Down the Rabbit Hole

A couple got in as she got out, called her by name.

“Oh hello.” She smiled at them, the man with the grinning cat’s face and the woman wearing a crown. “I’m going to see Marcus. I have something for him.”

She rang the bell on her brother’s door, waited with a smile until he opened it.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“I know.” Just as she knew he was still angry with her. She held out a hand for his. “I’m so sorry, Marcus.”

He sighed, shook his head. Closed the door behind her. “I miss them, too, Darli, and we owe it to them to make sure everything’s done right, for the estate, for the business, for the rest of the family.”

“I know.”

“You can’t keep closing in, shutting down.”

“I know. I know. It’s been so hard, Marcus, losing them the way we did, and I haven’t handled it well. I haven’t done my share.”

“It’s not about the work,” he began, then his eyes narrowed on her face. “Have you been drinking?”

“What? No!” She laughed. “Just tea, lots of tea, and I’ve got so much to tell you. I needed to talk to them first.”

“To who?”

“Mama and Daddy, of course.”

“Darlene.”

“I needed to know they’re all right. In a better place. I can see them there, and it’s beautiful. It’s Wonderland!”

“Okay.” He set a hand on her shoulder. “Okay.”

“I brought you something, like a peace offering.”

“Fine. Take off your coat, let’s sit down. We need to talk.”

“In a minute,” she muttered. She opened her bag, stared at the red scarf. Her fingers floated over it, through it, and down to the bright red rose beneath.

“For you,” she said and pushed it at him. In him.

He looked at her so strangely, but then he wasn’t the sort of man who expected a flower. Delighted, she pulled it back, pushed it at him again.

And again, until he sprawled in the meadow covered with red roses.

“I’ll get Mama and Daddy now, so you can talk to them. Sit right there!” She raced across the meadow, pushed past long, flowering vines that barred the view. And climbed to the top of the hill.

She saw her parents dancing by a silver lake and, laughing, flew toward them.

And flying, never felt the fall.





CHAPTER TWO




Instead of enjoying a rare night off sprawled out with her ridiculously sexy husband watching a vid where lots of stuff blew up, Eve Dallas stood over death.

She’d pulled rank—a favor for a friend—to take primary on what, on the surface, struck as a murder/suicide. Sibling rivalry taken to extremes.

The friend was currently in the kitchen area of the crime scene—the swank Upper East Side penthouse of the late Marcus Elliot Fitzwilliams—with her own pretty sexy husband. And the uniformed cop who kept them in place.

Eve studied the silver shears deeply embedded in the victim’s chest. Cause of death might have been apparent, but she opened her field kit, crouched to do her job.

“Visual identification of Fitzwilliams, Marcus, confirmed with print match on scene. Victim is thirty-six, single Caucasian male, owner and only listed resident of this unit. Employed CEO and president of Fitzwilliams Worldwide.”

She took out microgoggles, lifted one of the victim’s hands with her own sealed ones. “No visible defensive wounds, no signs of struggle. COD, three puncture wounds to the chest. ME to confirm.”

Bled out right here, she thought.

“An attempt to resuscitate the victim resulted in some compromising of the scene.”

Rising, she crossed over to the open terrace door, studied the bloody palm print on the glass. Running it, she ID’d the victim’s sister. Who was even now splatted on the sidewalk below.

Eve stepped out into the cold, looked down to the street, the police barricades, the crowd lined up behind them.

The icy wind dragged at her short, choppy brown hair, had her sticking her hands in the pockets of her long leather coat to warm them.