Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) by Linda Ladd

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    Claire thought the house looked more like an estate. Big and sprawling and modern, with dark cypress wood and miles of shining glass and angular clean lines. Lots of walls made entirely of plate glass, and dozens of doors and windows faced one sweet view of the lake from as high a vantage point as Black’s penthouse. Claire glimpsed a woman in one of those giant windows, wearing a short white dress and standing motionlessly as she stared out over the lake. A wife worrying about her husband? Probably so. And for very good reason.
    Bud followed the circular drive to a little decorative oval fish pond which probably held some seriously chilly goldfish and stopped at the bottom of a flight of steps that led up to a front porch covered by a fancy pergola made out of huge cypress beams. Somebody had shoveled off the snow up there, too. They both got out and clunked their doors shut. They gazed up at the house looming a good three stories above them. And yes, they were slightly in awe. It was a very unusual structure, more than impressive, really. Like something Black might buy for its architectural interest but that Claire would hate because it looked cold and empty and soulless to her. On top of all that, it was plain bizarre looking.
    The ground floor appeared to be a spacious garage, similar to the one at Black’s house on Governor Nicholl’s Street in the New Orleans French Quarter, which had been built up high in case of flooding. But there was no way in hell that this place could ever flood. It was up way too high on the cliffs, cliffs that were very similar to the ones in Ha Ha Tonka State Park and in other parts of the lake. It occurred to Claire at that point that their victim could’ve been thrown off that very selfsame cliff and later dumped at the park. But why? She couldn’t think of a good reason. She walked the short distance to the edge of the cliff, which really wasn’t all that far from the front porch, and looked down, way down. Far below, the ground was covered with deep snow and barely visible brambles and thickets and bushes, all of which could hide a body forever. Claire moved away from the edge and walked back to Bud where he waited at the bottom of the staircase. He didn’t like heights so he tended to let her check them out. Suddenly very interested in meeting that pensive lady in that upstairs window, they started climbing the steps.
    Claire didn’t have to wait long. Before they were halfway up the steep staircase, the same woman appeared above them on the landing. She was hugging herself, her arms crossed over her chest, apparently cold sans a coat in that very short dress. “You’re the police, aren’t you?” she called down to them. Her voice was trembling a bit, and each excited breath she took looked like smoke in the bitterly cold air. She started wringing her hands and shivering all over. She looked as if she were teetering on the precipice of a nervous breakdown, one of gargantuan proportions.
    Claire glanced at Bud and then looked back up at the woman. “Yes, ma’am. We’re detectives at the Canton County Sheriff’s Office. We’d like to talk to you, if that’s okay.”
    “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
    “Are you Mrs. Blythe Parker?”
    “Yes. Yes, I am. My husband’s dead, isn’t he? Tell me, tell me the truth!”
    “Maybe we could come inside and talk to you. Would that be all right?”
    The woman did not look good. In fact, she looked like hell warmed over. She pressed both hands over her mouth and gave a strangled sob. She knew all right. Women’s intuition? Or maybe if you had a cage fighter for a husband, you had a tendency to expect the worse. They clomped their way up to the porch, trying to stamp snow off their boots along the way. Mrs. Parker stood back and allowed them to precede her through a pair of eight-feet-tall French doors made of beautiful stained glass etched in the design of a majestic leaping buck.
    The inside of the home was about what Claire