Trudy grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself as she stared in disbelief. She hadn't imagined it. The Amazon--the words stung her as they struck home. She also realized then she never even knew her name. A guest had died at the Slipper and she never even knew who the woman was.
Forms, shadows gathered around the body in the periphery of her view, she couldn't pull herself away from the sight of the gold handled knife standing there so regal in the woman's back.
"Call emergency rescue," a baritone room encompassing voice collided with her thoughts. Nothing seemed real. Not the voice, not the woman lying on the floor, not the gold handled dagger plunged deep between her shoulder blades--perhaps it was her scream she'd heard. Did she scream, or was it someone else, her own scream that still echoed in her head?
"Trudy, my God, Trudy," she heard Alexandra's voice outside the fog. Alexandra took her shoulders and forced her to turn away from the view of the body.
Unglued from the scene Trudy regained her composure. "Call nine-one-one. I must," her own voice sounded disjointed, hollow in her ears, "Yes, call."
"Here you sit, I'll call. Marquis, grab that afghan from the couch and put it over the woman, will you please?"
One of the shadow men leaned down to pull the knife from her back.
"No! Don't touch," Alexandra said as she dashed to the phone. Alexandra's face drained of color as though some one had pulled a drain plug. She shook the phone and pushed frantically at the disconnect button. Trudy knew in an instant the phone was as dead as the woman in the kitchen doorway.
"Now what?" she said.
Trudy sat staring at the men who stared back at her. None of them showed any emotion about the death. The thought struck her, someone in this house is a murderer and I'm stranded here with them. "We'll have to get Max and Jamison to ... no, that won't work, we can't jeopardize their lives. This woman is already dead, there is no help for her," Trudy said.
The noise from the living room reminded her the television was still on. Life went on as usually in the rest of the world. Once again things had stopped turning in her life, in Orenda, at Zero Cemetery Lane. She was beginning to wonder if Faith Yachne hadn't been right and The Slipper needed to be burned, not renovated.
Since none of the men seemed emotionally involved with this woman she reasoned one of them must have been the killer. "Will you all go back to what you were doing? Where you were before I screamed. There is nothing we can do for her. We will have Jamison and Max move her."
"I'll go get them," Alexandra said slipping back into her winter clothes.
Trudy wasn't sure she wanted to be left alone in the house with a murderer. "Okay," she said thinking her choices were extremely limited in this instance.
The shadow men retreated to the living room. "Maybe I can assist," Marquis said.
"Who is ... was she?" Trudy asked.
"I'm afraid I do not know, dear lady."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"Exactly that," his voice, baritone and booming, never moderated from a pleasant loudness and yet it filled the room much as a stage actor learns to project his voice. He offered nothing further.
The shadows merely stood a short distance off, soundless, emotionless. Time seemed frozen in that moment of discovery until Jamison and Max burst through the door.
"What in biddy hell, who offed the old bag?" Max said in his brutish manner. He never seemed to temper his words. He just blurted them out without apparent thought of their impact.
"I'm afraid we have no clue who off--stabbed Mrs., Ms, the lady."
Alexandra finished her snow dance and stood next to Trudy staring down at the big woman; blood had begun to ooze around the knife as Jamison turned her to check for pulse or breathing. "She's dead all right. How'd it happen? Who stabbed her?" he said looking around at the male guests.
"No one seems to know," she turned to Alexandra "And get this, no one knows who she is ... was."
"Now wait a New York minute, I'm gullible, maybe even a little naïve, but..." she waved her hand toward the men. "They were traveling with her, weren't they?"
"Yes and no," said Marquis finally.
Jamison and Max lifted the body onto the tarp they brought in from the shed. "Where shall we put her?"
Trudy couldn't bear the thought of sharing the house with another corpse, but until they could get the coroner and the police here she had little choice. "Let's put her out in the summer porch bedroom. That way she will remain cool and won't start to decompose as quickly. I'm sure Chief Hahn will have a million questions once we get through to him, and the knife will need to be fingerprinted." Dread began to wash over her again as she realized yellow crime scene tape may once again decorate the rooms of the Slipper.
)
