by J. D. Robb
“I was so mad. I tried calling her, but she didn’t answer. I thought about going after her, but, Christ, I didn’t have the money. And I didn’t know where her parents lived. I waited. I worked, took gigs, wrote really bad songs. I didn’t hear from her until June, more than a month. I was out of my mind, pissed off with it, and I get a letter. An actual letter.”
He took another moment, leaning in when his wife stroked his hair.
“She told me she was sorry and she loved me, but our love was selfish. She’d disgraced her family and I’d cut myself off from mine. How could we give a child a good, loving life? She had to do what was best and right for the baby, so she was going to a quiet place where her parents wouldn’t be disgraced, dishonored. And she was giving the baby to a loving family so the child we made so recklessly would have a good, safe, and happy life. She asked me to forgive her, asked me to reconcile with my family as she had with hers. Not to give up my music, to be true to myself but find a way to respect and honor my parents.”
He looked back at Eve. “What did I do? Nothing. She broke my heart, but more, she closed the pieces of it off. I got drunk—a lot. Missed gigs, lost work, wallowed, and raged. I pulled it back together after a while, telling myself the hell with her. I got work and I wrote, but I couldn’t get it back. By the next summer, I was dead broke. Seriously broke, mostly busking for loose change. When I pawned my guitar, I knew it was over, so I stuck out my thumb and I rode it home.”
“You never told your family about Johara?”
“No. I’d had the pride kicked out of me, my heart broken, but that was mine. That part of my life was mine. I fell in line, went to work for the company, learned the ropes. I guess it’s in the blood, because I had a knack for it. But I stayed sad and mad—really clung to that sad and mad—under the show. Until I met Lilith.”
“Sad eyes.” She leaned over to kiss the top of his head. “You had such sad eyes back then.”
“You knew about Johara,” Eve said.
“Bolt told me everything before he asked me to marry him. She was wrong to leave the way she did, but…”
“Do you still have the letter she wrote?” Eve asked.
“I kept it a long time. Years. To remind me love was a lie, dreams were illusions. That’s how I felt until Lilith. I showed her the letter when I told her about Johara, the baby, then I balled it up and threw it away.”
“I … I have it. I’m sorry, Bolt, I pulled it out of the trash and kept it. I thought maybe one day, when the child grew up, they might want to know you, find you. And I know the letter hurt you, but it was loving toward the child you’d made. She was so young and trying to do what she believed was best. So I kept it.”
“You kept it.” He pulled her down into his lap, pressed his face to her shoulder. “I loved her, I loved the baby we’d started, but Lilith, you’re the world.”
“Could I have it?” Eve asked. “Make a copy of it?”
Lilith stroked Bolt’s hair. “Will it help?”
“It may.”
“I’ll get it. I’m so sorry.” She lifted Bolton’s face, touched her lips to his. “We’re going to get through this, but I’m so sorry.”
Still holding him, Lilith looked at Eve. “It wasn’t his mother. I know her. I met Bolt because I worked for her foundation. She would never have been a part of this. If she’d known, if she’d found out after it happened, she would have gone to the police.”
Bolt shot his wife a baffled look. “What are you talking about?”
Eve kept her eyes on Lilith’s. “You don’t say the same about his father, his grandmother.”
Bolton’s face went from puzzled to stunned. “You can’t think—They didn’t know about her. I never told them.”
“Bolton.” Lilith cupped his face in her hands. “Think. Do you really believe your grandmother didn’t keep tabs on you back then? Didn’t know about Johara? Didn’t know everything?”
She rose, but kept a hand on Bolt’s shoulders. “Elinor Singer is a cold, calculating woman.”
“Lil—”
“I will say it,” she snapped. “You know how I feel, and I know you feel the same. Status and reputation are her gods, and she’s ruled this family with an iron fist.”
“Not you,” Bolton muttered.
“No, not me. She thought she could, and so approved of me. She was mistaken, and we coat our dislike for each other in manners. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she’d found some way to pressure or intimidate a girl barely into her twenties, emotional, fragile, to give up her child. But Johara never got the chance to do that, did she?”
Tears spilled out of eyes hot with anger. “She loved, too. You can read it, read her own heartbreak in the letter. She came to New York, that’s what you think, isn’t it? She came here to tell Elinor, to tell J.B. she was keeping the baby, she wanted to make a family with Bolt, she wanted their blessing. For the sake of the child. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“What I know is she came to New York, and she was shot three times on a site owned and run by Elinor and J. B. Singer, and she was walled up there, left there for thirty-seven years.”
“You can’t possibly think my grandmother, my father would have…” Bolton trailed off. The color drained out of his face again. “Who else?” He whispered it. “Who else could have?”
“She was coming back to you, Bolt.” Lilith dashed tears away from her cheeks. “I’m sure of it. They couldn’t have that, couldn’t allow that. She didn’t meet the standards. I did—a few years later when you’d fallen in line, I did. Or so they thought. A well-educated, well-brought-up young woman from a wealthy, prominent New York family. An all-American family. Marvinia met those standards in her day.”
He dropped his head in his hands. “Oh Jesus, Lil.”
“If she had her way, Kincade will be obliged to select a woman by those standards—because it’s the sons that matter to her.” Lilith’s face went feral. “She’ll never get her way with mine, with ours. It eats at her to know that.”
Then her eyes filled again, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh God, I hate her. I didn’t realize just how much. God, Bolt. Oh God.”
He got up, shakily, but wrapped his arms around her. “We’ll get through it. You’re right, we’ll get through this. Lieutenant Dallas, do you think, do you believe, my grandmother and my father killed Johara and our child?”
“I need to follow through with this information.” She had two people very much on the edge, Eve thought, and needed to be very careful not to tip them over. “We’re going to pursue every avenue to find out who murdered Johara Murr, to bring them to justice. Whoever they are.”
Now Eve got to her feet. “I can’t stress enough how vital it is you have no communication with your family until I tell you otherwise.”
“Do you think I’d warn them?”
“I think you’re upset and angry and confused, and may feel the need to confront them. You need to stay back and let me do my job.”
“We will. Johara deserves that, Bolt. From both of us. I’ll go get the letter.”
“Lil,” Bolt said as she started from the room. “We were so young, and each of us so sure we were right. Not much compromise between us. I can look back and see we probably wouldn’t have made it. We’d have tried for each other, and the child, we’d have tried. But love isn’t enough without understanding, real respect, and a hell of a lot of compromise. We wouldn’t have made it. You and me? We always will.”
“Damn right we will.”
He sat again. “I don’t know what to think, what to feel. If my grandmother did this, if my father … He can’t stand up to her. Few can. I tried, all those years ago. I failed. And I never really tried again until Lilith, until the kids.”
He turned to Roarke with the faintest of smiles. “A strong woman will make a man of you.”
“Truth. We’re fortunate in ours. I’m very sorry, Bolton, for your loss. I’m glad to see you’ve made a family who’ll let
you grieve that loss.”
“I only knew her surname. She didn’t like talking about her family, it made her feel guilty. We had some friction about that, too. I know she had a brother—in medical school. In London, I think, but I’m not sure. Her family needs to know. I could hire investigators to find them.”
“Let me use my resources for that,” Eve said.
“If you find them, any of them, I’d like the chance to speak with them, if they’d agree. And if you can’t find them, or something happened to them over the years, Lilith and I would like to—to make the arrangements.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Can you tell me? You must know. We, ah, Johara and I, weren’t going to find out before the birth, but you must know.”
Eve started to say the fetus was male, but saw his eyes. “A boy.”
“A boy.” His lips trembled, then firmed. “Thank you.”
After Eve took the letter Lilith had folded in an envelope, they left the Singers and stepped out into the quickening rain.
“You trust them not to make that contact.”
“Yeah, I do. Especially since we’re going to move fast now. Get us a copter.” She looked up at the boiling sky as she got into the car. “There’s more than one storm coming.”
22
While Roarke drove, Eve tagged Peabody and snapped out orders. “Don’t ask questions, just listen. Contact the local LEOs in Hudson Valley and inform them I’m on my way there, to arrest Elinor and J. B. Singer on suspicion of murder.”
“Holy—”
“Shut up. The warrant will include bringing Marvinia Singer in for questioning. There will be a search warrant. As the murder took place in New York City, I will transport the individuals and any evidence found to New York City. They are to do nothing, I mean nothing, until I arrive. They are not to approach, not to enter, not to do anything. Whoever’s in charge can contact me for details if deemed necessary.”
“Got it. Should I meet you at the heliport?”
“No time. Get to Central, set things up there. I’ll write up what I can on the flight there—God help us all. Shit, contact Mira. I want her in Observation. I may need a shrink on this. Contact Baxter, tell him and Trueheart they’re on the search. They can drive. Give them the particulars. And have them pick up McNab for the electronics.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Go.” She clicked off, tagged Reo. “Warrants, now. Listen.”
She banged out details, continued to bang them out as she ran through the rain to the waiting copter.
She heard the helipad guy say, “It’s going to be rough up there, sir.”
“Too rough for clearance?” Roarke asked.
“No, but rough enough.”
“I’ll see you at Central, Reo. I have to keep a jet-copter from crashing with the strength of my will.”
“You’re taking a chance—with the arrests, and the flight. Let’s have good luck on both.”
“Yeah, let’s.” She strapped in. “This is a bigger machine than Peabody and I took this afternoon.”
“I assumed you’d be transporting prisoners on the return.”
“That’s right.” She tried not to think about what he did with switches and monitors or who he talked to on the headset. “It’s not raining that hard.”
“Not here.”
She closed her eyes as the jets wound up. “Oh shit.”
“I’ve got you, Lieutenant. Reo meant you’re taking a chance, as you don’t have hard evidence so much as circumstantial.”
“Piles of circumstantial now. And I’m betting on a seventy-five, maybe eighty percent chance the gun that killed Johara Murr’s in that big, ugly house.”
“Is it ugly? And why do you think they kept the gun?”
He was keeping her talking as they rose into the air. Good idea, she decided.
“Strict and stern, Peabody said. She’s right. You’ll see for yourself.” Everything shook, including the contents of her stomach. “And the gun’s power. I didn’t find a collector’s license or any record of a license in the past for that weapon. It probably came down through the family.”
“Licenses, bugger licenses. We’re too important for that.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” She saw lightning flash in a giant five-pronged fork in the distance. The shake and roll of the answering thunder made her seriously consider curling into a whimpering ball.
“You see Elinor pulling the trigger.”
Talk, talk, keep talking. Why wasn’t she on the ground somewhere, battling a rampaging horde of chemi-heads hopped up on Zeus?
“J.B. could have done it if his ass was on the line—the way I had it playing out. Knocked her up, get rid of her. But for this? He wouldn’t have the guts. Oh, fuck, fucking fuck, there’s another one.”
“We’re fine.”
She risked a glance at him. He looked calm—calm, determined, and focused. Which meant more than the strength of her will kept them aloft.
“I know what I saw in Elinor Singer today.” It wasn’t easy to keep her voice as calm as his, but she worked on it. “But I got a look through Lilith’s lens. She’s a tyrant. On top of the rest. What Lilith didn’t add on the standards? White and Christian. Johara fell short on those, too. Maybe you don’t have to be really religious, or totally pure, but a young, Lebanese, Muslim pianist? That would never do. She’s not going to be able to pull Bolton back, get him firm under the thumb if he makes a life with that substandard girl and their illegitimate child.”
She pulled in a breath, let it out slowly. “I have to ask. How much longer before we land?”
“About five minutes.” He reached over, gave her hand a squeeze. “We’re coming into the rough part now.”
“Coming into? Fuck me sideways.”
“Let’s try that one once we’re home again.”
They bounced, swayed, jittered. She heard Roarke swear—lightly, and under his breath, but she heard it. They dipped, they danced, and a line of ice-cold sweat slid down Eve’s spine.
The world outside the windscreen rolled thick and dense and dirty gray. All angry clouds snarling, booming.
Peabody would pick it up, she told herself. If they ended up a smoking, smoldering tangle of body parts and twisted copter in the river, Peabody would see it through. Justice would be done.
That was something.
Then a few tiny tears ripped through the solid gray, and through them she saw the flicker of lights from the heliport.
Roarke communicated with somebody, got clearance, and, after a couple of final, nasty shakes, they landed.
“There now.”
Eve held up a finger, then dropped her head between her knees. “Not gonna boot. Just need a second. Need my warrants, too. Need my goddamn warrants.”
“And there, she’s rounding back already. You’re a bit pale yet,” he told her when she straightened. “But you’ll do.”
She got out, resisted kissing the wet ground, and slid into the waiting all-terrain.
“Big enough for transporting.” She nodded. “I’ll guide you in.”
“I had them program the address. Have some water. Settle yourself the rest of the way.”
“Yeah, maybe. Come on, Reo. I expect some mild resistance,” she continued. “The grandmother’s over the century mark, and he’s a coward under it, but some. Probably threats and insults, which will hurt my delicate feelings.”
“You’ll muddle through.”
“I tend to agree with Lilith’s take on Marvinia, but we don’t take chances. I’d peg her as in the best shape, physically, of the three of them. We’ll be sexist here. If it comes to it, I’ll deal with the women, you deal with him.”
“As necessary.”
“You’re carrying, aren’t you? You’re always carrying. Don’t pull a weapon, for Christ’s sake, but they’ve got security, a gate. I don’t want them to know we’re coming until we’re there. With the warrants. Cams on the walls, about every five feet. And alarms, scanners on the
gate.”
“No worries.”
“Got none there. Yes! And Reo scores.”
“I don’t like to go on auto in this weather, so…” He pulled over, took out his ’link. “Just under a quarter mile.”
“What are you doing?”
“Scanning their system. Ah well, it’s not absolute shite, but they can afford better. I’m just going to deactivate cams and alarms. If they notice, they’ll likely blame the storm. There we are.”
Though pleased, the cop in her frowned. “You can do that with your ’link?”
He shot her an easy smile. “It has a few handy accessories built in.”
He continued to drive and when he reached the gates, hit vertical and sailed over them.
“It is very ugly. I’ve seen prisons—from the outside of course—with more charm.”
Lights glared against the window glass, but didn’t add welcome or cheer. Eve walked through the rain to the door. “Are the door cams down?”
“They are, yes.”
She rang the bell. Moments later a flustered Marvinia opened it. “Oh! Hello. I thought you were the driver. The storm’s taken out the security.”
“Going somewhere?” Eve asked.
“Me? In this?” On an eye roll, she shook her head. “No. But J.B. is determined to head off to Capri for some sunshine. Elinor’s up there trying to talk some sense into him. I’ve left them to it. So sorry, come in out of this horrible rain.”
She stepped back. “Roarke, it’s lovely to see you. I didn’t expect to see anyone on a night like this. Let me take your coats.”
“We’re good. I need to see your husband and mother-in-law.”
“Yes, of course. Come, sit down. I’ll go get them. I assume you have some resolution on your investigation, and coming out on a night like this shows you’re even more dedicated than I believed.”
“If you could use the house ’link to ask them to come down,” Eve began, when she heard J.B.’s voice.
“I don’t want to wait until morning, Mother! I need to get away from all this stress.”
He appeared at the top of the staircase, and froze when he saw Eve.
“I wouldn’t.” She saw flight in his eyes. “Nowhere to go. Come down, Mr. Singer, or I’ll come up and get you. And tell your mother to get down here.”