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“Please don’t let this be…” He didn’t finish the thought. Using his forearm, he pushed the door wide. The string of patio lights from the neighboring yard cast a baleful sheen across the scene. Ellery’s uneasy gaze moved from table to sink to floor—he could hear a soft, but steady drip onto the tile. He swallowed, turned on his phone’s flashlight, and directed it into the kitchen.

To his relief, he saw that water was dripping from the sink counter.

That wasmuchbetter than the grisly explanation his imagination had supplied, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

“September?” he asked doubtfully.

He held his phone out as though trying to get a better signal. His effort to expand the range of his cell’s flashlight was rewarded, if you could call it that, by the sight of something bundled in the doorway leading from the kitchen into the room beyond: a pile of filmy draperies which gradually resolved itself into a white huddled…

Pile of laundry, he told himself, and did not believe it for an instant.

His heart bounced around his chest like radar pinging off incoming trouble as his horrified gaze slowly, reluctantly picked out the shape of an outstretched hand.

“Oh God.”

She wasn’t bluffing. She did it.

He retreated hastily to call for help, and the slide of light briefly illuminated the gleam of something silver on the table. Not a utensil. Not a knife. Nothing that belonged on a kitchen table.

Was that—? Whatwasthat?

A hammer.

He blinked, trying to get his shocked brain to compute.

The hammer was out of place in that scene. Nobody used a hammer to…

“Ohno.”

Ellery stumbled away from the door and collapsed onto the iron bench. He took a couple of deep, trembly breaths. The damp night smelled of geranium, scented candle, and the relentless creep of something coppery and sinister. He pressed Jack’s number.

Jack’s cell rang once and then Jack, sounding blessedly normal, said, “How goes it?”

“It’s gone better,” Ellery said shakily. “I’m over at September’s. I think she’s dead.”

“What?”

“Someone’s dead, anyway. I think it must be her.”

“You’re not making sense. Are you sure she’s dead?”

Ellery closed his eyes considering the stillness, the silence, the scent of that which made your scalp prickle and your blood turn cold.

“Yes. That is, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t go inside. Which, I don’t know, maybe I should make sure she’s not…”

Jack said sharply, “No. Don’t go inside. Did you drive over?”

“Yes.”

“Wait in your car. I’m on my way.”

It seemed a lifetime before Ellery heard the sirens, saw the red and blue flash of LED bar lights speeding up the street toward where he sat shivering in his car.

Three police SUVs parked along the street. Jack got out and directed the other officers toward the house. The people in the surrounding cottages, came outside, standing on their porches, hugging themselves, watching.

Jack crossed to Ellery, who had climbed out of the VW.

“Are you okay?”