"Seen this before, ma'am."
"Where, on that dumb TV show Cops?" Meg snorted. "Hah."
Ange's gaze drifted downward. Meg was wearing a gauzy white cotton dress that she'd picked up in Bloomingdale's that afternoon. Despite her tough-guy diction, she looked a lot younger than thirty. "Home invasion, miss."
Quill, a little huffy that she'd been 'ma'amed' and Meg had been 'missed,' said with more force than she'd intended, "Home invasion? You mean armed thugs breaking into people's homes and taking their valuables? That's ridiculous!"
"Oh?" Officer Ange, despite his youth, had an un- expected depth of shrewdness. "You two know any different, you'd better let the sergeant know."
"Know what?" The female detective's companion, the one who had gone out the door to, presumably, examine the body of the security guard, approached with a frown. "Your names?" he snapped. He was of medium height, with very broad shoulders and a big chest. His hair was fair-mixed heavily with gray and thinning on top. His nose dominated a thin, tanned face. Quill liked his looks.
"Sarah Quilliam. This is my sister, Meg."
The set of his shoulders shifted a little. "Sarah Quilliam? You involved in that business with Hedrick Conway up in Hemlock Falls?"
"Why, yes. I was."
"Hm. It's all right, Corporal. I'll take it from here."
Ange straightened and put his hands behind his back. "Sir?"
"I said it's all right. I know them. Or of them, at least." Quill, who had the sudden, undeniably thrilling thought that news of her exploits as a solver of crime had gotten as far as Miami, smiled brilliantly. "Nosy," the detective added, "but harmless."
"If you say so, sir."
"Those two bimbos of the Taylor boys will need an escort home. Why don't you take them and report back here in half an hour. No more than that."
"Yes, sir." Ange marched off. Quill noticed that the tips of his ears were red.
The detective shoved both hands in the pockets of his sport coat, balanced on the balls of his feet, and said unexpectedly, "How's Myles?"
"Myles?" Quill blinked at him. "Oh, my goodness! You must be Jerry. Myles's friend from his days in New York."
"Hear he's fallen into a pretty lucrative line of work."
"Yes. He's an investigator for a company that handles corporate crime. He spends a lot of time overseas."
His eyes went to the ring on her left hand.
"And yes, we're getting around to that. At some point."
"Good to hear it. Thought things were kind of rocky there for a while."
"Oh?" Quill's voice was cool.
"We thought we might get him on the force in Miami a while back. Just before he took that investigator's job. Didn't say much, Myles. Never does. But I gathered that if you two were really going to get married, he wasn't interested in moving down here. So." His tone shifted. "You two know anything about this?"
"We might," said Quill. "Actually, um... Jerry... I'd been expecting that something was going to happen to Verger Taylor."
"You had, huh?"
Quill ignored Meg's warning glare. "In the past few days, I've heard no less than two significant threats against Verger Taylor's life."
"No kidding?"
Quill, a little uncertain at the sarcasm in his voice, nodded.
"You realize that keeping track of people who want to murder Verger Taylor is a full-time job? The list's pretty long. In the past month we've had" - he paused, drew a small notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket, and flipped through the pages - "three significant death threats against him."
"Three?" said Quill.
"Significant?" Meg asked. "What do you mean by significant?"
"Threatening letters, phone calls, that sort of thing. Taylor's attorney, Frank Carmichael, turns them over to us pretty routinely."
"Corporal whosis, that is, Ange."
"Wisc. Just like it's spelled."
"Yes. Him. That is, he. Said that all the evidence pointed to a home invasion."
"That's right. It's a typical M.O. for this part of Palm Beach County. The perpetrators scope out the victim's home beforehand, posing as television repairmen or electricians, then pick a night when there's not a lot of activity. They don't care in particular if anyone's home or not. They disable any alarm systems, shoot whomever's in their way, and take off with what they can steal. In this case, it was a bag with twenty thousand dollars cash, a lot of small silver and jade. The contents of the safe in Taylor's office."
"Twenty thousand in cash?" Quill was stunned. "The boys say keeping that amount of money on hand was typical of him. It's not all that unusual around here."
"Couldn't have it been premeditated murder? Planned to look like a home invasion?"
"Anything's possible," Jerry said agreeably. "But I'll tell you one thing about police work, if Myles hasn't told you already - the simplest explanation is usually the best. We checked the security log, and two telephone repairmen checked in to the mansion three days ago. One of our guys just contacted the phone company - and no such team was sent out. The security guard was shot through the head, execution style, and all the indications are that Taylor's been shot, too."
"Do you have any suspects yet?" Meg asked. "A home invasion is usually staged by young kids without anything to lose. Except their lives. Most of them don't care about that. Half the time around these parts, the homeowner's armed and blows at least one of them away. The other half of the time, they shoot to kill, but the victim survives to put them in jail. Seems to me if one of Taylor's business victims want to blow him off, they'd choose a much less risky way. But then, you tell me."
"Where's his body?" Meg demanded. "If this was a home invasion, where's Verger's body?"
"Now, that's a good question. I don't know." He grinned. Quill, who had been feeling a little intimidated, couldn't help but grin back.
"I know you two have been involved in a number of cases. Myles tells me you're actually pretty sharp at solving crimes. So, you have any ideas? I'll listen."
"Where do you think the body is?" asked Meg. "If the types of criminals that stage home invasions just leave the bodies, where is Verger Taylor?"
Jerry nodded. "Now that, Miss Quilliam, is the best question anyone's asked all night. There's one possible explanation. And if it's true..."
"Jer!" Jerry's woman partner, a pleasant-featured, heavyset woman in her fifties, waved at him urgently from across the room. "We got it. We got the call."
"Oh, my goodness," Quill said. "Kidnapping. Of course!" She and Meg sprang up after Jerry and trailed behind him to the living room telephone. Evan, his face tight, was listening intently on the telephone. A wire was attached to the head of the phone by the same kind of rubber suckers that used to tip Meg's play arrows when she was six. The wire ran to a recorder that was spinning slowly. Evan held the receiver away from his ear, so that the police officers nearby could hear the conversation. The kidnapper's voice was heavily distorted. And from the look on Jerry's face, Quill knew that they were either unprepared or technically unable to trace the call.