Mareson's Arrow by K.L. Abrahamson

Author:K.L. Abrahamson [Abrahamson, K.L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-927753-70-5
Publisher: Twisted Root Publishing

13

In the summer, Enver Pasha’s home sat across the street from the green lawns, wide paths, and graceful trees of Yekaterina Park. In the winter, the house faced a wilderness of unbroken white and skeletal trees that had yielded up at least two bodies this year. Kazakov shuddered.

He did not want to remember the case again, but every twinge in his side was a reminder. So was the ache in his heart that he did not like to acknowledge.

The house was four stories tall, including the aboveground basement intended as the servants’ quarters. The main part of the house was built of pale gray stone, fashioned into large bricks. Dormer windows filled the third-floor roofline of the main residence, and the windows below held white-framed windows curtained with lace. A set of steep, shoveled stairs led up to the white-columned portico that shielded the slick, black front door. The ground floor was built of dark kiln-baked brick and blended into the low bushes in the yard.

Kazakov parked and climbed out of the Perseus. A scent of burning and wet debris filled the air as if the smoke from one of New Moscow’s factories had been blown back over the city. The sound of traffic on the sloppy streets came from across the river and beyond Potemkin Park. On the quiet crescent that wound past Enver Pasha’s house, the air was filled with the hush of the breeze in naked branches and the trickle of water off the house eaves. To one side of the house, the brothel known as the Red Veil was primed and ready to greet its well-heeled, noonday customers.

Kazakov turned away from that brothel and focused on Enver Pasha’s house. A lower floor curtain twitched, suggesting they were watching for him.

He lumbered up the steep stairs, feeling the ache in his side. The door opened before he could knock and he found himself once more facing the blonde-haired woman he had come to know was Olga Gruenwald. Once before he had stood here and questioned her. That time it had been about a dead body found in the park and she had denied him access to her employer’s house.

This time she stepped aside and ushered him in.

She wore a simple black skirt, crisp white blouse, and white sweater thrown over her broad shoulders. White pearls glistened at her throat and earlobes and she carried a faint scent of something spicy. She exuded far more elegance and athletic grace than one would expect for a woman who had claimed to be no more than Enver Pasha’s housekeeper.

The foyer of the house was a grand reminder that he did not belong in a place like this. A haunting hint of incense sweetened the air, too similar to that which had been used by the now dead Yekaterina Weber. A gleaming, broad wooden staircase wound up one side of the circular, wood-paneled room and immaculate, thick Persian carpets lay underfoot. He was surprised that paintings of Byzantine figures adorned the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.