by J. D. Robb
“To go with your scepter?”
“Not for me. Jeez. Mavis. Thing tomorrow. It’s a theme or something. Is a scepter one of those…” She fisted her hand, pumped it up and down in a way that made his eyebrows shoot up as he grinned.
“God, gutter-brain.” But she laughed, shifted her arm well out to the side of her body. “You know, like a staff deal?”
“I believe so.”
“We should find one of those, too. So maybe you could figure out a costume store or something where we can get them on the way to dinner.”
It was remarkably simple to find a rhinestone tiara and plastic scepter, especially when he was shopping with a woman who made a habit of grabbing the first thing that came close to the mark and making an escape.
And since he knew his woman, for the meal he chose Italian in a crowded little trattoria where the atmosphere was simple and the food stupendous. By the time she’d dug into spaghetti and meatballs and hadn’t brought up the case, he let it lie.
“You missed lunch.”
She spun pasta around her fork. “Probably, but I had a donut in there. And I think I forgot to inform you that Peabody and McNab are bunking at our place tonight.”
“Inform me?”
“Summerset. He got pissy because I forgot about a delivery coming in today. Anyway, Peabody wants to decorate for the shower—which I don’t get. You’re getting a party, presents, food. What more do you need?”
“I suppose we’ll find out. That’s handy though. I can pluck McNab up tomorrow, and we’ll go do something manly.”
“Go? Leave?” Absolute panic rushed into her face. “You’re not going to stay for the thing?”
He took a bite of manicotti. “There’s nothing you could do, say, nothing you could possibly offer—including deviant sexual favors—that would induce me to be within a hundred yards of that baby shower.”
“Crap.” She forked up a nice chunk of meatball. “Not even if I combined chocolate sauce with the outfit?”
“Not even.”
“There could be whipped cream. And choreography.”
“An excellent bribe, I grant you, especially for a desperate woman. But no. I’ve already made arrangements to escape with Leonardo. We’ll just add McNab to our happy little troupe.”
“But what if something goes wrong?” She grabbed his arm. “Like the caterer goes whacko, because sometimes they do. Or we lose one of the pregnant women in the house.”
He merely picked up his wine with his free hand.
“Okay, okay.” She rolled her eyes. “I can handle it. But it stinks, if you ask me, really stinks, that you get to go out somewhere drinking beer while I’m stuck at Baby Central. Just because you have a penis.”
“We’ll think fondly of you over beer, me and my penis.”
She ate a little more, then smiled slowly. “You’ve still got to be in the birthing room when she pushes it out.”
“Shut up, Eve.”
“Your penis won’t save you then, pal.”
He picked up a breadstick, broke it in half to offer her a share. “And are you playing games tomorrow? Will there be prizes?”
She winced at his perfect delivery of the perfect stinger. “Okay, I’ll shut up. Want to talk about murder?”
“Please.”
She brought him up to date as they finished the meal and lingered over cappuccino.
“So Cavendish and his admin struck you wrong.”
“Vibes all over the place. Something off there, and the admin pulls his strings.”
“I don’t know him, though I have met the other players in today’s cast.”
“I’ve got the basics on him. Forty-six, trust-fund baby. Likes squash—the game, not necessarily the food. Two marriages, ditched the first wife eight years ago. One child, female, age twelve. Mother has custody, and moved to Paris. Married wife number two as soon as the divorce was final. She’s twenty-nine. Former model. My take there is he went from starter wife to trophy wife and fools around with the admin on the side.”
She narrowed her eyes as she sipped the frothy coffee. “And she wears leather, high-heeled boots, and makes him bark like a dog when they do it.”
“Really?” Amused, Roarke sat back. “And you know this because?”
“Because, of the two of them, she’s the one with the balls. He pushes paper, attends events, takes meetings, and does what he’s told.”
“And did someone tell him to kill Copperfield and Byson?”
“Maybe, and wouldn’t that be tidy?” She frowned over it. “But I’m leaning away from that. The killer was too level-headed, too confident. Cavendish broke a sweat just talking to me. But he knows something, and one of the things he knows is who did it.”
“So you’ll sweat him a bit more.”
“I can do that. I can talk to him again, poke at him a little. But I don’t have enough to charge him with anything and make him flip. I need more. A direct line. I have to find more because I’m betting he was just where he said he was on the night of the murders. Home in bed, and with the covers over his head because he knew what was going on.”
“If the New York branch of the law firm was part of it, used to funnel money or wash funds, I’ll find it.”
He would, Eve thought, not only because he was good, but because his pride was on the line this time out. “Counting on it,” she said. “Maybe we should go get started.”
She knew Peabody and McNab were already there because she could hear the music and the voices coming from what she’d designated as the party room. If it made her a coward, she’d live with it, but Eve made a bee-line for her office.
There she updated her board, then sat down to take a closer look at Ellyn Bruberry.
Forty, she mused as the data scrolled onto her wall screen. No marriages, no offspring. The West Side address listed would give Bruberry a grand view of the park and the price tag to match. Not bad for a paralegal and administrative assistant.
American born, though she’d moved from Pittsburgh to London in her early twenties. To join the firm of Stuben, Robbins, and Cavendish—Mull came later—as a legal secretary. Relocated to New York, and the branch there, as Walter Cavendish’s admin six years before.
After the second marriage, Eve mused.
No criminal record.
Eve took a dip into the financials. Hefty salary, she decided, but it wasn’t illegal to pay employees well. Major influxes in income jibed with Christmas, Bruberry’s birthday, and the time she’d come into the law firm—and would be easily explained as bonuses.
But wasn’t it interesting that her personal accounts were handled by Sloan, Myers, and Kraus?
Not Byson’s client though, she confirmed after a check of his list. She made a note to find out who at the firm handled Bruberry’s financials.
Direct lines, she thought again. What was the most direct line from Copperfield/Byson to Cavendish/Bruberry?
The firm again, but if she spiked out from there it was the Bullock Foundation. Clients of both the law firm and the accounting firm. And Cavendish had been flustered when she’d asked if he’d seen the foundation people during their time in New York.
It was the youngest partner, Robert Kraus, who’d been entertaining Bullock and Chase—and who was alibied by them.
“Hey, Dallas.”
She grunted as she called up Kraus’s data.
“You’re not still working. Come on.” Peabody stood beside the desk, hands on her hips. “You need to look at the decorations we’ve got going. I need to run some stuff by you.”
“You just do what you’re doing. It’s fine.”
“Dallas. It’s after ten.”
“Golly, Mom, did I miss curfew? Am I grounded?”
“See, you’re cranky.” Peabody pointed an accusing finger. “Take a break, take a look. It’s for Mavis.”
“Okay, okay. Jesus.” But if she was going to be dragged into decorations, she wasn’t being dragged alone. Eve marched to Roarke’s office. �
�We’re going to look at decorations and see what else needs to be done. I think.”
“Have fun.”
“Un-uh. We is you, too.”
“I don’t want to.” But he made the mistake of glancing up, and met the same glowering look on Eve’s face she’d seen on Peabody’s. “All right, then. But when this whole business is finally over, you and I are taking that postponed holiday, and doing naked handsprings on the sand.”
“Right with you, ace.”
11
IT WASN’T NUMBERS THAT DANCED IN HER dreams, but rainbows and strange winged babies. When the flying babies began to buzz like wasps and form into packs, Eve clawed her way out of sleep.
She sat up as if her shoulders were on springs and said, “Whoa.”
“Nightmare?” Roarke was already rising from the sofa in the sitting area.
“Flying babies. Evil flying babies with evil wings.”
He stepped onto the platform, sat on the side of the bed. “Darling Eve, we need a vacation.”
“There were balloons,” she said darkly. “And the wings cut through them like razors so they popped. And when they popped, more evil flying babies zoomed out.”
He trailed a finger along her thigh. “Maybe you could make an effort to dream about, oh, let’s say, sex.”
“Somebody had sex, didn’t they, to create the evil flying babies?” Suddenly she reached forward, grabbed fistsful of his sweater. Her eyes radiated desperation. “Don’t leave me alone with all these women today.”
“Sorry. I’m falling back on the penis clause. Which sounds vaguely obscene, when spoken aloud, but I’m using it in any case. No negotiation.”
“Bastard,” she said, but with more envy than heat as she released him to flop back.
“There, there.” He gave her an absent pat.
“Maybe it’ll snow. There could be a blizzard, and people won’t be able to come because it’s a blizzard—a big mother—that brings New York to its trembling knees.”
“Forecast is for a high of twenty-two degrees under clear skies.”
“I heard that. I heard it.” Rearing up again, she jabbed a finger at him. “Not the words, the tone. You think this is funny.”
“No. I know it is. And you’ll end up having a good time, first because Mavis will be so happy, and next because you’ll spend some nonprofessional time with a number of women you like.”
“But, Roarke, there have to be games.”
“You don’t play them.”
Her eyes went cop flat. “Why not?”
He couldn’t help it if he was amused. She managed to be panicked and suspicious at the same time. “You’re the hostess, and it would be wrong for you to participate in the games and win any of the prizes.”
“Is that true?”
“It should be, and that’s your stand on it.”
“Yeah, that’s my stand on it.” She perked up considerably. “Thanks.”
She revved herself up with a workout, a long swim, and a hot shower. Then she snuck into her office to run probabilities on different scenarios.
“You’re working again!”
She actually jolted upright, and felt a small twinge of guilt. “What are you,” she demanded of Peabody, “the work police?”
“You don’t need a cop, you need a keeper. Dallas, the caterer’s going to be here any minute.”
“Okay, fine, good. Somebody can tell me when they’re here.” Eve waved a hand. “I’m just checking some things that have to do with pesky details like double murders.”
But she shut down the machine when Peabody merely stood, gimlet-eyed, actually tapping her foot. “You’re not the work police.” It was said with some bitterness. “You’re the party gestapo.”
“Mavis just called. She didn’t try your ’link because she knew you’d be busy with the shower preparations. She’s on her way over because she can’t wait anymore.”
“Man. I turned my machine off, didn’t I? I’m leaving the office. See, walking out, shutting the door behind me.”
Peabody only smiled. Guilt was the best tool, she knew. She’d learned that one at her mother’s knee.
Eve’s first surprise was that the caterer didn’t want her to do anything. In fact, they wanted Eve and everyone else completely out of the way. Her second was that Summerset had already left the house, and wouldn’t be back until the following day.
“You won’t find any Y chromosomes on the premises this afternoon,” Roarke told her. “Except the cat.”
He stood with Eve in the second-level sitting room. It was larger than the downstairs parlor they used most often, and boasted double fireplaces with malachite surrounds. Sofas, chairs, and an abundance of pillows had been arranged in conversation areas, with a long table, covered now with a rainbow hue of cloths and candles, running along the back wall. Over it, rainbow streamers, pink and blue balloons, and some sort of arty flowered vine flowed out of a sparkling circle and formed a kind of canopy over what Peabody had designated as the gift table.
Baby roses, baby iris, baby’s breath—and an assortment of other baby-type posies Eve had already forgotten—were spilling out of little silver baskets shaped like cradles.
Buffet tables, also rainbow-hued, were already set up. The caterer had dressed one with china following the color scheme, more miniature candles, more flowers, and an ice sculpture of a stork carrying a little sack in its beak.
Eve had been sure it would be silly, and instead it was sort of charming.
Both fires simmered low, and in the center of it all the rocker was draped in rainbows and decked in flowers.
“I guess it looks pretty good.”
“Very sweet.” Roarke took her hand. “Very female. Congratulations.”
“I didn’t do that much.”
“That’s not true. You dragged your feet every chance you got, but you picked them up and did the job.” He brought her hand to his lips, then leaned down to kiss her.
“Oops.” Peabody stopped in the doorway and grinned. “Don’t mean to interrupt if the stork and all the cradles are giving you guys ideas.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Eve warned.
“I’ve got Mavis out here. I thought maybe you’d want to show her in.”
“Has pregnancy affected her eyesight?”
“No, I just—never mind,” Peabody said with a laugh. “Okay, Mavis.”
She might have been carrying an extra twenty pounds, but Mavis could still bounce. She all but boinged into the room on pink airboots that slicked up to her knees. Her blue and white skirt fluttered like flower petals beneath the basketball bulge of her belly. The sleeves of her dress displayed a geometric pattern of color that came to points over the backs of her hands.
Her hair—a soft, pale blonde today—was scooped back in a long, twisty tail as bouncy as she was.
She stopped short, slapped both hands over her mouth. And burst into tears.
“Oh shit. Oh shit” was all Eve could manage.
“No, no, no.” Still sobbing, even as Leonardo rushed in behind her, Mavis waved one of her hands. “I’m so knocked-up. I’m a total victim of the hormones. It’s so pretty! Oh, oh, it’s all rainbows and flowers. It’s so mag. It’s so mag, Dallas.”
She sobbed her way across the room and threw herself into Eve’s arms—bulging belly first.
“Okay, good then. Glad you like it.”
“I abso love it. Peabody!” Mavis flung out a hand, pulling Peabody into a three-way embrace. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Maybe you should sit down.”
“No, I’m okay. I just flood off and on. Isn’t that right, honey-pie?” she said to Leonardo.
“We had baby carrots last night.” He was already passing her tissues. “She cried for ten minutes.”
Obviously the memory made her laugh, as she grinned and turned to give the bulk of him a squeeze. “I don’t know how you put up with me. Three in the morning? I woke up starved. Like shackled-in-the-cellar-for-a-week starved. A
nd my baby bear got up and fixed me scrambled eggs. Oh, oh, check it out!” She bounced again as she looked at the canopied chair. “It’s like a throne, right? I get to sit there.”
“That’s your spot,” Eve confirmed.
“Can I give you a hand, your majesty?” Roarke offered his.
“This is TTF. Too Totally Frosty. You’re going to run away for the day with my sweetie, aren’t you?”
“As soon as humanly possible,” he told her, and helped her into the chair.
“Well, okay. I give you leave.”
“Give her the stuff,” Peabody whispered.
“She might start crying again.”
“I get stuff? Already?” Since she was sitting, the best Mavis could do was bounce on her butt. “What? Where? Oh, God, I love stuff.”
Uneasy about the results, Eve went to a cabinet, took out the scepter and tiara.
“Oh, boy! Uptown squared.”
Relieved because this time Mavis’s eyes glittered with laughter instead of tears, Eve passed the tiara to Leonardo.
“You probably know how to get it on right.”
“Crown me, moonpie,” Mavis told him. “And let the games begin.”
Within the hour, the room was so full of estrogen Eve thought she could bottle it and sell it on the black market. Women nibbled, sipped, cooed over other women’s protruding bellies and chatted about the things she understood they chatted about when they got together as a species.
Hair. That’s a great look for you, and what a mag color! Where do you go?
Clothes. Absolutely fabulous shoes. Are they comfortable?
Men. He just doesn’t listen to what I need to say.
And due to the nature of the event, they talked of babies, babies, and more babies.
The new fact she discovered was that women who’d already had children felt compelled to share their childbirth experiences with those about to head to the labor mines.
Sixteen hours, and two and a half of that pushing. But it was worth it.
Titania popped out as soon as my water broke. If I’d been ten minutes later getting to the birthing center, she’d have been born in the cab!
I had to have a C. Wiley just wouldn’t turn.