by J. D. Robb
“I’m going for door number two on that one, as the one she walked into led her to that long fall.”
CHAPTER SIX
Eve was halfway through the tunnel heading out when Peabody came in.
“I’m not late!” Automatically quickening her steps in her pink, fussy-topped boots, Peabody checked her wrist unit. “I’m not late.”
“No, I was early. No sign in the female vic of habitual drug use. But she had valerian, peyote, and some as yet undetermined substances in her system—mixed, it appears, with tea and cookies.”
“You think somebody drugged her? But murder/suicide takes—” Peabody’s eyes popped. “Shit! Red Horse.”
“Not according to Morris. Not the same.” And they could all be grateful for it. “Ingested, he believes,” she added as they walked out to the car. “He’s going to crack the whip at the lab so I don’t have to. We wait on that. Where did she get the scissors—shears, Morris called them?”
“Dressmaker shears.” Peabody climbed into the passenger seat, belted up.
“Dressmaker?”
“Broad term, I guess. I have a pair I use when I’m doing some sewing, or a craft project.”
“I went through her residence. I sure didn’t see any signs she did the crafty. No sign in the brother’s place he’d have use for that sort of tool. And if it didn’t belong to either of them, where did she get it?”
“Is it it or them? Shears, scissors—it’s like plural, probably because of the two blades, but it’s still just one tool, so . . . never mind,” Peabody finished when she caught Eve’s cool stare.
“We’re going by to talk to Louise and the fiancé. I want to know if she owned those shears. She had to have an assistant, an admin at work. Dig it up, check with whoever that is if she had something like that, or access to it, in the office.”
“How about the psychics?”
“On the slate.”
“A pair of mine are in the wind. Bench warrants out on them—co-habs, partners. Fraud and theft. He’d rifle through purses and wallets, help himself, while she held a séance. They’ve been running that scam or others for about five years. They pack up and move off fast, pick another spot, try another variation with new names.”
“Darlene ran backgrounds—not a complete idiot—so that should’ve popped. We’re going to factor in the drugs, look for somebody who hypes the use of herbs to help open the portal.”
“The portal?”
“A couple of the brochures used that one. Bridge, portal, channeling. They’ve got a patter, and there’s a sucker born every second.”
“Minute. Born every minute.”
“In my world they pop out every second, and Darlene Fitzwilliams reads like one. She stabbed her brother three times in the heart, didn’t waste a minute, then didn’t waste a minute jumping off the terrace.”
“It looks like that’s what she went there to do.”
“Yeah. What if she thought she was doing something else? It’s not Red Horse, it’s not Jess Barrow’s version of mind-control VR, but we’ve dealt with fatal delusions before. She was smiling,” Eve added. “That ‘I’m sorry, and I know you’ll forgive me’ smile. She wasn’t pissed or afraid, she wasn’t nervous. A woman who’s never committed a criminal act, who’s lived a responsible life, goes to her brother’s door intending to kill him and herself? I should be able to see some nerves. Or at the very least, resolve.”
“Not if someone put the whammy on her. I know what you’re going to say,” Peabody continued in a rush. “There is no whammy. But there sort of is, or could be, when you factor in the drugs.”
“Drugs are drugs, and not a whammy.”
“They assist the whammy, that’s what I’m saying. Make her more susceptible. Then?” Peabody lifted her hands, flicked her fingers out. “Whammy.”
Eve disliked the idea of the whammy, but had to acknowledge it fit. “And what form would this whammy take?”
“Maybe it’s like internal VR, or brainwashing. Brainwashing is a true thing. Documented.”
“I’ll give you brainwashing,” Eve said as she looked for a parking space on Charles and Louise’s pretty street. “Internal VR makes no sense. But some form of brainwashing paired with drugs. When Cerise Devane jumped off the Tattler Building a couple years ago, and I sat there on the ledge trying to talk her in, she was perfectly lucid. She knew who I was, who she was. But she was compelled to fly off that ledge—thought I’d enjoy going with her. So maybe that sort of mind-control paired with drugs, with brainwashing. Maybe a whole new fucked-up way to make people die.
“But why—that’s a key. What’s gained?”
“A lot of money’s at stake now.”
“Yeah, and greed’s a favorite for a reason.”
Eve looked down the street toward Louise’s home when they got out of the car.
The doctor and the former licensed companion were building a good life here, a happy, settled one. On the surface, it had looked the same for Darlene and Henry. Nice house, comfortable and settled.
As shattered now as Darlene’s bones.
“Sometimes people get off on fucking things up. Not much of a motive,” Eve said, considering. “But some people do.”
“Somebody who had a grudge against Darlene or Marcus or Henry Boyle,” Peabody speculated. “Or the Fitzwilliamses in general.”
“Possible,” Eve said as they walked. “The parents—straight accident. I checked it in and out, so their deaths aren’t connected—not in an overt way. But months later both of their children are dead, so . . .”
“A family member who wants more, taking advantage of Darlene’s vulnerability.”
“Yeah. You’ve got to look at it.” She went through the little gate, down the short walk through what had been a garden in the summer, and up to the front door of the dignified brownstone.
Louise answered. She wore leggings and a black sweater—and shadows under her eyes.
“Dallas, Peabody. You have news?”
“Not really, but some questions.”
“We’re in the back. Charles and I cleared our schedules for the next couple of days. We want to be here for Henry. Marcus’s uncle’s on his way here from Europe. The family has a pied-à-terre here, and there’s the estate on Long Island. Gareth and Bria’s New York home,” she explained. “It came to Marcus and Darlene. That was one of the things they were to talk about . . . God.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “Sorry, none of that matters. Come on back.”
“It all matters. Were they going to sell the Long Island house?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s been in the family five, maybe six generations.”
The kitchen and great room sprawled over the back of the house with views of the patio beyond through wide glass doors.
Henry pushed up from his chair, misery and hope warring on his face.
“You know what happened? You know who did this?”
“We’re investigating, Mr. Boyle. We have more questions.”
He sat again, shoving his hands through his hair. “Henry, just Henry. When I woke up, there was a moment I didn’t remember. I could smell her hair. I could smell her. Then I remembered, and it was gone. Even that was gone.”
Louise bent over, kissed the top of his head. “I’ll make fresh coffee.”
“I’ll get it.” Charles brushed a hand down her arm, crossed over into the kitchen.
“Henry,” Eve began, “did Darlene own a pair of dressmaker shears?”
“Dressmaker shears? No. She didn’t sew.”
“Maybe she—or you—had a pair for some other project. You did a lot of the rehab on the townhouse yourself, right?”
“Yeah. I helped design it—with plenty of input from Darli. She had definite ideas about how it should look. We did some of the painting, refinished the floors—we wanted our stamp on
it. But we didn’t use anything like shears. The only specialty shears we have are poultry shears. Darli bought them last year when she got it into her head to try making coq au vin.” His eyes lit for a moment. “That was a disaster. Fun, but . . .” The light died. “They’re in the kitchen somewhere, I guess.”
She’d seen a weird pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer.
“Maybe she had something like that at work.”
“I can’t think why. I don’t see what . . .” He trailed off as Louise took his hand. Eve saw when realization hit him. “Is that . . . That’s what killed Marcus.”
“Would he have had a pair?”
“For what?” Color flooded back into his face—anger now. Denial was over. “He didn’t sew. He didn’t make things. For Christ’s sake, I bought him a set of screwdrivers as a joke, because as smart as he was, he could barely change a lightbulb. They weren’t handy people, Dallas. They were good people. Generous people. Loving. If you’d spend five minutes listening to me, you’d know she didn’t do these things. Why aren’t you—”
“Henry.” Louise said it softly, drawing their joined hands up to her cheek. And he deflated.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know you have to ask questions. I just . . . I smelled her hair. Now I can’t.”
Charles brought in a tray with a tall white pot and five oversized white mugs. He set it down on the table, sat on the arm of Henry’s chair while Louise poured the coffee.
“I didn’t get into this last night,” Charles said. “So I’m going to say this to you now, Henry. I’ve known these two women for a while now. If anything happened to Louise, I’d want these two women looking after her. I’d want them looking for the answers. Because I know they’d find them. Answers won’t bring Darlene and Marcus back, but having the answers will matter to you.”
Nodding, Henry took a mug from Louise and, as he had the night before, cupped it in both hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eve told him. “I went through Darlene’s things. I found these hidden in a drawer in the closet.”
Eve opened the file bag, took out the evidence bag, showed the cards and pamphlets.
“I don’t understand. Hidden?” He took the bag, read through the plastic. “She had all these? Psychics, tarot readers? What would . . . Mediums.” He closed his eyes. “She hid them from me. She couldn’t talk to me about it, so she hid them from me.”
“She never mentioned her interest in this area?”
“God. About a month after her parents died—she and Marcus were in grief counseling, but she stopped going. I asked her why she’d stopped, and she told me she wanted to explore another avenue. She hadn’t been able to say good-bye, had questions she needed to ask them, so she’d gone to a sensitive. A friend of a friend had a friend, that sort of thing. I was . . . tolerant. I probably showed how fucking tolerant. The sensitive she went to didn’t have the capabilities to communicate with the dead.”
He waved his hand by his ear as he used the phrase. “But she had some recommendations. I said something like I thought grief counseling would be more beneficial than tossing time and money at some gypsy with a crystal ball.
“I don’t believe in that sort of thing, so I dismissed it all. I—I dismissed her. So she hid all this from me because she felt I wouldn’t understand or approve.”
“Was she going to someone?” Louise asked.
“We’re looking into that, but we do know she withdrew cash weekly from a new private account she set up a few months ago.”
“A new account?”
“A new account in a different bank. Every week she withdrew nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”
“Ten thousand a week?” The stricken guilt on Henry’s face shifted to puzzlement. “For how long?”
“Including the withdrawal she made yesterday morning, eighteen weeks. Do you know of any reason she’d want or need that much cash?”
“No. Just no. She’d have some cash, sure, but Darlene preferred using plastic. She’d have a clear record monthly that way. She was generous, and she didn’t deny herself either, but she was raised to know where her money went.”
He pointed to the evidence bag. “One of them. One of them was scamming her. Scamming her.” He shoved forward in his seat. “Marcus must have found out and threatened to go to the police. That could be why he wanted to hold the intervention, Louise. Because he found out some fake medium was scamming Darlene.”
“Henry, he would’ve told me,” Louise said.
“But it makes sense,” Henry insisted. “It finally makes sense. This medium got into Marcus’s apartment somehow, and killed Marcus. When Darlene got there, he forced her onto the terrace, pushed her over. You have to find him,” he said to Eve. “You have to find whoever she was paying. That’s who killed her, killed Marcus. You have to find them.”
“I intend to. Do you know if she took any trips, did any traveling in these last eighteen weeks?”
“I know she didn’t. She was supposed to go to East Washington last month and to London, ah, about six, eight weeks ago—both trips she sent her assistant in her place, and handled her part via ’link conference. She said she didn’t want to leave home. Just couldn’t leave home.”
“One more thing. You’ve all said she didn’t use—and that’s bearing out—but did you notice any changes in her behavior, any signs she seemed impaired over the last weeks?”
“She started sleepwalking.”
“Henry, you never told me.”
He shook his head at Louise. “She asked me not to say anything. The first time—maybe three months ago—I found her downstairs, in the kitchen, middle of the night. She was making these pouring motions. I asked her what she was doing, and she looked at me. Through me, I guess, and said she had to pour the tea for the tea party. It was kind of funny, really, and she woke up as soon as I touched her. She didn’t remember getting up.”
He set his untouched coffee down. “A few weeks later, I woke up, heard her talking. She was crawling under the bed, calling out to someone to come back. I thought she meant her parents—that she was having a stress dream about them. I tried to coax her out at first, and she laughed. She laughed, and said she wanted to go down the rabbit hole. She wanted to see where he’d gone. She woke up again when I took her hand.”
“And didn’t remember?” Eve prompted.
“No. She was baffled, and a little embarrassed. It happened one more time about two weeks ago. I woke up, and she was sitting on the side of the bed staring at me. I asked her what was wrong. She said—it was like a riddle. Ah, she said: Why is a crow like a desk? I think.”
“A raven?” Louise asked. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
“Yeah, that’s it. A raven.”
“It’s from Alice in Wonderland, the book. And the riddle has no answer. The rabbit hole, that’s an Alice reference, too. And the tea party could be the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”
“Was she a big fan of that story?” Eve wondered.
“I don’t know,” Henry told her. “Not that I know of, especially. Maybe it’s something she read as a kid, or her parents read to her. So it reminded her of when they were alive, when everyone was safe? I don’t know.”
“All right.” A question for Mira, Eve supposed, the department’s head shrink. “We’ll get back to you,” she said as she rose.
“Isn’t there something I can do?”
“We’ll go be with the family,” Louise told Henry. “In a little while we’ll go be with the family. I’ll walk you out,” she said to Eve and Peabody.
Eve waited until they were out of Henry’s earshot. “There were sedatives and hallucinogens in her system. A bunch of long, complicated names, and some elements we have to wait for the lab to ID. Being as you’re a doctor, I’m telling you I’ll clear you to talk to Morris and Berenski if yo
u think you can be any help putting that part together.”
“She might have taken a sedative, but I can promise you, she wouldn’t have taken a hallucinogen, not knowingly. The sleepwalking—three incidents Henry knows of, which doesn’t mean there weren’t others when he didn’t wake up. That’s a concern. As is the money, and the fact she hid all those cards from Henry, didn’t tell Marcus. She didn’t tell him, or he’d have told me when he asked us to come over, possibly talk with her.”
She gripped Eve’s hand, then Peabody’s. “Someone manipulated her, fed her drugs, caused her to kill Marcus and herself. Why?”
“Find out what she ingested. Leave the rest to us.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Considering the herbs and sleep aids, Eve made the psychic nutritionalist the first stop. Doctor Hester housed her business in a street-level shop in Soho, tucked between a health food store and a bakery.
She’d go for the bakery every time.
The reception/retail area held shelves full of apothecary-style bottles, instructional and motivational discs, candles and crystals.
The girl at the counter sported multiple visible piercings: ears, eyebrow, nose. And a tat of a winged dragon on the back of her right hand.
“A bright and healthy morning,” she said, each syllable heavily weighted with the Bronx. “What service can we provide for you?”
“We’re looking for Doctor Hester.”
“Doctor Hester is preparing for a consultation. If you’d like to book—”
Eve pulled out her badge, held it up.
“We’re fully licensed in accordance with all city, state, and federal laws.”
“That’s not my worry right now. Get your boss.”
“Hang a minute.” She slid off the stool and went through a door behind the counter area.
Eve watched Peabody ease over toward a section of metabolism boosters.