Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,32

arm. Did she see it?

“Me? You’re blaming me?”

“Yes,” he said, very clear and precise.

“Don’t blame me that we couldn’t have children of our own. It’s your sperm that doesn’t work.”

Todd flinched as if she’d hit him, crumpling a little forward as if it had been a gutshot, and maybe it had been in a way. It was a low blow—something that should have been on the list of things never to say in a fight. Every couple has a list of things that should never be said in anger, because once said you can’t take them back, and the damage is done. Some words, even true words, are relationship killers.

Muriel didn’t even look sorry. She looked triumphant, as if she knew she’d gotten the last word, and she had. That little spark of angry defiance evaporated, and Todd was back to being her whipping boy.

But whipped or not, Todd got handcuffed after Duke found the spray. If he’d used it in the hallway, it would have gassed us all. We took Muriel and Todd down the main staircase, which would have been wide enough for four horses to have gone down abreast, if their hooves wouldn’t have slipped on the marble. I was very happy that I was in my heavy-soled boots and not Muriel’s heels on the slick stone, because she struggled periodically. If Newman and I hadn’t had a hand on both her arms, she might have fallen headfirst on the hard stone with her hands cuffed behind her. She wasn’t even technically under arrest yet, so it would have been a shame for her to die in our custody. Though since they weren’t under arrest and hadn’t been read their rights, it wasn’t the legal definition of custody, but it would have been good enough for the Internet if she hurt herself cuffed like this. After she almost fell on the stairs, she stopped struggling for the most part, but she made up for it verbally. By the time Duke led us to the garage connected to the house, I was very tired of listening to Muriel.

“I know my rights! You can’t search our car without a warrant,” she said from between Newman and me.

“One, you parked your car in someone else’s garage without their permission,” Leduc said.

“Rico let us in. He knew we parked back here,” she said.

“Deputy Vargas and I will be discussing that in more detail later. Two, you have more suspicious packages in the backseat of your car. They’re plainly visible, so I have reasonable cause.”

“We were shopping earlier. That’s all that’s in the backseat,” Muriel said.

I had to give her points for sheer audacity. She wasn’t a good liar, but she was damn persistent. By the time the car was emptied out, there were two more porcelains: one more like the two in the case, and a plate. There was also a series of jade figurines that turned out to be ancient Chinese. A series of four small oil paintings turned out to be originals painted for the first Marchands back in Europe, so they’d been in the family awhile. There were also two larger oil paintings in the trunk painted by a contemporary of Rembrandt. I would have said Todd and Muriel were stealing a small fortune, but I wasn’t sure it was a small one.

We ended up separating the couple so we could question them. Sheriff Leduc still believed that Bobby was the murderer, but we’d caught Muriel and Todd stealing red-handed, so to speak. Even Duke thought it was suspicious behavior. He had the one deputy I hadn’t met yet, Troy Wagner, trade duties with Deputy Frankie so they could have at least one woman with Muriel. He let us go see the clues from the first crime, while he and his small force started gathering up new evidence for the new crime. Murder and grand larceny in the same location less than twenty-four hours apart was spreading his small force to its limits. We’d help them again after Newman took me through the murder scene and the blood evidence.

We started with the bloody footprints, but to get to the upstairs, which held the “kids’” rooms, was like a freaking maze. “How many square feet is this place?” I asked when we finally came to a white-carpeted hallway that had crime scene tape wrapped around one doorknob and the post of a third staircase. This one had a dark wood banister that curved in a spiral near the top,