The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  “You think I don’t hear you, but you’re wrong.” Eve squeezed into traffic.

  “Oh. Oops.”

  Eve nipped through a light on yellow, snarled at the maxibus that lumbered into her lane. With a wrench of the wheel, she punched through a narrow break, slapped the accelerator, wrenched back, and cut the bus off as neatly as it had her.

  The irritable blast of its horn brought her a nice little glow.

  “So I guess between your parents and the fresh case, you haven’t had much time to work on Stibbs.”

  “I did some. Maureen Stibbs, formerly Brighton, not only lived in the same building as the deceased, but on the same floor. As he does now, Boyd Stibbs often worked from home, while his first wife traveled to her place of employment during the work week. The former Ms. Brighton, while employed as a home design consultant, also worked out of her home office when not traveling to and from clients. This gives the currently married couple time and opportunity for hanky-panky.”

  “Hanky-panky. Is that a legal term?”

  “Boyd Stibbs married Maureen Brighton two and a half years after Marsha Stibbs’s tragic death. I figure that’s a pretty long time if they were canoodling—”

  “Another legal term. Peabody, I’m so impressed.”

  “—while Marsha was alive,” Peabody continued. “But it would also be pretty smart. Still, if they were doing the horizontal rumba, that’s a medical term, and wanted to make it a permanent deal, divorce was the easiest option. It’s not like Marsha had a bunch of money Boyd would lose out on if he ditched her. I can’t figure any motive for premeditation.”

  “And you’re looking for premeditation because?”

  “The letters. If we say that all the statements from friends, relatives, people she worked with, even her husband and her replacement are valid, we work the angle that there never was a lover. So somebody had to plant the letters. Somebody had to write them, and put them in her drawer. After the murder.”

  “Why after?”

  “Because a woman knows what’s in her underwear drawer. She goes into it for a pair of panties, she’s going to find the letters.” Peabody paused. “Is this like a test?”

  “Just keep going. Play it out for me.”

  “Okay, somebody with access to her apartment, somebody who was there the night she died, put the letters in her drawer. And it seems to me that the choice of drawer is female. A guy isn’t as likely to pick the lingerie department to hide something. We don’t know when the letters were written because there were no envelopes, no date stamps. They all could’ve been written the night she was killed. And if they were, that might rule out premeditation and move into covering up an impulse. Crime of passion.”

  “So the theory is person or persons unknown killed Marsha Stibbs on impulse, then put her into the bathtub hoping to cover up murder as an accident. Concerned perhaps that wasn’t enough, this person or persons then wrote letters from some nonexistent lover, planted them in the victim’s underwear drawer so that it might then appear she was killed by said nonexistent lover during an argument.”

  “Okay, it sounds a little out-there.”

  “Then bring it in.”

  “I’m just nervous, because this really feels like a test.” Peabody cleared her throat when Eve merely sent her a stony stare. “Some of the rest of the theory is just instinct. You look at the way the two of them reacted to us. Boyd seemed sad, a little shaky initially, but was glad we were there. It could’ve been an act, but with no time to prepare, it just feels real as does his insistence that Marsha didn’t have a lover.”

  She paused, waiting for Eve’s affirmation or rebuttal, and got nothing but silence. “Okay, on my own. His alibi’s solid, and even if he knew or arranged the killing, it seems to me he’d have been nervous or annoyed that we’d walked into his nice new life and opened the possibility of exposing him. On the other hand, when she comes in, she’s scared, she’s angry, and she wants us out. Away from her nice new life with her dead pal’s husband. Maybe that’s a normal reaction, but it could just as easily be guilt and fear of exposure.”

  “Guilt because she was—what was it?—canoodling with said dead pal’s husband before said pal was dead?”

  “Maybe, but what if she wasn’t?” Anxious, and just a little excited, Peabody shifted in her seat so she could see Eve’s profile. “What if she just wanted to? What if she was in love with him, and here he is, just across the hall, day after day, happily married, seeing her as a friend of his wife’s. She wants him for herself, but he’s never going to look at her that way as long as Marsha’s in the picture. It’s Marsha’s fault he doesn’t love her. Marsha’s fault she’s not living that dream—nice home, great husband, maybe a couple of pretty kids down the line. Pisses her off, makes her unhappy. She’s always got to be acting like the friend and neighbor and she just can’t get the fantasy of what it could be like out of her head.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She has a showdown with Marsha. Boyd’s out of town, now’s the time. She blasts Marsha for going off to work every day instead of staying home and taking care of her man. She doesn’t deserve Boyd. If she was his wife, she’d be there to fix the meals, buy the groceries. She’d give him a child. She’d give him a family. They fight about it.”

  She wanted to see it, as she knew Eve could see such things. But the imagery was still indistinct. “Marsha probably tells her to get the hell out. To stay away from her husband. I bet she said she was going to tell Boyd everything. That neither of them would have anything to do with her again. That’s too much for Maureen. She shoves Marsha, and Marsha falls, cracks her head. File said it was a fall against the corner of a reinforced glass table that killed her. She panics, tries to cover it up. Strips Marsha down, puts her in the bathtub. Maybe they’ll think she slipped, hit her head on the tub and drowned.

  “But then she starts to think again, and realizes that maybe they won’t think it’s an accident. More, this is an opportunity. Like a gift. She didn’t mean to kill her, but it was done. She couldn’t take it back. If Boyd and the police think Marsha’d had a lover on the side, it would solve everything. They’d go off looking for him as a suspect. Why should they ever look at her? So she writes the letters, plants them, then she goes home and waits for it to play out. I bet, after a while, she started to believe it really did happen the way she’d made it seem. It was the only way she could live with it, the only way she could sleep beside him night after night and not go crazy.”

  She blew out a breath, swallowed hard because her throat was dry. “That’s the theory I’m working. Are you going to tell me it blows?”

  “How’d you come to it?”

  “I kept looking at the reports, the data, the photographs. I read the statements until my eyes hurt. Then I was lying in bed last night with all that running around inside my head. So I put it all like in this corner of my brain, and used the rest of it to try to think like you. Or how I thought you’d think. You know, how you walk onto a crime scene and you start visualizing, sort of like you’re watching it all happen. And that was the way I watched it all happen. A little murky, but that’s how I saw it.”

  She started to take another deep breath, then blinked. “You’re smiling.”

  “You’re going to want to get to her when he’s not around. You’ll want to question her when she’s alone. With him and the kid, she’s got defenses built up. She can tell herself she’s protecting them. Get her into Interview. Make it formal. She won’t want to, but the uniform will intimidate her into it. It’s not likely she’ll yell lawyer straight off, because she’ll worry it’ll make her look guilty. Let me know when you’re ready to set it up, and I’ll try to observe.”

  Peabody felt her heart beating again. “You think I’m right? You think she did it?”

  “Oh yeah, she did it.”

  “You knew it. The minute she walked into the apartment, you knew.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I knew or what I know. It’s your
case, so what matters is what you know and getting her to tell you.”

  “If you did the interview—”

  “I’m not doing the interview, you are. Your case. Work out your approach, your tone, then bring her in and break her down.”

  Eve pulled into a driveway, and Peabody looked around blankly. Somehow they’d gotten from city to suburb.

  “Now put it away,” Eve ordered. “Pettibone’s front and center now.”

  She sat a moment, studying the rosy redbrick house. It was modest enough, even simple until you added the gardens. Floods, rivers, pools of flowers flowed out from the base of the house, streaming all the way to the sidewalk. There was no lawn to speak of, though there were tall clumps of some sort of ornamental grasses creatively worked in to the sea of color.

  A stone walkway ribboned its way through to the base of a covered porch where flowering vines, thick with deep purple blooms, wound their way up round posts.

  There were chairs with white cushions on the porch, glass-topped tables, and yet more flowers in pots that had artistically faded to verdigris. Obviously Shelly Pettibone liked to sit and contemplate her flowers.

  Even as Eve thought it, a woman stepped out of the front door carrying a tray.

  She was deeply tanned, her arms long and leanly muscled against the short sleeves of a baggy blue T-shirt. Her jeans were worn and cropped off at midcalf.

  She set down the tray, watched Eve get out of the car. The mild breeze stirred her sun-streaked brown hair worn short and unstyled around the weathered, appealing face of a woman who lived a great deal of her life outdoors.

  As Eve drew closer, she saw that the woman’s eyes were brown and showed the ravages of weeping.

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Mrs. Pettibone? Shelly Pettibone?”

  “Yes.” Her gaze shifted to Peabody. “This is about Walter.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve offered her badge. “My aide, Officer Peabody. I’m sorry to disturb you at this difficult time.”

  “You need to ask me questions. I just got off the ’link with my daughter. I don’t seem to be able to do anything to help her. I can’t think of the right words. I don’t think there are any. I’m sorry, sit down please. I was going to have some coffee. I’ll just get more cups.”

  “You needn’t bother.”

  “It gives me something to do, and just now I don’t have nearly enough to do. I’ll just be a minute. It’s all right if we talk out here, isn’t it? I’d like to be outside for a while.”

  “Sure, this is fine.”

  She went back in, left the door open.

  “A guy dumps you for a younger model after thirty years or so,” Eve began. “How do you feel about it when it kicks off?”

  “Hard to say. I can’t imagine living with anyone for three years much less thirty. You’re the married one here. How would you feel?”

  Eve opened her mouth to make some withering comment, then stopped. She’d hurt, she realized. She’d grieve. Whatever he’d done, she’d suffer for the loss.

  Instead of answering, she stepped over, glanced in the door. “Nice place, if you go for this sort of thing.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this yard. It’s seriously mag, and it must take a ton of work. It looks natural, but it’s really well-planned. She’s got it all planted for maximum effect—seasonally, fragrance-wise, colors, and textures. I smell sweet peas.” She took a deeper sniff of the air. “My grandmother always has sweet peas outside the bedroom window.”

  “Do you enjoy flowers, Officer?” Shelly stepped back out, cups in hands.

  “Yes, ma’am. Your garden’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you. It’s what I do. Landscape design. I was studying horticulture and design when I met Walter. A million years ago,” she said softly. “I can’t quite believe he’s gone. I can’t believe I’ll never see him again.”

  “Did you see him often?” Eve asked.

  “Oh, every week or two. We weren’t married any longer, but we had a great deal in common.” She poured coffee with hands that wore no rings. “He’d often recommend me to clients, as I would him. Flowers were one of the bonds between us.”

  “Yet you were divorced, and he remarried.”

  “Yes. And yes, he was the one who wanted to end the marriage.” She folded her legs under her, lifted her cup. “I was content, and contentment was enough for me. Walter needed more. He needed to be happy, to be excited and involved. We’d lost some essential spark along the way. With the kids grown and away from home, with it being back to the two of us . . . Well, we couldn’t revive that spark. He needed it more than I did. Though it was difficult for him, he told me he wanted a change.”

  “You must have been angry.”

  “I was. Angry and hurt and baffled. No one likes to be discarded, even gently. And he was gentle. There isn’t, wasn’t a mean bone in his body.”

  Her eyes welled again, but she blinked the tears back, took a deep sip of coffee. “If I had insisted, if I had pushed him back into the corner our marriage had become for him, he would have stayed.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I loved him.” She smiled when she said it, heartbreakingly. “Was it his fault, my fault, that our love for each other had mellowed into something too comfortable, too bland to be interesting any longer? I won’t say it wasn’t hard to let him go, to face life on my own. We’d been married more than half my life. But to keep him with me out of obligation? I’ve too much pride for that, and too much respect for both of us.”

  “How did you feel when he married a woman younger than your daughter?”

  “Amused.” The first glint of humor crept over Shelly’s face, and made it pretty and mischievous. “I know it’s petty, it’s small, but I think I was entitled to a moment or two of amusement. How could I be otherwise? She’s a bit of foolish fluff, and frankly, I don’t think they’d have stayed together. He was dazzled with her, and proud the way men are when they’re able to hang something stupendously decorative on their arm.”

  “A lot of women would’ve felt embarrassed, angry.”

  “Yes, and how foolish is that to measure yourself against a silly ornament? My reaction was the opposite. In fact, his relationship with her went a long way to helping me resolve what had happened between us. If his happiness, even temporarily, depended on a beautiful set of breasts and a giggling young girl, well, he wasn’t going to get that from me, was he?”

  She sighed, set her cup down. “She did make him happy, and in her way loved him. You couldn’t help but love Walt.”

  “So I’ve heard. Someone didn’t love him, Mrs. Pettibone.”

  “I’ve thought about it.” All humor fell away from her face. “Thought and thought. It makes no sense, Lieutenant. None at all. Bambi? God, what a name. She’s foolish and flighty, but she’s not evil. It takes evil to kill, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes it just takes a reason.”

  “If I thought, for one instant, that she had done this, I’d do everything I could to help you prove it. To see her pay for it. But, oh God, she’s a harmless idiot who, if she manages to have two thoughts at once must hear them rattling together in that empty head of hers.”

  She couldn’t, Eve thought, have said it better herself.

  “And what reason could she have to do this?” Shelly demanded. “She had everything she could want. He was incredibly generous with her.”

  “He was a very rich man.”

  “Yes, and not one to horde his wealth. The divorce settlement was more than fair. I’d never have to work again if I didn’t love my work. I know—because he told me—that he’d gifted Bambi with a substantial trust when they married. Our children were generously provided for and each has a large share of World of Flowers. The inheritance each of us, and yes, I’m also a beneficiary, will receive upon his death is considerable. But we have considerable already.”

  “What about business associates? Competitors?”
<
br />   “I don’t know anyone who’d wish Walt harm. As for business, killing him won’t effect WOF. The company’s well-established, well-organized, with both our children taking on more and more of the administration. Killing him makes no sense.”

  It had made sense to Julianna, Eve mused. The woman did nothing unless it made sense. “Since you’ve maintained a good relationship, why didn’t you attend his party?”

  “It just seemed awkward. He urged me to come, though not very hard. It was supposed to be a surprise, but of course he knew about it weeks ago. He was very excited. He always was like a little boy when it came to parties.”

  Eve reached into her bag, drew out Julianna Dunne’s two photographs. “Do you know this woman?”

  Shelly took both, held them side-by-side. “She’s very pretty, in both looks. But, no, I’ve never seen her before. Who is she?”

  “What were you doing the night of your husband’s party?”

  She drew a small breath, as if she’d known this was a blow she’d have to face. “I don’t really have what you’d call an alibi as I was alone. I did work out in the garden until almost sunset, and one of the neighbors might have seen me. I stayed home that night. Friends had asked me to dinner at the club, The Westchester Country Club, but I didn’t feel like going out. You might know them. Jack and Anna Whitney. He’s a police commander in the city.”

  Eve felt her stomach sink. “Yes. I know the commander and his wife.”

  “Anna’s been trying to fix me up since the divorce. She just can’t understand how I can be happy without a man.”

  “And are you? Did you wonder that if your husband’s relationship with his current wife failed, as you felt it would, he’d come back to you?”

  “Yes. I thought of that, considered that. And the fact is I don’t think he would have come back.”

  A butterfly, creamy white, flitted across the porch and fluttered down to flirt with the potted flowers. Watching it, Shelly sighed.

  “And I know I wouldn’t have had him if he did,” she added. “I loved him, Lieutenant, and he’ll always be a vital part of my life. Even now that’s he’s gone. This is a man I lived with, slept with, had and raised children with. We share a grandson we both adore. Memories no one else has, and those are precious. But we weren’t in love with each other anymore. And I’ve come to like the life I’m making on my own. I enjoy the challenge, and the independence of it. And while that baffles Anna and some of my other friends, I’m not ready to give that independence up. I don’t know that I ever will be. Walter was a good man, a very, very good man. But he wasn’t my man anymore.”