by J. D. Robb
Police work was too often drudgery. After five hours of staring at her monitor as she ran makes on the names in DeBlass’s books, Eve was more exhausted than she would have been after a marathon race.
Even with Feeney taking a portion of the names with his skill and superior equipment, there were too many for such a small investigative unit to handle quickly.
Sharon had been a very popular girl.
Feeling discretion would gain her more than aggression, Eve contacted the clients by ’link and explained herself. Those who balked at the idea of an interview were cheerfully invited to come into Cop Central, charged with obstruction of justice.
By midafternoon she had spoken personally with the first dozen on the client list, and took a detour back to the Gorham.
DeBlass’s neighbor, the elegant man from the elevator, was Charles Monroe. Eve found him in, and entertaining a client.
Slickly handsome in a black silk robe, and smelling seductively of sex, Charles smiled engagingly.
“I’m terribly sorry, lieutenant. My three o’clock appointment has another fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll wait.” Without invitation, Eve stepped inside. Unlike DeBlass’s apartment, this one ran to deep, cushy chairs in leather and thick carpets.
“Ah . . .” Obviously amused, Charles glanced behind him, where a door was discreetly closed at the end of a short hallway. “Privacy and confidentiality are, you understand, vital to my profession. My client is apt to be disconcerted if she discovers the police on my doorstep.”
“No problem. Got a kitchen?”
He let out a weighty sigh. “Sure. Right through that doorway. Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time.” Eve strolled off to the kitchen. In contrast to the elaborate living area, this was spartan. It seemed Charles spent little time eating in. Still, he had a full-size friggie unit rather than a cold cell, and she found the treasure of a Pepsi chilling. Satisfied for the moment, she sat down to enjoy it while Charles finished off his three o’clock.
Soon enough, she heard the murmur of voices, a man’s, a woman’s, a light laugh. Moments later, he came in, the same easy smile on his face.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“No problem. Are you expecting anyone else?”
“Not until later this evening.” He took out a Pepsi for himself, broke the freshness seal from the tube, and poured it into a tall glass. He rolled the tube into a ball and popped it into the recycler. “Dinner, the opera, and a romantic rendezvous.”
“You like that stuff? Opera?” she asked when he flashed a grin.
“Hate it. Can you think of anything more tedious than some big-chested woman screaming in German half the night?”
Eve thought it over. “Nope.”
“But there you are. Tastes vary.” His smile faded as he joined her at the little nook under the kitchen window. “I heard about Sharon on the news this morning. I’ve been expecting someone to come by. It’s horrible. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“You knew her well?”
“We’ve been neighbors more than three years—and occasionally we worked together. Now and again, one of our clients would request a trio, and we’d share the business.”
“And when it wasn’t business, did you still share?”
“She was a beautiful woman, and she found me attractive.” He moved his silk-clad shoulders, his eyes shifting to the tinted glass of the window as a tourist tram streamed by. “If one of us was in the mood for a busman’s holiday, the other usually obliged.” He smiled again. “That was rare. Like working in a candy store, after a while you lose your taste for chocolate. She was a friend, lieutenant. And I was very fond of her.”
“Can you tell me where you were the night of her death between midnight and three A.M. ?”
His brows shot up. If it hadn’t just occurred to him that he could be considered a suspect, he was an excellent actor. Then again, Eve thought, people in his line of work had to be.
“I was with a client, here. She stayed overnight.”
“Is that usual?”
“This client prefers that arrangement. Lieutenant, I’ll give you her name if absolutely necessary, but I’d prefer not to. At least until I’ve explained the circumstances to her.”
“It’s murder, Mr. Monroe, so it’s necessary. What time did you bring your client here?”
“About ten. We had dinner at Miranda’s, the sky café above Sixth.”
“Ten.” Eve nodded, and saw the moment he remembered.
“The security camera in the elevator.” His smile was all charm again. “It’s an antiquated law. I suppose you could bust me, but it’s hardly worth your time.”
“Any sexual act in a secured area is a misdemeanor, Mr. Monroe.”
“Charles, please.”
“It’s a nitpick, Charles, but they could suspend your license for six months. Give me her name, and we’ll clear it up as quietly as possible.”
“You’re going to lose me one of my best clients,” he muttered. “Darleen Howe. I’ll get you the address.” He rose to get his electronic datebook, then read off the information.
“Thanks. Did Sharon talk about her clients with you?”
“We were friends,” he said wearily. “Yeah, we talked shop, though it’s not strictly ethical. She had some funny stories. I’m more conventional in style. Sharon was . . . open to the unusual. Sometimes we’d get together for a drink, and she’d talk. No names. She had her own little terms for them. The emperor, the weasel, the milkmaid, that kind of thing.”
“Was there anyone she mentioned who worried her, made her uneasy? Someone who might have been violent?”
“She didn’t mind violence, and no, nobody worried her. One thing about Sharon, she always felt in control. That’s the way she wanted it because she said she’d been under someone else’s control most of her life. She had a lot of bitterness toward her family. She told me once she’d never planned on making a career out of professional sex. She’d only gotten into it to make her family crazy. But then, after she got into it, she decided she liked it.”
He moved his shoulders again, sipped from his glass. “So she stayed in the life, and killed two birds with one fuck. Her phrase.”
He lifted his eyes again. “Looks like one of the fucks killed her.”
“Yeah.” Eve rose, tucked her recorder away. “Don’t take any out-of-town trips, Charles. I’ll be in touch.”
“That’s it?”
“For the moment.”
He stood as well, smiled again. “You’re easy to talk to for a cop . . . Eve.” Experimentally, he skimmed a fingertip down her arm. When her brows lifted, he took the fingertip over her jawline. “In a hurry?”
“Why?”
“Well, I’ve got a couple of hours, and you’re very attractive. Big golden eyes,” he murmured. “This little dip right in your chin. Why don’t we both go off the clock for awhile?”
She waited while he lowered his head, while his lips hovered just above hers. “Is this a bribe, Charles? Because if it is, and you’re half as good as I think you are . . .”
“I’m better.” He nibbled at her bottom lip, let his hand slide down to toy with her breast. “I’m much better.”
“In that case . . . I’d have to charge you with a felony.” She smiled as he jerked back. “And that would make both of us really sad.” Amused, she patted his cheek. “But, thanks for the thought.”
He scratched his chin as he followed her to the door. “Eve?”
She paused, hand on the knob, and glanced back at him. “Yes?”
“Bribes aside, if you change your mind, I’d be interested in seeing more of you.”
“I’ll let you know.” She closed the door and headed for the elevator.
It wouldn’t have been difficult, she mused, for Charles Monroe to slip out of his apartment, leaving his client sleeping, and slip into Sharon’s. A little sex, a little murder . . .
Thoughtful
, she stepped into the elevator.
Doctor the discs. As a resident of the building, it would have been simple for him to gain access to security. Then he could have popped back into bed with his client.
It was too bad that the scenario was plausible, Eve thought as she reached the lobby. She liked him. But until she checked his alibi thoroughly, Charles Monroe was now at the top of her short list.
chapter three
Eve hated funerals. She detested the rite human beings insisted on giving death. The flowers, the music, the endless words and weeping.
There might be a God. She hadn’t completely ruled such things out. And if there were, she thought, It must have enjoyed a good laugh over Its creations’ useless rituals and passages.
Still, she had made the trip to Virginia to attend Sharon DeBlass’s funeral. She wanted to see the dead’s family and friends gathered together, to observe, and analyze, and judge.
The senator stood grim-faced and dry-eyed, with Rockman, his shadow, one pew behind. Beside DeBlass was his son and daughter-in-law.
Sharon’s parents were young, attractive, successful attorneys who headed their own law firm.
Richard DeBlass stood with his head bowed and his eyes hooded, a trimmer and somehow less dynamic version of his father. Was it coincidence, Eve wondered, or design that he stood at equal distance between his father and wife?
Elizabeth Barrister was sleek and chic in her dark suit, her waving mahogany hair glossy, her posture rigid. And, Eve, noted, her eyes red-rimmed and swimming with constant tears.
What did a mother feel, Eve wondered, as she had wondered all of her life, when she lost a child?
Senator DeBlass had a daughter as well, and she flanked his right side. Congresswoman Catherine DeBlass had followed in her father’s political footsteps. Painfully thin, she stood militarily straight, her arms looking like brittle twigs in her black dress. Beside her, her husband Justin Summit stared at the glossy coffin draped with roses at the front of the church. At his side, their son Franklin, still trapped in the gangly stage of adolescence, shifted restlessly.
At the end of the pew, somehow separate from the rest of the family, was DeBlass’s wife, Anna.
She neither shifted nor wept. Not once did Eve see her so much as glance at the flower-strewn box that held what was left of her only granddaughter.
There were others, of course. Elizabeth’s parents stood together, hands linked, and cried openly. Cousins, acquaintances, and friends dabbed at their eyes or simply looked around in fascination or horror. The President had sent an envoy, and the church was packed with more politicians than the Senate lunchroom.
Though there were more than a hundred faces, Eve had no trouble picking Roarke out of the crowd. He was alone. There were others lined in the pew with him, but Eve recognized the solitary quality that surrounded him. There could have been ten thousand in the building, and he would have remained aloof from them.
His striking face gave away nothing: no guilt, no grief, no interest. He might have been watching a mildly inferior play. Eve could think of no better description for a funeral.
More than one head turned in his direction for a quick study or, in the case of a shapely brunette, a not so subtle flirtation. Roarke responded to both the same way: he ignored them.
At first study, she would have judged him as cold, an icy fortress of a man who guarded himself against any and all. But there must have been heat. It took more than discipline and intelligence to rise so high so young. It took ambition, and to Eve’s mind, ambition was a flammable fuel.
He looked straight ahead as the dirge swelled, then without warning, he turned his head, looked five pews back across the aisle and directly into Eve’s eyes.
It was surprise that had her fighting not to jolt at that sudden and unexpected punch of power. It was will that kept her from blinking or shifting her gaze. For one humming minute they stared at each other. Then there was movement, and mourners came between them as they left the church.
When Eve stepped into the aisle to search him out again, he was gone.
She joined the long line of cars and limos on the journey to the cemetery. Above, the hearse and the family vehicles flew solemnly. Only the very rich could afford body internment. Only the obsessively traditional still put their dead into the ground.
Frowning, her fingers tapping the wheel, she relayed her observations into her recorder. When she got to Roarke, she hesitated and her frown deepened.
“Why would he trouble himself to attend the funeral of such a casual acquaintance?” She murmured into the recorder in her pocket. “According to data, they had met only recently and had a single date. Behavior seems inconsistent and questionable.”
She shivered once, glad she was alone as she drove through the arching gates of the cemetery. As far as Eve was concerned, there should be a law against putting someone in a hole.
More words and weeping, more flowers. The sun was bright as a sword but the air had the snapping bite of a petulant child. Near the gravesite, she slipped her hands into her pockets. She’d forgotten her gloves again. The long, dark coat she wore was borrowed. Beneath it, the single gray suit she owned had a loose button that seemed to beg her to tug at it. Inside her thin leather boots, her toes were tiny blocks of ice.
The discomfort helped distract her from the misery of headstones and the smell of cold, fresh earth. She bided her time, waiting until the last mournful word about everlasting life echoed away, then approached the senator.
“My sympathies, Senator DeBlass, to you and your family.”
His eyes were hard; sharp and black, like the hewed edge of a stone. “Save your sympathies, lieutenant. I want justice.”
“So do I. Mrs. DeBlass.” Eve held out a hand to the senator’s wife and found her fingers clutching a bundle of brittle twigs.
“Thank you for coming.”
Eve nodded. One close look had shown her Anna DeBlass was skimming under the edge of emotion on a buffering layer of chemicals. Her eyes passed over Eve’s face and settled just above her shoulder as she withdrew her hand.
“Thank you for coming,” she said in exactly the same flat tone to the next offer of condolence.
Before Eve could speak again, her arm was taken in a firm grip. Rockman smiled solemnly down at her. “Lieutenant Dallas, the Senator and his family appreciate the compassion and interest you’ve shown in attending the service.” In his quiet manner, he edged her away. “I’m sure you’ll understand that, under the circumstances, it would be difficult for Sharon’s parents to meet the officer in charge of their daughter’s investigation over her grave.”
Eve allowed him to lead her five feet away before she jerked her arm free. “You’re in the right business, Rockman. That’s a very delicate and diplomatic way of telling me to get my ass out.”
“Not at all.” He continued to smile, smoothly polite. “There’s simply a time and place. You have our complete cooperation, lieutenant. If you wish to interview the senator’s family, I’d be more than happy to arrange it.”
“I’ll arrange my own interviews, at my own time and place.” Because his placid smile irked her, she decided to see if she could wipe it off his face. “What about you, Rockman? Got an alibi for the night in question?”
The smile did falter—that was some satisfaction. He recovered quickly, however. “I dislike the word alibi.”
“Me, too,” she returned with a smile of her own. “That’s why I like nothing better than to break them. You didn’t answer the question, Rockman.”
“I was in East Washington on the night Sharon was murdered. The senator and I worked quite late refining a bill he intends to present next month.”
“It’s a quick trip from EW to New York,” she commented.
“It is. However, I didn’t make it on that particular night. We worked until nearly midnight, then I retired to the senator’s guest room. We had breakfast together at seven the next morning. As Sharon, according to your own reports, was
killed at two, it gives me a very narrow window of opportunity.”
“Narrow windows still provide access.” But she said it only to irritate him as she turned away. She’d held back the information on the doctored security discs from the file she’d given DeBlass. The murderer had been in the Gorham by midnight. Rockman would hardly use the victim’s grandfather for an alibi unless it was solid. Rockman’s working in East Washington at midnight slammed even that narrow window closed.
She saw Roarke again, and watched with interest as Elizabeth Barrister clung to him, as he bent his head and murmured to her. Not the usual offer and acceptance of sympathy from strangers, Eve mused.
Her brow lifted as Roarke laid a hand on Elizabeth’s right cheek, kissed her left before stepping back to speak quietly to Richard DeBlass.
He crossed to the senator, but there was no contact between them, and the conversation was brief. Alone, as Eve had suspected, Roarke began to walk across the winter grass, between the cold monuments the living raised for the dead.
“Roarke.”
He stopped, and as he had at the service, turned and met her eyes. She thought she caught a flash of something in them: anger, sorrow, impatience. Then it was gone and they were simply cool, blue, and unfathomable.
She didn’t hurry as she walked to him. Something told her he was a man too used to people—women certainly—rushing toward him. So she took her time, her long, slow strides flapping her borrowed coat around her chilly legs.
“I’d like to speak with you,” she said when she faced him. She took out her badge, watched him give it a brief glance before lifting his eyes back to hers. “I’m investigating Sharon DeBlass’s murder.”
“Do you make a habit of attending the funerals of murder victims, Lieutenant Dallas?”
His voice was smooth, with a whisper of the charm of Ireland over it, like rich cream over warmed whiskey. “Do you make a habit of attending the funerals of women you barely know, Roarke?”
“I’m a friend of the family,” he said simply. “You’re freezing, lieutenant.”
She plunged her icy fingers into the pockets of the coat. “How well do you know the victim’s family?”