Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

table. Gary wasn’t breathing. There was no pulse when Desmond touched his neck, and the skin was cool. Gary’s eyes were closed and his face was flushed, as if he’d run a marathon before drifting off to sleep and dying.

The rooms on the first floor were empty. Desmond took the freshly polished stairs to the second story two at a time. “Dominique!” he shouted. No answer.

Desmond saw an open door as he reached the upper landing. He ran to it and saw Dominique was curled up in bed like a cat.

“I’m here, baby girl,” he rasped, rushing to her. “Wake up.”

Her chest wasn’t rising and falling, but he refused to believe his eyes. The moment he touched her cheek, he knew she was dead, but he couldn’t process the thought. Her soft brown skin was cool under his fingertips, yes, but her cheeks were flushed. If anything, she looked relaxed and healthy, dreaming of things that made her lips curl in a smile.

“Wake up,” he ordered, his voice barely a whisper. He said it as if she were still the rebellious eight-year-old who told him he wasn’t allowed to go into the military and leave her behind. Twenty-two years had gone by since then, but that didn’t matter. She was still his baby girl, and she was lost to him.

Chapter 19

He stood, rooted to the spot and gasping for breath. He couldn’t lift his hand to wipe his eyes. There were no bruises on his sister, no serious cuts or wounds. He held her hands, and when he gently pried hers apart, he discovered she was holding a rusty nail. It was a couple of inches long, and he held it up to the light. That wasn’t rust. It was blood. Was it Dominique’s? He wrapped the nail in a tissue and put it in his coat pocket. Why would his sister be holding on to a thing like that? Her nails were painted hot pink with little gold stars, but the tips were ragged and broken. The damage wasn’t dramatic enough to be a defensive wound, but it was completely out of character for a girl who never left the house with a hair out of place. Clearly something had happened. How could Dominique be dead? Had Gary killed her and committed suicide?

Desmond touched his sister’s throat, seeing no sign she’d been strangled. Her eyes were closed, as if she had drifted off to sleep and never woken up. Una nox dormienda, the Romans called it. A long sleep, after the pain and suffering of life. But a healthy thirty-year-old woman wasn’t supposed to sleep like that.

Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

The familiar words ran through his head. Desmond rocked back on his heels. Dominique was the only family he had left, and she was gone. His first impulse was to throw himself out the window. Instead, he straightened his back and looked around. There was a glass on the nightstand. He sniffed at the pale remnants. Chalky, like champagne. He thought of the open bottle downstairs, on the kitchen table. In his mind, the scenario started to unfold. Gary had poisoned Dominique and then killed himself. Maybe Gary had even swallowed the same toxin. That could explain why they both looked like they’d peacefully drifted off to sleep.

Part of him—a bigger part than he’d admit existed—wanted to go downstairs, find an axe, and chop off Gary’s head. But that was foolishness now, even he could see that. He had to attend to things properly. Responsibly. That was his job now, and he took it seriously.

He choked back his tears and dialed the police. Words tumbled out of him, first the bare bones of who he was, where he was, and what he’d found. Then, without thinking, he added, “I think it’s a murder-suicide.”

“Please don’t touch anything, sir. It might be important,” the operator warned him. She kept him on the line, saying it would be helpful to them to track his signal to find the house. Helpful, sure. His sister was dead and they wanted him to be helpful. And don’t touch anything. That wouldn’t be helpful. For some reason that one word, helpful, grated on him. He’d driven through the night to help his sister, but there he was now, being helpful.

He paced the bedroom, staring at the walls as if they were part of a cage. It was like a hothouse in there, and the window wouldn’t budge when he tried to open it. He wanted to take off his coat, but he had nowhere to put it. The only available surfaces were the night table, the dresser and the bed. He kept his coat on.

“Are you all right, sir?” the operator asked him at one point.

“My sister’s dead. How can anything be ‘all right’?”

“You sound disoriented, sir. You keep repeating things.”

Was he? He had a jackhammer pounding away behind his eyes, and he felt exhausted. But he’d been driving all night, and all the coffee he’d swallowed was taking its revenge by making his limbs weak and jittery. You didn’t have to be a medic to figure out the pain in his chest was caused by the sight of Dominique’s lifeless body.

“I’m fine,” he answered. “As much as I can be right now.”

He was determined to make his way through the house before the police got there. In his initial shock, he’d forgotten something important. Who was the other man Dominique had mentioned on the phone? He couldn’t remember. There was an echo of his sister’s voice in his head, but it was hazy. Whatever name she’d said was wrapped in a cloak of fog. Desmond had an excellent recall for facts and dates and details, a holdover from his military training, so this lapse gnawed at him as he made his way through the rooms on the second story of the house. They were empty. There didn’t seem to be anything to