Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

It was so not on my list of things I expected him to say. It was the politest thing I’d ever heard anyone say when confronted by the police in the middle of committing a crime.

“Guests,” a woman’s voice said from inside the room. “What do you mean, we have guests? Rico would have asked our permission before letting anyone else into our house.”

I felt Deputy Rico shift uneasily behind us without having to see around Newman. The sheriff moved so he could keep an eye on Todd and still give Rico a dirty look. Leduc got some of his brownie points back because he kept Todd in his sights as he moved. The man in front of us looked harmless, but a lot of “harmless” people end up killing cops every year. Just because Todd was clutching the case to his chest like a baby didn’t mean there wasn’t a gun tucked into his belt.

A woman—Muriel, I assumed—walked through the doorway. An angry scowl crossed her face before she got it under control and smiled pleasantly at us, but she couldn’t quite get her eyes under control, while the rest of her nearly perfect face was all gracious hostess. She was tall, with blond hair that was almost the same shade of yellow as Bobby Marchand’s. The family resemblance was strong enough that I’d have thought they were mother and son, not just aunt and nephew, if I hadn’t known better. She was a handsome woman, like a blond Jane Russell, but slenderer, fewer curves. But some things even good cosmetic surgery can’t change, so the thin arm she held out to Leduc had more loose skin in places than the rest of her seemed to promise. She kept herself thin but didn’t worry about muscle tone, and without that, you can nip and tuck anything you want, but age will catch up. Maybe it always catches up—I didn’t know yet—but Muriel Babington had done her best to stay ahead of time.

Thanks to Jean-Claude’s love of jewelry, I knew that the gold chain with its simple diamond and the pair of understated antique earrings in gold and more diamonds cost more than most people’s yearly salaries. The watch on her left wrist was a vintage Rolex. It complemented the cream pants and vest buttoned over a blue silk blouse that made her gray-blue eyes look closer to Bobby’s brighter blue. I didn’t know the designer of the clothes, but I was betting that everything she was wearing was designed by a name I should have known. Jean-Claude would have known, even Nathaniel might have known, but I didn’t. The best I could do was recognize expensive when I saw it.

As Muriel glided down the hallway toward us, her pants gave glimpses of pale leather boots with stiletto heels, though once heels go that high, I think they’re just high heels with boot fronts. Boots imply practical, and these shoes were not, but they did give her slender frame more feminine swish, which was the goal of heels like that. I had a few pairs that did the same thing, but after a few date nights when I danced in them, I was beginning to rethink the sexy-heels-to-comfort ratio. The closer the wedding got, and the more Jean-Claude insisted on dressing me up, the more I wanted to rebel against the whole impractical idea of women’s fashion.

“What brings you by so late, Duke?” Muriel asked.

“Like I told Todd, work.”

“You have the murderer locked up. Case solved,” she said.

If I hadn’t known that it was her brother who had been brutally murdered and her nephew locked up for the crime, I’d have thought she was an uninterested bystander, maybe a distant family acquaintance.

“Muriel, you know you can’t be in here right now.”

“I know no such thing. My brother is dead, and that’s awful, but I warned him about Bobby.”

“What did you warn him about?” Leduc asked.

She gave him a pitying look, as if he were being too stupid for words. Disdain dripped off her well-manicured hand as she put it on her hip. “You know what Bobby is, Duke. Don’t play games after you saw what he did to Ray.”

I fought to keep my face and body very still and not give away the spurt of adrenaline I’d felt because of the wording. If they knew details about Ray Marchand’s body, then they had been here before the cops were called.

“What did he do to Ray, Muriel?” Leduc asked.

Her look went from disdainful to scathing. “Come on, Duke. I didn’t see Ray’s body, but seeing the study where he was killed was enough. It looks like a damn butcher shop.”

Duke looked at the husband still clutching the small case to his chest. “What did you think of Ray’s body when you saw it, Todd?”

Muriel touched her husband’s shoulder. “We didn’t see the body, Duke. Todd wouldn’t even come into the study with me.” Her voice held scorn and disappointment, as if she was often scornful of and disappointed in her husband.

“I saw the bloody footprints in the front hallway up here,” Todd said. “That was enough for me.”

“It would be for you,” she said, and her tone was humiliating. I couldn’t imagine being married to someone who would talk to me like that in front of strangers or at all.

Todd didn’t say anything in return, just huddled more tightly around the small case in his arms.

Duke said, “What’s in the case, Todd?”

Todd glanced at his wife and then at the floor but didn’t meet anyone else’s eyes. He didn’t answer the question either.

Duke held out his hand. “Give me the case, Todd.”

Muriel pushed in front of her husband so that Leduc either had to back up or let her invade his personal space. He didn’t move back. Underneath the panic and pain of earlier was a good cop. I hoped to see more of that side of him and let the bad cop be an unfortunate moment we could all forget.

In the heels, she was a few inches taller than Leduc. “We don’t have to let you see inside the case, Duke. It’s our case. We brought it into the house. Rico there will tell you he saw us bring it in. Didn’t you, Rico?”

The sheriff was already standing so he could keep Muriel and Todd in his peripheral vision and see the deputy, but Newman and I had to move to the other side of the hallway opposite Duke so we could help keep an eye on everyone.

Rico gave her a less-than-friendly look, and something about the darker emotion made him look better or more real. I realized he was handsome in that generic Hollywood way, if you were going for a mix of old-fashioned Latin lover and Midwestern college athlete. The hair I could see around his Smokey Bear hat was as black as mine and had curl left even though it had been cut short. He looked like he’d tan darker than I did, but I was betting that his heritage was mixed like mine. The last name Vargas should have been

a clue. Sometimes I’m slow, but mostly if you do your job, I just don’t care.