Mind Games Read Online Free Page A

as possible, and although it was only Day Three of the investigation, tension was clearly visible in his eyes and in the frown lines
creasing his forehead. Still, busy as he was, Detective Becket still seemed ready to fetch coffee for the two of them and to tell Grace all that – and more than – she wanted to know
about the murders.
    The actual weapon, he said in strict confidence, had not yet been found, but Marie and Arnold had both been slain with a fine, acutely sharp blade that the ME had immediately suspected of being
some kind of scalpel. A search of the house on Pine Tree Drive had subsequently yielded an old, hand-stitched, purpose-made leather pouch containing an equally old and quite valuable set of
hallmarked solid silver surgical instruments, each in its own separate stitched narrow compartment – with one compartment empty. According to Frances Dean, the instruments were a family
heirloom left to Cathy by her late father, Marie’s first husband.
    ‘Was he a surgeon?’ Grace asked.
    ‘A physician,’ Becket answered, ‘but his father was a surgeon.’
    ‘So if the missing scalpel was the weapon,’ she mused, ‘the murderer might have known about the pouch?’
    ‘It’s a possibility. The house wasn’t ransacked. We don’t feel there was anything random about the killings.’
    ‘But you said there was a break-in?’ Becket had said something earlier on the telephone about a forced window at the rear of the house.
    ‘Maybe,’ he said now.
    Grace looked across the desk, querying.
    ‘That was how it looked.’
    ‘So what’s changed?’ She saw indecision in his expression. ‘Is this information you can’t share with me?’ She gave him a second or two. ‘I do
understand, detective, but you must realize that confidentiality gets a pretty high rating in my line of work, too.’
    Becket studied her for a moment before making up his mind. ‘The crime-scene people think the window may have been broken from inside the house.’
    Grace waited again. He offered nothing more, but the implication seemed perfectly clear to her.
    ‘You think someone wanted it to look as if it was broken from outside?’
    ‘It’s a possibility,’ he said again. ‘Though if that was the intent, they did a poor job.’
    ‘Mightn’t it have been broken before?’ Grace asked. ‘In the past?’
    ‘It might,’ he said. ‘It might also be unconnected.’
    ‘What does the housekeeper say?’
    ‘Mrs del Fuego says she has no knowledge of the window being broken before Thursday, but she can’t be sure because it’s not a room she went into every day.’
    Grace thought about Anita del Fuego and the impact of coming suddenly upon that kind of mayhem. ‘How’s she doing?’
    ‘Coping,’ Becket said.
    ‘That’s a word I mistrust,’ Grace said. ‘I hear it all the time.’
    ‘Still, coping’s what people do, isn’t it?’ the detective asked her. ‘They cope – they get by. They survive.’
    ‘Of course.’ She gave a small grimace. ‘They also bottle up nightmares, wall themselves up.’
    ‘Storing up problems for the future,’ he said.
    They were both silent for a moment.
    ‘Cathy looks like she’s coping,’ Grace said, ‘but we both know she isn’t. She can’t be. It isn’t possible.’ She noticed suddenly that Becket was
looking at her intently, and she bristled slightly. ‘Do I have a smudge on my face?’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘It’s just the similarity.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘Between you and Cathy Robbins.’ He saw her startled expression. ‘You’re really quite alike, physically, Dr Lucca.’
    ‘Are we?’ Grace said coolly. ‘I didn’t notice. Looks were not uppermost in my mind when I was talking to Cathy.’
    ‘No, I don’t imagine they were,’ Becket said. ‘I’m sorry.’
    Grace had learned the tough way, as had many of her professional contemporaries, to slap down references to her appearance by colleagues, male or female. Her own blue eyes