Free The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) by Mery Jones

ominous skies, put on a positive, professional smile and entered the marble-floored, elegantly domed rotunda, ready to face the day.
    As usual, Agnes, the receptionist seated opposite the double doors, ignored me. She stared through her reading glasses at the newspaper splayed out on her desk.
    “Good morning, Agnes,” I chirped, purposely antagonizing her with cheeriness. There was, as always, no reply. Agnes and I were not friends. Due to her thirty-plus years at the Institute, she regarded me and other relatively junior staff members as interloping newcomers, and she pulled rank whenever possible. She didn’t greet me, but I felt her spectacled, critical eyes follow as I passed her desk. I felt her stare as I crossed over the marble floor, under the elegant brass-and-crystal chandelier, along the intricate mosaic murals that covered the walls. As I finally entered the long hallway that led to the art studio, I almost skipped, glad to have escaped Agnes’s line of vision.
    “Oh, Ms. Hayes,” she sang out, her voice echoing through the domed atrium. “There’s a note for you.”
    I turned and looked back; Agnes held out a folded white paper. Agnes had a color-coded system for messages, and she was always revising it, posting memos about what each color signified. Blue, pink, green, lilac, yellow—each meant something different: outside or internal calls, high or low urgency, call back or don’t. She waved the piece of white paper, waiting for me to walk back across the foyer to get it. I would have ignored her, but I couldn’t remember what white meant—was it urgent? Could it be about a patient?
    Agnes had deliberately waited until I was almost out of sight to call me to come back. The woman never sacrificed an opportunity to assert her piddling amount of authority. Annoyed, I started back across the foyer. But just then, Bertram Haggerty sailed through the front door. Seeing Agnes waving the paper at me, he snatched it from her with a smile and a “Good morning, Agnes. I see that you’re a ray of sunshine as usual. Is this for Ms. Hayes? Here—I’ll give this to her.”
    “It’s confidential,” Agnes croaked. “I’m supposed to deliver it personally.” She bolted out of her chair and grabbed Bertram’s wrist with mottled, arthritic fingers. Was she going to fight him for the paper? Their eyes met in a silent duel. The chandelier rattled with tension. And then, amazingly, Agnes backed down. She released his arm and sat, huffing.
    “Thank you, Agnes.” Bertram was already heading my way.
    “Just a minute, Dr. Haggerty. There’s one for you, too.” She held it out as he went back for it, but she didn’t grace him with eye contact.
    Bertram Haggerty was even newer to the Institute than I was, but he was a brilliant renowned psychiatrist, so Agnes treated him with minor deference. In his late thirties, despite his professional stature, Bertram was a man who, outside of work, I’d never have noticed. No one would. He had the kind of face that blends invisibly, undistinguished, into a crowd. Short, balding, wiry, splayfooted and pale, he had small, shiny hands and glasses with clear plastic frames. Within the Institute, however, Bertram was a man of impressive stature. Known for his quick mind and cutting-edge research, he was the youngest department head on staff, in charge of Dissociative Disorder Research. I’d met him only recently, but I found him more approachable, less arrogant than most of the Institute psychiatrists. He walked my way, bouncing briskly, the toes of his brown cowboy boots pointing outward, his charcoal pants, like all his slacks, expensive but cut slightly too short and too tight. As he handed me my note, he eyed my bruises, wincing. “Zoe, what happened to you? Get hit by a truck?”
    “In a way.”
    I took the paper, preparing to explain. But Bertram didn’t want an explanation; his mind had already moved on, scanning his memo.
    “What’s this?” His already pasty skin