Read Online Crewel Yule by Monica Ferris, Melissa Hughes - Free Book Online

fell. She staggered to her feet. But even scuffling along, she kept slipping and sliding, and once slid into a car, burying her hands above the wrists in snow on its hood.
    She made her way as fast as she could down to the front of the hotel then up and under the portico, where the wind was blowing like a tornado, lifting her coat and nightgown indecently. Hands pushing down, she hurried to the front entrance, and inside the first set of doors she paused to stamp snow off her feet and resettle her coat. The nightgown clung to her knees and there was snow in her fair hair as she walked into the warmth of the big lobby.
    Someone was saying into a phone, “. . . eyewitness who saw her fall from the ninth floor.”
    There were loud voices out in the atrium, she could hear them coming through the center open doors. They were coming from a crowd gathering around the body. But the lobby had only three people in it. One, a tall, stocky black woman, was behind the check-in counter. She was the woman who had given Jill the glue bottle and, Jill realized, the clerk who had checked her in last night. She was talking on the phone.
    “. . . a terrible mess, and she’s really, obviously past any need for life support,” the woman was saying, talking to emergency services. That was good.
    Standing near the twin couches was a very plump woman in stretch knit slacks who was staring anxiously at the woman on the phone. Probably the eyewitness. That was good, too, pulling her out of the crowd before her memory could be mixed with other people’s.
    And in a wheelchair behind the INRG check-in tables was a thin woman with a thick, smooth helmet of white hair. She wore a gray dress printed with big black leaves, and was talking on a cell phone while looking with alarm at the crowd in the atrium. “No, no, stay where you are, it’s a madhouse here—and you couldn’t get over here, anyway, the news is saying all the streets are impassable.” Probably talking to another INRG official.
    Jill strode past the counter into the atrium, down the steps, and up to the crowd. “I’m a police officer, let me through,” she announced. The people made room, but slowly, staring at her, confused by the contradiction of the authority in her voice and the strange outfit she was wearing.
    At the center, in a small clear space, lay the body. Definitely a body, not an injured person. She had beautiful light blond hair in a tangle of curls, an oversize sweater that was still mostly white, and red wool slacks. One low-heeled black shoe had come off but lay on its side beside her shattered foot. Near one shoulder lay a small purse, its contents spilling. A Market Guide, open and folded back, had suppliers marked in red—the red pencil itself was near the dead woman’s hand. Jill looked up, but nowhere was the line of gallery railing broken. So why had she fallen over?
    The crowd shifted as two employees pushed through, carrying a dark brown blanket they had already started to unfold.
    “Hold it!” ordered Jill. “Let’s keep the scene just as it is for now.” The two men halted to look at her uncertainly. “I’m a police sergeant. Not from here,” she added, “but the rules are the same.” She reached into her purse and produced the folder with her ID card and gold badge. “My name is Jill Cross Larson.”
    The badge did it. The men brought the ends of the blanket back together and edged away through the crowd.
    Jill looked around at the gapers, some of whom had stopped staring at the body to stare inquiringly at her. “I want a perimeter, all right?” said Jill, in a voice that left no room for discussion. But they didn’t back up to enlarge the circle. She pointed to three strong-looking men and two tall women in the crowd. “You, you, you, you, you, come here.” They obeyed. “It may take a while for the police and an ambulance to get here,” she told them quietly. “I want you to space yourselves out around here, facing the crowd, and