Coco was transfixed by Pauline's fear and didn't move for several moments. Then he grabbed a pair of fine black silk hose, fresh from Paris, and sat in a chair at the vanity. He rolled them on over his toes and up his calves and thighs. Coco loved that sensation. It never got old.

"Have you ever had the sense there were two of you living inside your brain?" Coco asked Pauline, and then he gestured to the corset. "Finding this in your drawer tells me you have. So in case you were wondering, that's what we're doing here, exploring our personalities, acting out fantasies, you know?"

Pauline Striker's eyes were glued on Coco.

As Coco went by her, he ran the fingernails of his left hand over her cheek softly, saying, "Tonight there's someone else playing in your head, Pauline. Her name is Miranda. She's a wild child, and I love her."

Pauline's brow was knit with confusion when Coco came around the other side of the chair and faced her.

"Miranda's a wild child, and I love her," he said again and felt himself harden. "But she's also my mother, and I hate her."

Coco slapped Pauline across the face so hard it left a palm print.

Over Pauline's cries and whimpers of pain, Coco said coldly, "Gloves are off, Mummy. No more making things look like suicide for Jeffrey's sake. There's just nothing fulfilling in that anymore."

CHAPTER 71.

"I'M TELLING YOU, sarge, some of the time it sounded like Coco," Johnson said. "She had this distinctive cadence when she talked, and so did that lady."

"Cadence?" Drummond said, skeptical.

"Yeah, like where the word emphasis was," Johnson said. "My wife's a speech pathologist. She knows about this stuff, so I know about this stuff. Did you notice how the voice broke every so often? Old and then kind of younger?"

I'd never heard Coco's voice, so I couldn't say, but there had been something odd about the way Johnson's questions had been answered.

"We can't go in on the basis of you saying one woman sounded like another one on a cell phone," Drummond said.

"But maybe I can," I said.

"What?" the sergeant said, swiveling in his seat to look at me. "You're on the job," I said.

"You're handcuffed by the law, but right here, right now, I have no jurisdiction. I am a private citizen with information that suggests a woman might be in danger in that house. Acting on that suspicion, I go into the compound. I look in a few windows. If there's a party going on with Edwin, Pauline, Mize, and others, I slip out. If I see probable cause, I call you."

"You could get shot," Drummond said.

"If I do, you'll be the first to know," I said, getting out of the car.

"How're you getting in?" asked Johnson.

"The straightforward way," I said, and I shut the door.

It was pouring when I ran across the boulevard, which was lightly traveled at that hour. There was no one in the western lane at all when I accelerated at the gate and then jumped up like I was going for a rebound.

Both my hands found the top of the gate and hung on. I kicked and shimmied and pulled until I'd gotten my belly over it. I straddled the gate, pivoted, and then hung down off it and let go. I landed and moved fast into the shadows.

The driveway was done in some kind of mosaic tile and was slick and puddled everywhere as I moved past the vegetation that blocked the house from the road. There were lights on in the inner yard, revealing a lawn that looked like a putting green at Augusta; beds of blooming annuals ringed the house.

There were lights on at every corner. Tinier lights lit an arched trellis that framed the main entrance. But unless the Strikers were using blackout curtains, there were no lights on in the lower part of the house.

I could see at least three rooms on the second story that were lit up, however. And the drumming rain made hearing anything impossible. I wondered whether this had been another impetuous act, the kind of all-in move Bree had been concerned about.

But more often than not, I've found it pays to be all-in. I ran across the lawn to the walkway and up under the trellis to the door. For a moment I stood there, trying to hear inside. Figuring my scouting trip was likely about to be over, I nevertheless reached for the door handle, because, well, you never know.

The handle moved down, and the locking mechanism gave. The door swung open. You never know.

I was torn at that point, because even though the door had been left unlocked, I was still breaking and entering. I hesitated, and then decided to just step inside and listen. If I heard nothing of alarm, I'd be gone.

I stepped into a dark, air-conditioned foyer, eased the front door shut behind me, and strained to hear. The distant hum of a refrigerator compressor. The closer ticking of a clock. A drip, drip that I realized was me leaving puddles on the entryway floor.

Then I heard a woman's m.u.f.fled voice somewhere in the house above me. I couldn't tell what was being said, but I caught the odd rhythm of her speech. Was that what Johnson had been talking about?

A smacking noise. A cry. A whimper.

I locked in on the sounds, not sure what to do. What if Mize or Coco was torturing her? But what if the Strikers and Mize and Coco were into bondage or something, and this was all between consenting adults?

The cop in me told me to get the h.e.l.l out. But when I heard another smack and more crying, the mystery lover in me drove me toward a spiral staircase that rose off the foyer.

I climbed the stairs quietly, moving as fast as I dared. On the landing, I heard the woman's voice again, clearer but still not intelligible. After kicking off my shoes, I drew the Ruger from my ankle holster and snuck down the hall, where I saw a wafer of light coming through a door at the far end; thankfully, no floorboards creaked or- "What did you expect, Miranda?" a woman said cruelly. "You dress a little boy in silk and lace all the time, this is what you get."

Smack. A moan.

A moan of pain? Or pleasure?

"You did teach me a cla.s.sic sense of style, though, I'll give you that," the woman went on in that odd rhythmic voice. "But you denied yourself nothing." There was a pause before she shouted, "Nothing!"

Smack.

"Anything you wanted, when you wanted it, Mother!"

Smack! Smack! Smack!

Each blow sounded louder and more furious than the previous one. If this was some kind of s.e.x act, it was full-on S&M. Whatever it was, home invasion or not, I was going to see who was doing the hitting and who was being hit.

"How will it go for you this time, Miranda? Shall we stick with the tried? The true? The erotic? You know what asphyxia does to your o.r.g.a.s.m."

That stopped me right outside the door, and I didn't know what to do. If I burst in and it was something consensual, I could kiss a lot of things good-bye.

The woman said, "Once it's over, I'll put a toy in you, complete your method, your scenario."

Then the whimpering turned to whining amplified by what sounded to me like terror, and I didn't care about anything but stopping it.

Gun up, I pushed the door inward, saw an older woman, naked, bound to a chair and gagged. There was some kind of wide sash or gold cord biting into her neck. Standing up behind her on the bed, straining to tighten the cord, was a very pale, very pretty bald woman wearing makeup and an outfit that would have made a trucker blush.

I panicked and was stepping backward when the naked older woman's bulging eyes caught mine and she nodded wildly.

"Let go!" I yelled, moving deeper into the room, aiming right at the bald woman. "Let go or I will shoot you!"

CHAPTER 72.

THE BALD WOMAN started, stepped back, let go of the rope, and stared at me and the gun before raising her trembling hands and saying hoa.r.s.ely, "What is this?"

I grabbed a robe off a chair, tossed it over the older woman I a.s.sumed was Pauline Striker, and came around behind her, still aiming at the bald woman.

"Get down on your knees, Coco, then facedown on the bed, hands behind your head," I said.

She seemed even more frightened now that she realized I knew her name, and she started to lower herself to her knees while I worked the gag off Mrs. Striker. She spit it out, choked, and cried, "He-"

"Are you the police?" Coco asked from one knee.

"The next best thing," I said, pulling out my cell phone. "Just need to know one thing, Mrs. Striker. Was that consensual? Or was your life in danger?"

Before the older woman could speak, Coco said in a deep male voice that startled me, "Of course it was consensual. Pauline, tell him. You can't have our interlude coming out in the Palm Beach Post. Not with Edwin's new thing just around the corner. It would be everywhere."

I gaped for a second, realizing that Coco had to be Jeffrey Mize. But even though the person in front of me was bald, my brain was having trouble with the idea that she was a he. If not for the lack of hair, Mize could have been an aging supermodel.

"Mrs. Striker," I said, feeling unsure now. "Please answer my question."

The older woman seemed less upset than before, and she looked at me, then over at Mize, who was on all fours, gazing at her.

"Tell him, Pauline," Mize said. "Whoever he is."

Mrs. Striker swiveled her head to look at me, choked out, "Who are you?"

"A Good Samaritan," I said. "I'm here to help and to contact the police if you need them."

"Wait," Mize said, pushing up into a kneeling position. "You're not a cop?"

"How did you get in here?" Mrs. Striker asked, sounding angry.

"That's not important; what's important is whether this was consensual or not," I said, feeling the situation slipping away from me.

"It was consensual," she said emphatically. "But I most certainly did not consent to having you in my house holding me and my guest at gunpoint. Who are you and what are you after?"

"Who I am doesn't matter," I said, trying to figure out a way to exit gracefully and anonymously. "What matters is that Mr. Mize has been linked to the murders of three Palm Beach socialites."

"That's not true," Mize snapped.

"He painted their portraits. Lisa Martin. Ruth Abrams. Maggie Crawford. Is there a portrait of you here in the house, Pauline? Were you about to become number four?"

Mrs. Striker looked bewildered for a moment and then said, "I don't know anything about that."

"See?" Mize said, smiling and straightening.

It was time to either cut and run or do something audacious. I chose audacious.

"Then I apologize and I'll be going," I said, lowering the gun. "But I'd rather see you free of your bonds before I go."

"That's not necessary," Mize said.

"I insist," I said.

Taking my eyes off Mize, I squeezed my phone, then crouched and set it on the carpet behind the ladder-back chair at the foot of the bed. With my left hand, I began working at the knots. My right thumb found the latch on the Ruger and I pressed it before I moved the gun to my left hand.

I made a sound of frustration, set the pistol on the bedspread, and set to work in earnest on the knots. I'd undone two and was stepping around Mrs. Striker when Mize dove on his belly, grabbed the Ruger, and aimed it at me, point-blank.

"I don't know who you are, but I am going to enjoy killing you," Mize said in Coco's voice. "And don't you move now, Pauline. We have unfinished business, you and I."

"No, Jeffrey, I-"

Mize slammed the b.u.t.t of the gun backward, hitting the side of Mrs. Striker's head and opening up a rectangular cut that bled as she moaned.

"Why'd you do that?" I demanded.

"I needed her out of the way so you and I could have fun," he said, coming off the bed, gun three feet from my chest. "Who are you?"

My mind was on overdrive, spinning through the little pieces of what I knew about Mize and the murders and what I'd heard coming up the stairs.

"Why kill me?" I asked. "I don't fit your pattern. The mommy complex. Did you even have a father?"

"Shut up," Mize said.

"It's not difficult to understand you hating your mother and taking it out on these women," I said. "Miranda, your mother, humiliated you right from the beginning, dressed you up like a girl until age ... what?"

Mize glared at me, said nothing.

"I figure it had to be one of the few things that got you attention from her," I said. "Women's fashion and style were what you had in common. Maybe fashion was the only way you could tear Miranda away from all those men."

"You don't know anything about her," Mize snarled.

"I know she spent a lot of money. I figure you barely inherited enough to keep up the house she left you. Or maybe, between your trust and the portrait commissions and your shop, you had enough money for a while. But recently the trust ran out, or the commissions stopped, or your shop began floundering. And it all got to be too much for you, didn't it, Jeffrey?"

Mize seemed to be staring right through me now.