the wood gleaming with years of polish and care. The wood was so lustrous that it made me want to stroke my hand down it, but since I was already wearing latex gloves and booties over my boots, there was no point. I was trying not to leave evidence behind; it made petting things difficult.
“There are two estimates online and one in the last architect’s plans. None of them is the same.”
“I’ve never been in a house with three separate staircases before,” I said.
“Me either. This was the original main staircase before one of the great-grandfathers started building onto the house. When the master suite moved to the new section, the kids got this wing to themselves.”
I thought about what it must have cost to heat and cool a place this big and almost wanted to know, but not enough to ask. I was here to try to solve a murder or at least find enough reasonable doubt to delay executing Bobby Marchand, not to get nosy about how the other half lived. Jean-Claude had money. As I’d watched him spend money for the wedding, I had begun to realize just how much he might have. We were keeping separate bank accounts so far, but he’d told me that I could know his finances if I wished to know. I was almost scared to find out. Was he this kind of rich and I just didn’t know it, and why did that thought bother me so much?
“Are you all right?” Newman asked, and I realized I’d just been staring into space for a few minutes. I had to get my head in the game, not keep poking at my insecurities about the wedding.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking too hard and not too productively.”
I could see the footprints on the white carpet down the hallway, but since there were supposed to be prints on the stairs, I decided to start with them. The stairs were all hardwood with only a narrow burgundy carpet runner. The color hid the prints a lot better than the white hallway did.
I bent over on the second step so I’d be able to see it and the one above and below it better. I didn’t kneel, because for so many reasons, I didn’t want to accidentally kneel in blood. I had coveralls in my main gear bag in case things got very messy, but those were mostly for vampire stakings or zombies. Most crimes scenes were less bloody than doing the killing yourself. I used my gloved fingertips to steady myself as I looked for footprints on the burgundy runner. The carpet was held in place by metal bars that snugged in against the bottom of each step. The bars could be unfastened so that the stair runner could be cleaned or replaced without having to tear up carpet and damage the wood underneath. I filed it away to remember if we ever replaced the carpet on the stairs in the house back in St. Louis.
I could smell the blood before I saw it clearly enough to be certain what it was: a bare footprint or at least no obvious shoe tread. I got the small flashlight I carried in one of the many pockets on the tac pants and shone the light down on the blood. The light was bright enough that at night it looked like a prison-break searchlight; on the dimly lit stairway, it highlighted the footprint against the dark carpet nicely. It was a clear footprint, and the stair steps were deep enough that the entire foot showed.
“That’s weird,” I said.
“What’s weird?” Newman asked.
“Let me check another print before I answer you.”
I moved down a step and then more, until I finally moved all the way down to find where the footprints began on the floor below. Newman waited patiently at the top of the stairs. I didn’t need the footprints trailing off away from the stairs to know that I was close to the murder room, because I could smell the blood and meat. It had that thick, beefy smell that comes only when at least one adult human being has bled out in a room. I have to say that one plus for vampire kills is that they are usually neater; less blood means less smell. Then I realized all I smelled was meat and blood. I didn’t smell the outhouse smell that usually comes with someone who has been ripped open by a wereanimal. It didn’t mean that Ray