The Maid's Diary(11)

Mal studies a framed photo on the wall behind the bar. It’s the only photo downstairs. It shows a man and woman, likely in their midthirties. The female is a fair-skinned and rather stunning brunette. Long wavy hair. Slender. She wears a silky cream jumpsuit and ridiculously high-heeled sandals. She poses with the panache of a Vogue model beside a man who is slightly shorter than her because of her heels. The male has his arm around her waist in a proprietary way. He appears of Asian cultural descent. They stand in front of a turquoise pool. Clearly confident and comfortable together. They look rich—if rich has a look. In the background are palm trees, cascades of orchids, a colonial-looking building with white columns and rattan furniture on a black-and-white-tiled veranda.

“Haruto and Vanessa North?” she suggests as she shoots her own photo of the framed image. “Taken some place in Asia would be my guess from the vegetation and that rattan furniture on the deck?”

Benoit moves into the kitchen. Mal follows. It’s massive, all stainless steel and gleaming white. Spotless. No signs of recent cooking at all. Benoit opens the Sub-Zero refrigerator.

“Nothing inside the fridge apart from a bottle of rosé,” he says, opening and closing doors. “Nothing in the dishwasher, either. It’s like this home was staged for a photo shoot. Oh, wait, take a look at this.” He points to a knife block. “One is missing.” He meets Mal’s gaze. “One of the big carving knives.”

Tension winds tighter as they climb the staircase, stepping to the side of tags marking droplets of blood on the steps. Blood is smeared down the handrail.

A tech comes down the stairs, nods in greeting. The upstairs area is carpeted. Bloody footprints track along the plush cream carpeting, coming from the bedroom. They enter the main bedroom. Mal stalls. For a moment she can’t breathe.

She’s no stranger to violent homicide scenes, but this one is shocking. An abstract painting—almost beautiful—done in blood spatter across the pristine white decor of the room. The red blood streaks and drops arc across the walls, the ceiling, the mirror, the lampshades, the carpet. And in the center of the king-size bed, in the middle of rumpled, silky-white sheets, is an area almost black with saturated blood.

A chill creeps over her skin. She swallows, steps forward. “Wow,” she says quietly.

The two crime scene techs collecting blood trace from a jade statue on the floor beside the bed both glance up. “Right?” they say, almost in unison.

“And no sign of a body?” she asks.

“Not yet,” says the female tech. “But I’m pretty damn sure whoever lost this much blood did not walk away from this.”

“The statue look to be a weapon?” Benoit asks.

“Possible,” the tech says. “We’ve got traces of matted hair and blood on the corner of the statue. Fine blonde hairs. Dark at the roots. We also found longer dark strands in the sheets. There’s something on the other side of the bed you might find interesting.”

Mal and Benoit go around to the far side of the king bed. A lone sneaker lies on its side—a white shoe with a decorative orange swoosh on the side. A worn, bloodied sock hangs out of it.

Mal frowns. “Just this one sneaker?” she asks. “Any sign of the other one?”

“So far nothing,” the tech says.

Mal drops to her haunches, captures a photo, then studies the shoe. “A practical, midrange women’s sneaker. Designed for comfort.” She picks it up, peers inside. “Size seven.”

Benoit says, “You’d expect to find a super-high-end exercise shoe in a place like this, not a middle-of-the-road sneaker like that.”

Mal chews the side of her cheek. “It definitely looks like the odd thing out here. Could’ve been yanked off the victim’s foot, the sock coming off with the shoe, perhaps when she was dragged. We’ll get DNA off that sock, see if it matches the rest of this blood.” She regards the king-size bed. The rumpled linen. Another framed photograph of the couple stands on the dresser. They’re in formal wear, dressed for some kind of gala occasion. Very handsome. Very smooth. She thinks of the drinks glasses downstairs. The pie and flowers outside. No body. House owners gone. Luxury vehicles still in the garage. She gets to her feet and goes to the walk-in closet. She opens the doors, flicks on the lights. The closet is as large as Mal’s husband’s home office. She and Benoit enter. Female clothing lines the right side of the closet, male apparel on the left. Everything is impeccably pressed, neatly hung, evenly spaced. The wall at the rear has been given over to shoes. Racks of them. Luxury designer brands for both sexes. She picks up a stiletto, turns it over.

“Size eight and a half,” she says quietly.

Benoit checks another. Then another. “All the female shoes are either a women’s eight and a half or nine,” he says. “The male shoes are a men’s ten.”

“The woman in the photo downstairs—she looks tall,” Mal says. “She’d easily be a nine. The man with her, easily a men’s ten.”

“Yet the bloody sneaker by the bed is a women’s seven,” notes Benoit.

“That sneaker definitely does not fit this picture,” Mal says quietly, scanning the obviously outrageously expensive designer contents of the closet.

“If the sneaker does not belong to Mrs. North of the photo, maybe it’s our victim’s,” Benoit says.