The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “Yeah, me, too. But there you go. Sunday, Mrs. Renquist.”

  Pamela drew air sharply through her chiseled nostrils. “We have brunch on Sundays at ten-thirty. Prior to that, my husband would have enjoyed a well-deserved hour in our relaxation tank, as he does every Sunday, when schedule permits, between nine and ten. While he was doing so, I would have joined him in our home health center for my own Sunday morning hour of exercise. At eleven-thirty, after brunch, my daughter would have gone with her au pair to a museum, while my husband and I prepared to go to the club for a doubles match with friends. Is that detailed enough, Lieutenant?”

  She said lieutenant as another woman might have said nosy, insolent bitch. Eve had to give her credit for it. “You and your husband were home on Sunday from eight until noon.”

  “As I’ve just said.”

  “Mummy.”

  They both turned and looked at the young girl—gold and pink and white, as pretty as a frosted cake—on the stairs. A woman of about twenty-five, with a spill of black hair clipped back neatly at her nape, held the girl’s hand.

  “Not now, Rose. It’s impolite to interrupt. Sophia, take Rose back upstairs. I’ll let you know when the guests have arrived.” She spoke to her daughter and the woman in the same polite and distant tones.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She gave the girl’s hand a little tug—Eve saw it, and the slight resistance of the child before the girl went obediently back up the stairs.

  “If there’s nothing more, Lieutenant, you’ll have to make an appointment with either myself or my husband through our offices.” She walked to the door, opened it. “I hope you find who you’re looking for soon, so this can be put to rest.”

  “I’m sure Jacie Wooton and Lois Gregg feel exactly the same way. Thanks for your time.”

  Chapter 10

  With the help of Lois Gregg’s daughter-in-law, Eve mapped out the daily routine of the victim’s life.

  Leah Gregg served iced tea in the compact nook off her compact kitchen. She wanted to keep her hands busy, Eve could see. And her mind occupied. More, Eve saw a woman who wanted to take some active part in standing for her husband’s mother.

  “We were close. Actually, Lois was closer to me than my own mother. Mine lives in Denver with my stepfather. We have issues.” She smiled when she said it, a tight-lipped grimace that indicated they were big issues. “But Lois was the best. Some of my friends have trouble with their in-laws. Unwanted advice, little digs, interference.”

  She shrugged, and sat across from Eve at the narrow service bar. Then she nodded at the ring on Eve’s left hand. “You’re married, so you know how it can be—especially with mothers of sons, who don’t want to let go of their baby boy.”

  Eve made a noncommittal sound. There was no point in saying no, she didn’t know how it could be. Her husband’s mother had been forced to let go of her baby boy a long, long time ago.

  “But I didn’t get any of that from Lois. Not that she didn’t love her kids. She just knew how to keep it all balanced. She was fun, and smart, and had a life of her own. She loved her kids, she loved the grands, she loved me.” Leah had to take a long, calming breath. “Jeff and his sister, all of us really, are just flattened by this. She was young and healthy, vital and active. The sort of woman you expect to live forever, I guess. To lose her this way, it’s just cruel. But well . . .” She took another breath. “I guess you know that, in your line of work. And it’s not why you’re here.”

  “I know this is hard, Mrs. Gregg, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”

  “I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to help you find the bastard who did this to Lois. I mean that.”

  Eve saw that she did. “I take it you talked to her often.”

  “Two, three times a week. We got together very often: Sunday dinners, shopping sprees, girl days. We were friends, Lieutenant. Lois and I . . . she was, I guess I’ve just realized, she was my best friend. Oh, shit.”

  She broke off, pushing off to grab some tissue. “I’m not going to lose it, it won’t help her or Jeff or the kids for me to lose it. Just give me a second.”

  “Take your time.”

  “We’re having a memorial tomorrow. She didn’t want anything formal or depressing. She used to joke about it. ‘When my time comes,’ she’d say, ‘I want you to have a nice, tasteful memorial service and make it short. Then, break out the champagne and have a party. Celebrate my life.’ That’s what we want to do, we will do because she wanted it. But it wasn’t supposed to be now. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I don’t know how we’ll get through it. One minute at a time, I guess.”

  She sat again, breathed again. “Okay. I know what was done to her. Jeff told me. He tried not to, but he fell apart and it all came pouring out, so I know what was done to her. You don’t have to be delicate with me.”

  “She must’ve liked you a lot.” It was the first time Peabody had spoken, and the comment had Leah’s eyes tearing again.

  “Thanks. Now what can I do?”

  “She wore a ring, third finger, left hand.”

  “Yes, she considered it her wedding ring though she and Sam never made it formal. Sam was the love of her life. He died a few years ago in an accident, and she continued to wear his ring.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Sure. Gold band, channel set with little sapphires. Five little sapphires because he gave it to her on their fifth anniversary. Very classic, very simple. Lois didn’t like flashy jewelry.”

  She paused a moment, and Eve could see it sink in. “He took it? He took her ring? The bastard, the filthy son of a bitch. That ring mattered to her.”

  “The fact that her killer took the ring may help us find and identify him. When we find it, and him, you’ll be able to positively identify it. That will help us build our case.”

  “All right, all right. Thanks. I can think of it that way now, think of it as a way to lock him up. That helps.”

  “Did she mention anything, however casually,” Eve began, “about meeting someone, seeing someone hanging around the neighborhood?”

  “No.” Her kitchen ’link beeped, and she ignored it.

  “You can get that,” Eve told her. “We can wait.”

  “No, it’s someone calling with condolences. Everyone who knew her is calling. This is more important now.”

  Eve angled her head. “Officer Peabody’s right. She must’ve liked you very much.”

  “She’d have expected me to handle this, the way she would’ve handled it. So I will.”

  “Think carefully then. Any mention of anyone she might’ve met or seen in the last few weeks.”

  “She was friendly, the sort who talks to strangers on line at the market or strikes up conversations in the subway. So she wouldn’t have mentioned anything like that unless it was out of the ordinary for her.”

  “Take me through the places she’d go, the routes she’d take. Daily business sort of thing. I’m looking for repetition and habit, the kind of thing someone who was tracking her could use to determine she’d have been alone in the apartment Sunday morning.”

  “Okay.” Leah began to outline Lois’s basic routines as Eve took notes.

  It was a simple life, if an active one. Fitness classes three times a week, bi-weekly sessions at a salon, market on Fridays, Thursday evenings out with friends for a meal and a vid or play, volunteer work Monday afternoons at a local day-care center, her part-time job at a lady’s boutique on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.

  “She dated once in a while,” Leah added. “But not so much recently, and nothing serious. As I said, Sam was it for her. If she’d been seeing anyone, even very casually, I’d have known about it.”

  “Customers in the shop? Men?”

  “Sure, she’d tell us about some of the guys who’d come in and throw themselves on her mercy, looking for something for a spouse or girlfriend. Nothing lately, not that she mentioned. Wait.”

  H
er back went steel straight. “Wait. I remember her saying something about a man she ran into when she was shopping for produce. A couple of weeks ago. Said he looked sort of lost over the tomatoes or something.”

  As if to nudge the memory clear, Leah rubbed her temples. “She helped him pick out some vegetables and fruit, that was just like her. She said he was a single father, just moved to New York with his little boy. He was worried about finding good day care, so she told him about Kid Time, that’s the place she volunteers, gave him all the information. Being Lois, she pumped him for personal information. She said he was a good-looking guy, concerned father, looked lonely, and she was hoping he checked out Kid Time so she could maybe fix him up with a woman she knew who worked there. God, what did she say his name was? Ed, Earl, no, no, Al. That’s it.”

  “Al,” Eve repeated and felt it hit her gut.

  “She said he walked her part of the way home, carried her bags. Said they talked kids for a few blocks. I didn’t pay much attention, it was the kind of thing she did all the time. And knowing Lois, if they talked kids, she talked about hers, about us. She probably said how we got together Sunday afternoons, and how she looked forward to it. About how she knew what it was like to raise kids alone.”

  “Did she tell you what he looked like?”

  “She just said he was a good-looking boy. That doesn’t mean anything. Damn it! She’d call any guy under forty a boy, so that’s no help.”

  Yes, it was, Eve thought. It eliminated Elliot Hawthorne, as her own instincts already had.

  “She was a born mother, so if she saw this guy puzzling over tomatoes, she’d have automatically stepped up to give him a hand and talk to him, try to help him out with his problems. Southern,” Leah said on a rise of excitement. “That’s what she said. A good-looking Southern boy.”

  “She was a jewel. You know what I’m saying?”

  Rico Vincenti, proprietor of the family-run market where Lois Gregg did her weekly shopping, unashamedly wiped his tears with a red bandanna, then stuffed it away in the back pocket of khakis that bagged over his skinny butt. He went back to stacking a fresh supply of peaches in his sidewalk bin.

  “That’s what I’m hearing,” Eve said. “She came in here regularly.”

  “Every Friday. Sometimes she’d come by other times, pick up a couple things, but she was in every Friday morning. Ask me about my family, give me grief about prices—not bitchy,” he said quickly. “Friendly like. Some people they come in here, never say a word to you, but not Mrs. Gregg. I find the bastard . . .” He made an obscene gesture. “Finito.”

  “You can leave that part to me. You ever notice anybody hanging around, look like he was watching her?”

  “I see somebody bothering one of my customers, even if it ain’t a regular, I move ’em along.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder like an umpire calling out a base runner. “I been here fifteen years. This is my place.”

  “There was a man, a couple of weeks ago. She helped him pick out some produce, struck up a conversation.”

  “Just like her.” He pulled out the bandanna once more.

  “He went out with her, carried her bags. Nice-looking guy, probably under forty.”

  “Mrs. Gregg, she was always talking to somebody in here. Let me think.” He raked his hands through his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, screwed up his narrow face. “Yeah, couple Fridays back, she took this guy under her wing, picked out some nice grapes for him, some tomatoes, head of romaine, radishes, carrots, got a pound of peaches.”

  “Can you tell me as much about him as what he bought?”

  Vincenti cracked his first smile. “Not so much. She brought him up with her—I always checked Mrs. Gregg out—and she says: ‘Now, Mr. Vincenti, I want you to take good care of my new friend, Al, when he comes in here by himself. He’s got a little boy who needs your best produce.’ I say something like, ‘I got nothing but the best.’ ”

  “What did he say?”

  “Don’t recall that he did. Smiled a lot. Had on a ball cap, now that I think. And sunshades. This heat, most everybody’s got on a cap and shades.”

  “Tall, short?”

  “Ah, damn me.” He mopped at his sweaty face with the bandanna now. “Taller than me, but who the hell isn’t? I top out at five six. We were busy, and I wasn’t paying much attention. She was doing all the talking, like always. She asked me to put some peaches aside for her the next week. She was going to her daughter’s in Jersey Sunday next, whole family deal, and she wanted to take her some peaches ’cause her girl had a fondness for them.”

  “She come in for them?”

  “Sure, this past Friday. Five pounds. I put them in a little basket for her, let her take them home in it ’cause she’s a good customer.”

  “The guy who went out with her, has he come back?”

  “I haven’t seen him again. I don’t come in on Wednesdays, like to golf on Wednesdays, so he coulda come in and I wouldn’t know. But if he’d come back any other day, I’m here. You think that’s the guy? You think that’s the sick prick who killed Mrs. Gregg?”

  “Just covering the ground, Mr. Vincenti. I appreciate the help.”

  “You need any more, you need anything, you come see me. She was a jewel.”

  “You think he might be the killer,” Peabody said as they walked the neighborhood, following the route Leah had outlined for them.

  “I think he was being a smart-ass, introducing himself with the name Al—Albert DeSalvo, the method he planned to use for her murder. I think it would have been a very smart way to feel her out, coming to the market, putting on the baffled single-daddy routine. If he’d scoped out the area, looking for a woman, a single woman of her age group, spotted her, considered her while he was trolling, he’d have watched her routine, gotten her name, looked up her data, so he’d know she volunteered at a kid care place.”

  He knew how to research, Eve thought. Knew how to take his time, get the data, digest it before he made a move.

  “A woman does time in day care, voluntarily, she’s into kids, so he tells her he’s got a kid when he makes his first contact.”

  She nodded as she spoke, as she studied the neighborhood. It was smart. It was simple. “Good place to make that contact is the market. Ask her for advice, give her a story about having a kid needing day care. Walk her part of the way home. Not all the way. He doesn’t have to, he knows where she lives. Just like he knows her plans for Sunday. Not the next Sunday, the following, so he can have plenty of time to watch her, get it all down, plan it out, enjoy the anticipation.”

  She stopped on the corner, watched people walk by, most with the native New York stare that stopped well short of eye contact. Not a tourist sector, she acknowledged. People lived and worked here, went about their business.

  “She’d have strolled, though,” Eve said aloud. “Strolled along with him, chatting, giving him what seemed like harmless little details of her life. Peaches for her daughter, but there wasn’t a basket of peaches in the apartment on Sunday. He took them. A nice edible souvenir to go with the ring. Walked out of her place after he did what he did, carrying a little basket of fruit. I bet he got a real kick out of that, really enjoyed taking a big juicy bite.”

  Feet planted, she hooked her thumbs in her pockets, too intent on what she was seeing in her head to notice the quick and wary glances tossed her way when her stance revealed her weapon. “But that’s a mistake, a stupid, cocky mistake. People might not notice some guy walking out of an apartment building with a toolbox, but they might, just might, notice one walking out with a basket of peaches and a toolbox.”

  She crossed the street, stood on the next corner, and judged the ground. “Glide-carts aren’t going to be up and running that early on a Sunday, not around here. But the newstands, the coffee shops, the delis, they would be. I want them canvassed. I want to know if anyone noticed a man in maintenance wear, carrying a toolbox and a friggin’ basket of peaches.”

  “Yes, sir. Lieute
nant, I just want to say it’s a real pleasure to watch you work.”

  “What’re you angling for, Peabody?”

  “No, seriously, it’s an education to watch you, see what you see, and how you see it. But now that you mention it, it’s pretty hot. Maybe we could, since they are up and running this time of day, get a drink from the glide-cart there. I’m doing a Wicked Witch of the West here.”

  “A what?”

  “You know . . . I’m melting.”

  With a half-snort, Eve dug credits out of her pocket. “Get me a tube of Pepsi, and tell him if it’s not cold I’m going to come over there and hurt him.”

  While Peabody clomped off, Eve stood on the corner, her imagination running. He’d have left her here, she decided. Most likely here, a couple blocks short of the apartment. Had to part ways on a corner, makes the most sense. Probably told her he lived nearby, what he did for a living, little stories about his kid. Lies, all of them, if this was their man.

  And every cell of the cop told her it was.

  Southern, she thought. Had he told her he was from the South? Most likely. Used an accent, or had one. Used, she decided. Just another little flourish.

  Peabody came back with the drinks, a scoop of fries, and a veggie kabob. “Got you the scoop, heavy on the salt, so you wouldn’t sneer at my kabob.”

  “I can still sneer at a kabob. I’ll always sneer at veggies on a stick.” But she dug into the scoop. “We’ll head down this way, swing into the dress shop. Maybe he paid a visit there, too.”

  There were two clerks on duty at the boutique and both began to weep openly the minute Eve mentioned Lois’s name. One of them went to the door, put up the Closed sign.

  “I just can’t take it in. I keep expecting her to walk in and tell us it was some sort of horrible joke.” The tall clerk, with her greyhound’s lithe body, patted her companion’s back as the younger woman sobbed into her hands. “I was going to close the shop for the day, but I don’t know what we’d do with ourselves.”

  “This your place?” Eve asked.

  “Yes. Lois worked for me for ten years. She was great, with the staff, with the customers, with the stock. She could’ve run the place single-handedly if she’d wanted. I’m going to miss her so much.”