Behind him, Lily tugged at her mother’s sleeve and pointed again — this time directly at the staircase.
“I can show you,” she whispered to Marcello.
And then, in words even stranger, words that made the woman in pink go perfectly still:
“Where she hid it.”
Marcello looked up into the dim recess of the upper hallway. His jaw tightened. There, on the third carpeted step from the top, rested a faint, unnatural lump — soft, flesh-colored, wrong. And draped over the banister beside it, swaying slightly in the air-conditioning, was a leather strap.
A strap made for fastening something around a body.
“Caroline,” Marcello whispered, his voice dropping an octave, laced with sudden, terrifying realization. “Why is there a leather strap hanging over the banister?”
The ballroom held its breath.