“What a kook!” I whispered to Abby. “Did you see what he had on?”

“Yeah,” she whispered back. “He’s a fashion idol-a real gone geisha. I’ll have to find out where he shops.” Then she turned back around to Gray’s door and pounded on it with all her might.

To our great, jaw-dropping surprise, the door flew open and crashed against a nearby wall.

“Oh, my Lord!” I cried. “You broke it!” I was on the verge of wigging out again. “We could be arrested for this, you know!” Breaking and entering? This was more like bashing and entering, except we hadn’t entered yet.

Abby gave me a weary look. “Don’t be stupid, Paige. I didn’t break a thing. The door wasn’t locked, it wasn’t even all the way closed.” She stepped into the dim, narrow hallway and started walking toward the sunlit room ahead. “I wonder where Gray is. He must have heard the noise… Hey, Gray! Gray! Are you here, babe? It’s me, Abby. I came to tell you what a great big gorgeous star you are!”

There was no answer to her call. There was no sound at all. I held my breath and strained my ears, but no noises came from inside the apartment. No clattering dishes, whistling tea kettles, or irksome radio commercials. No singing in the shower. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Except for Abby, who had breezed all the way down the hall and was now entering Gray’s living room with such ease and abandonment you’d have thought it was her own. She turned the corner to her left and disappeared from my view. “Where are you hiding, Sweetpants?” she warbled. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Still no response.

Feeling certain that Gray wasn’t at home, and that I wouldn’t be disturbing him in any way, I finally ventured into the apartment and began slinking through the shadows toward the sunny room at the end of the corridor. I was about halfway there when Abby started screaming.

Chapter 4

I HURTLED TO THE END OF THE ENTRANCE hall and rocketed into the living room. What was happening? Where was Abby? Was she hurt? Had somebody attacked her? Was she unconscious? She wasn’t screaming anymore.

She was crying, however, and although I couldn’t see her anywhere in the large bright room, I had only to follow the sounds of her sobbing to figure out where she was. I found her down on her knees behind the couch, hugging her arms tightly across her breast like a distraught mental patient strapped in a straitjacket. She was kneeling in an enormous pool of blood.

At first I thought it was her own blood, but-praise be to every deity who ever rented space in Heaven!-it wasn’t. It was the blood of Gray Gordon, whose dead and naked body was lying just four feet away-splayed out like a poor sacrificed lamb-in the middle of the wide passage between the back of the couch and a wall of windows. His throat had been slit and there were numerous stab wounds in his chest. There were many other deep slashes in his limbs, belly, and groin, but I won’t say anything more about that. Believe me, you don’t want to know.

I didn’t want to look at the butchered mess of bone and flesh before me, but my inquisitive nature overpowered my revulsion. What monster had done this hideous thing? When had the murder taken place? How long had Gray been lying here like this? Judging from the thick coagulation of his blood, and the dry opaqueness of his gaping eyes, and the sickeningly rancid stench that permeated every breath I took, it had been a few hours at least.

Fighting back my own tears, and a violent urge to throw up, I dropped down to my knees next to Abby and threw my arms around her. Still sobbing and gasping for air, she turned and wrapped her arms around me. Then we held on to each other for dear life, rocking to and fro in a steady, continuous rhythm, like two orthodox Jews in prayer.

After a few anguished and mournful minutes of kneeling, hugging, rocking, and praying, I grabbed hold of the back of the couch and pulled myself to my feet. Then I helped Abby stand up. Our knees, shins, and shoes were covered with blood. Abby’s hands were coated, too, until she wiped them-over and over and over again-on the cotton contours of her powder blue capris. Struck dumb by the carnage, she didn’t utter a word.

“I think you’d better sit down,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and gently guiding her around the couch. Then I steered her across the floor to a chair on the opposite side of the room, where the body would be out of her sight. “Will you be okay here for a couple of seconds?” I asked, helping her lower herself into the dark green club chair. “I need to go next door and call the police. I don’t want to put my fingerprints on Gray’s phone. You stay right here, okay? Don’t move. Don’t get up and walk around. And don’t touch anything.”

She stared straight ahead and mumbled something I couldn’t understand. But then she nodded in my direction, so I figured she wasn’t in a total daze.

“Just sit tight,” I reiterated, using the calmest and firmest voice I could conjure up. “I’ll be right back.”

Careening out into the hall, I lurched over to the door marked 2A and started knocking as hard as I could. “Help! Help!” I bellowed. “There’s been a murder! Please open up! This is urgent! I need to use your phone!”

Gray’s strange-looking neighbor opened his door right away, looking not quite so strange as before. Instead of a yellow silk kimono, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and a pair of tan trousers. He even had on a tie.

“Murder?” he spluttered, eyes bugged to the limit. “Did you say murder?” He yanked his door wide and motioned me inside, eyes protruding even further at the sight of my gory shins. “Omigod!” he shrieked. “Is that blood? What happened? Are you hurt? Who’s dead? Where is the killer? Is he still in the building?” The man was scared out of his wits. As soon as I walked through his door, he slammed it and locked it again.

“Don’t worry,” I said, hurrying to calm the poor fellow’s fears. “The murderer’s gone.”

But the minute those words flew out of my mouth, I realized how wrong they could be. I didn’t know if the killer was still there or not! What an idiot I was! I hadn’t searched the rest of Gray’s apartment! Thinking that Gray had been dead for hours, I had jumped to the conclusion that his slaughterer had fled the premises. But what if I was mistaken? What if the fiend was still in there-hiding in the bedroom closet or behind the shower curtain-waiting to plunge his bloody knife into another hapless victim?

Oh, my god! I shouldn’t have left Abby in there by herself!

“Open up!” I cried out to Gray’s neighbor, jumping back over to his double-locked front door, so frantic to get out of there he probably thought I’d lost my senses. “I’ve got to go back across the hall! Please let me out right now! And then call the police immediately. Tell them there’s been a murder and they’ve got to come at once.”

“Who, me? I can’t call the police! I don’t like them and they don’t like me. And I don’t have their number!”

“Then get it from the operator!” I screeched, unlocking and opening his door myself. Then I sucked up all my courage (and a big supply of stench-free air) and scrambled back to the murder zone.

ABBY WAS NOWHERE IN SIGHT. THE club chair I’d left her sitting in was empty, and the partially concealed passage behind the couch-the area where Gray’s body was lying-was devoid of any other bodies, alive or dead.

There were lots of bloody footprints, though, stamped all over the floor around Gray’s corpse, and tracked across the thick beige carpet in the living room. A slew of ruddy smudges were concentrated around the legs of the club chair, and several rust-colored streaks stretched from the chair to the small hallway leading to the rear of the apartment.