Seduced and Betrayed Read Online Free PDF Page A

sheen. Zeke moved through the rooms of the apartment slowly, his hands stuffed deep in his pants pockets, taking it all in, observing, remembering. A wide graceful archway opened off the living room onto the dining room, with a small efficiency kitchen beyond that which, in turn, led back into the living room. He walked down a short hall to the two small bedrooms and a surprisingly large bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-footed tub and pale aqua tile running halfway up the walls. It was all eerily the same, he thought, right down to the massive old mirror on the living room wall.
    It was a ridiculous piece of expensive Victorian frippery, at least four feet wide by five feet tall, framed in pewter that had been elaborately cast with dozens of roses and ribbonlike scrolls. There had been some legend connected with the mirror, Zeke recalled. Some curse. He couldn't quite remember what it entailed, except that it had had something to do with a young starlet who was rumored to have drowned in the pool that had once graced the courtyard. He'd always thought that particular story had been dreamed up by someone who'd taken one too many drug-induced trips.
    "Did you ever see her?" Mueller asked.
    Zeke shifted his gaze from the mirror to the building super. "Did I ever see who?"
    "The woman in the mirror." Mueller lifted his chin at the mirror. "Some say it's the ghost of the girl who drowned in the pool that used to be down there in the courtyard. That's why it was filled in, you know. Nobody knows whether it was an accident, or if she drowned herself on purpose, or if somebody held her under 'til she stopped breathing. She's supposed to live in that mirror there, and she only shows herself when somebody's life is about to change somehow."
    "Really?" Zeke murmured, trying not to encourage the superintendent. He wasn't the least bit interested in ghost stories.
    "Sometimes the change is for the better and the person who sees her gets their dream. But mostly it's a change for the worse," Mueller said with relish. "There was a girl saw her the night of the party you guys had. Your old roommate saw her, too. That one who's running for Congress now? He saw her the day before he got the part in that soap opera he was in. The one that started his career." Mueller's gray eyes glittered. "Told me all about it one night."
    "Ethan Roberts? He saw the—" And then Zeke realized the significance of Mueller's remarks. "You know who I am," he said, and he wasn't referring to the fame he'd achieved via the silver screen.
    Mueller nodded. "You're the kid who fell over Shannon's body that night."
    "Well, why the hell didn't you say something when I first came in and asked about the apartment, if you knew who I was?"
    "What for? It wouldn't make no difference to anything, would it?" Mueller shrugged. "Couldn't see no point in bringing it up, not if you wasn't going to take the place."
    "Point?" Zeke said, inexplicably irritated. "No, I guess there was no point, but it certainly would have been the polite thing to—"
    "Hello?" A lilting female voice, accented with the soft vowels of the deep South, came floating from the direction of the open front door to the apartment. "Mr. Mueller, is that you?"
    "Dammit, Angel—" the speaker was male, his voice rich with exasperated affection "—don't go running in there like that. For all you know, an ax murderer could have broken in while we were gone."
    "An ax murderer would have used his ax to break the door down," the woman said. "I didn't see any signs of dam—Oh, all right. You go first, if it'll make you happy."
    A man appeared from down the front hallway with a brown paper grocery sack cradled in one arm. He was as lean and rangy as a big cat, with a cat's watchful eyes and instinctive wariness. He tensed when he saw Zeke standing in his living room, automatically shifting his stance to keep the woman safely out of reach behind him. And then he caught sight of the superintendent and relaxed.