Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(24)

Benton grabs my scene case, and to look at him, you wouldn’t think he knows anything about it. But I suspect the opposite is true, and I continue wondering where he’s been today.

“Come on,” he says to me. “Let’s get you inside.”

Thanking Fruge again, we watch her drive off in a huff. Or perhaps it’s just my imagination.

“I think she was hoping you’d invite her in,” Benton says as we follow the walkway. “She obviously enjoys your company.”

“Well, I don’t know what she enjoys but I was beginning to think she might ride around with me all night. Searching roadsides and alleyways with her spotlight, asking a lot of questions about us.”

“I had a feeling something like that was going on.”

“I think she’s lonely, and I’m afraid I wasn’t very sociable,” I reply, feeling another twinge of guilt. “But my personality is used up for the day.”

“Lucky me,” he says.

The alarm system chirps as we walk into the house, the antique pumpkin pine floorboards creaking under the entryway rug. I can hear the TV news in the living room, Christmas music playing though the intercom, and at the moment I could do without both.

“I talked to Marino a little while ago,” Benton says. “When he told me who was driving you, I figured she was acting like old home week.”

“You remember her mother from our Richmond days.”

“Who could forget Tox Doc?” He’s not a fan.

“Let’s leave my scene case by the door, please.” I take off my coat, feeling wilted. “I want to make sure I don’t forget it in the morning, ending up with two at home and none at the office. And I need to replace the Narcan I took out of it.”

“I’m glad to see you.” He kisses me. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

I can see the preoccupations in his hazel eyes as he sets the big Pelican case in the corner. I leave my briefcase on the entryway table, giving him a hug, and he’s striking in pinstripes. His perfectly knotted blue silk tie is vibrant against his charcoal-gray shirt with monogrammed French cuffs.

As always, he smells good, his platinum hair brushed back from his chiseled face, and he gets more handsome with age. At least that’s how it seems to me, and I apologize for my dishevelment.

“And for being late, and messing up our dinner plans.” I open the entryway closet, asking where he’s been. “I thought you were working remotely today. What’s going on?”

“I had an urgent meeting at headquarters.”

“About?” I hang up my coat.

“Gwen Hainey,” he replies, to my surprise and confusion.

“How did you know about her before I did?” I don’t understand. “You were already on the way home from your meeting when the police called me. Before anyone knew she was missing, in other words. Did the Secret Service have information before the rest of us? And if so, why?”

“Because of something else involving her.” That’s as much as he’s going to say now that my sister Dorothy is walking in, jingling and strobing like a two-legged carnival.

Decked out in a Grinch onesie embroidered with tiny Santa sacks of purloined presents, she has on pointed-toe booties tipped with bells. The glow sticks wound around her arms and neck flash green and red, and it’s enough to cause vertigo.

“Something else involving who?” She picks up on what she overheard. “My dead neighbor, no doubt,” directing this at me. “It’s simply dreadful! I’ve been glued to the news, which includes you ducking Dana Diletti outside Gwen Hainey’s townhome.”

“It’s gone national,” Benton lets me know.

“On Fox and CNN.” Dorothy sounds impressed, her strobing accessories disconcerting, her hair below her shoulders and streaked with gray.

It’s tied back with a sprig of mistletoe that combined with her glittery green swaths of eyeshadow make her appear somewhat extraterrestrial. Since various forms of remote communication became the norm, she’s taken to wearing themed makeup and outlandish outfits.

I don’t think a day goes by when my sister’s not on camera for one reason or another, in addition to launching podcasts and selfies over social media. Tonight, her festive getup is unrelated to the actual occasion of her only child’s birthday after the worst year imaginable. I would have bet money on Dorothy being thoughtless.

It would seem that a lack of remorse and empathy are defi cits she comes by naturally. They’re milled into her DNA. The older she gets the more she evolves into a carbon copy of our mother, who died last year in a Miami retirement home after suffering a stroke during the worst of the pandemic. Vivacious and charming, Dorothy “Doro” Scarpetta, for whom my sister is named, was a charismatic narcissist, and the coconut didn’t fall far from the palm.

Not in my case either when it comes to our hard-working, laconic father. If you ask my sister, I’m the boringly responsible one, all business, no play or sense of fun. In other words, “dull with an air of the inevitable” as if I wear “a dream coat woven on the loom of tragedy,” my sister’s words not mine.

I’m not sure what she really remembers about our childhood except that I was named after our father, both of us Kay Scarpetta. His firstborn and namesake, I had special status, at least in my sister’s mind, and his reliance on me made her only more resentful.