The In Death Christmas Collection

by J. D. Robb

  “JJ.” With barbs in the name, the lawyer clamped a hand over Copley’s. “Ms. Quigley was in fear for her life, and called out for her husband. Called out for him to help her.”

  Eve smiled. “You can try that one, but you know what the jury’s going to hear. From the recording, from Natasha Quigley’s own lips in court.”

  “Ms. Quigley suffered a severe head injury during an attack by an unknown assailant, one who very likely killed Ziegler, one who very likely was in league with him. Her recollection, and her testimony on the events, isn’t trustworthy.”

  “And this ‘unknown assailant’ mysteriously went poof?”

  “My client believes that Catiana Dubois assaulted his wife, and in the struggle fell, was killed. My client believes the deceased was in league with Ziegler.”

  Rage tickled the back of her throat. Eve let it show, let it come.

  “So you want to try to hang Ziegler on her? Let me say this, so you both hear it. Try it. Just try it. Your client’s a liar, a cheat, an adulterer, a fraud. Just who do you think a jury’s going to sympathize with? A man who cheats on his wife with a naive young woman he lies to – one he’s set up with money he’s stolen from his wife? A man who paid a blackmailer to keep that arrangement quiet? Or an innocent woman, one who worked for a living, came from a nice family, had no smears on her record?”

  “You leave Felicity out of this,” Copley demanded.

  “I talked to her, too, just about an hour ago. Did you get her memo?”

  He lurched up; Eve rose with him.

  “You had no business talking to her. I’m going to explain everything to her. She’ll come back to me. I love her. I’m going to marry her.”

  “But you couldn’t until you got rid of the wife you already have. Killing her clears the way.”

  “I don’t have to kill her! Why do you think I paid Ziegler to fuck her!”

  “JJ, God! Shut up!”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up.” Color high, he rounded on McAllister. “You useless bitch. Why haven’t you gotten me out of here? I told you I wanted Silbert or Crosby.”

  “You’ve got me.”

  Eve sat again, looked at Peabody. “Now, this is interesting. Don’t you find this interesting, Peabody?”

  “I’m riveted. Absolutely riveted. Did he say what I think he said – on record – that he paid Ziegler to sleep with his wife?” Peabody glanced at Copley. “Did you get to watch?”

  “Shut the hell up. You’re disgusting.”

  “He pays some sleaze to sleep with his wife, and I’m disgusting? Jeez. Okay, if you didn’t do it for kinky watching, what did you do it for?”

  “For Felicity!”

  “She got to watch?”

  More pride swelled in Eve’s heart as Copley snarled at Peabody.

  “I want to speak to my client in private.”

  “You’ve had plenty of time for that,” Eve said. “It sounds to me like JJ has things to say. Do you have things to say, JJ?”

  “Damn right. And you shut up,” he told the lawyer, who just shook her head and sighed.

  “It was love at first sight with Felicity. I wanted to give her what she needed, fulfill her dreams.”

  “So you lied to her.”

  “I didn’t lie. I just needed time. I intended to divorce Natasha, but without certain stipulations and agreements, the divorce would have left me unable to fulfill Felicity’s dreams.”

  “You needed your wife’s money to fulfill the dreams of the woman you were ditching your wife for.”

  “There’s no need to be crude. Love is its own reason. Natasha and I had grown apart, and —”

  “Really, spare me all the old chestnuts. They’re roasting fresh ones out on the street.”

  “You’re going to pay for your disrespect.”

  “Name your price.” Eve pushed into his face again. “Because I’ve got no respect for you. You’ve got something to say, say it. Clear, on the record. You made a deal with Trey Ziegler. Explain.”

  The look he sent her burned with hate, but he spat out the words. “Simply put, I was aware Ziegler had sex with clients. He bragged about it to me. Claimed he could get any woman he wanted.”

  Still trying, McAllister chimed in, “My client wasn’t aware Ziegler used illegal substances on those clients.”

  After an eye flicker that told Eve Copley had known – Copley continued, “Of course not. That’s deplorable. As far as I knew all the women were willing. I told him I’d pay him if he could seduce Natasha. She had a choice.” Copley jabbed a finger at the table for emphasis. “She chose to have sex with him, and more than once. It had to be more than once, there had to be a clear affair in order for me to preserve my… financial advantages.”

  “Your prenup specified if your wife had a sexual affair, you got a divorce with a fat settlement?”

  “It’s fair.”

  “So you hired Ziegler to draw her into a sexual affair, one I assume you documented.”

  “That’s right. It’s not illegal.”

  On the contrary, Eve thought, but the pimping charges weren’t worth mentioning.

  “I only needed them to do it a couple more times. By the first of the year, or right after, I could file.”

  “But you suggested a trip with Natasha, to shore up your marriage, after the first of the year.”

  “Okay, I did.” He shifted in his chair, leaned forward a bit as if explaining the perfectly reasonable. “It would never have happened, but it was important I came off as trying to fix things up. It’s marriage,” he said, obviously frustrated. “It’s personal business, not police business.”

  “If you wanted it to stay that way, you shouldn’t have killed Ziegler.”

  “I didn’t! I only needed him to screw her a couple more times. Now he’s dead.”

  “He couldn’t finish the job because she broke it off, or was about to.”

  “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But he’d have persuaded her.”

  “One way or the other?” Eve said.

  “He told me he’d persuade her.” Copley looked away. “I told him he didn’t get the money until he did. Just two more times, and I could take it to my divorce lawyer.”

  “When did you tell him?”

  “Just last week when I went…”

  “To his apartment.”

  “Look, fine. I went there. One time. Just that one time because he dropped it on me at our training session she’d made noises about working on the marriage, maybe stopping the sex with him the day before. And she was talking to me about fixing things, getting teary, getting flirty. I just needed a couple more times to seal the deal.”

  “He couldn’t do it, but he still wanted money. If you didn’t pay it, he’d go to your wife, confess – and you’d lose. He’d tell her about Felicity. And you’d lose. The prick was hitting you from every angle. It was never going to stop. So you stopped it.”

  “I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t there.”

  “The same way you were upstairs when Catiana was killed, when your wife was attacked? What had Catiana figured out? What did she know? She’d tell Natasha, and you’d lose again. She had to be stopped. You stopped her. But your wife walks in, and that’s not just losing your ‘financial advantage,’ that’s losing everything. She had to be stopped.”

  “He used me. They all used me. I’m the victim here. I’m the goddamn victim. I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t there. I want to talk to Natasha. I want to talk to Felicity.”

  “They’re done with you. What you’ve got now is me. So let’s start again.”

  He fumbled and stumbled, raged a time or two. He pleaded, and he insulted. But he didn’t budge.

  Eve decided spending Christmas in a cage might add the final incentive.

  She sent him off, raging.

  “He’s talked himself into it,” Peabody commented. “Didn’t Mira say something like that? How he could make himself believe the lie so it’s his truth.”

  “Something like
that. It may be harder for him to believe after another couple days behind bars. He keeps tripping up over things. Going to Ziegler’s apartment, paying Ziegler to nail his wife. We’ll keep piling up the stumbles until he falls flat.”

  “There’s more than enough to go to trial.”

  “Without a confession, the PA’s going to offer a deal. It’s not enough. Maybe I could swallow it on Ziegler, but not on Catiana. We’ll hit him again after Christmas. Go, grab McNab’s skinny ass, catch your shuttle, see your family.”

  “Really? We have to write up the —”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “You always say that. I’ll —”

  “I say it because I’m the boss. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Thanks. Merry Christmas, Dallas. Don’t hit me.” Peabody flung her arms around Eve, squeezed. “I hope you like your gift half as much as I love my coat.”

  She dashed off, presumably to get said coat.

  In her office, Eve wrote up the report, copied it to Reo, the commander, Mira, Peabody.

  She could work on the twists and turns of it, she thought, maybe straighten some of them out, talk to Quigley one more time.

  Then she thought: The hell with it.

  She was going home.

  Maybe it dogged her on the drive, the insane drive full of rain and revelers. It dogged her enough for her to use her in-dash comp, to ramble some thoughts and speculations into it to sort through later.

  But when she walked in the house, she ordered herself to leave it outside.

  It wasn’t hard, not when she walked into warmth, light, laughter. Even if some of the laughter was Summerset’s.

  They were in the parlor, Roarke sprawled in a chair, a glass of wine in his hand. Summerset sat with perfect posture across from him. She didn’t think Summerset could sprawl due to the stick up his ass.

  Then she reminded herself it was Christmas and time for a moratorium on insults.

  “What’s the joke?” she asked.

  Roarke smiled. “Just a little stroll down memory lane.”

  “How many pockets picked on the stroll?”

  “Who’s counting?” He rose to kiss her, take her coat, which he tossed onto the arm of a sofa. “I’ll get you some wine.”

  “I’ll take it. Party food.” She studied the tray of fancy finger food, chose one, popped it. She wasn’t sure what it was except good.

  “Everything tied up?” Roarke asked when he handed her the wine.

  “Tied, but not pulled tight and bowed up. Still, Copley’s getting stones in his Christmas stocking.”

  “That’s coal.”

  “What’s coal?”

  “Never mind.” Roarke kissed her again, pulled her down into the chair with him.

  Flustered – Summerset was right there – she started to push up. “We have lots of chairs.”

  “We’re economizing.” Roarke held her fast. “Summerset was telling me about a Christmas during the Urbans when he and some medics fashioned a Christmas tree out of rebar and rags among other things.”

  “It was quite festive, considering,” Summerset added. “We lit it with mini, bat-powered torches, and some enterprising soul stole a case of MREs from the enemy camp so we had a feast.”

  “That would be you.”

  Summerset lifted an eyebrow at Eve. “Perhaps it was. Making do can add to the sense of community.”

  “My team hauled in a broken tree, a dented menorah, fake ears of corn.” She sipped her wine. “It cheered the place right up.”

  She relaxed, let the evening wash the day away. Maybe the cop in her couldn’t approve of some of the tales they told – or the thievery often involved, but… hell, the statute of limitations made them all just memories.

  “I’ve friends waiting,” Summerset said at length, and rose.

  Eve bit back the automatic retort involving ghouls and corpses and wait time. Moratorium, she reminded herself.

  “Happy Christmas to you both. It’s a happier one for me knowing this is a home fulfilling its promise and purpose.”

  Glad she’d bitten back the barb, Eve cleared her throat. “It helps having someone who knows what he’s doing to handle the details.”

  “Thank you. An unexpected gift. Good night.”

  Roarke kissed Eve’s cheek after Summerset left. “Unexpected, and sweet.”

  “I’m not sweet. It’s truth. I’m big on truth tonight.”

  “Difficult pieces to your day?”

  “Yeah, and then some. We’re not going to think about that because, hey, look. There are all these presents under the – Shit! Shit.” Now she did push up. “I need twenty minutes.”

  “All right.”

  “Go… do something,” she suggested and fled to wrap the gifts she’d neglected to wrap because there was plenty of time.

  She hauled them down to the parlor, shoved them under the tree. Huffed out a breath, stepped back. And nearly yelped as she spotted Roarke lying on one of the sofas reading a book, the cat stretched out beside him.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “So I deduced when you reached for your weapon.”

  “I didn’t draw it. You’re reading a book.”

  “It’s the Yeats you gave me our first Christmas together. I reread it every year at this time.”

  “You’re such a sap.” But she smiled when she said it because the idea filled her with pleasure. “Do you want to see what you got this year?”

  “I do.” He rose, set the book aside. The cat just turned over, stayed on the sofa. “We could leave the gifts from friends for tomorrow,” he suggested, poured them both more wine. “For Christmas Day.”

  “Works for me. Then we could finish what we started last night. You know, drink a whole bunch of wine, have crazy sex.”

  “That would absolutely work for me. Or.” He cupped a hand behind her neck, kissed her slow. “We could start at the end of that, work back. Crazy sex, lots of wine, gifts.”

  “It’s a plan, but —” She pulled back, grabbed a large, clumsily wrapped box. “Open this. I figured it would be the…” She threw her hands in the air, made a whooshing sound. “What is it?”

  “The explosion.”

  “No, no, when the guy who —” With loosely fisted hands she waved her arms in the air. “And the musicians all —”

  “The crescendo?” He laughed, sat on the floor with the box. “I do adore you. So, in this case, crescendo first.”

  “Yeah. I want to see if I hit the mark. It’s a crappy wrapping job.”

  “It’s charming.” He untied the ribbon, tore the paper. When he opened the box, she gauged surprise. But surprise didn’t necessarily mean bull’s-eye.

  “You didn’t get yourself a magic coat,” she pointed out.

  “I hadn’t gotten to it.”

  He drew out the soft black leather, in classic style, and he noted – touched – the buttons held the symbol of Celtic trinity knots.

  “You amaze me.”

  “You can buy your own clothes – you can buy everybody’s clothes, but this is… I want you safe, too.”

  “Darling Eve.” When he leaned over, kissed her, she knew she’d hit the mark.

  “It’ll fit,” she told him. “I went to your guys – the R&D guys on the lining, and that wasn’t easy. I think I could get into the White House War Room easier. And your tailor.”

  He stood to put it on. “It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  And on him, the knee-length, supple black leather was ridiculously sexy. “There’s an add-on. Hidden interior pockets. I figure a guy like you can find them easy enough. For carrying things even an expert civilian consultant isn’t suppose to carry.”

  “Is that so?” He did, indeed find them, grinned like a boy.

  Double bull’s-eye, Eve thought. On a roll, she started to reach for another gift.

  “No, your turn now.” He slipped out of the coat, laid it with hers. “We’ll just stick with the crescendo theme.” He chose a small box.
“This one.”

  She expected jewelry. He couldn’t help himself. So puzzlement came first when she opened it, found a simple business card. “Master Wu? I don’t get it.”

  “You get him. He’ll work with you, at his dojo, or here, in the one we’re having put in beside the gym on the lower level.”