Ray Marchand’s sister.
I was fighting not to push past Leduc and see what was in the case and what Todd’s other half was doing in the room behind him. Newman moved up beside me enough for me to look at him. He gave a small shake of his head. This was his town and his warrant. I could chill—for a while.
Duke took the few steps he needed to be within reach of Todd. He held his hand out wordlessly. Todd hugged the case to himself a little tighter. Duke turned his hand upside down and moved his fingers in a give-it-to-me motion.
Todd glanced back at the open door and called out, “Muriel, we have guests.”
It was so not on my list of things I expected him to say. It was the politest thing I’d ever heard anyone say when confronted by the police in the middle of committing a crime.
“Guests,” a woman’s voice said from inside the room. “What do you mean, we have guests? Rico would have asked our permission before letting anyone else into our house.”
I felt Deputy Rico shift uneasily behind us without having to see around Newman. The sheriff moved so he could keep an eye on Todd and still give Rico a dirty look. Leduc got some of his brownie points back because he kept Todd in his sights as he moved. The man in front of us looked harmless, but a lot of “harmless” people end up killing cops every year. Just because Todd was clutching the case to his chest like a baby didn’t mean there wasn’t a gun tucked into his belt.
A woman—Muriel, I assumed—walked through the doorway. An angry scowl crossed her face before she got it under control and smiled pleasantly at us, but she couldn’t quite get her eyes under control, while the rest of her nearly perfect face was all gracious hostess. She was tall, with blond hair that was almost the same shade of yellow as Bobby Marchand’s. The family resemblance was strong enough that I’d have thought they were mother and son, not just aunt and nephew, if I hadn’t known better. She was a handsome woman, like a blond Jane Russell, but slenderer, fewer curves. But some things even good cosmetic surgery can’t change, so the thin arm she held out to Leduc had more loose skin in places than the rest of her seemed to promise. She kept herself thin but didn’t worry about muscle tone, and without that, you can nip and tuck anything you want, but age will catch up. Maybe it always catches up—I didn’t know yet—but Muriel Babington had done her best to stay ahead of time.
Thanks to Jean-Claude’s love of jewelry, I knew that the gold chain with its simple diamond and the pair of understated antique earrings in gold and more diamonds cost more than most people’s yearly salaries. The watch on her left wrist was a vintage Rolex. It complemented the cream pants and vest buttoned over a blue silk blouse that made her gray-blue eyes look closer to Bobby’s brighter blue. I didn’t know the designer of the clothes, but I was betting that everything she was wearing was designed by a name I should have known. Jean-Claude would have known, even Nathaniel might have known, but I didn’t. The best I could do was recognize expensive when I saw it.
As Muriel glided down the hallway toward us, her pants gave glimpses of pale leather boots with stiletto heels, though once heels go that high, I think they’re just high heels with boot fronts. Boots imply practical, and these shoes were not, but they did give her slender frame more feminine swish, which was the goal of heels like that. I had a few pairs that did the same thing, but after a few date nights when I danced in them, I was beginning to rethink the sexy-heels-to-comfort ratio. The closer the wedding got, and the more Jean-Claude insisted on dressing me up, the more I wanted to rebel against the whole impractical idea of women’s fashion.
“What brings you by so late, Duke?” Muriel asked.
“Like I told Todd, work.”
“You have the murderer locked up. Case solved,” she said.
If I hadn’t known that it was her brother who had been brutally murdered and her nephew locked up for the crime, I’d have thought she was an uninterested bystander, maybe a distant family acquaintance.
“Muriel, you know you can’t be in here right now.”
“I know no such thing. My