Castle Fear Read Online Free PDF

large, slanting skylight in the living room let in gray midmorning light. Rain spattered on the glass panes in a steady rhythm.
    Joe went quickly through the whole place first, checking out each room and making sure the young woman wasn't there. He looked into all the closets, even under the bed. Jillian - or worse, her dead body - wasn't there. The flat was very neat and tidy. After searching, he noted that he didn't see a single photo of the missing young woman.
    "I don't think I've ever seen or heard of an actress who didn't keep pictures of herself around," Joe muttered as he passed from the kitchen to the living room, glancing around.
    The antique trunk that served as a coffee table was bare. And although there were spaces on the bookshelves for little glass vases and knickknacks, there were no picture frames.
    Beyond the living room, Joe found a neatly made bed and a bedroom in perfect order. There was no sign of a struggle having taken place. He looked again into the clothes closet, which gave off a faint scent of flowery perfume.
    Joe noticed that there was probably a suitcase missing. A set of matching luggage sat in a row on the closet floor. There was a gap between suitcases two and three - a space large enough to hold another suitcase. Fallen across the largest bag was an expensive-looking black evening dress. Not something a girl would leave lying, wrinkled, on the floor of her closet, he thought.
    Joe frowned. Suppose it was a rush job - somebody grabbing clothes to toss into that missing suitcase so it would look as if Jillian had packed her bag. They wouldn't care about a wrinkled dress that had fallen off its hanger.
    On the other hand, maybe Jillian was just sloppy. Joe shook his head. That didn't fit in with how neat she'd left the room - the whole apartment, in fact.
    Joe checked the bureau drawers, the boxes on the top shelves of the closet, and under the bed - twice. But he turned up no pictures at all. None of Jillian, none of Jed Shannon, none of anyone. No letters, either.
    He had the feeling that someone had been through the girl's flat fairly recently and done some careful editing of its contents.
    In the living room, Joe did find something, but he wasn't sure what it meant.
    Beside the trunk he found a small pile of magazines. Five of them were fashion or theater periodicals, all with recent dates. But the sixth was a British newsweekly that had come out five months earlier. Joe found a small red paper clip serving as a page marker. Opening the magazine, Joe found a piece about a young woman named Emily Cornwall.
    According to the story, Miss Cornwall was the heiress to not one but two large fortunes and had been living abroad for several years in a warmer climate because of her health. Rumors had reached the magazine that the heiress would be returning to England in a few months. Under the will of her late, eccentric grandfather, Sir Danvers Talbot, she was due to receive "the fabled Talbot emeralds" on her twenty-first birthday. That date would fall - Joe glanced at the date on his watch. Just three days from today.
    He examined a grainy black-and-white photograph, shot from a distance with a telephoto lens. It showed a slim young woman sitting on a sunlit patio next to a plump older woman. Emily Cornwall seemed pretty but looked frail.
    Joe spread the magazine on Jillian's desk while he searched it. Every cubbyhole was empty. There wasn't even an unpaid bill to be found.
    His back was to the flat's front door when he heard it swing open.
    "Then he heard a voice say evenly, "I have a gun. Just stay right where you are."

Chapter 6
    Joe looked over his shoulder, stared, then turned around to face the intruder. "Still looking for your lost dog, Red?"
    Standing in the open doorway was the red-haired young woman he'd bumped into after last night's shooting. She still had her black shoulder bag, but this time she had her hand thrust inside it.
    "My hair is auburn, not red. What are you doing