Concealed in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “You run a department,” he pointed out. “And have a budget to work within.”

  “Yeah, which got me thinking. I’m juggling all the time, or trying to mine what I have for a little extra. Shift this to open that, then you have to figure out how the hell to fill the hole you opened when you shifted. It’s a pain in the ass, but it has to be done. The Joneses had the same deal. This is what we’ve got, and we have to figure out how to make it work.”

  Those wild blue eyes lit with interest. “Now you’re following the money?”

  “Kind of. Both Nashville and Philadelphia Jones got the training and degrees for the social work and counseling aspects. The older sister—the Aussie now—she got some of it, too. Philadelphia some business management, so you have to figure she was the one with the budget headaches.”

  “I wouldn’t say she did a stellar job of it.”

  Eve pointed her finger at him. “That’s exactly right. They pretty consistently swam in the red, right up until they were swamped by it before Bittmore built them a big, shiny boat. Now, many people like that run on good intentions and the hope that a higher power—one with deep pockets—is going to come to the rescue. But Philadelphia strikes me as more realistic than that. When you’re the one trying to add up the columns and stretch the numbers, you have to be.”

  “All right. What does that tell you?”

  “You sound like Mira,” she commented. “Anyway, it makes me look at the whole production, and the parts of it. Philadelphia’s pulling a lot of weight; the older brother, he looks to be pulling pretty hefty, too—even did some outside work, part-time teaching, part-time preaching—to bring in a little more here and there.”

  “And the younger? Not pulling weight.”

  “It looks like he was weight. Didn’t get the certifications, so he can’t officially run any of the sessions or counsel or teach. Treatment for depression, and meds to deal with it. No specific training I can find. From my shuffling around in the financials, it looks like he had a little stipend from the mother at her death—just him, not the others—a portion of insurance there, but no stipend—which is also telling.”

  “She left what she could to the one she felt needed it most.”

  “Yeah. And for the rest, his siblings covered him. Even the Aussie sister sent them some money now and then,” Eve added. “They paid baby brother out of the budget for general labor, and that’s mostly a bullshit term to get around specifics when there just aren’t any.

  “That goes on for years. Then boom, they get that big, shiny boat. They’re barely on board when they send him to Africa—and it wasn’t first-class travel, but it cost them. They finally have a little breathing room in the budget, and instead of absorbing him into the new place, they ship him off.”

  “And you wonder, was it to just divest themselves of the weight, was it a sudden opportunity they believed would serve him, or did they get him as far away as they could because his mission wasn’t to help young girls, but to kill them.”

  “That’s just what I’m wondering. He’s the one with all the loose time.”

  “And it would take time to lure, to kill, to construct the walls.”

  “Yeah, and where does somebody with a full schedule, with an armload of stuff to do, get that time? But he’s got plenty on his hands. What do you do with that? Maybe you hang around the neighborhood, and you see where some of the kids—like Shelby—go when they get out and around.”

  “A kind of stalking,” Roarke suggested.

  “Maybe. Or maybe envying. Some people kill what they envy. If you’re Montclair Jones, you know what they’re doing, the girls, and maybe you let them know you know and you’re okay with it. You build up that trust—we’re all pulling something over on the do-gooders.”

  “Why kill them?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe you’ve got a stresser that breaks in. Moving to a new place, have this huge opportunity to do more good, and do it right. But the sibs lay it on the line for him. You have to straighten up, bro. We can’t keep floating you the way we have. We can’t squander this gift from the old higher power. So that’s a pisser. Now he has to actually work? Have real responsibilities, and they’re going to be on his ass. And who’s fault is that?”

  “The children.”

  “He could think so. And those girls—they sneak around doing what they want, but he’s going to have to toe the line.”

  “And back to envy.”

  “Yeah, so screw that, screw them. Something like that,” she said, not quite satisfied. “Because I’m not buying all the coincidence in timing, in cross-relationships. It all has a center. If Shelby’s a key, maybe he’s a lock. Put them together and it could open the center.”

  “You’re going to have a busy day.”

  She cocked her head. “Am I?”

  “You’ll want to consult with Mira because talking it out with her will help you refine the theory. You’ll want to talk to both Joneses—separately. You’ll hope to get this DeLonna’s contact information from Sebastian, otherwise you’re going to squeeze me to find his HQ so you can put your boot on his neck until he does. And I imagine you’ll be talking to someone in Africa.”

  He rose as he spoke, came to her, laid his hands on her shoulders. “My meetings pale beside your meetings.”

  “I don’t have meetings,” she insisted. “They’re interviews, interrogations, consults. Meetings are for suits.” She gave his tie a tug.

  “You may not wear one, Lieutenant, but you’re a suit with a badge.”

  “Insulting me so soon after we’ve had sex could mean it’s the last sex you have for the foreseeable future.”

  He pulled her in, caught her mouth with his. “I like my odds,” he told her, taking another quick nip before he let her go.

  They were probably pretty good, she admitted as she headed down. She flipped her coat off the newel post, shrugged into it as she headed out into the frosty, ear-numbing morning. And as she engaged her in-dash ’link to contact Mira, she thought as she often did, if Roarke had turned right instead of left, he’d have made a damn good cop.

  “Eve. You’re moving early today.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a full plate. I’m hoping you can make room for me on yours. I’ve got some thoughts on the Jones siblings I want to run by you. Get your sense.”

  “I have an hour now if you can come to my home.”

  “Oh. I don’t want to push into your off time.”

  “It’s not a problem. I was about to review the notes you sent me in any case.”

  “I’m on my way then. Thanks.” She switched off, contacted Peabody as she made the first turn out of the gates. “I’m swinging by Mira’s for a quick consult, then I want to hit Jones and Jones again. I want to talk to them separately.”

  “You want me to meet you there?”

  “No. Arrange for the sister to come in. Play it nice, but firm. I want her in my space. Then we’ll take her brother. While I’m with Mira, contact Owusu in Zimbabwe. I want—”

  “I get to talk to Africa? Major score!”

  “Glad I could start your day off with a bang. See if she’s talked to her people yet about the younger Jones. And ask if she can—if she hasn’t—get a sense of him. Did he put in the work? Was he good at the work? And get those details of the lion mauling. And if she can find anyone who has a picture of him from back then.”

  “I’m all over it, like a hyena. No crazy and mean. Like a howler monkey.”

  “Hold the howling and get a clear picture of him over there. I want specific details I can use in the interviews with the siblings.”

  “I’ll get what’s to get. Then you’ve got to give me the deep deets on this Sebastian. I can’t believe Mavis knew—”

  “Basics are in the notes. We’ll get deeper later. Get me something from Africa.”

  Eve shut off, and began
to hunt for parking.

  She took the block-and-a-half walk in stride. Fast strides as the air froze her fingers and cheeks. Too early for the off-to-school brigade, she noted, but not for the domestics. Nannies, maids, cooks poured off maxibuses, streamed up from the subway, hoofed it over the sidewalk toward the day’s work.

  Owners, or those owners paid, walked a variety of dogs. She smelled fresh bread, chestnuts roasting, coffee, sugar-dusted pastries.

  Not a bad place to call home, she thought as she walked up to the Miras’ front door. Even before she rang the bell, the door opened.

  As always when she saw the kind and dreamy eyes of Dennis Mira, her heart gave a little tug. Just something about him, she thought, with his cardigans and mussed hair, bemused smile.

  “Eve. Come in out of the cold.” He took her hand to draw her inside. “Where are your gloves? Your hands are freezing. Charlie! Find Eve some gloves.”

  “Oh, no, I have them. I just forget to—”

  “And a hat! You should always wear a hat in the cold,” he said to Eve. “It keeps the heat in.” He winked at her. “Warms the brain. Who can think with a cold brain?”

  In her life he was the only person she actively wanted to hug the minute she saw him. Just press up against him, rest her head on his sloping shoulder and just . . . be there.

  “You can sit by the fire,” he said, nudging her into the living area with its sparkling Christmas tree, its family photos, and lovely, lovely sense of home. “I’ll make you hot chocolate. It’ll do the trick.”

  “You don’t—” Hot chocolate? “Really?”

  “It’s my secret recipe, and the best. Charlie will tell you.”

  “It’s incredible,” Mira confirmed as she came in—looking nothing like a Charlie in an icy blue suit and heeled boots in metallic sapphire. “We’d love some, Dennis.” Then she tugged on the frayed sleeve of his cardigan. “Didn’t I put this sweater in the donation box?”

  “Did you?” He smiled in that absent way he had. “Isn’t that strange? I’ll make the chocolate. Where did I put the . . .”

  “First cupboard, left of the stove, second shelf.”

  “Of course.”

  He walked off, little shuffling sounds in his house scuffs.

  “I can’t get him to let go of that sweater. It’ll probably unravel on him one day.”

  “It looks good on him.”

  Mira smiled. “It does, doesn’t it? Have a seat, and tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Eve sat near the simmering fire to talk of the business of murder.

  Mira listened in that quietly absorbed way she had even when Eve felt the need to get up and pace out the theory.

  “There’s no way it all slides in that neat,” Eve concluded. “‘Hey, we’re moving. Listen, brother, you’re going to Africa to spread the word.’ And between those two events, twelve girls are drowned in the bathtub of the former digs, rolled up and walled up. It has to tie.”

  “The mother’s history of mental illness, and her eventual suicide when the youngest child was still living at home.”

  “He never lived on his own.”

  “Yes, a dependency either innate or fostered. You’re looking at the tub—the mother died in one, now the girls are killed in one.”

  “It’s tidy.”

  “It’s the wrong symbolism. The mother took her life, and it’s a violent act. A blade through flesh, blood in the water. The girls were drowned, not—according to the forensics—bled out.”

  “The killer could have cut their wrists. It wouldn’t show on the bones. And it’s pretty damn annoying not to be able to just look at a body and see.”

  “I’m sure it is. Let’s take the other route. This Sebastian—a fascinating character from your notes—do you tie him in?”

  “I’m not sure where or how, just yet. My first instinct was he’d be top of the list, no matter how Mavis feels about him, because those feelings go back to when she was a kid and he played the center role in keeping her from going hungry and being alone.”

  She shoved her hands in her pockets. “But then you talk to him awhile, and the sense is he’s sincere—in his warped way. That he has a code—it’s screwed up, but it’s a code—and he isn’t capable of doing what was done to those girls. Then, with a little distance, you have to remember he lives and makes his living off the grift. He’s not just a liar, he’s a damn good actor with it. So, he’s a possible, even if just a possible accomplice.”

  “Is that because you sense he is capable after all, or because you instinctively hate the idea whoever killed those girls may already be dead and beyond the reach of justice?”

  “Probably more of the second.” She dropped down again. “But—” Then stopped when Dennis shuffled in again with a tray loaded with cups, what looked like a bowl mounded with whipped cream, and a fat white pitcher.

  “Here we are. Don’t let me interrupt. I’ll fix you up and be right out of the way.”

  “Sit down and have some with us,” his wife instructed. “It’s very possible for older siblings to feel a sense of duty and responsibility for a younger, especially a younger who falls short. They come from a family who based their lives, their work on faith, good work, and the mission to use that work to draw more into the faith. They could hardly exclude their own brother from that mission.”

  She shifted, crossed her legs. “Particularly after the mother’s death, the suicide which would go against their tenets—suicide affects those left behind, and the younger brother was still a teenager when she died.”

  “It messes you up.”

  “Family and loved ones often feel anger and guilt after a suicide. And there’s often a sense of abandonment.”

  “The father went off on a mission within the year, dumped the younger on his older brother and the sister. So they’re responsible, right? That’s the way it would work. They’re responsible for him now. It’s their job to take care of him.”

  “Yes, they would in a very real way have substituted for the parents. At the same time, repeated failures by a sibling or a refusal or disinterest by that sibling in sharing the load, doing the work, would begin to wear. No one rubs you quite as hard the wrong way as a sibling. And while you may criticize, protecting and defending from the criticism of others is common.”

  “He was a drain on the work,” Eve began, then goggled at the cup Dennis offered her—and the frothy hillock of whipped cream, sprinkled with shaved chocolate topping it. “Thanks. Wow.”

  “You’ll want this,” he said, handing her a spoon.

  “From what you’re telling me, yes,” Mira agreed. “He put a strain on the mission they both forged their lives to fulfill. It may very well be they found this post in Africa as a way to push him to contribute, and remove him from the immediate area while they reorganized in the new location.”

  “Could he have snapped?” Eve demanded. “If they gave him an ultimatum. We’re shipping you out if you don’t start pulling your weight?”

  “There’s so little known about him. The medical records are very general, and there aren’t many. The treatment for depression indicates he was troubled, certainly, that he had some difficulty not achieving what his siblings had, suffered from anxiety, and as I said, those abandonment issues. But the doctor who treated him is deceased, and the treatment ended fifteen years ago with the patient’s death.”

  “He was more isolated than his brother and sister. And I have to ask, is this legal?” Eve dipped her spoon into the cool cream and warm, rich chocolate again.

  Dennis beamed at her. “In this house it is.”

  “It’s really amazing. Sorry,” she said to Mira. “What I mean is, being more isolated, having less opportunities to socialize with peers, like the others who went on to study and work outside the homeschooling and missionary stuff, wouldn’t he have a harder time adjusting to that li
fe outside? His mother self-terminates, his father goes off on a missionary gig, leaves him in the care of the older two. They were given a small but decent financial share of the sale of the family home, a kind of before-I’m-dead inheritance. But the younger got an allowance, you can say, in the mother’s will. So much per month he could draw from rather than a lump like his siblings.”

  “Which indicates the parents, either together or separately, had decided he couldn’t or wouldn’t handle a lump sum well, and needed more guidance. And yes, that could have caused some resentment on his part. Could have caused some anxiety and depression. So depressed, anxious, in treatment for both, still in a way under the thumb of his parents, who are now represented by his siblings, he’s pulled into their work as he has nowhere else to go, no particular skills, and from what it seems, no burning ambition.”

  “Ends too loose tend to tangle,” Dennis said as he sipped his chocolate, and Mira nodded.

  “Exactly. You want to know if it’s a viable theory. Could this at-too-loose-ends young man—with emotional challenges, challenges that may very well have been compounded by his separation from socializing with others his age in school, in play groups with other viewpoints and faiths . . . this young man who lacked his siblings’ skills, their drive, and perhaps their vocation, have become so troubled, so tangled, that even the change from one location, which would have been his home now as his parental home had been taken away, to another—yet another, where he was not given a true choice—have caused a psychic break?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s about it.”

  “It’s certainly possible. And the method, the drowning, at the place that had become his home? Perhaps a rebellion against the tenets he’d been raised on, or a terrible attempt to embrace them.”

  “A ritual baptism deal—either to screw with the whole basis of his siblings’ world, or to try to prove he could be a real part of it.”

  “Yes.” Through the hillock of whipped cream, Mira sipped the chocolate. “You lean toward the first of those. You’d prefer it if he acted out of malice. But in this scenario, if it falls along these lines in the end, I’d lean toward the latter.”