by J. D. Robb
It ended there.
She wore a snug, low-cut tank over very impressive breasts and a snug, short skirt over fairly stupendous legs. A multitude of thin chains of varying lengths sparkled around her neck, over the impressive breasts, and to the waist of that snug, short skirt.
She looked . . . indolent, Eve thought, as if she had all the time in the world to sit there—all sparkle and flame in the dull room—and was mildly amused at where she found herself to be.
“Ms. Delaughter?”
“That’s right.” Patrice did one quick up-and-down sweep, then offered a hand. “You’d be Lieutenant Dallas.”
“I’m sorry you had to wait. I was expecting to go to you at some point.”
“Felicity contacted me. I was in the city, so I decided to come here. It’s a fascinating place. That’s a fabulous jacket. Leonardo?”
Eve glanced down at the blue jacket she’d put on to cover her weapon. “Maybe.”
“Simple lines in a cropped length matched with a strong color in that Nikko blue, and the interest of the Celtic design on the buttons, which match the one on your ring. Clever. And the fit’s perfect.”
Eve glanced down again. She’d just thought of it as the blue jacket.
“Leonardo’s one of the reasons I’m in the city. He’s designing a gown for me.”
“Okay. Do you want something to drink?”
Patrice’s smile went from beautiful to breathtaking. “What’s safe?”
“Water.”
With a laugh, she gestured. “Water it is.”
Eve crossed over, scowled at the vending machine, and mentally warned it not to give her grief. She plugged in her code, ordered two bottles of water, and to her surprise the machine spit them out without incident.
When Eve came back to sit, Patrice held up a hand. “Let me just say, before we start, that I knew some of what Felicity told you today, but not all. We’re friendly, and we love each other, but we tend to drift in and out of each other’s lives. I wish, back when she got involved with Winnie, I’d taken more care with her, that I’d taken care of her. We were both young, but she was, always, softer than I. Sweeter, and more easily hurt. So I suppose I’m here because of that, because I feel, in some ways, responsible for what happened to her. How he treated her.”
“She came through it.”
Felicity smiled again. “Softer and sweeter, and in some ways stronger. The woman he ended up marrying was neither soft nor sweet, and came out of it richer. Maybe a bit harder.”
“You know Annaleigh Babbington?”
“I do, though we’re not particularly close. I dated her second husband for a while.” Patrice flashed that smile again. “We’re colorful, playful fish in an incestuous little pond. From what Felicity said, I imagine you’re going to talk to her at some point. It may have to be a later point, as she’s vacationing on Olympus for the next couple weeks. I can tell you, as it’s common knowledge in our little pond, there’s no love lost between Leigh and Winnie.”
“Is there any lost between you and Sylvester Moriarity?”
“None.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it? About him.”
“Sly.” She sighed, sipped her water. “No woman forgets her first—husband I mean. You’re still on your first.”
“Planning to stay there.”
“We all do. I was crazy about him. Maybe I was a little crazy altogether, but I was young and rich and considered myself invulnerable. He was exciting, maddeningly aloof, and a little dangerous under all that polish. It attracted me—the undercoating, you could say.”
“Dangerous how?”
“Everything was immediate, and harder, faster, higher, lower than everyone else. It had to be or we’d be like everyone else, and that we would never be. We drank too much, did whatever illegals were in style, had sex anywhere and everywhere.” She angled her head. “Did your mother ever pull out that chestnut about if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”
Eve had a flicker, very brief, of her mother’s face, and the loathing in her eyes for the child she’d borne. “No.”
“Well, it’s an old standard. We had to be the first to jump off the cliff. If there was a trend, we were going to set it. If there was trouble, we were going to make it. God knows how much money our parents pulled out of the coffers to keep us out of jail.”
“There aren’t any arrests on your records.”
“Greased palms.” Patrice swept her fingers over her palm. “It’s also a standard and works in every language. We were self-indulgent and reckless, then I did the most reckless thing of all. I fell in love. I believe he had feelings for me, which I thought were love—and might even have been, for a while, in some strange way. Then he met Winnie, and though it took me a long time to see it, Sly loved him more.
“Not romantically, exactly, and not sexually,” she added. “Sly likes women. But what I came to realize after we were married, after it became clear we couldn’t remain so, was he and Winnie weren’t like two sides of the same coin. They were the same side. They didn’t want anyone, not long-term, on that other side.”
“Did he ever hurt you, physically?”
“No, never. I think there might have been others, other women he did hurt, but never me. I was his wife, and that was, again in a strange way, a point of pride—for a while. Still, it was after we were married, a year or so after Winnie and Felicity broke up and Winnie was out and about with women, that Sly asked me if I’d be agreeable to experimenting with a third bed partner.”
She paused, sipped, studied Eve. “Felicity told me she felt you were very nonjudgmental.”
“I have no reason or cause to judge you, Ms. Delaughter.”
“Do me a favor, considering the topic. Call me Pat.” She set down the water, said nothing for a moment as conversations murmured around them, as people came in, as others walked out. “This takes me back. God, I really was crazy about Sly. I thought he was everything I wanted. Exciting, handsome, daring. And at that point in my life I was completely open to trying everything. Except initially I thought he meant Winnie, and that I wasn’t open to.”
“Why?”
She leaned forward. “I came to understand Sly wasn’t everything I wanted, and there was something in there that would doom or damn me, but Winnie? After Felicity broke things off, he was, again under that polish, vicious. There was something in his eyes, in his voice, in his body that sent alarms out. I don’t really know how to explain it to you, but young and adventurous as I was, I wasn’t willing to share a bed with him. And on that point I was very clear, very firm.”
“How’d he take that?”
“He barely spoke to me for the next two weeks, and in fact, took off without me for a few days to spend some time . . . God, I don’t remember where. It hardly matters. When he came back, and we made up, he told me he’d been angry because of my attitude, because I’d insulted his closest friend, and put restrictions on our own relationship.”
She smiled a little. “It didn’t change my mind about those restrictions, but I was relieved when he told me that wasn’t what he wanted either. He didn’t want another man, even his good friend, in bed with us, but another woman. And I thought, what the hell, that could be fun, and I had been pretty harsh about Winnie. So why not?
“He suggested hiring a pro, which would keep things very level. No emotional involvement. I liked the idea, I admit it. And at first it was very sexy, very exciting, strangely intimate. She was skilled and truly beautiful, and seductive. Patient with me as it was my first time with a woman or with more than one lover.”
Eve felt the buzz. “Do you remember her name?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t. I’m not sure I knew it, or if she used her name. Is it important?”
“It might be. Do you remember what she looked like?”
“Perfectly. It’s etched.” Patrice didn’t smile as she tapped her forehead. “Sly enjoyed watching us together for a time, and having us with him, arou
nd him. But then he began to hurt her, he was so rough, so unlike himself—or what I expected. I didn’t like it, but it didn’t seem to bother her. In fact, she soothed me. I remember drinking buckets of champagne, smoking some zoner, doing what I thought was Exotica. Then it all went a little mad. A lot mad. It turned frantic and mean. I had no control, no boundaries. And I have very little memory of the rest of the night, into the next day.”
“He slipped you something.”
“He gave me Whore and a chaser of Rabbit. My husband did that to me.” She pressed her lips together for a moment, gripped the chains around her neck as if they were an anchor keeping her in place. “I like sex. I like a lot of sex, but this wasn’t voluntary. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I thought, when I surfaced, we’ll say, that I’d just overdone it with the alcohol and drugs, with the experiment. Physically I felt sore and sick and blurry for days, enough that Sly had the house droid keep me in bed and bring me soups and teas until it passed. But worse, I had flashes for months after, where I swore I saw Winnie’s face over mine, heard his voice, felt his body. Sly never asked me to repeat the experiment, and told me I imagined things, so I let it go. But part of me knew, from the way Winnie looked at me, I hadn’t imagined it.”
When Patrice lapsed into silence, Eve leaned forward so their eyes met. “Do you need a break?”
“No. No, let’s just get it done. One day I was waiting for a friend at Chi-Chi’s. We were going to have lunch and do some shopping, and the pro slipped into the chair across from me. I was surprised, to say the least. She said there were lines, and my husband had crossed them, but she would deny ever having spoken to me if I told him. She told me he’d given me drugs, and he’d let his friend have me when I was under them.”
Her voice faltered, but she took a long drink of water and came back stronger.
“Maybe I didn’t care, and that was my business. She could lose her license if she engaged with a client who used illegals, so she would deny that, too, if it ever became an issue. But I had a right to know he’d abused me. She told me they’d recorded it. Recorded taking turns with me. That she’d said and done nothing because she was afraid of them, because she was new, because my husband was her client. And she left before I spoke a word, before I could think of a word to speak. I knew she told me the truth.”
“Do you want more water?” Eve asked her.
“No, I’m fine. It was a long time ago. I’m over it.” But she took a deep breath. “I waited. It took weeks. I had to search when he was out of the house, when I knew I’d have plenty of time. But eventually I found the disc. I made a copy, which I still have. Which he knows I still have. I confronted him, and I suppose—technically—I blackmailed him. I got one hell of a settlement in the divorce.” She breathed again, sat back. “I suppose that was cold and mercenary.”
“Personally, I think it was fucking smart.”
That spectacular smile shone again. “Thanks. I’ve never told anyone. Not even my husband—my third—whom I do love, very much. I married a second time before I was over what had happened, and that was a mistake. But Quentin and I have a good marriage, a good life, and I’d rather, even now, he didn’t know. But Felicity thought it was important, vital even, that you understand who these men are.”
“It is. Very. Excuse me a minute.” Eve rose, pulled out her communicator and stepping away contacted Peabody. “My partner’s going to bring in some pictures for you to look at. Is that okay?”
“Yes, all right.” Her fingers closed over her chains again, twisted them, untwisted them. “Should I get out of town?”
“I don’t think there’s a problem for you, but I understand you often travel in the same circles—same place, different times. I’d keep to those different times.”
“That’s easy enough.”
“Are they usually together—in that same place, same time?”
“Often, from what I read, what I hear. They like to gamble and compete, and preen. Well, we all preen, it’s part of what we do. I do see them a bit here and there, and make it a point—it’s pride—to speak to him when I do. But it’s show. We don’t really socialize, we don’t have mutual friends who are actual friends. I think you understand.”
“Yeah.”
“Oddly, I’ve never been afraid of either one of them until now. I figured I had the upper hand, and it was all so long ago. It hardly seems real. Then Felicity called today, and suddenly it was very real, and I’m afraid.”
“Do you want protection, Pat?”
“I can get my own, and I think I will, but thank you. Do you really believe they’ve killed two people?”
Eve kept her gaze steady so Patrice could see the truth in them. “At this point Moriarity and Dudley are persons of interest in my investigation. I have no evidence against either of them at this point.” She waited a beat. “Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand perfectly.”
When Peabody walked in, Eve gestured her over. “This is Detective Peabody. Patrice Delaughter.”
“Thanks for coming in, Ms. Delaughter.”
She smiled, but it lacked some of the earlier brilliance. “It’s been an experience.”
“I’d like you to look at these pictures.” Eve opened the folder, began to spread out the shots. “Tell me if you recognize anyone.”
“Her.” Eve had barely set out the ID photos when Patrice laid a finger on Ava Crampton’s. “That’s the pro Sly hired. She’s older, of course, but I know her.”
“This is the licensed companion Sylvester Moriarity hired when you were married, and who subsequently spoke to you regarding the night you were her clients?”
“Yes. There’s no question about it. She’s stunning, isn’t she? A face that’s hard to forget. She did me a very good turn. I remember her.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Wait.” Patrice grabbed Eve’s wrist. “Felicity said there’d been two murders. Is she one of them?”
“Yes. Here’s what I want you to do. Stay out of his way, off his radar. He’s got no reason to think about you, and we’ll keep it that way. I may need you down the line, but I’ll try to keep the information you gave me out of it.”
“He killed her.”
“I can only tell you she’s dead.”
Patrice closed her eyes. “I’m going to ask my husband to come to New York. I’m going to tell him everything. If you need to use what I’ve told you, use it. She helped me, and she didn’t have to. If he’s responsible for her death, it must go back to that night, mustn’t it?”
“I’d say so. Where’s your husband?”
“Right now he’s in London on business.”
“Leave me your contact information and go there. You’ll feel safer. I can have a couple of officers escort you where you need to go, to stay with you until you’re on your way.”
“Do I look that shaky?”
“You did what was right. Why should you look shaky?”
“I’m going to give you my card. I’m going to take your officers and I’m going to take your advice. And I’m going to contact Felicity and ask that she and her family join us in London.”
“I think that’s a good idea. Peabody.”
“I’ll take care of it. You can wait right here, Ms. Delaughter.”
“I’ve always thought of myself as intrepid,” Patrice murmured. “Now I’m going to ask if you could stay here with me until this is arranged.”
“No problem. Do you know if either Moriarity or Dudley owns a crossbow?”
“I don’t, sorry. I do know they both have an interest in weaponry and war. We have some mutual acquaintances that have been on hunting parties with them, or have gone on the same sort of safaris. Quentin and I aren’t really interested in that sort of thing. I could ask around.”
Eve considered. “When you’re in London, maybe you could contact someone you know who’s been out with them. Without mentioning them specifically.”
“Just asking about the experience,” Patrice said with a nod. “Quentin and I are thinking about trying a safari or a hunting trip. What’s it like, what do you do, any gossip, any stories? Yes, I can do that.”
She leaned forward, looked hard into Eve’s eyes. “I think you know the answer to this, and I think I need to know it. Why her and not me? Why kill her, a hired pro from so long ago?”
“She was the best,” Eve said simply. “You were just his wife, and then you weren’t. But she’d become the best in her field, and the former connection made it—I think—irresistible.”
“Just his wife.” Patrice let out a weak laugh. “Well, thank God I didn’t matter.”
“You will. When this is done, you’ll matter. And, to my way of thinking, that’s the kind of payback money can’t buy.”
Eve rose when Peabody came in with two officers.
15
CONNECTIONS, EVE THOUGHT AS SHE WATCHED Patrice walk away flanked by two burly uniforms.
“You picked big males so she’d feel safer.”
“I thought it would add to it,” Peabody admitted. “She nailed Crampton’s photo. It’s been better than twelve years, but she nailed it.”
“Some faces stay with you.” Her own father’s, Eve thought, over hers in the dark while he pushed himself inside her. She understood, too well, how some faces, some moments, some nightmares never quite faded away.
“So Crampton wasn’t random.”
Eve shook her head, gave a come-ahead gesture as she started back toward her office. “What she was, was unlucky. And your instinct that there were some links in the whole mix was on target.”
“Yay, me. Even if I couldn’t find what I thought should be there.”
“It wasn’t going to show, and that’s something they counted on. The odds of us talking to any of their exes had to be long from their perspective. And if we did, neither of them would consider the women would talk, relive old humiliations.”
“We got lucky.”
“No,” Eve corrected. “We worked the case and got lucky. Ava Crampton’s not only a connection, but probably a sore spot for Moriarity at last. And that added a little bonus to the contest. The random isn’t altogether random, and that’s where I’ve been off, and you were on.”