The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “Maybe someday, somewhere like it.” Her name wasn’t Dolores, but Deena. Her hair was dark red now, and her eyes a vivid green. She’d killed, would kill again, and her conscience was clear. “When it’s finished, when we’ve done all we can do, it’ll have to be sold. But there are other beaches.”

  “I know. I’m just feeling blue.” She turned, contained elegance, then smiled. “No point in feeling blue. We’re free. At least as close to it as we’ve ever been.”

  Deena walked over, took the hands of the woman she considered a sister. “Scared?”

  “Some. But excited, too. And sad. How can we help it? There was love, Deena. Even if it was twisted at its root, there was love.”

  “Yeah. I looked in his eyes when I killed him, and there was love in them. Sick and selfish and wrong, but love. I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t let myself.” She breathed deep. “Well, they trained me how to do just that, shut out feelings and do the job. But after . . .”

  She closed her eyes. “I want peace, Avril. Peace and quiet and days with nothing but both. It’s been so long. Do you know what I dream of?”

  She squeezed Deena’s fingers. “Tell me.”

  “A little house, a cottage really. With a garden. Flowers and trees, and birds singing. A big silly dog. And someone to love me, a man to love me. Days of that, quiet days of that with no hiding, no war, no death.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  But Deena could look back, year by year. There was nothing but hiding, nothing but death. “I made you a killer.”

  “No. No.” Avril leaned close, kissed Deena’s cheek. “Freedom. That was your gift.” She walked back to the wall of glass. “I’m going to paint again. Really paint. I’ll feel better. I’ll comfort the children, poor little things. We’ll take them away from all this as soon as we can. Out of the country, at least for a while. Somewhere they can grow up free. As we never were.”

  “The police. They’re going to want to talk again. More questions.”

  “It’s all right. We know what to do, what to say. And nearly all of it’s the truth, so it isn’t hard. Wilfred would have respected her mind, this Lieutenant Dallas. It’s so fluid, and somehow straightforward. She’s someone we’d like, if we could.”

  “She’s someone to be careful with.”

  “Yes. Very. How foolish of Wilfred, how egocentric of him to have kept personal records in his home. If Will had known—poor Will. Still, I wonder if it’s to the good that she knows about the project. Or knows something. We could wait, see if she’s able to follow it through. She might end it for us.”

  “We can’t take that chance. Not after we’ve come this far.”

  “I suppose we can’t. I’ll miss you,” she said. “I wish you could stay. I’ll be lonely.”

  “You’re never alone.” Deena went to her, held her. “We’ll talk every day. It won’t be much longer.”

  She nodded. “It’s horrible, isn’t it, to wish for more death. To want it to come quickly. In an awful way, she’s one of us.”

  “Not anymore—if she ever was.” Deena eased back, then kissed her sister’s cheeks. “Be strong.”

  “Be safe.”

  She watched while Deena put a blue bucket hat over her hair, dark glasses over her eyes, then picked up a bag to sling over her shoulder.

  Deena slipped out the glass door, jogged quickly over the terrace, down the steps to the sand. She walked away, just a woman taking a stroll on a November beach.

  No one would know what she was part of, where she’d come from. Or what she had done.

  For a long time, there was only the water and sand and birds. The knock on Avril’s door was soft, as was her voice command to release the lock.

  The little girl stood there, blonde and delicate like her mother, rubbing her eyes. “Mommy.”

  “Here, sweetie, here, my baby.” With love bursting inside her, she hurried over to lift the child into her arms.

  “Daddy.”

  “I know. I know.” She stroked her child’s hair, kissed her damp cheek. “I know. I miss him, too.”

  And in a strange way, one she couldn’t understand herself, she spoke the pure truth.

  11

  EVE CLEARED HER MIND AND LET HERSELF SEE. The quiet house. Familiar. Through the door, alone.

  She’d gone to the Center alone. Killed alone.

  Back to the kitchen. Why the tray? she asked herself as she took the route she imagined the killer had used. To comfort and distract.

  Someone he knew. Had he known his father’s killer, hidden that?

  In the kitchen, she stood a moment, gauging the ground.

  “The domestic didn’t put the food on a tray. It’s unlikely Icove did it for himself.”

  “Maybe he was expecting her all along,” Peabody suggested. “So he shut down the droids.”

  “Possible. But why lock down for the night? You’re expecting company, why set full night security? Could have set it, shut down the droids, then been contacted by her. Came down, let her in himself. Hey, let’s have a snack.”

  But she didn’t like it.

  “The way he was positioned on the couch up in the office. It’s not entertaining company. It’s ‘I just want to lie down awhile.’ Let’s try it this way for now. She comes in, knows the code or has clearance. She comes back here, puts the food together. She knows he’s upstairs.”

  “How does she know?”

  “Because she knows him. She knows. Could easily verify by the house scanner if she’s not a hundred percent. Probably used it, yeah, I would have. Confirm not only his location, but that he was alone in the house. Checks the droids, too, makes sure they’re shut down. Carries the tray up.”

  She turned, walked the way she’d come.

  Was she nervous? Eve wondered. Did the plate rattle on the tray, or was she calm as a sea of ice?

  Outside the office door, Eve mimed holding a tray, cocked her head. “If he’s locked in, she’d use voice command to unlock and open. Why put the tray down to free her hands? Let’s have EDD take a look, see what they see.”

  “Check.”

  Eve walked in, studied the angle. “He wouldn’t have seen her, not at first. He’d have heard her if he’d been awake, but he was facing away from the door. Crosses over, sets the tray down. Did they talk? I brought you a little something. You need to eat, take care of yourself. See, that’s wifely. She shouldn’t have bothered with the tray. That’s a mistake.”

  Eve eased a hip down near the outside center of the sofa. There’d been room for that, she thought, bringing the image of Icove’s body position into her mind. “If she sat like this, it blocks him from getting up, and it’s wifely again. It’s nonthreatening. Then all she has to do is . . .”

  Eve leaned forward, fisting her hand as if holding the handle of a blade, pressed it down.

  “Cold.”

  “Yeah, but not entirely. The tray’s the thing. Maybe the contents were tranq’d, and it was backup. Otherwise it was, I don’t know, maybe guilt. Give the guy a last meal. There was nothing like that the first time. Go in, do it, walk out. No frills.”

  She got up again. “Everything else is efficient. Lock the door behind you, take the discs, reset security. This tray keeps shouting at me.”

  She blew out a breath. “Roarke does stuff like that. Pushes food on me. It’s an instinct with him. If I’m feeling off or upset, he’s going to be shoving a bowl or plate under my nose.”

  “He loves you.”

  “That’s right. Whoever did this had feelings for him. A relationship of some sort.”

  She took a turn around the room. “Let’s go back to him. Why does he lock himself in here?”

  “To work.”

  “Yeah. But he lies down. Tired, off, maybe he thinks better on his back. Whatever.” She poked into the adjoining bath as she thought it through. “Kinda dinky bathroom for a swank house like this.”

  “It’s off the office, inaccessible from the rest. He wouldn’t need
plush.”

  “Yes, he does,” Eve responded. “Look at the rest of the space. Oversized, fancy furniture, art. His private bath at the center was bigger than this, and this is his home.”

  Curious now, she stepped all the way in. “Dimension’s aren’t right, Peabody.”

  She hurried out, Peabody behind her, and went to Avril’s office on the other side of the bath. She stared at the wall, covered with art, the small table, two chairs precisely centered.

  “There’s something between. Something between this wall and the bath.” Walking back over, she studied the small linen and supply closet, pulled the doors open.

  She rapped the back with a fist. “Hear that?”

  “Solid. Heavy. Probably reinforced. Hot doggies! We got us a secret room, Dallas.”

  They searched for a mechanism, running hands over the walls, the shelves. Finally, Eve sat back on her heels, muttered a curse, and pulled out her ’link.

  “Can you squeeze out any time between formulating plans for world domination and buying all the turkey in all the land?”

  “Possibly. If there was incentive.”

  “I’ve got a hidden room. Can’t find entry. It’s probably electronically activated. I can call in EDD, but since you’re still home, you’re closer.”

  “Address.”

  She gave it to him.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Eve sat more comfortably on the floor. “I’ll wait for him, contact the alibi while I do. You want to have chats with some of the neighbors?”

  “No problem.”

  Eve made the call from where she sat, and wasn’t surprised when Avril’s Hamptons alibi checked out precisely. For the hell of it, she contacted the ice-cream parlor where Avril stated she’d taken the children. And was again unsurprised when the statement held up to the letter.

  “You were damn well prepared,” she muttered, and rising, walked back downstairs.

  She tagged Morris.

  “Just about to buzz you, Dallas. Stomach contents confirm the reported last meal. Tox shows a blocker. Standard stuff. And a mild tranq. Both ingested under an hour prior to death.”

  “How mild?”

  “He’d have been relaxed, a little sleepy. He had a standard dose in him of both meds. A cocktail you might take if you had a nasty headache and wanted to rest.”

  “Fits.” She thought of his position on the sofa. “Yeah, it fits. Got anything else?”

  “No other trauma. Healthy male, superior face and body work. He’d have been conscious at time of death, but groggy. Identical weapon, single wound to the heart.”

  The door opened, and Roarke strolled in. “All right. Appreciate the speed. Later. You didn’t have to pick the locks,” she said to Roarke.

  “Practice. Lovely home.” He studied the decor of the foyer and living area. “A bit overly traditional, not particularly creative, but lovely of its kind.”

  “I’ll be sure to put that in my report.” She jerked a thumb toward the stairs, then started up.

  “It’s good security, by the way,” he said conversationally. “It would have taken me longer if EDD hadn’t already fiddled with it. As it was, a couple of neighbors gave me the eye. I believe they took me for a cop. Amazing.”

  She glanced over at him, the god of eye candy in his ten-thousand-dollar suit. “No, they didn’t. It’s in here.”

  He looked around the office. He could see the trace dust left by the sweepers, noted the lack of electronics. Already in EDD, he assumed. “The paintings are the best part of the decor.”

  He walked to a chalk sketch, an informal family portrait. Icove sitting on the floor, one foot planted, his wife sitting beside him, head tipped toward his arm, her legs swept to the side. And the children snuggled in front of them.

  “Lovely, loving work. Pretty family. The young widow is talented.”

  “I’ll say.” But Eve took time out to stand beside him, study the portrait. “Loving work?”

  “The pose, the light, the body language, her lines and curves. It strikes me as a happy moment.”

  “Why do you kill what you love?”

  “We couldn’t count the reasons.”

  “You’re right on that,” Eve agreed, and turned toward the bathroom.

  “You believe she did it.”

  “I know she was part of it. Can’t prove dick at this point, but I know.” She hooked her thumbs in her front pockets, nodded. “It’s behind there, other side of that closet.”

  Like she had, he took scope of the room. “It would be.” From his pocket, he took a handheld. It shot out a thin red beam when he engaged it. Roarke ran the beam over the wall and shelves.

  “What does that do?”

  “Sssh.”

  She heard it, barely. A low hum emitting from the gadget he held.

  “You’ve got steel behind the wall,” he said, glancing at the readout.

  “I figured that out without the toy.”

  He merely lifted an eyebrow at her. Moving closer, he keyed something into the handheld. The hum became a slow, rhythmic beep. He played the beam of light, centimeter by centimeter, until she could hear her own teeth grinding.

  “What if you—”

  “Sssh,” he ordered again.

  Eve gave up and walked out to meet Peabody when she heard the front door open.

  “Snagged a couple neighbors. Nobody noticed any activity. Lots of shock and dismay over Icove. Nice, happy family, according to next-door. Caught the woman—Maude Jacobs—before she headed out to work. Belongs to the same health club as Avril Icove, and they’d work out together sometimes. Have a veggie juice after. Describes her as a nice woman, good mother, happy. Families did the dinner party thing every couple months. She never noticed any friction.”

  Peabody glanced upstairs. “I figured I’d come back since I saw Roarke was here. Check out the room before we hit more neighbors.”

  “He’s working on it. We’ll call EDD,” she continued as they headed back to the office. “Have them bring down—Never mind.”

  The back wall was open. The door, more accurately, Eve corrected. It was a good six inches thick, and she could see a complex series of locks on the inside now.

  “Frr-osty,” Peabody said as she moved toward the opening.

  From inside, Roarke turned, shot her a grin. “It’s an old panic room converted to a high-security office. Once you’re inside, door shut, engaged, there’s no getting in from the outside. All the electronics are independent.” He gestured to a short wall of screens. “You’ve got full surveillance of the house, inside and out. Stock provisions, you could hold out against home invasion, possibly a nuclear attack.”

  “Records.” Eve looked at the blank computer screen.

  “Unit’s passcoded and fail-safed. I could bypass, but—”

  “We’ll take it in,” she interrupted. “Keep the chain of evidence clear.”

  “Well, you can, but I can tell you it’s likely been wiped. And there’s not a single disc in the room.”

  “He destroyed them first, or she took them. If it’s the latter, she knew about the room. The wife would’ve known. Even if Icove didn’t tell her about it, she’d have known. She’s an artist for one thing. She’d understand symmetry, dimensions, balance, and the proportions are off in the bathroom.”

  She took a hard look at the room, walked back out, took another study of the office.

  “He’s not going to destroy the discs,” she decided. “He’s too organized, too like his father. And you know what, this project is their life’s work. It’s their mission. He didn’t think he was going to die, and he’s got that vault in there. He feels secure about that. He feels secure except I’m asking questions, and he realizes his father kept records—coded, sure, but a little too accessible. So maybe he checks the room, just reassures himself. And it’s under his skin.”

  “If he knew the woman who killed his father, wouldn’t he worry she’d come for him?” Peabody stepped out with Eve. “Could be why he s
ent his wife and kids away. For their safety.”

  “A guy thinks there’s a knife at his heart, he’s going to shed some sweat. He didn’t. He was pissy because I poked at his father. Concerned, even afraid that his father’s death was a result of their work and we might screw that up. But you’re afraid for your life, you run and hide. You don’t hunker down in your house and take a sedative. Standard, mild. Morris,” Eve said before Peabody could ask.

  “If there were records,” she added, “the killer has them. Question is, What was on them? And why does she want them?”

  She turned to Roarke. “Let’s look at it this way. You want to eliminate an organization, a company. Destroy it or take it over, whatever. What do you do?”

  “A variety of things. But the quickest, most ruthless would be to cut off its head. Detach the brain, the body falls.”

  “Yeah, like that.” Her lips curved, grimly. “The Icoves were pretty brainy guys. Even then, you’d want all the data, all the intel you can gather. Especially inside stuff. They didn’t run it alone. You’d want to know the other players. Even if you know them, or some of them, you’d want the data. And to cover your tracks.”

  “You think the killer will pick off others involved in this project?”

  She nodded at Roarke. “I’m thinking hey, why stop now. Let’s get the sweepers in here, Peabody. Then we’re at Central. We’ve got a lot of reading to do.”

  She started downstairs while Peabody called it in. “Oh, and Nadine’s on for Thanksgiving,” she said to Roarke. “With maybe a date.”

  “Good. I spoke with Mavis. She said she and Leonardo will be there, ringing.”

  “Ringing what?”

  “With bells on, I assume.”

  “What does that mean, anyway? Why would people come to your house wearing bells. It would just be annoying.”

  “Mmm. Oh, and Peabody, she said if I spoke with you before she . . . No, let me get this just right. If I tagged on you before she made the beep, I should tell you that she and Trina are jacked, and if it chills you, they’ll group it tonight at Dallas’s.”

  Eve went dead white. “Dallas’s what? Trina? No.”

  “There, there,” Roarke soothed, and patted her hand. “Be brave, my little soldier.”