Phantom Prey by John Sandford

Author:John Sandford [Sandford, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 9781440634154
Google: 68MFeWR5El4C
Amazon: 0425227987
Barnesnoble: 0425227987
Goodreads: 2014625
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2008-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

13

Fairy was in the kitchen when he called to her; out the window over the sink, the moon was rising behind the bare branches of the winter oaks.

“Hello? Hell-o-o-o?” Loren said. He walked in, wearing another new outfit, this one with a ruffle at his neck, with a green velvet coat that was cut long, as though he’d been traveling in the nineteenth century. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. His lips were cold and dry. Then he stepped back and, looking down, said, “Those shorts aren’t particularly becoming.”

He was not trying to be offensive: he said it with the detached professional tone of a hairdresser about to suggest a change of style.

“I’ve been moving furniture,” Fairy said.

He cut her off: “Just an observation,” he said. He cocked his head and grinned, a practiced gesture that might have been made by a French fop in a romantic novel. But something caught in her throat, and she suspected he knew it. He was still holding her hand, and she could feel the edges of his fingernails in her palm, like claws. “Pale women have a problem with thighs,” he said. “Their paleness, which can be very attractive, also makes them look a little heavy. A soft dress, on the other hand, something in a cool green, or a mint, would be stunning. Black would be good, in the evenings; Ivory would be fine, too—but of course, you know all this.”

“Now you’re a fashion maven?” Fairy asked.

“I have an interest in costume,” Loren said, not quite dismissively. Before she could say anything else, he turned to the piano and hit a chord.

“You talk about the piano, but you never play,” she said. “You do play?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve seen your sheet music here, the Moonlight . . .”

With a glance at a wall mirror, to check his look, Loren settled on the piano bench and played a long run from the final movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, missed a few notes, shook his head, tried again, missed again, and banged out a few loud chords. “My problem has always been, I think about it—if you think about it, you can’t do it. . . . At least, I can’t.”

“Stupidity, a piano method by Loren Doyle,” she said, pulling his last name from thin air, not knowing where it came from.

“Doyle,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her, “It means ‘dark stranger.’ How about that?”

“You certainly fit the name,” she said.

Loren threw back his head and laughed, his longish hair flipping back to his shoulders. “One thing you’ve got to remember about Beethoven,” he said, picking out the theme of the Moonlight, “is that he’s dead. On the other hand, Bob Seger is still alive.”

Loren launched into “Old Time Rock & Roll,” pounding it out, his right hand bouncing up and down the keyboard in a chord-claw, and Fairy began to laugh . . . and laugh.

And Loren stopped playing, stood up, and gripped the hair at the base

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