(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(55)

She gives me a look. “What metal bed? Don’t think we aren’t going to finish this conversation, but what metal bed?”

“The black frame with the scratch marks. It was a queen-sized bed in one of the rooms.”

She glances over the desk at the photos and scowls. “I don’t recall a metal bed.”

“One of those bed frames is brand fucking new.” The time frame is off in my head.

“Brand new last spring when he took her?”

I shake my head. “I—she never saw the bed again. So it was bought sometime between last winter when she was on it and this fall when she escaped.” I pause. “If I had to guess I would say he brought the bed and replaced it when he knew he was going to bring her there. He had to clean up the things in his place she had touched. She slept on that bed, she clung to it with her wrists handcuffed there. She was on that bed. She was sitting on the couch, but a thorough vacuuming would remove the evidence. She ate from the dishes, but everything goes in the dishwasher. So he replaced the bed with that one.” I point at the wooden bed with the dark stain. “It’s that room. I recognize the view from that room and the curtains.”

She whistles. “Ya might possibly be redeeming yourself with this one.”

I open my mouth to defend our work, but this whole mind run has been a cock-up from the start. Acid stirs in my stomach when I look at the bed. “Don’t tell anyone what we found. The way he cleaned up the house and fixed everything and killed the girls with poison makes me wonder if we somehow have a leak with the police department.”

She frowns, furrowing her barely-there ginger brows. “All right, but just so ya know, I am not going door to door with ya on this shite. I’m a doctor, not an investigator.”

I roll my eyes. “I’ll go by myself.”

“Ya think that’s a good idea?”

“I do. The fewer people involved, the less likely it is to get fucked up again.”

I need to stop cussing so much.





16. See a man about a bed




The Coal Arched bed frame is here.” The man points at it, giving me a weird look. I follow him across Barrel & Barn at the University Village Shopping Center. I never come to places like this, ever, but if by some random unluckiness I do, I always try to look homeless. Pressure sales are not my thing, and coming in here like you might have ten dollars to your name is a bad idea. Barrel & Barn is one of those stores where you look at things that will make your house so much homier until you happen upon the price tag. Then you vomit and buy whatever you need off Craigslist like sensible people.

“Why are you so dressed down?” Dash leans in, probably wondering why we are bed shopping since he had demanded we buy a new one when he moved in with me. His diva ways really should have revealed his blue blood sooner.

I sip my latte and smile. “They harass you less if they know you’re poor.”

“Dear God, why didn’t you say something? I would have changed. Are they going to harass me?”

“Yeah, most likely.” I nod at the pretty salesgirl in the corner. “Especially her.”

“Great!” He grimaces but I ignore it and drag him over to the bed, away from the pretty girl. We round the corner, and I stop dead in my tracks; it’s exactly the bed.

“What is this? I don’t even understand why we had to come back to Seattle, let alone here. Honestly, why are we at Barrel & Barn? This store is so—”

“Expensive?”

His eyes narrow. “Uhhh, yeah. Okay.”

“You were going to put it down for being a place where peasants like me shop, weren’t you?”

He opens his mouth and then snaps it shut.

“I wouldn’t shop here, just so you’re aware.”

He nods. “Well, good, the furniture is subpar and would likely need repairs or replacement—” He pauses. “Wait, why wouldn’t you shop here?”

I blink, stunned at his snobbery. “Not even trying to keep that shit locked up anymore, huh?” I point at the two-thousand-dollar price tag next to him on a small round dining-room table. “Because that’s more than one of my paychecks.”

He blinks staring at it. “Are you being serious?”

I stare at him deadpan. “You want to go joint account with me so we can both laugh when I get paid?”

“You mean you’ll finally agree to let me buy you things?”

“No, and since I met your parents, extra no.”

He laughs like I’m kidding, but I’m not.

An older salesman strolls over to us, but he looks through me at Dash. “We have some lovely end tables that just came in from Africa—rubberwood, and very charming.” I don’t know what that has to do with anything, so I make an attempt to ignore them both and stare at the bed that’s been haunting my dreams.