by J. D. Robb
“Oh.”
“Her life, as she knows it,” Gillian said as she bent to pick up a toddler—sex undetermined for Eve—from the floor, “is over.”
“A week’s an endless stretch of time when you’re nine. Gilly, taste this coleslaw. I think it could use a bit of dill.”
Obediently, Gillian opened her mouth, accepted the bite her mother held out on a fork. “Bit more pepper, too.”
“So, um . . .” Eve already felt as if she’d entered a parallel universe. “You’re expecting a lot of people.”
“We are a lot of people,” Mira said, chuckling.
“Mom still thinks we all have the appetites of teenagers.” Gillian rubbed a hand absently over Mira’s back. “She always makes too much food.”
“Makes it? You made all this?”
“Hmm. I like to cook, when I can. Especially when it’s for family.” Her cheeks were pink with pleasure, her eyes laughing as she winked at her daughter. “And I drag the girls into helping out. It’s shamefully sexist, of course, but none of my men are worth two damns in the kitchen.” She glanced out the window wall. “Give them a big, complicated smoking grill, however, and they’re right at home.”
“All our men grill.” Gillian gave the toddler a little bounce on her hip. “Does Roarke?”
“You mean, like, food?” Eve looked out to where he stood, apparently enjoying himself, picnic casual in jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. “No. I don’t think he has one of those.”
There were soy dogs and burgers, the potato salad of Roarke’s fantasy, cold pasta, big chunks of fruit swimming in some sweetened juice, fat slices of tomatoes, the slaw, and deviled eggs. Bowls, platters, trays of those and more were shuffled around. The beer was cold and the margaritas kept coming.
She found herself in a conversation with one of Mira’s sons about baseball, and to her frozen shock had a small, blond child climb up her leg and into her lap.
“Want some,” he burbled at her and grinned with his ketchup-smeared mouth.
“What?” She looked around in mild panic. “What does he want some of?”
“Whatever you’ve got.” Mira patted the boy’s head as she passed by to take the baby from her daughter-in-law and cuddle it.
“Okay, here.” Eve offered her plate with the hope the boy would take it and go back about his business. But he just dipped his fat little fingers into her fruit salad and came out with a slice of peach.
“Like it.” He took a bite, then generously offered her the rest.
“No, you go ahead.”
“Off you go, Bryce.” Gillian hefted him off Eve’s lap and instantly became her new best friend. “See what Granddad’s got for you.”
Then she plopped down beside Eve, arched her eyebrows at her brother. “Go away,” she told him. “Girl talk.”
He ambled away, good-naturedly. Amiability, Eve thought, appeared to be a common trait for the men in this family. “You’re feeling overwhelmed and just a little out of place,” Gillian began.
Eve picked up what was left of her burger, bit in. “Is that an observation or the result of a psychic scan?”
“A little of both. And a little of being the daughter of two observant and sensitive people. Large family gatherings can be odd for those who don’t have one of their own. Your Roarke adjusts more seamlessly.” She glanced around to where he sat with Dennis and Bryce. “He’s more a social animal than you, and part of it’s from the work he does, part’s just his nature.”
Gillian took a forkful of pasta salad. “There are a couple of things I feel compelled to say to you. I hope you won’t be offended. I don’t mind offending people, but I prefer to do it deliberately, and this wouldn’t be deliberate.”
“I don’t bruise easy.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” She switched her food for her margarita. “Well, first, I have to say that your husband is, without question, the most magnificent piece of work I’ve ever seen in real life.”
“I’m not offended by that, as long as you remember the mine part.”
“I don’t poach, and if I did—and there was anything left of me after you’d got done, he wouldn’t even notice. Added to that, I’m very much in love with my husband. We’ve been together a decade now. We were young, and it concerned my parents. But it was right for us.” She nibbled on a slice of carrot. “We have a good and satisfying life, three beautiful children. I’d like to have another.”
“Another what?”
Gillian laughed, turned back. “Another child. I’m hoping to be blessed with one more. But I’ve wandered from my purpose, and I doubt this group will give me much more time alone with you. I’ve been jealous of you.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed, flicked back in the direction where Roarke sat, then back when Gillian let out a low, almost purring laugh. “No, not because of him, though one could hardly be blamed there. Jealous of you and my mother.”
“You lost me.”
“She loves you,” Gillian said, and watched something like embarrassment pass over Eve’s face. “She respects you, worries about you, admires you, thinks of you. All the things she does for and about me. And this relationship, well, annoyed me on some primal level.”
“It’s not at all the same,” Eve started to say, and Gillian shook her head.
“It’s very much the same. I’m the daughter of her body, her heart and spirit. You’re not of her body, but you are, without question, of her heart and her spirit. I was of two minds when she told me you were invited today.”
She licked salt from the rim of her glass as she studied Eve. “The first was purely selfish—why is she coming? You’re my mother. The other was rampant curiosity. At last, I’ll get a good look at her.”
“I’m not in competition with you for Mira’s . . .”
“Affections?” Gillian finished with a little smile. “No, you’re not. And it was my flaw, my self-absorption that caused those unattractive and destructive feelings in me. She’s the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever known. Wise, compassionate, strong, smart, giving. I didn’t always appreciate it, you don’t when it’s yours. But as I’ve gotten older, had children of my own, I’ve come to treasure everything about her.”
Her gaze swept the patio, then stopped, held on her own daughter. “I hope, one day, Lana will feel that way about me. In any case, I felt you were stealing little bits of my mother from me. I was prepared to dislike you on sight—an attitude that is in direct opposition to what I believe, to what I am, but there you are.” She lifted her glass in a little toast, sipped. “I just couldn’t pull it off.”
Gillian picked up the pitcher of margaritas, poured more in each of their glasses. “You came here today for her. Probably with a little persuasion from your gorgeous husband, but primarily you’re here for her. She matters to you, on a personal level. And I noticed the way you look at my father, with a kind of charmed affection. It tells me you’re a good judge of character, and I know from my mother—who’s one as well—that you’re a good cop, a good woman. It makes it easier for me to share her with you.”
Before Eve could think of a response, Mira walked over, carrying the now sleeping baby on her shoulder. “Did everyone get enough?”
“More than,” Gillian assured her. “Why don’t you give him to me? I’ll take him upstairs.”
“No, he’s fine. I don’t get to hold him nearly often enough.” Agilely, she sat, lightly patting the baby’s back. “Eve, I should warn you, Dennis has convinced Roarke he can’t live without a grill.”
“Well, he has everything else.” She polished off her burger. “And it works great.”
“Dennis would tell you it’s all in the cook, not the cooker. Which I’ll claim when you’ve tasted my strawberry shortcake and peach pie.”
“Pie? You made pie?” Obviously, Eve realized, there was a great deal to be said for family cookouts after all. “I could probably—”
Eve’s communicator beeped. Her face closed down; Mira’s cheerful smile vanished
.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me a minute.”
She rose, pulling it out of her pocket as she walked back inside the kitchen, back into the quiet.
“What is it?” Gillian demanded. “What’s the matter?”
“Her work,” Mira murmured, thinking of how Eve’s eyes went cool and flat. “Death. Take the baby, Gilly.”
She was rising when Eve stepped back out. “I have to go,” Eve began, then lowered her voice as Mira walked over, took her arm. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Is it the same?”
“No. It’s him, but it’s not the same. I’ll get you the details as soon as I can. Damn, brain’s a little sloshy. Too many margaritas.”
“I’ll get you some Sober-Up.”
“Appreciate it.” She nodded to Roarke when he joined her. “You can stay. This is going to take awhile.”
“I’ll take you, and if need be I’ll get myself home and leave you the car. Another LC?”
She shook her head. “Later.” She took a breath, studying the patio, with its family sprawl, its flowers and food. “Life’s not always a goddamn picnic, is it?”
Chapter 7
“Drop me off on the corner. You don’t have to go down the block.”
Roarke ignored her and breezed through the light. “But your associates would miss the opportunity to witness your arrival in this particular vehicle.”
The vehicle was a shiny silver jewel with a smoked glass retractable top and a snarling panther of an engine. It mortified her, they both knew, for other cops to whistle and hoot about her connection with Roarke’s fancy toys.
She sucked it up, yanked off her sunshades. They were new, one of the items that habitually, and mysteriously, appeared among her things. She suspected they were stylish, knew they were ridiculously expensive. To save herself a little grief, she stuck them in her pocket.
“There’s no reason for you to hang. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I’ll stick around awhile and stay out of your way.” He eased in behind a black-and-white and an emergency services vehicle.
“That is some ride, Lieutenant,” one of the uniforms said even as she climbed out. “Bet it burns on a straightaway.”
“Button it, Frohickie. What’ve we got here?”
“Sweet,” he murmured, sliding a hand over the gleaming hood. “Female vic, strangled in her apartment. Lived alone. No sign of forced entry. Name’s Lois Gregg, age sixty-one. Son became concerned when she didn’t show up at a family event or answer her ’links. Came over, let himself in, found her.”
He spoke briskly, though he did shoot one more look over his shoulder at the car as they trooped into an apartment building.
“Strangled?”
“Yes, sir. Definite signs of sexual assault with object. Fourth floor,” he said when they were in the elevator. “Looks like he used a broomstick on her. It’s pretty bad.”
She said nothing, letting the new data filter through.
“He left a note,” Frohickie said. “Addressed to you. Bastard stuck the envelope between her toes.”
“DeSalvo,” she muttered. “Good Christ.”
Then she blanked it out, blanked it all out so she would walk into the scene with no set images or preconceptions in her head.
“I need a field kit and a recorder.”
“Brought them up when we got word you were tagged away from home.”
She forgave him for his comments about the car. “Scene’s secured?” she questioned.
“Yes, sir. We’ve got the son in the kitchen, with a uniform and an MT. He’s in bad shape. He says he didn’t touch her.”
“My aide’s on her way. Send her in when she gets here. You have to stay out,” she said to Roarke.
“Understood.” But he felt a quick wrench that he would remain closed out while she walked into what was going to be another nightmare.
She marched in the open door, noted there were no signs of forced entry nor of struggle in the neat, simple living area. There were plain blue curtains at the window, sheer enough to let in the light. No privacy screens were engaged.
She squatted down to examine a few drops of blood on the edge of an area rug.
She could hear weeping from another room. The son in the kitchen, she thought, then blocked it out. Rising, she gestured the other cops back, sealed up, fixed on her recorder, then went into the bedroom.
Lois Gregg lay on the bed, nude, still bound, with the sash that had strangled her around her neck tied just under her chin in a festive bow.
The creamy envelope with Eve’s name printed on the front was stuck between the toes of her left foot.
There was more blood—not as much as Wooton—on the plain white sheets, on her thighs, on the broomstick he’d left on the floor.
She was a small woman, probably no more than a hundred and ten pounds, with the caramel complexion that indicated mixed-race heritage.
Broken capillaries in her face, in her eyes, the distended and swollen tongue, were signs of the strangulation. The body fought back, Eve thought. Even after the mind went dark, the body fought for air. For life.
Eve spotted the long green robe beside the bed. He’d used the robe sash to strangle her.
He’d have wanted you conscious when he hurt you. He’d want to see your face, the pain, the horror, the terror. Yes, he’d want that this time. He’d want to hear you scream. Nice building like this ought to have decent soundproofing. He’d checked it out, checked you out before today.
Did he tell you what he was going to do to you? Or did he work in silence while you begged?
She recorded the scene, documenting the position of the body, the placement of the robe, the broomstick, the carefully drawn curtains.
Then she took the envelope, opened it, and read.
Hello again, Lieutenant Dallas. Isn’t it a gorgeous day? A day that just begs for heading down to the shore or strolling through the park. I hate to interrupt your Sunday, but you seem to enjoy your work so much—as I do mine—that I didn’t think you’d mind.
I’m a little disappointed in you, however, for a couple of reasons. First, tsk, tsk, on stonewalling the media reports on me. I was really looking forward to the buzz. Then again, you’re not going to be able to keep a lid on the barrel too much longer. Second, I thought you’d be giving me just a bit more of a challenge by this point. Hopefully, my latest offer will inspire you.
Best of luck!
—Al
“Self-important bastard, aren’t you?” she stated aloud, then sealed the note and envelope before opening the field kit.
She’d completed the preliminary exam when Peabody came in. “Lieutenant, I’m sorry. We were in the Bronx.”
“What the hell were you . . .” She broke off. “What is that? What are you wearing?”
“It’s a, um, ah, it’s a sundress.” Flushing a little, Peabody brushed a hand over the poppy pink skirt. “It took us so long to get back, I thought I should come straight here instead of heading home to change into uniform.”
“Huh.” The dress also had skinny little shoulder straps and a very low bodice. It demonstrated what McNab was fond of saying: Peabody sure was built.
Peabody’s ruler-straight hair was covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat, and she was wearing lip dye that matched the sundress. “How are you supposed to work in that getup?”
“Well, I—”
“You said we? You brought McNab?”
“Yeah. Yes, sir. We were at the zoo. In the Bronx.”
“That’s something anyway. Tell him to go check the outside security, and the discs for the lobby level and elevators. This building should have them.”
“Yes, sir.”
She went out to relay the order as Eve walked into the adjoining bath.
He could’ve washed up after, she figured, but there was no sign of it. The bath was tidy, the towels looked fresh. Lois hadn’t liked fuss, Eve mused, or clutter.
Must have brought his own soap and t
owel, too, or took some away with him.
“We’ll want the sweepers to check the drains. Might get lucky,” she said as Peabody came back in.
“I don’t get it. This isn’t like Wooton. Nothing like Wooton. Different type of victim, different method. There was another note?”
“Yeah. It’s sealed.”
Peabody studied the scene, tried to commit it to memory as the recorder did. She noticed, as Eve had, the little vase of flowers on the nightstand, the square catchall box on the dresser that said I LOVE GRANDMA in pink swirly letters on the top, and the framed photos and holos that stood on the dresser, the nightstand, the small desk by the window.
It was sad, she thought. It was always sad to see those bits and pieces of a life when the life was over.
But she tried to shake it off. Dallas would shake it off, she knew. Or bury it, or use it. But she wouldn’t let herself be distracted by the pity.
Peabody looked again, making the deliberate shift from woman to cop. “Do you think there’s more than one killer? A team?”
“No, there’s only one.” Eve lifted one of the victim’s hands. No polish, she noted. Short nails. No rings, but a faint pale circle where one had been, and habitually. Third finger, left hand. “He’s just showing us how versatile he is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I do. See if you can find where she kept her jewelry. I’m looking for a ring, band style.”
Peabody started on the dresser drawers. “Maybe you could explain what you understand, so I can.”
“Victim is an older woman. No sign of forced entry or struggle. She let him in because she thought he was okay. He was probably suited up as maintenance or repair. She turns her back, and he hits her over the head. She’s got a laceration on the back of the skull, and there’s some blood on the living room rug.”
“Was she an LC?”
“Doubtful.”
“Got her jewelry.” Peabody lifted out a clear-sided box with insets of varying sizes. “She liked earrings. Got a few rings, too.”
She brought the case over, holding it while Eve poked through. Exposure to Roarke, and his propensity for dumping glitters on her had taught her to spot the real stuff from the costume. Lois’s body adornments were mostly costume, but there were a few good pieces as well.