"Kids?" she called, feeling a flare of anxiety inside. The little demons could be anywhere. They'd melted away, most likely on some devious mission. Where were they? Where had they gone?
She hustled through the room, looking frantically from side to side, moving on quickly through the interleading door into a room filled with wigs, ornate and tall, powdered and glamorous.
No children.
"Toni-Ann?" she called.
She hustled through to the next room, where a whole array of gloves and hats lined the shelves. She was starting to hyperventilate now. She'd taken her eyes off them for a moment. Only a moment.
The next three rooms, demarcated by dry walling set up within the halls, were joined by archways. She moved from room to room, looking and searching. Here was a partially closed door, as if concealing secrets. Was anything behind it? Such as, three naughty kids?
She opened the door, which was stiff, and resisted her efforts for a moment.
Inside, it was much gloomier than in the other rooms, and she was surprised to see only one model here, an incredibly lifelike wax configuration of a young, blonde woman, positioned near an antique bed, sitting on the edge of a podium, dressed in an ornate beaded gown.
Behind her? Anything? Were they hiding behind the podium?
Nothing. But at that moment, from beyond the archway, she heard Toni-Ann's high-pitched laugh and her voice at top volume. "Aren't these horses amazing?"
Ahh, so they had found their way to the room where the old-fashioned hunting outfits, the red coats, and sidesaddle gowns and top hats, were on display and were most probably just standing in innocent fascination looking at the life size model horses. All was well.
She turned to go, and as she did, a man passed her clumsily. Very clumsily. He jostled her sideways, and she knocked against the wax model.
“Hey!” she shouted in consternation, but he was gone.
Turning to the display in concern, Savannah then realized, puzzled, that when she jostled her, it hadn’t felt like wax. Just as she was taking in the cold, heavy sensation of that impact, turning in puzzlement, she saw the wax model lean sideways and then topple stiffly over.
Savannah gasped, taking in the way the model had collapsed off what she now saw was a wooden stand, the look of her hand, whitish blue and cold, the unseeing expression she now saw in her eyes which were framed with thick, gray eyeshadow.
And the marks on her neck, which had been exposed now that the gown's high neck had slipped.
Savannah backed away, hands clamped over her mouth as she took in the impossibility of this sight.
This was no wax model. No way. Not now that she was staring, wide eyed, at the impossible truth.
Someone had dumped a corpse here.
CHAPTER TEN
What intrigued Juliette about Collins was not only that he'd lived close enough to have been able to watch the ambassador's residence, and that he'd left on very bad terms, but it was also that he had a history of insubordinate behavior at school. He had old, aggressive posts on social media, and he was a wrestling champion.
All of this, Sierra had looked up in the space of the fifteen minutes that Juliette and Wyatt had taken to arrive at his residence.
Would he be here?
The place was in an upper middle class housing suburb that was more exclusive than most of the world could ever afford in terms of its location but was still a world away from the groomed, central London ambassador's residence. These were ranks of two-story houses with small yards set in a quiet, treed road.
She walked up to the front door and knocked.
After a few moments, a woman opened the door.
Juliette guessed, at a glance, that this was Collins's wife. She was in her thirties, petite, with a bright ginger bob and a combative expression that Juliette guessed was her natural demeanor.
After all, they'd surely done nothing to make her mad at them. So far, anyway?
"Can I help you?" the woman asked, sizing Juliette up with a suspicious expression.
Juliette stared back, meeting her gaze, as she showed her badge. "Yes, we're looking for Mr. Collins. Is he home?"
