Page 82 of Sinful Palace

“I’ll tell you soon,” I said. “Just sit tight for now, okay?”

She nodded and went back to staring into space. On the other end of the line, Connor was still typing furiously.

“I’m a fucking genius,” he said a moment later. “I’m in. That’s a record time for me.”

I stepped back into the wardrobe. “Can you find the autopsy report and read it to me?”

“Yup. Hold on.” His mouse clicked a few times, and then he spoke up again. “Let’s see. Stephen Rhoades… aged fifty-one… probable suicide by drowning.” He paused to clear his throat. “Obviously it says a lot more than that, but it’s just medical jargon and numbers. No point reading it all out.”

“Okay. Are there photos?”

“Not on this page, but—” He stopped abruptly and swore under his breath. “Fuck. I just found some on the next one.”

“Bad?”

“Worse than I imagined,” he said in a strained voice. “He’s all bloated and mottled. Barely even looks human.”

“Give me a second.” I went back into the main room and got Willow’s attention again. “Did your dad have any distinct freckles or moles on him?” I asked, covering the phone with one hand. “Or a tattoo? Anything like that?”

Her forehead crinkled. “Um… he had a dark brown mole here,” she said, raising one hand to her left ear. “Right on this spot. I used to tease him about it when I was a kid because I thought it looked like he had a stud piercing.”

I nodded and returned to the wardrobe. “Can you see a close-up of the ears in any of the photos?” I asked Connor.

“I dunno. There’s a ton of them. Let me check.” A few more minutes went by in silence before he spoke up again. “Okay, yeah. I found a few clear close-ups of the head.”

“Any freckles or moles on the ears? Specifically the left one.”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. Both ears are bone white. No marks of any kind.”

“Stephen Rhoades had a dark mole on his left earlobe.”

Connor lapsed into silence again. “If that’s true, then this isn’t Stephen Rhoades,” he finally said.

I swallowed thickly. “I knew it,” I muttered.

“What the fuck have you gotten me into, Logan?” he asked. I could hear him furiously typing again.

I rubbed my jaw. “I didn’t get you into anything. I’m just trying to figure out what really happened to Willow’s dad.”

“He’s the president’s husband. If someone killed him and covered it up, they must be high-level operatives. I don’t want to be involved in that shit.”

“Calm down. Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I said. I started pacing up and down the wardrobe. “Do you think they took photos of the real body?”

“If he was actually murdered, then yes. They would’ve taken photos as proof to show to the person who ordered the kill before they cremated the body to destroy the evidence.”

“Could you find those photos?”

Connor let out an exasperated sigh. “I already got the hell out of the morgue’s system, just in case, and I wouldn’t be able to do that anyway, for obvious reasons. Why the fuck would they upload the real photos?”

“Good point,” I muttered, hitting my forehead with the heel of my palm. “Fuck. What about security cameras?”

“Huh?”

“Do any of the morgue rooms have CCTV cameras in them?”

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