by J. D. Robb
“No.”
“Crap!”
Roarke sat calmly while she dropped into her desk chair and buried her head in her hands. “Do I correctly interpret the thing for the thing as a gift for Louise’s bridal shower?”
“What other thing is currently being shoved down my throat?”
“Mmm-hmm. Give me a moment.” Eve muttered, but her head shot up when she heard him say, “Caro.”
“Yes! Genius. Caro can get the thing.”
“No,” Roarke said it firmly and had Eve slumping again. “Caro,” he repeated. “If you were hostessing a bridal shower for a good friend, what would be the appropriate sort of gift?”
Eve swiveled so she could bang her head on the desk. Roarke and Caro talked—questions, answers—but she didn’t take it in. They might have been speaking Greek.
“Thanks. Something’s come up here, so I’ll likely be working from home later. Let me know if you need me for anything. Have a nice weekend.”
He clicked off, and Eve opened one eye to peer at him. “What did—”
He held up a finger, and continued to work on the PPC. “All right then,” he said after a moment. “Caro believes, given your relationship and the occasion, you should get Louise something both personal and romantic.”
“What, a sex toy?”
“No. Not exactly,” he amended. “Lingerie. A nightgown, or as she delicately put it, an ensemble.”
Eve straightened. “I’m supposed to buy Louise fuckwear?”
“Which is how to indelicately put it.”
“I can’t do that. It’s . . . Even if I wanted to, which—who would—I don’t know her size or anything.”
“I do. I just hacked into her account and have all her sizes. Now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go into an actual store as you’ve left this too late to purchase anything appropriate online.”
“Oh God. Just kill me.”
“Don’t worry. I know just the place.”
“Of course you do. I wanted to pick up Alex Ricker, sweat him in the box for a while.”
“I thought you weren’t looking at him for Coltraine’s murder.”
“I’m not. But I can’t tell what he knows until I know. He may not know what he knows until I pry it out of him. If Max Ricker ordered the hit, his son’s the reason. One way or the other. He’s running the businesses now. He’s got to know something.”
“I don’t think so. Which is what I wanted to speak to you about before we drifted off to lingerie.”
She grimaced as she glanced at her open door. “Don’t keep saying lingerie in here. It’s a cop shop.”
“I met Alex this morning. In fact, had just finished the meeting when you contacted me about transportation to Omega.”
“You—Jesus. You can’t just—on Coney Island.”
“My choice, the venue.” Roarke made himself as comfortable as possible in her saggy visitor’s chair. “He asked for a meeting.”
“It could’ve been a trap. It could’ve—”
“It wasn’t. And as I said, my choice of venue. Believe me, I was well secured.”
She held up her hands. It was a waste of time to argue, since it was already done. And a waste of energy not to believe he’d been, as he claimed, well secured. “What did he want?”
Roarke handed her a disc. “You can listen to it while I drive. You’ll be working, you see, and we’ll visit this charming shop I know. They gift wrap.”
Eve frowned at the disc. “You got a recorder past him?”
Roarke only smiled.
14
EVE LISTENED TO THE RECORDING STRAIGHT through, let it stew in her mind, then replayed it. She sat back, considered—and noticed vaguely that Roarke was having a fine time weaving through uptown traffic like a snake through high grass.
“You believe him? You believe he’s telling it straight about his feelings and loyalty—or lack thereof—to his father?”
Roarke cut east, went vertical over a double-parked delivery truck, then waited sedately at the light. “I do, yes. I should have tried out the video element, then you’d have a better sense. It was in his eyes. I recognize that in-the-bone hate, as I have it myself for my own.”
“For the same reason,” Eve pointed out. “Maybe he knows. Maybe he played that card because he knows you’d relate.”
“It’s not impossible, but it would be smart work on his part as I only found out myself last year. Do you think he’s lying about his mother?”
“When I read the file, my first thought was Ricker did her. First thoughts aren’t always the right ones. But my second thought, and my third thought came back to that. No, I don’t think he’s lying about Ricker tossing his mother out the window. I’m working on whether it matters to him.”
“You’re trying out the mirror again, to see if it reflects. He and I—both with violent fathers—murderous bastards both. If mine didn’t beat the hell out of me by sundown, well now, that was a lost day for him. His, or so he claims, embraced him one moment and cuffed him the next. If true, he had the worst deal to my thinking. At least I always expected the boot.”
“He had a mother—he indicates—loved him for the first years of his life.”
“And I didn’t. I think he got the short end there as well. I never knew what I missed. He says he grew up trying to please his father. I never gave a damn about pleasing mine, except to avoid that boot. I hated him from my first memory, so it becomes just the way of it. I’d think coming to that hate later in life boils it hotter, so to speak.
“You’ll want to run it by Mira, I expect,” Roarke added as he cruised up Madison. “But he wasn’t lying.”
“Okay.” If she couldn’t take Roarke’s word on that, Eve thought, then whose? “Okay, it fits. One visit from him to Omega, then nothing. No contact. And if you angle it toward his relationship with Coltraine, the timing . . .”
“You take Max down, and some of that splashes on Alex. He spins, restructures, reevaluates. And his lady realizes he’s not going to take this chance to step away, to become fully legitimate. He’s never going to do that.”
“She makes her decision, breaks it off. He makes his. He gives her up rather than give up the shady. He’s not a mirror of you,” Eve stated.
Roarke glanced at her. “And he got the short end of the deal again, didn’t he? For here I am with my wife, about to shop for lingerie. And he has no one.”
“He came here hoping to change that. That’s the trigger. That’s why Ricker pushed the button. To give his son the boot.”
“I’m sure you’re right. That’s at least part of it.”
“So he knows what his son’s up to,” Eve calculated. “Which means someone in Alex’s organization is feeding Ricker. Someone close enough to know Alex intended to contact Coltraine, what he hoped. And when. I vote for—”
“Rod Sandy.”
“I was voting,” Eve complained. “Damn it.”
“There now.” Roarke patted her hand, shifted to her. “Alex’s PA, his friend—longtime friend. Certainly a confidant. He’d know, as you’ve concluded, that Coltraine was never on the take. That she wouldn’t turn that way. He’d have known when they met here in New York how it went between them.”
“And the next day, she’s dead. Sandy didn’t call her. She went armed, and that still says one of her squad to me. But he might have been on the stairs. If he managed to doctor the security, or find another way out—knowing Alex was out of the place, then—”
“An interesting theory. Hold that thought. Or rather, put it on hold and think lingerie.”
“Why would I—oh.” She focused on her surroundings and noted they were parked. How the man managed to find a street-level spot in midtown on a Friday evening baffled her. “Where is this place?”
“Just around the corner, on Madison.” He joined her on the sidewalk, took her hand. “We should take advantage of luck—with the parking and the evening, and polish off the shopping with dinner. There’s a nice place just
across the street. We can sit outside, share a bottle of wine and a meal.”
“I really ought to—”
“Work, yes.” He brought her hand up to kiss her knuckles.
He’d sit and eat with her in her office while she did just that, she thought. Because it was the natural order for her.
She stopped at the corner, looked at him. “Maybe if it was a date.”
“Sorry?”
She angled her head, lifted her eyebrows. And watched his smile spread. “Ah. Darling, would you go out to dinner with me tonight?”
“She won’t, I will,” a woman said as she passed them. “I’ll even buy.”
“Yeah, I’ll go out to dinner with you tonight.” She kept her hand in his as they walked half a block.
In the place called Secrets, the window displayed human replicas lounging in silky robes, posing in fanciful bits of lace and satin, flirting in tit-enhancing corsets. Rose petals littered the floor. Eve studied the window, concluded that under normal circumstances she’d have to have a stunner pressed to her head to get her in the door.
She supposed friendship often amounted to the same.
“Is this yours?”
“The shop? I have a small interest. Twenty percent,” he added when she frowned at him.
“Why only twenty?”
“The couple who run it—and own the rest—used to work for me. They came to me with their idea, their concept, proposal, and business plan. I liked it. So I gave them the backing. About five years ago. There’s a second one downtown now, in the Village. But it’s a bit funkier. This one’s more Louise, I think.”
“Then I could’ve just ordered something, had it delivered. Not have to actually . . . shop.”
“Be brave, little soldier,” he said and opened the door.
He’d have gotten an elbow in the ribs for the crack, but he knew her well enough to evade.
The place smelled . . . sexy, she decided. Like smoldering candles and subtle whiffs of perfume. Select items spread like exotic butterflies over displays where others floated like suspended jewels. A woman sat in a gilt and velvet chair perusing a selection of minuscule bras and panties as if they were indeed jewels.
Another stood across the room, carefully wrapping something red and silky in tissue for a customer.
“It doesn’t even show,” Eve muttered. “What’s the big deal when you’re just going to cover it up with clothes?”
“Let me count the ways.”
“See?” She bumped his hip with hers. “That’s just fuckwear, like I said. I’m not sure I want to—”
She broke off when the tissue lady spotted Roarke and shot out a megawatt smile. “So good to see you again,” she said to the customer. “Enjoy.”
“Oh, I will. He will.” With a laugh, the customer started out, swinging her tiny, shiny silver bag.
“What a wonderful surprise.” The owner, Eve concluded, crossed over in her skinny pink heels to hold out both hands for Roarke’s.
“Adrian. You look lovely.”
“Oh.” She fluffed at the soft sunny waves of her hair. “It’s been a busy day. If you could just give me another moment?”
“Take your time.” As she went over to Bra-and-Panties, Roarke turned to Eve. “See anything you like?”
“Is this where my underwear comes from? The stuff, I mean, that appears like magic in my drawers? And the robes that mysteriously find their way to my closet or the hook in the bathroom?”
“Sometimes.” He wandered a couple of steps away to study a short gown as pale as water, and nearly as transparent. “Adrian and Liv have exquisite taste. Being women, they have a sense of what makes a woman feel sexy or romantic, confident, desirable. And being women who are attracted to women, they know what catches the eye and makes a woman sexy and so on to another.”
“So it’s a lesbian fuckwear shop?” She rolled her eyes when Roarke aimed his at her. “Just saying. And yeah, okay, it’s classy stuff in a classy atmosphere. Sex but no skank.”
“That should be their slogan.”
She grinned. “That’s what you get for taking me out of my element.”
He caught her face in his hands, surprised her with a cheerful kiss. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
“You go for skank as well as the next guy.”
“Darling Eve, only when the skank is you.”
She laughed, poked him in the chest. “Keep it that way, pal.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Adrian hurried over to them as Bra-and-Panties left the shop—with a bag. “I let Wendy, our clerk, go about an hour ago. Hot date. Of course, when you’re on your own, that’s when you get three and four customers at once. Lieutenant Dallas.”
She took Eve’s hand, shook it enthusiastically. “It’s so good to finally meet you. Roarke says you’re not one for shopping.”
“No. Really not. But you’ve got a really nice place here.”
“We love it, thanks. My partner and I.”
“How is Liv?” Roarke asked her.
“She’s great. She’s pregnant,” Adrian told Eve. “Thirty-two weeks.”
“Congratulations.”
“We’re over the moon about it. She was just so tired today, so I made her go home at noon. She’ll hate knowing she missed you. Both of you. What can I help you with? Something special?”
“For me? No. No. I’m good. More than.”
“That one.” Roarke gestured to the waterlike gown. “But we’ll get to that after. Eve?”
“Oh, yeah. Well. I have this thing, and the word is this kind of stuff would work for it.”
Adrian narrowed her eyes—serenely blue—in thought. “A thing, but not for you. You need a gift.”
“Yes.” Thank God. “Yes, I need a gift.”
“The occasion?”
“Like pulling teeth, isn’t it?” Roarke commented.
“Shut up.” Eve blew out a breath. “Okay. It’s a shower thing. Bridal shower thing.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll find just the thing. What’s your relationship with the bride? I mean,” she added, correctly assuming Eve was about to panic again. “Is she a good friend, a relative, an acquaintance?”
“A friend.”
“Eve’s standing up for her at the wedding,” Roarke put in.
“A very good friend then. Tell me about her. What she looks like to start.”
“She’s blonde.”
Roarke sighed. “Describe the subject, Lieutenant.”
“Right.” That she could do. “Caucasian female, early thirties, blonde and gray. About five-five, approximately one-fifteen. Slim build, even features.”
“All right then.” Pleased, Adrian gave a decisive nod. “Would you say she’s traditional, edgy, artistic, flamboyant—”
“Classic.”
“Excellent. Now then.” Adrian tapped a finger to her lips as she strolled around the shop. “What does she do?”
“She’s a doctor.”
“Is this her first marriage?”
“Yes.”
“Is she madly in love?”
“I guess. Sure. Why else?”
“She may have bought something for her wedding night already. But . . . as her matron of honor, that’s where I’d advise you to aim. Classic. Romantic.” Adrian opened the door of a tall, narrow cupboard. “Like this.”
It was a long sheer robe open over a long shimmering gown. Not quite gray, Eve mused, not really silver. But the color of . . . moonlight, she decided. “That could work.”
“Silk, with satin accents at the bodice, the straps. And the back—” Adrian turned it to display the low back with its wisps of crisscrossing satin. “I love the back.”
“Yeah, that could work,” Eve repeated.
“I wish you had a picture of her. It’s an important gift. It should be perfect.”
“You want a picture?” Puzzled, but game, Eve pulled out her PPC. She ordered a standard run on Louise Dimatto, then turned the screen around to Adrian to display t
he photo ID. “That’s Louise.”
“Oh, that’s mag! Isn’t she pretty? Can you bring it over here? If I can just scan it—the photo?”