The Cereal Murders Read Online Free Page A

at him, unable to formulate an answer to his question. Was I okay? Julian asked. I struggled to focus on his faraway voice, on his anguished eyes, his pallid face, and bleached, wet hair stuck up in conical spikes. Julian rubbed his hands on his rumpled white shirt and tried to straighten his plaid bow tie, which had gone askew. "Goldy, are you okay?" he repeated.
     
     
"I need to call Arch and tell him we're all right, that we'll be late."
     
     
The area between Julian's eyebrows pleated in alarm. "Want me to do it? I can use the phone in the kitchen."
     
     
"Sure. Please. I don't trust myself to talk to him just now. If he hears my voice, it'll worry him."
     
     
Julian darted toward the kitchen with Macguire Perkins striding uneasily after him, like a gargantuan shadow. I was shivering uncontrollably. Belatedly, I realized I should have told Macguire my jacket was in the van. Moving like an automaton toward the front hallway closet to look for a blanket, shawl, jacket, something, I could hear Julian's voice on one of the phone extensions. I pulled a huge raccoon coat off a protruding hanger. I had an absurdly incongruous thought: Wear this thing on the streets of Denver and you'd get spray-painted by anti-fur activists. As I was putting the heavy coat on, one of my coffeepots tumbled out of the dark recesses of the closet, spilling cold brown liquid and wet grounds on the stone floor. What was it doing in there? I couldn't think. I was shaking. Get a grip. I kicked at the hanging coats to make sure no other surprises lurked in the closet comers. Then I walked down the hall, looking into each of the large, irregularly shaped rooms with their heavy gold and green brocade draperies, dark wood furniture, and lush Oriental rugs, to see if there was anybody else around.
     
     
The voices of Julian, Macguire, and the headmaster warbled uncertainly out of the kitchen. Then the head-master cried, "Keith Andrews? Dead? Are you sure? Oh, nor I heard footsteps moving rapidly up the kitchen staircase. I stood staring into the living room, where the recent exodus of guests had left the tables and chairs helter-skelter.
     
     
"What are you doing in here? Jeez, Goldy." Julian leaned in toward my face. "You look even worse than you did five minutes ago."
     
     
There was a buzzing in my ears.
     
     
"Did you get through to Arch?" I wanted to know.
     
     
Julian nodded. "And?"
     
     
"He's fine.... There was a problem with the security system a little while ago."
     
     
"Excuse me?"
     
     
"Somebody threw a rock through one of the upstairs windows. It hit one of the sensor wires, I guess. The system went off. Once Arch found the rock, he interrupted the automatic dial."
     
     
I tried to breathe. There was stinging behind my eyes. I had to get home. I said, "Can you find something to put on? We need to go outside... to be there when they arrive."
     
     
He withdrew without a word. I went into the bathroom and stared at my face in the tiny mirror.
     
     
I was not a stranger to death. The previous spring I had seen a friend die in a car accident that had been no accident. I began to wash my hands vigorously. Nor was I a stranger to violence. I tested my thumb, the one my ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, had broken in three places before we were divorced. Trying to bend it, I winced. The warm water stung my hands like needles.
     
     
In the mirror, my skin looked gray, my lips pale as dust. A problem with the security system. I shook droplets off my hands. My right shoulder ached suddenly. In the middle of an argument, John Richard had pushed me onto the open lower shelf of the dishwasher. A butcher knife had cut deeply into the area behind that shoulder, and I had paid for my protest over his extramarital flings with twenty stitches, weeks of pain, and a permanent scar.
     
     
Now death, violence, brought it all close again. I looked down at my trembling hands. They had touched the cold, stiff cord wrapped around