The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) Read Free Page B

covered his eyes with bloody hands.
    I climbed off him. “You okay, Molls?”
    She nodded, wide-eyed. But I couldn’t go to her yet. First I had to check Beatrice. She wasn’t breathing. I felt her wrist, her slippery throat for a pulse. There was none. My father crawled to her slowly, on hands and knees. He knelt beside her, running his hands through his silver hair, leaving crimson streaks. “Damn,” he finally said. “Look what you’ve done.”
    I blinked, baffled. “What I’ve done?”
    “You killed her.”
    “Dad. You slit that woman’s throat.”
    “What choice did I have?”
    I studied him, wondering how long ago he’d lost his mind. “Besides cutting her jugular?”
    “That was her only hope.” He stared at her. “Her last and only hope.”
    Obviously, he wasn’t rational. I was a therapist; somehow my professional side kicked in, and I spoke to him slowly, calmly, as if to a child. “It’s all right, Dad. Come sit down.”
    “How is it all right? Beatrice is dead. Don’t be foolish, Louise.”
    Louise? Louise had been my mother’s name. She’d died a few weeks before my sixth birthday. Did he think I was my mother?
    Dad stood and began pacing. “Mother of God. Why did they have to kill her?”
    They? Maybe he was delusional. Gently, I took him by the arm and led him to a chair. “Sit.”
    But he wouldn’t sit. Bereft, close to tears, he paced and tore at his stringy white mane. “She ran over here. Choking. Her face was purple. The Heimlich didn’t work. Something was stuck in her throat—”
    I closed my eyes, erasing the image of spurting blood, finally understanding. “So you cut it open?”
    He blinked rapidly. “I tried to dig it out, but it was too far down. A tracheotomy was her only chance.”
    And so, with a carving knife, on the kitchen floor, my father, who’d had no medical training whatsoever, had decided to perform delicate throat surgery.
    “I was opening her airway. I was doing fine until you knocked the knife out of my hand.” He regarded me with a withering glare. “Dammit, Louise. You as good as killed her.”
    There was no point in arguing that the woman had died because he’d sliced into an artery and she’d bled to death. Or, for that matter, that I was not Louise.
    My father knelt beside Beatrice, his knees in her blood, cradling her head. “Beatrice. Stupid, stupid Beatrice.” He caressed her bloody cheek. “Why the hell didn’t you listen?”
    He scolded her, questioned her, drifting in conversation with a corpse. I put the knife on the counter, safely out of his reach, and finally went to Molly, who still hadn’t moved or spoken. She was standing by the basement steps, wide-eyed, watching, twisting a ringlet of hair with her fingers.
    “Molls? Are you all right?”
    She nodded silently and stood still as I hugged her, then allowed me to usher her away from the blood and the body. When I turned back to him, my father sat dazed on the kitchen floor, watching Beatrice as if unaware that we were there. Cuts and scrapes from our struggle dripped blood over his face and arms. He needed to go to a hospital, get examined. A wound on my forehead rained blood into my eyes, a painful lump was rising on the side of my head, and a chunk of skin was missing from my chin. I took a paper towel from the counter, an ice cube from the freezer, pressed them against my sores. Then I retrieved my purse from the floor, took out my cell phone, and called Nick.
    Nick Stiles was my fiancé, the father of my unborn child. He was also a homicide detective for the Philadelphia Police Department. But he wasn’t there. His voice mail answered. “This is Detective Nick Stiles…” Cool and professional, it asked me to leave a number and promised to return my call. Damn. Why wasn’t he there? Trembling and cursing, I dialed 9-1-1.
    As my call went through, I tried to piece together what had happened. Who was Beatrice? A neighbor? A friend? And how in touch with reality was my