“Keep an eye on him,” Lyra said. “I’ll be right back. Whatever you do, don’t get too close to him. He may still be conscious.”
“Wait.” Marcella sprang to her feet. “Don’t leave me out here with him. What if he’s not dead?”
“I have to call the police.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Marcella made her way around the pool. Lyra waited for her. Together they went into the glass-walled conservatory. The phone was on a small table. Lyra picked up the receiver and dialed the operator.
“Burning Cove police, please,” she said. “Homicide.” She tightened her grip on the phone to try to still the trembling in her fingers. She was a private investigator. She had to look good in front of the client. Competent.
“One moment, I’ll connect you,” the operator said.
A moment later a gruff, male voice came on the line. “Homicide. Brandon.”
“This is Lyra Brazier. I’m an investigator for Kirk Investigations.”
“Yeah? Didn’t know Miss Kirk had hired another investigator. Business is picking up, huh?”
Lyra decided this was not the time to explain that she was technically an apprentice investigator.
“I’m calling from the Adlington residence on Harborview Drive, Detective,” she said. “There’s been an incident involving Mrs. Adlington’s husband. We need the police and an ambulance.”
“Mrs. Adlington is hurt?” Brandon’s voice sharpened abruptly. “How bad?”
Lyra studied the unmoving figure on the patio. “Mrs. Adlington is fine. It’s Mr. Adlington who has been injured. I don’t know how badly. He appears to be . . . unconscious.” She cleared her throat. “Possibly dead.”
“Are you and Mrs. Adlington safe?”
“Yes.”
“Stay where you are. I’m on my way.”
There was a click on the other end of the line. Brandon had hung up. Lyra dropped the receiver into the cradle and looked at Marcella, who was staring at her husband through the glass panes of the conservatory.
“I knew he was becoming increasingly unbalanced again,” she said. “But I also knew no one would believe me. When there were other people around he always managed to appear perfectly normal. He even fooled the doctors at the asylum. I had to have proof.”
“You wanted to hire Kirk Investigations to try to find credible evidence that your husband was a danger to you and that he should be locked up in a mental hospital,” Lyra said.
There was a short pause before Marcella answered. Lyra got a ghostly frisson of intuitive awareness. Something was off. She was almost certain that Marcella was rapidly rewriting a script.
“Yes,” Marcella said, speaking a little too quickly now. “Yes, that was why I made an appointment with a private investigator today. But Charles showed up a short time ago. He was supposed to be playing golf. That’s his bag of clubs out there.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
“I’ll go around to the front of the house and escort Detective Brandon and the ambulance crew back here,” Lyra said. She glanced at Charles, who still had not moved. “Do you want to come with me?”
“No.” Marcella took a deep breath. “I’ll stay in here. If he moves, I’ll lock the door. He’s not much of a threat now, is he? Not with that head wound. Assuming he’s even alive.”
“Assuming that,” Lyra said. “No, he’s not a threat. Not at the moment, at any rate.”
Lyra walked quickly out of the conservatory and followed the flagstone path around the big house. A police car and an ambulance were pulling into the circular driveway.
The passenger-side door of the car opened. A man in a rumpled suit and a battered fedora climbed out. She recognized him. She had met Brandon recently when her sister, Vivian, had become the target of an assassin.
The sight of his hat made her realize that the fashionably feminine version of a fedora she’d had on when she arrived at the villa was no longer perched at a smart angle on her carefully pinned-up hair. It had come off during the short, brutal fight with Adlington.
Detective Brandon had the tough, world-weary look of a good cop who has seen human nature at its worst but who is determined to do his job. He gave Lyra a short, crisp nod.
“Miss Brazier,” he said. “Where’s Adlington?”
“On the patio behind the house,” Lyra said. “I’ll show you.”
Brandon didn’t wait for her. He took off along the flagstone path. Two ambulance attendants hauled a stretcher out of their vehicle and followed. Lyra had to trot to keep up with them.
“Talk to me,” Brandon ordered over his shoulder.
“I had an appointment with Mrs. Adlington this afternoon,” Lyra said. “Well, Raina had the appointment, but she thought it would be good experience for me to interview the client, so I came here instead. Mrs. Adlington expressed interest in hiring Kirk Investigations, but she didn’t say why. When I got here I found Mr. and Mrs. Adlington in the pool. It looked like Mr. Adlington was trying to drown his wife. When he saw me he climbed out of the pool and came after me.”
“Yeah? What did you—” Brandon went through the garden gate, saw the body, the blood, and the three iron, and came to a sudden stop. “You hit him with a golf club?”
“It was the closest thing at hand.”
Brandon whistled appreciatively. “You must have a hell of a swing.”
“It’s actually a pretty boring game, but my parents both play and so did my ex-fiancé and, well, it was expected, if you know what I mean.”
Brandon shot her an unreadable look. “Right. We didn’t have any golf courses or country clubs in my neighborhood. We played baseball in the middle of the street.”
“Sounds more interesting than golf, but then, almost anything is.”
She wasn’t paying close attention to the conversation, because she was watching the ambulance attendants. They had positioned the stretcher beside Adlington’s unmoving form.
“Hold on,” Brandon called to the two men. “I want to take a look before you move him.”
He strode across the patio and crouched beside Adlington. Lyra stayed where she was. She had no desire to take a closer look.
“Is he alive?” she whispered.
Brandon looked surprised by the question. “Hell no. Several whacks to the head with a golf club would probably take down a small elephant.”
“Several whacks?” Lyra forgot to breathe. “But I only hit him once.”