Her body twisted around as she fell, and he caught a glimpse of her terrified eyes and wide open mouth before she crashed to the floor below, landing on the back of her head with a thud that shook the house.
CHAPTER TEN
I
TEN days had passed since Janey’s death, and by now Conrad had absorbed the first shock. At first it had seemed unbelievable that she was dead, and it was only at the funeral that he finally realized the unhappy partnership was ended.
The Coroner had returned a verdict of death by misadventure. The high heel of one of Janey’s slippers had been found to have caught in the hem of her wrap. It was obvious to the Coroner that as she was descending the stairs she had tripped and had fallen heavily, breaking her neck.
Conrad had left all the arrangements to Janey’s father, and had stayed with Frances in the new hide-out. There was nothing he could do for Janey now, and the responsibility of Frances’s safety lay on him like a dead weight.
He had puzzled over O’Brien’s last cryptic words: It wasn’t an accident. Ferrari… my kid…
Conrad, like every other police officer in the country, knew of Vito Ferrari. Had O’Brien meant that Weiner had been murdered and that Ferrari had been responsible? Conrad had warned McCann that Ferrari might be in town, and had asked him to alert his men, but McCann had reported back that there was no sign of the Syndicate’s executioner.
Conrad worried about this. If Ferrari had been responsible for Weiner’s death, then Frances was in serious danger. He took every possible precaution to guard her.
He had moved her to the Ocean Hotel at Barwood, a small town fifteen miles from Pacific City. The hotel was a ten-storey building, built on the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the sea.