Deadly Beloved(41)

“Mr. Willis.”

Gregor walked up the four steps from the mudroom and opened the screen door there.

“That’s the kitchen,” Dan Exter told him. “Wait’ll you see what it’s like in there.”

Gregor went through the doorway and looked around. What it was like in there was large—too large, like some of the statuary of ancient Egypt, as if sheer size had been the point. There seemed to be two of everything: two sinks, two ovens, two refrigerators, two side-by-side Jenn-Air ranges built into a rounded-corner island. Beyond the island was what looked like an ancient keeping room, complete with an oversized stone fireplace big enough to roast a pig in. Gregor went over there and looked around.

“Can’t you just imagine watching the Eagles on the tube in this place?” Dan Exter asked him, pointing to the enormous television set placed discreetly in a dark wood cabinet, set up in front of a group of black leather chairs. “I’d be worried about making an echo every time I coughed.”

“It’s not exactly homey,” Gregor agreed. “Are those trophies over there on that wall?”

Dan Exter shook his head. “Some of them are, but most of them are decorations. They’re just supposed to look like trophies.”

“What are the real trophies for?”

“Golf,” Dan Exter said.

Gregor walked over to the trophies. Then he walked past them and looked at the bookcase built into the paneling. There were half a dozen books on securities law, one or two on the history of the Civil War, and a collection of the complete works of Tom Clancy in hardcover.

“Was Mrs. Willis a Civil War buff?” Gregor asked.

“Mr. Willis was,” Dan Exter said. “He’s got one of those Civil War chess sets upstairs, you know, where the pieces are soldiers in blue and gray. A really expensive set too.”

“How do you know it belonged to Stephen Willis and not his wife?”

“It was in Stephen Willis’s private closet.”

Gregor looked up at the ceiling. What was above his head right then were dark wooden beams, machine-cut to look hand-hewn. “Is upstairs this way?” he asked, pointing to an archway on his right.

“That’s it exactly,” John Jackman said.

Gregor went through the archway and looked around. There was a broad front foyer out there, and a staircase that curved in an angular sort of way. There was also a closet. He opened the closet and looked inside. There were six men’s coats, including a heavy camel hair and a black cashmere and a leather biking jacket that was much too expensive to have ever belonged to a biker. On the floor were four pairs of rain boots, Wellingtons and fancy galoshes, all men’s too.

“The bedroom’s up here,” John Jackman said, shooing Gregor in the direction of the staircase. “Every house in Fox Run Hill has a formal entry foyer and a grand front staircase.”

“That’s a direct quote,” Dan Exter said, “from the developer who built this place. We talked to him last night.”

Gregor stopped on the landing and looked out the window there, at the road and the houses.

“All the houses in Fox Run Hill have one of these landing things too,” Dan Exter said, “at least as far as I can figure. Or the ones right around here do. You can see it when you’re outside. The window halfway between the other windows.”

Gregor looked out at the big brick house. It had a window just above the entryway, halfway between the windows on the regular floors. “You can hardly tell the police have been here,” he said. “The place is so clean.”

“The place is antiseptic,” John Jackman said. “But you can tell the police have been here when you get upstairs. Just you wait.”

Gregor didn’t have to wait long. He got to the upstairs hall and looked right and left. To one side, the hall seemed as empty and clean as the rest of the house. The wall-to-wall carpeting looked as if it had been fluffed. The walls looked as if they had been polished. To the other side, however, there was chaos. A set of double doors was propped open by what looked like a pair of cardboard boxes. A large young man in a blue police uniform was standing watch between them. Beyond him, Gregor saw mess and insanity. He walked up to the large young man, nodded a greeting, and walked past him into the bedroom. Since John Jackman and Dan Exter were coming up behind him, the large young man did not protest. Gregor walked through to where the bed was and stood at the end of it. The sheets had been stripped from it, showing the bare mattress, still stained with blood. The bloodstains still looked wet.

“I take it he was sleeping when she shot him,” Gregor said to John Jackman and Dan Exter, who had come up behind him.