The In Death Christmas Collection

by J. D. Robb

“When was the last time you were in his apartment?”

  “I… Why would I go to his apartment?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I never went there. No reason to. He was a damned good trainer, worked you until you wanted to cry like a girl. Gave a good massage, too. Pretty good golfer. But we weren’t buddies, if that’s what you mean.”

  He rose, walked to the wet bar, poured himself a tall glass of water, squeezed a lemon slice into it. “Sure?” He tipped the glass right and left.

  “Yes. When was the last time you saw or spoke to him?”

  “I guess it would’ve been Monday morning, regular session with him at the gym. I actually had one scheduled yesterday, but they tagged me, told me he’d been killed. That was a shocker,” Copley added, drank deep.

  “Did he ever ask you for money? Hit you for a loan?”

  “Money?” Copley drank again, slid one hand into his pocket, jiggled whatever he carried in there. “No. I always slipped him some extra after a massage, but he never had his hand out. Look, I liked the guy. He was a good trainer, so I liked working with him. I gave him a couple perks – golf at the club, like that. We had some laughs on the course. That’s it.”

  “Did he ever contact you at home, at your office?”

  “What for?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I don’t remember anything like that. I’d see him a couple times a week at the gym. A couple times at the club when either I or Lance – my sister-in-law’s husband – set it up. Maybe once a week I’d get a massage from him. That’s it.”

  “Are you nervous, Mr. Copley?”

  “The cops are talking to me about a guy I knew that was killed. So, yeah, some. Plus I’ve got work waiting. I can’t tell you anything about what happened to Ziegler, so… if there’s more you should go through my lawyer. We’ll keep it smooth that way. Is that it?”

  “For now.” Eve started for the door. “Oh, you mentioned your brother-in-law. But you didn’t mention your wife also used the deceased as a trainer and a massage therapist.”

  “So what?”

  “Interesting.” Leaving it as that, Eve started out.

  She walked down the wide hallway again, through the doors, glanced at Peabody.

  “He’s lying.”

  “Oh yeah, he is.”

  9

  She wanted Copley in the box, Eve thought, but knowing in her gut he was lying didn’t equal proof. The minute she tapped him, he’d lawyer up. She didn’t begrudge him legal representation – rules were rules for reasons – but a lawyer was bound to block and dodge her questions, see she was on a fishing expedition.

  But Copley was lying, and there was damn well a reason for that, too.

  “We dig,” she told Peabody as they took the elevator up from the garage at Central. “We dig on Copley until we find enough to stand on, then we bring him in. He’s not going to talk to us again without a lawyer, so we find some holes.”

  She checked her wrist unit for time as a couple of uniforms pulled in a heroically drunk Santa who looked – and smelled – like he’d spent some time rolling around in reindeer dung.

  “Really? You couldn’t take that up the stairs a couple flights to the drunk tank?”

  “Gotta take him up to Sex Crimes, Lieutenant. He —”

  “Hey, little girl!” Drunk Santa sent Eve a bleary smile. “I got whatcha want for Christmas right here!”

  He grabbed his crotch, pumped his hips, then spread open a slit in the dirty red pants to reveal an unfortunately grimy penis.

  “That,” the uniform finished.

  “I like ’em naughty!” Santa exclaimed, then broke fantastic wind.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Somebody crack a window!” Santa suggested, and added, “Ho, ho, ho!”

  Eve did better. She leaped off the elevator on the next floor, one short step in front of Peabody. As the doors shut, she heard Santa bellow, “Merry Christmas to all!” right before the gagging noises.

  “I think that was alive.” Cautiously Peabody sniffed at her own sleeve. “We may need detox. Uniforms don’t get paid enough.”

  “Nobody gets paid enough around here. Send a departmental memo. Nobody rides in that car for a month. That should be about long enough. I’m not kidding,” she added when Peabody laughed.

  “On it.”

  “Meanwhile, back to murder. We dig on Copley. His business, his marriage, his finances, any priors no matter how minor. His politics, his religion, his favorite fucking color. Everything.”

  “You think maybe Ziegler was blackmailing him.”

  “It’s possible,” Eve said as she and Peabody stepped onto a glide. “It’s just as possible his wife’s fling with Ziegler wasn’t as discreet as she thinks. Let’s get a couple of uniforms over to Ziegler’s building with a shot of Copley. Maybe we’ll find somebody who saw him visit Ziegler’s apartment. We just need to find one lie to deepen the hole.”

  “He struck me as too weenie. Shit! I wish I hadn’t said weenie because it makes me think of that sick pervert’s weenie. Do we smell like Drunk Santa fart?”

  “If we did, people would be diving off this glide like lemmings.”

  “You’re right.” Still, Peabody took another cautious sniff of her sleeve. “We escaped in time. I need a replacement for the W word. Copley struck me as too wussy. There, a W for a W.”

  “Wussies kill, too.” Eve stepped off the glide, headed for Homicide. “He finds out his wife’s been doing the trainer. He thinks: That asshole’s fucking my wife, laughing at me behind my back. I’m paying him, and he’s doing my wife. I took him golfing at my club, for Christ’s sake. Who the fuck does he think he is?”

  “He’d be pissed,” Peabody agreed. “Anybody’d be pissed.”

  “He goes to Ziegler’s place to confront him – or maybe if he really is a wuss, he goes to plead with Ziegler to break it off. Either way, why wouldn’t Ziegler let him in? ‘Hey, man, I’m packing, but come on back. What’s up?’”

  “Copley says, ‘You’ve been banging my wife. It has to stop.’”

  “Maybe. And maybe Ziegler starts off denying, maybe not,” Eve speculated. “Maybe he pushes for money. ‘Just providing a service. I can stop the service, but you have to make up the fee.’ Simple business transaction. Ziegler’s not worried about this guy. Hell, he’s the trainer. ‘Your wife was happy to pay, so if you don’t want me providing the service, cough it up.’”

  “And Copley snaps. Bash, bash.”

  “Maybe,” Eve said as they turned into the bullpen.

  Someone had added a dented menorah to the decor. It stood on a bed of virulent greenery she suspected was supposed to be pine boughs. Beside it stood a sickly gray figure in a Santa suit, grinning viciously.

  “What the hell is that?” she demanded.

  Santiago glanced up from his work. “It’s Zombie Santa. We’re trying to be inclusive.”

  “They make Zombie Santas? Who thinks of things like that?” Shaking her head at all mankind, she strode to her office.

  It surprised her to find Feeney studying her board.

  The EDD captain, her former trainer and partner, wore a rumpled suit the color of… reindeer dung, Eve decided. Wiry silver strands poked through his explosion of ginger hair like carelessly tossed tinsel.

  Like the suit, his face had a rumpled, lived-in look. His eyes might have resembled a basset hound’s, but they were cop sharp as he scanned her photos, timelines, data.

  “Your vic was an asshole.”

  “Completely,” she agreed, walking straight to her AutoChef to program two coffees, strong and black. “Lead suspect, as of now, is this guy.”

  She brought up Copley’s ID shot after passing Feeney coffee. “One of the vic’s regular clients. Turns out the vic was banging his wife twice a week for the last few weeks – for a side fee. She claims the husband didn’t know.”

  Feeney gave the coffee a surface blow, drank. “It’s hard to hide regular
banging.”

  “Damn right.” Pleased to have him to bounce around the speculations, she eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “Rough patch, the wife claims. Separate bedrooms for a while.”

  “No sex for a while’s a rough patch. Separate bedrooms is a crater.”

  “Yeah?”

  He eyed her. “How long you been married now?”

  “Couple years.”

  “Take my word. You can climb out of a crater, but it’s harder than riding out a rough patch.”

  “She claims they climbed out, mostly, and are working on the rest of the way. But if he finds out she got naked with their mutual trainer, it’s off the cliff for the marriage.”

  “You didn’t tell him.”

  “Not yet. We ran the basics with him, and he was nervous. And he was lying. Something more there, something with the vic he’s hiding. So he’s top of my list right now.”

  “Smashed his head in, hauled the body onto the bed, then put a knife in the chest. With a ho, ho, ho.”

  Like Feeney, she studied the crime scene shot, drank coffee.

  “The last’s a kind of rage, isn’t it?” she said. “A cold one. The smash, bash, that strikes me as hot. But the flourish? It takes cold blood. Copley could fit.”

  “A liar’s one thing. A nervous one’s another. You could shake it out.”

  “Yeah, but he’s already brought up the L word. I’m going to do some digging on him, let him settle. His business is a boys’ club.”

  Feeney’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “He works with kids?”

  “No – big public relations firm, but he runs it like a boys’ club – on the exec level, at least. One woman in the meeting I broke up today, and she didn’t look real happy with him. I think he’s an asshole, but I have to ask myself if I’d just like to find an asshole killer for my asshole vic.”

  She shrugged, sipped coffee, studied her board. “He had a lot of clients, used a lot of women. The killing field’s a big one.”

  “Somebody who needed to put a sticker in a dead guy’s going to break at some point.”

  “That’s what I think, too. I need to be there when it happens.”

  He nodded, and for a moment or two they drank their coffee, studied death in companionable silence.

  “The wife’s all over me to wear a monkey suit tomorrow.”

  Eve frowned, shifted her thought process. “Why?”

  “How the hell do I know? You’re female. Why do women like men dressed up in monkey suits?”

  “I don’t, especially.”

  “Tell me this.” He pointed at her. “Is Roarke putting on a monkey suit for this shindig tomorrow?”

  “No. I don’t know.” For unexplained reasons, she had a moment of panic. “How would I know?”

  “You live with him.”

  “I live with me, too, and I don’t even know what I’m wearing tomorrow.” But Roarke would, she thought. Jesus, was she supposed to know what he was wearing? Was that another damn marriage rule?

  “Did he wear one last year?” How was she supposed to remember? But she tried. “I don’t think so. I can ask him not to if that helps you out.”

  “Do that. You do that.” With a righteous nod, Feeney smoothed a hand down his wrinkled jacket. “Bad enough to have to get all fancied up without that.”

  “Tell me,” she said, with feeling. “I’m the one who’ll have to have glop all over my face while I walk around on stilts.”

  “What you get for being female.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “The wife likes the fancy, and the stilts. Looks good on her, too. Anyway.” He scratched at his ear. “Anyway, I’m going to tell you she made you guys a bowl in her pottery class. It’s not bad – doesn’t even wobble. Much.”

  “Ah… that was nice of her,” Eve said cautiously.

  “I figure how many bowls can somebody use, but that’s not something you say when you’re married to somebody who keeps making them. Unless you want to hit a rough patch.”

  “I get it.”

  “So I got this.” He reached into the inside pocket of his ugly jacket, took out a small, slim square wrapped in shiny red paper.

  “Oh,” Eve said when he shoved it at her.

  She was lousy at giving gifts; she was worse at getting them.

  “I didn’t want to give it over tomorrow, with the party and the people and all that.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” After an awkward pause, she deduced she was meant to open it on the spot.

  She pulled off the paper, crumpled it, shot it into her recycler. She lifted the lid, just stared.

  Small reproductions of the medals she and Roarke had been awarded the month before floated inside clear glass. Etched beneath each were their names, the award, and the date presented.

  “This is…” Her throat closed up on her. “A lot,” she managed. “This is a lot.”

  “I figured you could put it somewhere you could take a look at when the job gets heavy. Maybe not here. It’s a little like bragging if you put it in here.”

  “Yeah. It should be at home. It’s Roarke’s, too.”

  “The highest honor given a cop.” There was a light in his voice that had her throat clogging on her. “The highest given a civilian. I was real proud of both of you.”

  She struggled for composure before she risked looking up at him. “That’s a lot, too.”

  “Can’t get a little sentimental at Christmas, when can you? Well.” He gave her a light punch on the arm, settled them both. “I gotta get back. No monkey suit,” he reminded her.

  “I’ll tell him. Thanks, Feeney.”

  She stayed where she was when he walked out, ran her fingertip over her name, over Roarke’s.

  She looked up at her board, at the image of Trey Ziegler propped in bed, that mocking note pinned to his chest with a kitchen knife.

  “You were an asshole, Ziegler. A user, a whore, a rapist. I wish you were alive so I could toss you in a cage. But since you’re dead, you’re going to get the best I’ve got.”

  Carefully she put the lid back on the box, set it aside.

  She sat down with what was left of her coffee, and went to work.

  Nearly two hours later, she programmed another cup of coffee, drank it standing at her skinny window looking out at the hustle-bustle of New York.

  She heard the clomp of Peabody’s boots, didn’t bother to turn. “It gets dark so damn early.”

  “We just passed the solstice, so the days are starting to get longer.”

  “It takes too damn long. Copley looks ordinary. Parents divorced, half sib on the father’s side. Average student. Little ding on possession right out of college, that would probably have gone away if he hadn’t mouthed off to the cops. Traffic tickets, and I dug into those a little. He went to court on every one of them, and in two cases ended up paying an extra fine for mouthing off to the judge. So, some temper there, some righteousness, some assholey behavior. Nothing violent.”

  “I didn’t find anything there, either,” Peabody said. “First marriage lasted four years – no record of domestic disputes, but he sure filed a lot of papers on the ex. The split probably cost him three times what it would have if he hadn’t kept pushing the buttons. Still, she had more money than he did, and no prenup, so he fought his way to a bigger chunk than he might’ve gotten.”

  Intrigued, Eve turned. “I hadn’t looked at marriage one yet, but Quigley’s rolling in it. His income’s a fraction of hers. There’s a prenup, bet your ass. Second marriage for both, yeah, she covered herself. It might be interesting to get a peek at the terms of that one.”

  “She’s the admitted cheater. It seems to me he’d make out bigger, considering.”

  “It doesn’t mean she’s the only one who cheated.”

  Peabody pursed her lips. “Hmm. Hadn’t gone there. I did take a first pass at his financials. I didn’t see anything out of line, nothing to indicate he’s stepping out. Unless he’s doing it on the cheap. No hotel bills in
the city, no second rent going out, no personal travel that doesn’t jibe with the wife’s. And no withdrawals that say blackmail.”

  “He’d have an expense account. That’s worth a look. And maybe, having married a second time to a woman with money, he learned something about socking money away.”

  She’d see if Roarke wanted to play with that.

  “From what I can see, he’s good at his job,” Eve continued. “Maybe a righteous asshole when it comes to being caught doing something wrong, or with an estranged wife, but he’s worked his way up at ImageWorks to partner.”