrowhead-shaped heads with vampire-sharp fangs.
Snow! Sending his costume jewelry flunkies to belly dance on my bod when I was out cold. What a bastard! He made Haskell seem like a small-time gnat. He made Hector Nightwine look like a slightly kinked teenager by comparison.
I lifted the cold, dead writhing lengths off of my living flesh. Necklaces this flashy were for sale in every Las Vegas hotel glitz shop, but none so carefully wrought. What was happening here?
The answer hit me with a sharp new chilclass="underline" Snow was thinking about me. The shape-changing jewelry echoed his thoughts, desires. He was reminding me of the leash he had put on me, the soft loop of his albino hair that had become metal…had now become chains of rhinestones. Except…I lifted the stones to the mirror to study their electric sparkle. These were diamonds. Holy Hell!
I sat up in bed, my arms clasped around my knees. I was wearing a gently used granny gown and probably a hundred-some carats of supernaturally lustful diamonds.
As I breathed in and out, trying for calm, the necklace shrank into a modest silver circlet. Maybe Snow hadn't expected me to sense his midnight invasion. Maybe he hadn't expected calm. Maybe he hadn't expected me to come calling on him the first thing the next morning.