Zinnia by Jayne Castle Read Free Book Online Page A

The knowledge was tempting.
    But she could not leave yet.
    If only Aunt Willy and Uncle Stanley could see her now, she thought ruefully. They would faint with shock. They still had not recovered from the dizzyingly swift decline in the Spring family fortunes which had followed the death of her parents four years earlier. Nor had they even begun to rally from the humiliation they had been forced to endure eighteen months ago when she had gotten herself involved in what had become known as the Eaton scandal.
    Only her younger brother, Leo, would be likely to appreciate tonight’s adventure. She suddenly wished he was with her.
    She made her way through the storeroom and cautiously opened the door on the far side. The smell was a lot worse in the main room. She realized it must have been shut up for some time.
    The blinds were pulled closed on the windows that faced the street. The darkness was very dense.
    She paused on the threshold and flicked the flashlight around the interior of the high-ceilinged shop. The sight that greeted her made her jaw drop.
    “Dear God.”
    Chaos reigned. She gazed, stunned at the mess. Books had been pulled from the shelves and dumped on the floor. The glass counter top had been smashed. The surface of Morris’s heavy old-fashioned Later Expansion Period desk was strewn with papers. The contents of the drawers were scattered every which way. The aging swivel chair lay on its side.
    She took a step back. Every instinct she possessed was screaming at her to get out of the shop. She had to find a phone so that she could summon the police, she told herself. That was reason enough to leave.
    Then she remembered that the nearest phone was the one on Morris’s desk. She picked it out with the flashlight beam.
    With an effort of will she made herself start toward the instrument. She was halfway across the room when she saw the crumpled form at the edge of the circle of light. The too-still figure lay at the foot of the tall rolling ladder that was used to access the highest shelves in the shop.
    “Morris.” She started forward. “No. Please, God, no.”
    “For what it’s worth, my advice is not to touch him.”
    She gasped and spun around at the sound of Nick Chastain’s dark disturbing voice. Her heart pounded as she aimed the light at the doorway of the storeroom.
    Nick stood cloaked in the shadows. He wore an enigmatic mask on his cold ascetic features that was about as comforting as the expression of one of the proverbial Guardians at the gates of the Five Hells.
    In that moment of acute awareness, she knew that he possessed strong psychic abilities of some kind. Even without a focus link, she could sense the metaphysical as well as the physical power in him. Math-talent or game-theory-talent, she thought. That would fit with his choice of career.
    She realized that he must have entered the shop through the same unlocked window that she had used a short while earlier. For a minute she was too disoriented from the horror of her discovery to comprehend the significance of his presence.
    Then it hit her. Nick Chastain had followed her.
    The flashlight trembled again as she pinned Nick in the beam. She struggled to keep her hand from shaking.
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
    “I would have thought that was obvious. We both have a serious interest in Morris Fenwick. And apparently we aren’t the only ones.” Nick ignored the glare of the flashlight to glance at the body on the floor.
    Nothing flickered in his gaze as he studied Fen-wick’s motionless figure. Perhaps encountering dead bodies was not that much out of the ordinary for him, Zinnia thought. She realized she was hovering on the edge of hysteria.
    “I think—” She broke off and tried again. “I think he’s—”
    “Dead?” Nick moved out of the light. He went to stand looking down at the pathetic shape on the floor. “Yes, I think we can safely assume that much. Looks like someone smashed in his skull with a