by J. D. Robb
Eve grunted, frowned.
“Then she gave us a reading. Mega. She said how she was glad we’d come in. She’d needed the positive energy. She wouldn’t charge us for the readings. I liked her, Dallas. She hasn’t got the eyes of a grifter.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll check out the package.” One way to make money, Eve mused, was to round up repeat customers. And a sure way to insure repeaters was to addict them.
“We got to make it.” Mavis was up again, gathering her bags. “I bought this candle for romance. I want to see if it works. See you Tuesday night.”
“Tuesday?”
Mavis tapped her platform sneaker. “Our Halloween party, Dallas. You said you’d come.”
“I must have been drunk.”
“No, you weren’t. Nine o’clock, our place. Everybody’s coming. I even tagged Feeney. See you.”
“Loosen up,” Trina advised as she strolled out. “Wear a costume.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Eve muttered. “Well.” She bounced the small bag of leaves and seeds in her hand. “That was probably a monumental waste of time.”
“They enjoyed themselves. And you’ll feel better once you analyze that mix.”
“I suppose. I’m not getting anywhere.” Eve set the bag on the table. “I keep taking wrong turns. I can feel it.”
“Enough wrong turns, and you usually end up in the right place after all.” He leaned forward, set his hands on her shoulders, and began to rub. “Mavis has a close friend who carries around too much stress.” He worked on the knots. “I wonder who that could be?”
“Shut up.”
He chuckled, kissed the nape of her neck. “You smell wonderful.”
“It’s that goop Trina poured all over me.”
“She mentioned it. She said I’d enjoy it.” He sniffed her neck again, made her chuckle. “And I am. She also said she managed to hold you down for a full body treatment. I’m to pay particular attention to your butt.”
“She certainly did. She tried to talk me into a temp tattoo of a rosebud on my right cheek.” She started to sigh, then bolted up, grabbing her ass. “Jesus Christ, she had me on the table for ten minutes. You don’t think she snuck one on.”
Roarke lifted a brow, then smiled slowly as he rose. “I’ll have to make it my job to find out.”
chapter eighteen
She had a rosebud on her ass, and wasn’t happy about it. Standing naked in the bathroom, Eve adjusted the trifold mirror until she could get a good look.
“I think I could bust her for this,” she muttered.
“Decorating a cop’s posterior without a license?” Roarke suggested as he strolled in. “Felonious reproduction of floral imagery?”
“You’re getting a big charge out of this, aren’t you?” Miffed, Eve snagged a robe off the hook.
“Darling Eve, I thought I made it perfectly clear last night I was on your side of the issue. Didn’t I do my best to chew it off?”
She would not laugh, she ordered herself as she bit down hard on her tongue. There was nothing funny about it. “I’ve got to get some solution or something. Whatever they make to get it off.”
“What’s your hurry? It’s rather…sweet.”
“What if I have to go in for a disinfect? Or need to shower or change at the station? Do you know what kind of grief a butt tattoo’s going to get me?”
He slid his arms around her, clever enough to get them under rather than over the robe. “You’re not working today.”
“I’m going in. I’ve got to check my unit, see if Feeney shot back some data.”
“And it won’t make any difference if you do it Monday morning. We’ve got the day off.”
“To do what?”
He merely smiled, slid his hands lower to stroke her rosebud.
“Didn’t we just do that?”
“It bears repeating,” he mused, “but it could wait a bit. Why don’t we spend the day lazing around the pool?”
Lazing around the pool? It had a certain appeal. “Well, maybe…”
“In Martinique. Don’t bother to pack,” he told her, planting a quick kiss on her mouth. “You won’t need anything but what you’re wearing.”
She spent the day in Martinique, wearing nothing but a smile and a rosebud. That might have been why she was dragging a bit more than usual on Monday morning.
“You look tired, Lieutenant.” Peabody dug a bag out from her field kit, set two fresh cream donuts on the desk. She was still beaming over the fact that she’d gotten them through the bullpen without the hounds sniffing them out. “And sort of tanned.” She peered closer. “You get a flash?”
“No. Just got some sun yesterday, that’s all.”
“It rained all day.”
“Not where I was,” Eve muttered and filled her mouth with pastry. “I’ve got a probability ratio to run by the commander. Feeney worked some numbers, we’re still pretty light, but I’m going to shoot for round-the-clocks on the top suspects.”
“I don’t suppose you want my probability ratio on your chances of getting it. New interoffice came down this morning about excess overtime.”
“Fuck it. It’s not excess if it’s necessary. Whitney could play it to the chief—and the chief could play it to the mayor. We’ve got two high-profile homicides, generating a lot of media. We need the manpower to close them and turn off the heat.”
Peabody risked a smile. “You rehearsing your pitch.”
“Maybe.” She blew out a breath. “If the numbers were a few points higher, I wouldn’t have to pitch so hard. There are too many people involved; that’s the problem.” Lifting her hands, she pressed her fingers to her eyes. “We’ve got to run the name of every member of both cults. Over two hundred people. Say we eliminate half on data and profile, then we’ve still got a hundred to tag, check alibis.”
“Days of work,” Peabody agreed. “The commander would probably spring for a couple of uniforms to knock on doors, sweep out the obvious noninvolved.”
“I’m not sure there are any obvious noninvolved.” Eve pushed away from her desk. “It took more than one person to transport Lobar’s body, strap him onto that form. And it took a vehicle.”
“None of the primes owns a vehicle large enough to have carried and concealed the body and the pentagram.”
“Maybe one of the membership does. We run names through vehicle licensing. Failing that, we start checking on rentals, vehicles reported stolen on the night of the murder.” She pushed at her hair. “And it’s just as likely whoever dumped him jumped a vehicle from one of the long-term lots, and nobody ever noticed.”
“Do we check, anyway?”
“Yeah, we check, anyway. Maybe Feeney can spare somebody in EDD to do some of the grunt work. Meanwhile, you get started, and I’ll go begging to the commander.” She punched her ’link when it beeped. “Dallas, Homicide.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Louis?”
Eve cocked a brow. “You want to talk about the charges against your client regarding resisting, you talk to the PA.”
“I need to talk to you,” he repeated, and she watched as he lifted his hand to his mouth and began to gnaw away his perfect manicure. “Alone. Privately. As soon as possible.”
She lowered a hand, signaling Peabody to keep back and out of view. “What about?”
“I can’t talk about it on the ’link. I’m on my pocket unit, but even that’s risky. I need you to meet me.”
“Come here.”
“No, no, they may be following me. I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I’m being careful.”
Had he made the shadow Feeney’d put on him, Eve wondered, or was he just being paranoid? “Who might be following you?”
“You’ve got to meet me,” he insisted. “At my club. The Luxury on Park. Level Five. I’ll leave your name at the desk.”
“Give me some incentive, Louis. I’ve got a full plate here.”
“I think—I think I saw a murder. Just you, Eve.
I won’t talk to anyone else. Make sure you’re not followed. Hurry.”
Eve pursed her lips at the blank screen. “Well, that’s incentive. I think we’ve caught a break, Peabody. See if you can sweet-talk Feeney into giving you an extra pair of hands from EDD.”
“You’re not going to meet him alone,” Peabody protested as Eve grabbed her bag.
“I can handle one scared lawyer.” Eve bent down, checked the clinch piece strapped to her ankle. “We’ve got a man outside the club in any case. And I’m leaving my communicator on. Monitor.”
“Yes, sir. Watch your back.”
The fifth floor of the Luxury Club held twenty private suites for the members’ use. Meetings of a professional or private nature could be held there. Each suite was individually decorated to depict its own era, and each contained a complete communication and entertainment center.
Parties could be held there, of the large or the intimate nature. The catering department was unsurpassed in a city often preoccupied with food and drink. Licensed companions were available through the concierge for a small additional service charge.
Louis always booked Suite 5-C. He enjoyed the opulence of the eighteenth-century French style with its emphasis on the decorative. The rich fabrics of the upholstery on curved-backed chairs and velvet settees appealed to his love of texture. He enjoyed the thick, dark draperies, the gold tassels, the gleam of gilt on pier glass mirrors. He had entertained his wife, as well as an assortment of lovers, in the wide, high, canopy bed.
He considered this period to have embodied hedonism, self-indulgence, and a devotion to earthly pleasures.
Royalty had ruled and had done as it pleased. And hadn’t art flourished? If peasants had starved outside the privileged walls, that was simply a societal mirror of nature’s natural selection. The chosen few had lived life to the hilt.
And here, in midtown Manhattan, three hundred years later, he could enjoy the fruits of their indulgence.
But he wasn’t enjoying them now. He paced, drinking unblended scotch in quick, jerky gulps. Terror was a dew on his brow that refused to be wiped away. His stomach roiled, his heart rabbitted in his chest.
He’d seen murder. He was nearly sure of it. It was all so hazy, all so surreal, like a virtual reality program with elements missing.
The secret room, the smoke, voices—his own among them—lifted in chant. The taste, lingering on the tongue, of warm, tainted wine.
Those were all so familiar, a part of his life now for three years. He’d joined the cult because he believed in its basic principles of pleasure, and he’d enjoyed the rituals: the robes, the masks, the words repeated and repeated while candles guttered into pools of black wax.
And the sex had been incredible.
But something was happening. He found himself obsessing about meetings, desperately craving that first deep gulp of ceremonial wine. And then there were the blackouts, holes in his memory. He’d be logy and slow to focus the morning after a rite.
Recently, he’d found blood dried under his nails and couldn’t remember how it had gotten there.
But he was starting to. The crime scene photos Eve had shown him had clicked something open in his mind. And had filled that opening with shock and horror. Images swirled behind his eyes. Smoke swirling, voices chanting. Flesh gleaming from sex, the moans and grunts of vicious mating. Dank black hair swaying, bony hips pumping.
Then the spray of blood, the gush of it, spurting out like that final cry of sexual release.
Selina with her feral, feline smile, the knife dripping in her hand. Lobar—God it had been Lobar—sliding from the altar, his throat gaping wide like a screaming mouth.
Murder. Nervously, he twitched the heavy drapes open a fraction, let his frightened eyes search the street below. He’d seen a blood sacrifice, and not of a goat. Of a man.
Had he dipped his fingers into that open throat? Had he slipped them between his lips to taste the fresh blood? Had he done something so abhorrent?
My God, dear God, had there been others? Other nights, other sacrifices? Could he have witnessed and blanked it from his mind?
He was a civilized man, Louis told himself as he jerked the draperies back into place. He was a husband and a father. He was a respected attorney. He wasn’t an accessory to murder. He couldn’t be.
With his breath coming fast and short, he poured more scotch, stared at himself in one of the ornately framed mirrors. He saw a man who hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, hadn’t seen his family in days.
He was afraid to sleep. The images might come more clearly in sleep. He was afraid to eat, sure the food would clog in his throat and kill him.
And he was mortally afraid for his family.
Wineburg had been at the ceremony. Wineburg had stood beside him and had seen what he had seen.
And Wineburg was dead.
Wineburg had had no wife, no children. But Louis did. If he was in danger and went home, would they come for him there? He had begun to understand during those long, sleepless nights, when liquor was his only company, that he was ashamed at the thought of his children discovering what he had participated in.
He had to protect them and himself. He was safe here, he assured himself. No one could get inside the suite unless he opened the door.
Possibly, he was overreacting. He mopped his sweating forehead with an already sodden handkerchief. Stress, overwork, too many late nights. Perhaps he was having a small breakdown. He should see a doctor.
He would. He would see a doctor. He would take his family and go away for a few weeks. A vacation, a time to relax, to reevaluate. He would break off from the cult. Obviously, it wasn’t good for him. God knew it was costing him a small fortune in the bimonthly contributions. He’d gotten in too deeply somehow, forgotten he’d entered into the cult out of curiosity and a thirst for selfish sex.
He’d swallowed too deeply of wine and smoke, and it was making him imagine things.
But he’d had blood under his nails.
Louis covered his face, tried to catch his breath. It didn’t matter, he thought. None of it mattered. He shouldn’t have called Eve. He shouldn’t have panicked. She would think him mad; or worse, an accessory.
Selina was his client. He owed his client his loyalty as well as his professional skill.
But he could see her, a knife gripped in her hand as she sliced it across exposed flesh.
Louis stumbled across the suite, into the master bath and, collapsing, vomited up scotch and terror. When the cramps passed, he pulled himself up. He leaned over the sink, croaked out a request for water, at forty degrees. It poured out of the curved gold faucet, splashed into the blindingly white sink and cooled his fevered skin.
He wept a moment, shoulders trembling, sobs echoing off the shining tiles. Then he lifted his head, forced himself to look in the mirror once more.
He had seen what he had seen. It was time to face it. He would tell Eve everything and shift his burden into her hands.
He felt a moment of relief, sweet in its intensity. He wanted to call his wife, hear his children’s voices, see their faces.
A movement reflected in the glass had him whirling, had his heart bounding into his throat. “How did you get in here?”
“Housekeeping, sir.” The dark woman in the trim black-and-white maid’s uniform held a stack of fluffy towels. She smiled.
“I don’t want housekeeping.” He passed a shaking hand over his face. “I’m expecting someone shortly. Just leave the towels and…” His hand slid slowly to his side. “I know you. I know you.”
Through the smoke, he thought through the cracked ice of fresh terror. One of the faces in the smoke.
“Of course you do, Louis.” Her smile never wavered as she dropped the towels and revealed the athame she held. “We fucked just last week.”
He had time to draw breath for a scream before she plunged the knife into his throat.
Eve strode out of the elevator, bristling with annoyance. The reception dr
oid had kept her waiting five full minutes while he checked her ID. He’d given her a hassle over taking her weapon into the club. She’d been considering just using it on him to shut him up when the day manager had bustled out full of apologies.
The fact that they’d both been aware he’d been apologizing to Roarke’s wife rather than Eve Dallas had only irritated her.
She’d deal with him later, she promised herself. See how the Luxury Club would like a full-scale inspection by the Department of Health, maybe a visit from Vice to check out their LCs. She had strings she could pull to insure the management a couple of days of minor hell.
She turned toward 5-C, started to punch the buzzer under the peep screen. Her gaze flickered over the security light. It beeped green for disengaged.
She drew her weapon. “Peabody?”
“Here, sir.” Though her voice was muffled against Eve’s shirt pocket.
“The door’s unlocked here. I’m going in.”
“Do you want backup, Lieutenant?”
“Not yet. Stay on me.”
She slipped inside, soundlessly, shut the door at her back. She kept to her defensive crouch, sweeping her weapon and her gaze through the room.
Fancy furniture, ugly and overdone in her mind, a rumpled suit jacket, a half-empty bottle. Drapes drawn. Quiet.
She stepped farther into the room, but kept near the wall, guarding her own back as she circled. No one hid behind the furniture, behind the drapes. The small kitchen was empty and apparently unused.
She stepped to the doorway of the bedroom, again crouched, again sweeping her weapon. The bed was made, heaped with decorative pillows and apparently hadn’t been slept in. Her gaze moved to the closet, the firmly shut carved doors.
She sidestepped toward it, then heard the sounds from the bathroom. Quick, heavy breathing, grunts of effort, a distinctly female chuckle. It passed through her mind that Louis might be having a quick roll with the LC of his choice, and she gritted her teeth in annoyance.