Page 19 of Over Her Dead Body

CHAPTER 8

ANONYMOUS

Nothing today has gone according to plan.

Three people have called to ask why Emma Calloway is not in Vienna.

She is in Lisbon, sitting in a bar with a man she followed across an ocean. All three knew that before they called.

How should I know why Emma Calloway is sitting in a bar in Lisbon?

I know where she is. For the moment, that will have to be enough.

Sean Merrick is not the most urgent problem I have. He is merely the one I can do something about.

One restores order where one can.

Today, that means starting at home.

I have a house. It is not the only house I have. It is the one I prefer, the one I take dinner in when I am alone, the one I keep things in that I do not keep elsewhere. It sits behind a gate, at the end of a road that exists on no public list of roads. The only neighbors close enough to matter are people who would never speak to a stranger about who comes and goes from it.

I had a party last week.

I do not enjoy parties. I host them because no one believes a person who wants to be left alone hosts parties, which makes hosting them the cheapest cover available. The trick to a good party is to invite enough faces that no one remembers any single one. I have been doing this for a long time.

Sean Merrick has been staying with me. An old friend, by the loose definition of friendship that people in my world apply to each other—meaning we have known each other for many years and have not yet had reason to kill one another. He has a thing he is waiting on in the city. He needs somewhere quiet to wait. I gave him the guest wing because I am the kind of host who gives the guest wing.

This was generous of me.

Sean did not return the generosity.

By the time I have him brought downstairs, the house has gone quiet around us.

He is sitting across from me now in a chair I do not particularly want him in. The door is closed. The curtains are drawn. Two of my men stand behind him.

He understands what that means in this room. He understands it the way a fish understands water.

“Sean.” I take the chair across from him. “Thank you for coming.”

He didn’t come. He was brought. But we are going to pretend, for the next several minutes, that this is a meeting between professionals. The pretense is a courtesy I extend to people who are about to have a very bad night.

It softens the edges.

I take a moment. Sean waits. He does not have a choice in the matter.

“Tell me, Sean. What does a person have to do to get a little respect in their own home?”

He opens his mouth. I hold up one finger. He closes his mouth.

I gesture, with that same finger, at the wall behind him.

He turns his head.

The painting is hanging where it has hung for nine years. A gallery light over it. Wall the color of bone. There is a tear across the lower third of the canvas.

“You know what that is,” I say.

“I—yes.”