A Share in Death

The phone rang just as she scooped up a rambunctious Toby, ready to take him to the sitter’s. The morning off had improved her outlook, and she reached for the receiver with a return of her usual energy. “No, no, love. Let Mummy get it.” She gripped Toby’s clutching fingers with one hand and picked up the phone with the other, shifting her handbag and balancing the toddler on her hip. Gemma rested her cheek for a moment against his flaxen hair. It was straight as a die, thank god, a genetic wild card, unlike either her own or his dad’s dark mop.

“Gemma?”

“Sir. How’s your holiday?” Gemma grinned into the phone, both surprised and pleased to hear Kincaid’s voice.

 

A share in death 65

 

She toed the uneasy line between Christian name and title.

 

“Sorry to interrupt your morning, Gemma. Are you working on anything in particular?” It was business, then, and she’d called it right. “Not really. Why?”

“I’d like you to do some checking for me, and I’d like you to do it as unofficially as possible. I’ve cleared it with the Guv’nor, but I don’t really have any official jurisdiction.”

“Gossip with the old biddies?” Gemma knew Kincaid’s indirect methods.

“Right. Although in some cases you may have to speak directly to relatives. The problem is that I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Anything in these people’s lives that doesn’t mesh, doesn’t seem quite right. Let me fill you in.”

Gemma listened, and wrote, having long since set the squirming Toby down. With half her mind she heard him pulling pots and pans out of the cupboard, his favorite pastime, but her attention was concentrated on Kincaid, and when she finally hung up she wore a small, satisfied smile.

 

As Kincaid locked the Midget and started across the gravel toward Followdale House, Inspector Peter Raskin came out the door and ran nimbly down the steps to meet him.

 

“Sir, I’d just about given up on you,” said Raskin, by way of greeting. “Thought you might like to know what the scene of crime lab came up with.”

Kincaid glanced up at the blank faces of the windows above them. “We do need to talk. Let’s move away a bit.” They strolled down to the bench at the end of the garden—the same spot where he and Hannah had stood two nights before and thought how gay and welcoming the house looked with the light spilling from its windows. “You first,” said Kincaid, when they had settled themselves on the bench.