The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “Anyone else?”

  “No. Will was very cautious about security. We changed the codes every few weeks. A bother,” she said with the barest hint of a smile. “I’m not very good with numbers.”

  “How was your marriage, Mrs. Icove?”

  “How was my marriage?”

  “Any problems? Friction? Was your husband faithful?”

  “Of course he was faithful.” Avril turned her head away. “What a terrible thing to ask.”

  “Whoever killed your husband was either let into the house or knew the codes. A man, under stress, might send his wife and children out of town for a day or two in order to spend time with a lover.”

  “I was his only lover.” Avril’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I was what he wanted. He was devoted. A loving husband and father, a dedicated doctor. He would never hurt me or the children. He would never stain our marriage with infidelity.”

  “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult.”

  “It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem possible. Is there something I should do now? I don’t know what I should do.”

  “We’ll need to take your husband’s body in, for examination.”

  Avril winced at that. “Autopsy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you have to. I don’t like the thought of it, of what will happen. One of the reasons we rarely discussed Will’s work was because I don’t like the thought of the . . . the cutting and lasering.”

  “Squeamish? A doctor’s wife—and a woman who likes crime drama.”

  There was a hesitation before that ghost of a smile. “I guess I like the end results, but could do without the blood. Do I have to sign anything?”

  “No. Not now. Is there anyone you’d like us to call for you? Anyone you want to contact?”

  “No. There’s no one. I have to get back to my children.” Her hands came out of her lap, pressed to her lips as they trembled. “My babies. I have to tell my babies. I have to take care of them. How will I ever explain?”

  “Do you want a grief counselor?”

  Avril hesitated again, then shook her head. “No, not now. I think they’ll need me. Just me, for now. Me, and time. I have to go to my children.”

  “I’ll arrange to have you escorted back.” Eve got to her feet. “I’m going to need you to stay available, Mrs. Icove.”

  “Of course. Of course I will. We’ll stay in the Hamptons tonight. Away from the city. Away from this. The media, they won’t leave us alone, but it’ll be better there. I don’t want the children exposed. Will would want me to shield the children.”

  “Do you need anything from here?”

  “No. We have all we need.”

  Eve watched her go, drive away in the sedan, this time with a police escort.

  When she was satisfied with her on-site, Eve gestured to Peabody. “My home office is closer. I’m going to write the report from there, and arrange for your transport home.”

  “You want me with you?”

  “For the moment.” She headed out to her car, handing Peabody the record of her interview with Avril Icove. “Listen to it, then give me your impressions.”

  “Sure.”

  Peabody settled into the car, switching the replay on as Eve drove.

  Eve drove through her own gates, listening to Avril’s voice, her own questions.

  “Shaky,” Peabody said. “Teary, but holding up.”

  “What’s missing?”

  “She never asked how he died.”

  “Never asked how, never asked where or why or who. And never asked to see him.”

  “Which is strange, I grant you. But shock can make for strange.”

  “What’s the number-one question a shocked family member asks when informed?”

  “Number one’s probably: Are you sure?”

  “She never asks, never insists on proof. She starts off with the ‘Was there an accident?’ routine, fumbles around to find her balance. Okay on that. She was shaking when I took her in, that works, too. But she never asks how he died.”

  “Because she knew? That’s reaching, Dallas.”

  “Maybe. She never asked how we got in—how we found him. Never said: ‘Oh God, was there a break-in, a burglary?’ Never asked if he went out and got himself mugged. I never told her he was killed in the house. But if you watch her face on the record, she looked through the doorway toward the stairs going up several times. She knew he was dead up there. I didn’t have to tell her.”

  “We can verify whether or not she was where she said she was during the time frame.”

  “She’ll have been there. She had that pat. She’ll be alibied tight. But she’s in this somewhere.”

  They sat in front of the house, Eve frowning through the windshield.

  “Maybe he was catting around on her,” Peabody suggested. “She uses what happened to his father as inspiration, and gets somebody to off him. Maybe she was doing the catting, and figured she could lap up more cream with him dead. Gets her lover the security code, clears his voice print prior. He sticks the husband, mimicking the MO from the first murder.”

  “Where’d the tray of fruit and cheese come from?”

  “Shit, Dallas. Icove could’ve ordered himself a snack.”

  “Came from the kitchen unit. I checked.”

  “So.”

  “So why go downstairs, order a snack, haul it up. You want a snack, use the office AutoChef.”

  “Lee-Lee Ten,” Peabody reminded her. “Maybe it’s like that. Maybe he likes to putter in the kitchen when he’s got something on his mind.”

  “He’s no kitchen putterer. She might be, Avril, but not him. Not Dr. Will.”

  “He could’ve been downstairs, decided to go up. Ordered it to take up with him. Gets up there, decides, I’m not hungry right now, stretches out, falls asleep. Wife’s handsome yet sleazy lover slips into the house, goes up, goes in, shoves the scalpel into his heart, takes the disc, resets security, and walks away.”

  Eve made a noncommittal sound. “We’ll talk to friends and neighbors and associates, check her personal finances again, go through her routines.”

  “But you don’t like my handsome-yet-sleazy-lover angle.”

  “I don’t discount the handsome yet sleazy lover. But if so, they moved damn fast to have it this smooth. I’m betting this was planned as carefully, and as much in advance, as the old doc’s. Same people, same motive behind both.”

  “Maybe Dolores is her handsome yet sleazy lover.”

  “Maybe. In any case, we look at Avril, and find the link.”

  Eve pushed open her door. “Take the vehicle. Come back at seven hundred. We’ll put in a couple hours here before we go into Central.”

  Peabody checked her wrist unit. “Wow! Looks like I may get five hours’ sleep.”

  “You want sleep? Sell shoes.”

  Eve wasn’t surprised to find Summerset, still fully dressed, in the foyer. “Icove’s son’s now as dead as he is.” She peeled off her coat, tossed it over the newel post. “You really want to help, turn up the soft glow of memory light and look back hard. He was into something.”

  “Must everyone you see carry stains?”

  She glanced back as she walked upstairs. “Yeah. If you want to find out who killed him more than you want to canonize him, you’ll look for them, too.”

  She kept going up, and straight into her office. Roarke came through the adjoining door.

  “If I came home and a cop met me at the door,” she began, “and told me you’d been murdered, what do you figure I’d do?”

  “Fall into a pit of despair from which you would drown for the rest of your sad, empty life.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get serious.”

  “I rather liked that one.” He leaned on the doorjamb. “First, I imagine you would kick the unfortunate messenger—and anyone else stupid enough to get in your path—out of your way. To see for yourself. I would hope you’d weep an ocean of hot and bitter tears over my body. Then you�
��d find out everything that could be found out and hunt my killer down like a rabid dog to the ends of the earth.”

  “Okay.” She sat on the edge of her desk and studied him. “What if I didn’t love you anymore?”

  “Then my life would no longer be worth living, and I’d have probably self-terminated or simply died of a broken, battered heart.”

  She had to grin at him, then sobered and shook her head. “She didn’t love him. The widow. She put on a dignified show, but she didn’t have all the lines, and she didn’t—What’s it when actors . . .” She threw out her arms, put a horrified expression on her face, slapped her arms crossways over her chest.

  “Miming? Please don’t do that again. It’s rather frightening.”

  “Not miming. People should be allowed—no, they should be required to chase mimes down the street with bats. Emote, that’s the word. Avril didn’t emote believably. See there was a tone when she talked about him, and another when she talked about her kids. She loves the kids. She didn’t love their father, or not anymore. Not through and through. Peabody figures she had some side action.”

  “Seems reasonable. You don’t?”

  “When do I have time for side action when you’re nailing me every chance you get?”

  He reached out, gave her hair a quick tug. “Quick tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Must be the buzz, because I’ve got one going on this. Maybe she had a side dish. And maybe she’s that smart and that quick and calculating. Duplicating her father-in-law’s murder to muddy the waters. But I’m thinking it is what it looks like. Connected murders by or on behalf of the same parties. And she’s in it.”

  “Why? Money, sex, fear, power, rage, jealousy, revenge. Aren’t those the headliners?”

  “Power’s in there. They were powerful men, killed with a tool of their own trade. If it’s rage, it’s ice cold. I don’t see fear, and money doesn’t give me the buzz. Jealousy’s unlikely. Revenge—that’s the unknown.”

  “The money’s plentiful, and well channelled. I haven’t, as yet, found any that’s questionable. Their accounts are ordered, extremely well organized and maintained.”

  “There’s more somewhere.”

  “Then I’ll find it.”

  “Here’s the gist.”

  Eve ran it through for him quickly. As she spoke, he came in, opened a recessed door, and took out brandy. He poured a snifter for himself, and knowing his wife, ordered her a cup of black coffee. He hoped it would be her last of a long day.

  She didn’t like them, her victims, he thought. It wouldn’t stop her from pursuing whoever was responsible for their deaths, but it wasn’t punishing her as murder often did.

  It was the puzzle that gave her the buzz she’d spoken of, the buzz she’d use and burn through until she found the answers.

  But the dead, this time, didn’t haunt her. The girls she believed they’d used would. And for them, he knew, she’d burn through until she found those answers and exhausted herself.

  “It’s not impossible the system was compromised,” he said when she’d finished. “Depends on the skill of your B-and-E man.” He passed her the coffee. “But in that neighborhood, at that time of the evening, you’d have to have extreme skill. Particularly extreme if when EDD examines the system they still find no sign of tampering.”

  “It’s more likely she had the codes, and a voice box or clearance. We’ve taken in the droids, too, and EDD will take them apart, see if any were compromised. If Icove’s orders were countermanded by the wife at some point earlier today, one of the droids could have opened the door for the killer, then had its memory washed.”

  “It would show. Unless, again, you’re extremely skilled.”

  “He wasn’t eating—Icove. No appetite. So if his tummy rumbled, okay, he wants a little bite. But he’s working in his office. Sequestered there. Wiping data, I’ll bet your fine ass.”

  She paced now, walking it through. “He doesn’t go downstairs to the kitchen to order a tray of food. It’s not efficient. And you know what it is—a pretty tray with pretty fruit, artfully arranged cheese and whatnot. It’s wifely.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Roarke said dryly. “I don’t believe my wife has ever artfully arranged cheese on a tray for me.”

  “Bite me. You know what I’m saying. It’s female and fussy. The sort of thing fussy females do to cajole somebody to eat. But it wasn’t the wife. She’s in the Hamptons, eating ice cream with the kiddies, entertaining the neighbors. Making damn straight sure somebody can swear on a mountain of Bibles she was somewhere else when that scalpel went into Icove’s heart. So maybe Icove was fooling around and somehow his side dish and his wife are in league.”

  “Back to sex.”

  “Yeah. Maybe he was cheating on both of them. Maybe his sainted father was a perv and diddled with all three. But that’s not it.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t feel like sex. It’s the project. It’s the work. She lied to me about knowing about his work, knowing about any long-term private research. That was the missed beat in her routine. There was the rage, just a flicker. I saw it in her eyes.”

  She sipped her coffee. “She could’ve planted the weapon at the Center. Who’s going to question Dr. Will’s wife if she wanders around? Easy enough to palm a scalpel, conceal one. She’s the main link between the two victims. Former ward of one, wife of the other. Maybe, if this project goes back far enough, she was part of it.”

  “It’s a long time to wait to take your revenge,” Roarke pointed out. “A lot of emotional ties during that time. She couldn’t have been forced to marry and live with, have children with Will Icove, Eve. It had to be her choice. If she’s involved, isn’t it more likely she found out about this project—objected, was appalled or enraged?”

  “Then she’s still got a choice. If you’re that appalled, you report it. Could do it anonymously. Give the authorities just enough to make them investigate. You don’t kill the father of your children because you’re upset about his side work. You leave him, or you fry him legally. You kill two men like this? It’s a personal act, caused by a personal act.”

  She shrugged. “I think. I’m going to talk to Mira.”

  “It’s late. Let’s get some sleep.”

  “I want to write this up first, while it’s fresh in my mind.”

  He crossed to her, kissed her brow. “Don’t drink any more coffee.”

  Alone, she wrote the report, added some case notes. Then some questions.

  Avril Icove—living relatives?

  Exact date and circumstances of Icove’s guardianship?

  Daily, weekly routines? Times out of the house alone? Where? When?

  Possible connection to woman known as Dolores Nocho-Alverez. Any body or face work?

  Last visit to the Center prior to father-in-law’s death.

  I’m what he wanted.

  What, if anything, did she take to the Hamptons?

  She sat back, let it circle through her mind another time or two. Wished for coffee.

  She shut down and walked to the bedroom. He’d left the light on low, so she wouldn’t come into the dark. Eve stripped, dragged on a nightshirt. When she slid into bed, he drew her into his arms to spoon.

  “I wanted more coffee.”

  “Of course you did. Go to sleep.”

  “She didn’t want them to suffer.”

  “All right.”

  She started to drift, warm in his arms. “She wanted them dead, but she didn’t want them to suffer. Love. Hate. It’s complicated.”

  “It certainly is.”

  “Love. Hate. But no passion.” She yawned, hugely. “If I needed to kill you, I’d want you to suffer. A lot.”

  He smiled in the dark. “Thanks, darling.”

  She smiled along with him, and slipped into slumber.

  10

  AT SEVEN A.M., EVE WAS DRINKING HER SECOND cup of coffee and studying the data she’d pulled up on Avril Icove.

  She noted Avril’s date of birth, he
r parents’ dates of death, and that she’d become Icove’s legal ward before her sixth birthday.

  Eve read through Avril’s educational data—Brookhollow Academy, Spencerville, New Hampshire, grades one through twelve, with continuing education Brookhollow College.

  So the kindly doctor had put his ward in a boarding school straight off the bat. How had she felt about that? Eve wondered. Loses her mother—and where had the kid been while Mommy was off in . . . where had it been? Africa. Who’d kept the girl while the mother was off saving lives, and losing her own in Africa?

  Then she loses her mother and gets shipped off to school.

  No living relatives. Really bad luck there, Eve thought. No sibs; parents were both only children. Grandparents dead before she was born. No records of aunts or uncles or fricking second cousins twice removed.

  Kinda weird, Eve thought. Most everyone had some relation somewhere. However distant.

  She didn’t, but there were always some exceptions to the rules.

  Jeez, look what had happened to Roarke. Go around all your life thinking you’re it, then bam! Got yourself enough relatives to people a small city.

  But Avril’s records indicated no blood kin except her two children.

  So, she’s almost six years old, tragically orphaned, and Icove, her legal guardian, puts her in a swank school. Busy surgeon, busy becoming Icon Icove, raising his own kid, who’d have been, what, about seventeen.

  Teenage boys had a habit of getting into trouble, causing trouble, being trouble. But her run of Dr. Will had shown her a record as spotless as his father’s.

  Meanwhile Avril’s doing sixteen years at basically the same school, which struck her as close to a prison term. Of course, she considered as she sipped more coffee, school had been a kind of jail for her.

  Marking time, she remembered, until she’d been of legal age and could escape the system that had gobbled her up after she’d been found in that alley in Dallas. Then straight to the Police Academy. Another system, she admitted. But her choice. Finally, her choice.

  Had Avril had a choice?

  Art major, Eve read, with minors in domestic sciences and theater. Married Wilfred B. Icove, Jr., the summer after she’d gotten her degrees—putting him in his middle thirties, with no blemish on his official data, no cohabs.