Defense for the Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

several cars in front of the building, and as she got closer, she could see mattresses stacked at the top of several stairs that led to the open front door.
    Maggie came out to meet them. She was hot and sweaty, her hair was tied up in a high ponytail to keep it off her neck; she looked years younger than the thirty-five she had admitted to. The deep shadowed hollows under her eyes were less noticeable, as if she had gotten some sleep the night before.
    “Let’s start at the top and work down,” Barbara said after introducing Bailey. Two young men emerged from the house with another mattress. Bailey was already taking photographs.
    A woman came toward them from a long hallway when they entered the building. She was muscular and lean, forty or forty-five, dressed in chino pants and a plaid shirt. “Irene Lasker,” Maggie said. “This is the lawyer I told you would be coming. Ms. Holloway and her associate.”
    Irene Lasker nodded. “I told her not to trust that insurance man,” she said. She stalked away again, muttering, “I hope they catch them and nail their hides to the wall, that’s what I hope.”
    “Well, upward?” Barbara said, eyeing the stairs. Two men were starting down, carrying an upholstered chair; the seat, arms, and back had all been slashed, the stuffing pulled partway out.
    “We’d better use the back stairs,” Maggie said faintly, watching the men wrestle the chair down the staircase.
    It was carnage, from attic apartment all the way through. Paneling in the halls had been broken, storage spaces under eaves and stairs had been emptied, closets ransacked, drawers dumped, overturned. Worse than Maggie had described. Finally Maggie took them to her room, and closed and locked the door. Part of the room had been outfitted as an office; there was a twin-size bedframe, and clothing scattered everywhere. Papers were on the floor, drawers overturned on them.
    Maggie went on to the bathroom, a large, oddly shaped room with hyacinth-blue and white tiles, a blue oversized tub, with a blue tile ledge in a sharply angled corner, blue cabinets…. Evidently a large flowerpot had been on the ledge; dirt, greenery, shards, were in the bottom of the tub. The cabinets had been emptied, hair dryer, towels, cosmetics, bowl cleaner…. A second door led to the girls’ room, Maggie said. On the wall opposite the window were floor-to-ceiling open shelves that had been swept clean, and a lighted mirror over a vanity table and small chair. Maggie went to that wall.
    She moved an upturned clothes hamper out of the way, moved the chair and then the vanity. Then she opened a panel in the wall. “Dad added the bedroom and bath when my mother got pregnant the first time. She didn’t want an upstairs room and she wanted an adjoining room for a nursery. They angled it out for the view,” she added. “And that made the bathroom this shape. They squared off some of the corners, but still there was space left where the pipes come in, and it was unusable, I guess, so they walled it off but left access to the plumbing.”
    She stood aside to let Barbara and Bailey get to the opening. It was too dark to see much. “Let’s get pictures first,” Barbara said, moving out of Bailey’s way.
    While he was getting the photographs, she glanced inside the girls’ room. More carnage, more clothes strewn about. This room was lavender, and now she saw a painting of lavender flowers on the wall, a graceful spray of lilacs, and she recalled that every room had a flower painting. Lilacs, roses, sunflowers… She examined the painting; it was Laurence’s, and it was very fine. Each room was decorated with colors that matched the colors he had used. The lavender bedroom, blue tinged with lavender in the bath, rose in Maggie’s room. It must have been a very elegant bed-and-breakfast.
    As soon as Bailey was done, he dragged the stuff into Maggie’s bedroom and took more pictures of everything.
    “Tape and seal the suitcase and