The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

Dance scooted onto a stool. She rested her maroon wedge Aldos on the supports. The straps on the shoes were inlaid with bright daisies. Even ten-year-old Maggie had more conservative taste than she did when it came to shoes, which were one of Dance's passions.

"For now, could you tell me something about the murders eight years ago? It might give me an idea of what he's up to."

Reynolds sat on an adjoining stool, sipping wine. He ran through the facts of the case: How Pell and Jimmy Newberg had broken into the house of William Croyton in Carmel, killed the businessman, his wife and two of their three children. They were all stabbed to death.

"Newberg too. My theory was that he balked about killing the kids and got into a fight with Pell, who killed him."

"Any history between Pell and Croyton?"

"Not that we could establish. But Silicon Valley was at its peak then, and Croyton was one of the big boys. He was in the press all the time--he not only designed most of the programs himself, he was the chief of sales too. Larger-than-life kind of guy. Work hard, play hard. Big, loud, tanned. Not the most sympathetic victim in the world. Pretty ruthless businessman, rumors of affairs, disgruntled employees. But if murder was a crime only against saints, we prosecutors'd be out of a job.

"His company had been burglarized a couple of times in the year before the killing. The perps got away with computers and software, but Santa Clara County could never come up with a suspect. No indication that Pell had anything to do with it. But I always wondered if it could've been him."

"What happened to the company after he died?"

"It was acquired by somebody else, Microsoft or Apple or one of the game companies, I don't know."

"And his estate?"

"Most of it went in trust to his daughter, and I think some to his wife's sister, the aunt who took custody of the girl. Croyton'd been in computers ever since he was a kid. He had probably ten, twenty million dollars' worth of old hardware and programs that he left to Cal State-Monterey Bay. The computer museum there's really impressive, and techies come from all over the world to do research in the archives."

"Still?"

"Apparently so. Croyton was way ahead of his time."

"And rich."

"Way rich."

"That was the actual motive for the killings?"

"Well, we never knew for sure. On the facts, it was a plain-vanilla burglary. I think Pell read about Croyton and thought it'd be a cakewalk to pick up some big bucks."

"But his take was pretty skimpy, I read."

"A thousand and some jewelry. Would've been a small case. Except for five dead bodies, of course. Almost six--good thing that little girl was upstairs."

"What's her story?"

"Poor kid. You know what they called her?"

" 'The Sleeping Doll.' "

"Right. She didn't testify. Even if she'd seen something, I wouldn't've subjected her to the stand, not with that prick in the courtroom. I had enough evidence anyway."

"She didn't remember anything?"

"Nothing helpful. She went to bed early that night."

"Where is she now?"

"No idea. She was adopted by the aunt and uncle and they moved away."

"What was Pell's defense?"

"They'd gone there with some business idea. Newberg snapped and killed everybody. Pell tried to stop him, they fought and Pell, quote, 'had' to kill him. But there was no evidence Croyton had a meeting planned--the family was in the middle of dinner when they showed up. Besides, the forensics were clear: time of death, fingerprints, trace, blood spatter, everything. Pell was the doer."

"In prison Pell got access to a computer. Unsupervised."