Peril by Thomas H. Cook

bits of shattered debris lay scattered like small white bones at his feet.
    When it was over, he slumped down on the plush blue carpet. In his mind he saw Sara as she’d appeared the night he’d met her, a slender young woman with shoulder-length hair who’d come on tough and worldly but had melted at his touch. He felt the sweetness of her unexpected surrender, the way she’d given herself up to him, the fever and the shuddering and the low moan, the way she’d whispered “I love you” that first time. To hear her say that again, just once, was all he wanted now.
    ABE
    It was a slow night. By ten there were only four people left in the bar, all of them regulars, some who’d even known McPherson when he’d still owned the place and Abe when he’d played for tips, the Bordeaux glass filling slowly with crumpled bills and pocket change as night crawled toward morning, and Lucille leaned back against the piano and drew a red feather boa along her bare white shoulders and broke into the final, melancholy song before last call.
    He ran his fingers over the keyboard, playing the notes of “As Time Goes By,” giving it that bitter edge Mavis’ betrayal had taught him.
    Milo Barnes leaned back slightly, the scotch a little loose in his hand. “Where’s Lucille?” he asked.
    â€œOut sick,” Abe said. He closed the cover over the keys and glanced out over the nearly empty bar. “I should probably check on her.”
    He picked up the phone beside the register and dialed Lucille’s number. There was no answer. He’d called her a few times since early in the afternoon, attributed the fact that she hadn’t answered to a nap or a brief walk or maybe that she’d gone out for groceries, her laundry. But now he was worried.
    â€œI’m gonna check on Lucille,” he said to Jake as he grabbed his hat from the wooden peg near the bar. “She’s not answering the phone.”
    He knocked at her door a few minutes later, waited, knocked again, and when there was still no answer, unlocked the door.
    The apartment was pitch black, and something in the depth of the darkness told him what he’d find when he turned on the light.
    â€œLucille,” he said quietly as he flipped the switch.
    She was lying on her back, eyes closed, one arm across her brow as if, in the last moments, she’d shielded her eyes against a blinding light. A bottle of Seconal rested on the table beside the bed, along with a half-empty glass of water. She’d left a piece of sheet music on the old battered spinet she’d once used to rehearse some song that had taken her fancy.
    â€œLucille,” he repeated, and then stepped over to the bed and, in a distant hope he might be wrong, shook her gently. When she didn’t move, he touched her face, felt a strange slackness in her skin, as if life were little more than the force that kept things taut.
    The EMS ambulance arrived a few minutes later, then a couple of cops, one in plainclothes who introduced himself as Detective Melville.
    â€œI just have a few questions,” he told Abe. “You found the deceased?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you are?”
    â€œAbe Morgenstern.”
    â€œWhen did you get here?”
    â€œJust a few minutes ago,” Abe answered. “I called as soon as I found her.”
    â€œYou’re a friend of hers?”
    â€œYes. And she worked for me. McPherson’s. On Twelfth Street. She called in sick this afternoon.”
    â€œHow did you get into her apartment?”
    â€œI have a key.”
    â€œSo you’ve known her a long time?”
    â€œA long time, yeah,” Abe said, the years rushing by on a white-water stream.
    There were a few more questions, all of them routine, Abe guessed, though he could not be sure, since he’d never been questioned by a policeman before.
    Detective Melville closed his notebook. “Okay,