Strangers in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Good enough for me. It’s not the megabucks Ava reaps, but it’s solid. It’s…proportionate, if you think about it. And it’s another button to push when we get Custer into Interview. Thanks.”

  She mulled it over as she undressed. “Some of the seminars Anders offered are on budgeting, financial planning. What do you bet Ava talked to Suzanne about her money situation and how it could get a lot brighter?”

  “A basic strategy would be to list all advantages. And push home all the disadvantages of the status quo. I imagine some of those seminars dealt with being proactive, with empowerment, making tough choices to improve your family situation. Any and all could be twisted by a clever woman to seduce, as you said, a vulnerable one.”

  “So many mind games,” Eve mused, “so little hard evidence.”

  “It’s cooking until morning,” he reminded her. “And speaking of seductions.” He gripped her hips. “I believe we have to finish making up.”

  “Oh yeah. I guess I could work that in now.” Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she pushed off the balls of her feet, rising up with his helpful boost to wrap her legs around his waist. “How mad were we?”

  “Furious.”

  “It didn’t seem that bad, looking back.”

  “It was a pitched battle that nearly shook the foundation of our marriage.”

  “My ass.”

  “Yes, it is.” He gave it a squeeze before tumbling to the bed with her. He laughed down at her, then kissed her lightly. “It’s a good day when it ends like this.”

  She laid a hand on his cheek. “They’re pretty much all good days for me now, even the bad ones.”

  All good, she thought, with him. When her mouth lifted to his, they both sank in.

  So it was to be slow and easy, quiet and sweet. And so married, Eve thought, with one anticipating the other. A rise, a fall, a turn, a glide. A thrill, yes, it would always and ever be a thrill—the feel of him, the taste of him. But comfort twined with it, a velvet ribbon through the silver blade.

  Her pulse quickened, and muscles, tight from a long, long day, relaxed.

  He felt her give, that slow, fluid yielding to him. To herself. She warmed his blood, steadied his heart even as its beat went fast and thick. He drank her in, there, just there under the line of her jaw where the skin was so amazingly sweet. Pleasure slid through him as her hands stroked, gripped, whispered over him.

  It was she who took him in, opened and asked and took, guiding him into the heat. Surrounding him with it so that each long, slow thrust pulsed and pumped through them both.

  Slow, beautifully slow, drawing out and out and out every drop of pleasure. She stared into his eyes, her fingers locked with his now, clamped together as they held each other to that lazy, that torturous pace. She held, even when her breath came short, her head arched back.

  He pressed his lips to the curve of her throat. Skimmed up the scrambling pulse, once again along that sweet spot under her jaw. His mouth found hers, and with that final link, let himself go.

  20

  EVE SET UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, LINING up the data she’d already accumulated and organized. For now, she set aside the results of Roarke’s explorations. The warrants would pull that information in soon enough.

  She decided to say nothing about the buffet table, the extra seating, that had found their way into her office. What would be the point? She skimmed over her notes, took a last round with her murder boards.

  Baxter surprised her by walking in just before eight.

  “Guess the brunette wasn’t so hot after all.”

  “She was smoking. I left her warm and cozy in…that’s food. Hot damn!”

  Eve watched him bullet over to the buffet, lift the lid of the first warmer. “Yo, that is pig meat.” He plucked out a slice of bacon, bit in.

  “Just help yourself,” Eve said dryly.

  “Gonna.” Bearing no shame, Baxter grabbed a plate. “While I do you can tell me what you’ve got that has me here eating meat of pig—and hey!—egg of actual chicken at eight hundred on a Saturday.”

  “You’ll get it when the team gets here.”

  “We’ve got a team now?” He surfed the warmers, began to pile the plate with food while he studied Eve and the buffet offerings. It seemed to her it was a tough toss-up which interested him more.

  “We’ve got a team now. Where’s Trueheart?”

  “On the way. Peabody?”

  “The same. I’ve called in Feeney and Mira and…the civilian,” she said as Roarke walked in.

  “Baxter.”

  “Primo pig. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” Roarke poured himself a cup of coffee, lifted his eyebrows at Eve. “Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah, yeah, why not? We’ll see if we can work in the briefing between courses.”

  “Woohoo, breakfast!” Peabody all but skipped into the room, just ahead of McNab.

  “I told you not to feed the puppies,” Eve scolded.

  “But they’re so cute.” Roarke handed her the coffee.

  “Sorry, am I late?” Trueheart hurried in. “I missed the…Wow.” His young hero face went bright as a birthday candle at the sight of the buffet.

  “Grab some pig, kid,” Baxter told him. “Team feed. Hey, Feeney, Dr. Mira.”

  “Good morning. Isn’t that lovely!” Mira shot a smile at Eve, beamed at Roarke. “And so considerate.”

  “Don’t eat all the damn bacon, McNab.” Feeney muscled him aside to claim his own.

  “There’s ham, too,” McNab told him with his mouth full of it.

  “When you all finish stuffing food in your faces, maybe you could listen up.”

  “I got no problem listening while I’m stuffing.” Feeney glanced around. “You?”

  “Well, damn it, everybody just fill it up and sit down with it somewhere.” Cops and food, she thought. Put them in the same room, invite chaos. “This is a goddamn official briefing not an all-you-can-eat.”

  “Here you are, then.” Roarke handed her a plate of bacon and eggs. “You won’t be so cross if you have a bit of breakfast.”

  “This is your fault.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” He grinned without an ounce of remorse. “Go on, then, shovel some in.”

  She did, as everyone else was. “Some of you vultures…sorry,” Eve said to Mira, “no offense.”

  Mira took a neat bite of creamy eggs. “None taken.”

  “Some of you may be aware that Detective Pig-Eater there and his aide, Officer Danish, caught a homicide a couple months back. Baxter, quick overview.”

  “Custer, Ned,” he began, and reeled off the basic facts.

  When he’d finished, Eve flipped Suzanne Custer’s ID and data on screen. “The widow’s alibi holds,” she said. “The ’link to ’link transmissions she made originated in her apartment, and EDD analysis verifies they were live trans, not recorded. Suzanne Custer didn’t slit her husband’s throat. She not only wasn’t there, but lacked the physicality for the killing blow.”

  “Too short, too slight,” Baxter confirmed between shovels.

  “The extensive and thorough investigation by the gluttonous primary and his aide unearthed no sidepiece, no relative, no friend who might have killed Custer on the wife’s behalf,” Eve continued. “Said investigation found no financial payment, or other bartering tool that may have been used by the wife to hire the hit. The widow does, however, benefit financially from Custer’s death, and as the vic had a documented history of spousal abuse, adultery, and kept his fist closed over the purse strings, the widow also benefits on emotional, physical, and practical levels from his death.”

  “Dallas, we can’t pin her.” Baxter lifted his hands, one of them holding a chunk of grilled ham speared on a fork. “We dead-ended on every angle we played with her connected to the murder.”

  “She went white.” Trueheart shifted in his seat as Eve turned her gaze on him. “When Detective Baxter and I went to inform her, she didn’t seem all that surprised to f
ind cops at the door. More tired, resigned. She said how she didn’t have money for bail. And when we told her he was dead, she went white. It didn’t feel faked, I guess I want to say. It rang true.”

  “It probably was true. Let’s switch over to the Anders case. Peabody and I caught this one.”

  Baxter rose to get more coffee as Eve laid out the salients. “Are you looking for a connect?” he asked. “Because both vics appear to have been killed by an LC, or a sex partner?”

  “That’s an interesting connection, isn’t it? And one of the mistakes made. Ava Anders.” Eve ordered Ava’s ID photo and data split screen with Suzanne’s. “Also solidly alibied at the time of her husband’s murder. While she apparently has more friends, certainly more influence and resources than Suzanne, no evidence leads to murder for hire. Her circle of friends don’t play in. She also gains financially, and when you scrape away at the surface of her claims of a happy marriage to the lies and manipulations underneath, she gains on several other levels.”

  She turned to study the screen. “These women have a great deal in common, under the surface. And they’re connected. Another mistake. Suzanne Custer’s two kids are part of the Anders sports programs. She’s attended several of Ava’s seminars and mommy retreats. She’s done some volunteering, too.”

  “Huh.” It was all Feeney said, but Eve glanced at him, and saw it had clicked.

  “You think the Anders woman got the idea to off her husband from what happened to Custer?” Baxter’s brows drew together as he stared hard at the screen. “Little Suzanne caught a lucky break, why can’t I? Maybe she talks an LC into doing her the favor, pays her off through the program or the company, then…”

  “Simpler than that,” Feeney commented and enjoyed another scoop of hash browns. “Simpler’s best.”

  Baxter frowned, then…“Well, Christ.”

  It hit, Eve noted, hard enough for Baxter to forget his coffee and pig meat. “Give me a hand, will you,” she said to Roarke.

  Together they turned Eve’s murder board so the second side faced the room. “Ava Anders to Bebe Petrelli and Cassie Gordon. They didn’t pan out for her, but she tested waters there. Ava Anders to Charles Monroe. Professional LC, clean record, sterling rep. Use him to build her claim that her husband liked the kink, and she didn’t. That she loved him regardless. Ava to Brigit Plowder and Sasha Bride-West. Alibis. Girlfriends, tight circle.”

  As she outlined, Eve tapped each photo, each connection.

  “Ava to Edmond and Linny Luce—friends of vic who would, in turn, testify as to the comfortable and happy marriage. Except they don’t like her—under the surface, they don’t like her a bit. She didn’t count on that. She didn’t count on any real connection being made between her—lady of the manor, lady bountiful—with the less fortunate women in the program she oversees.”

  Now she pinned her finger to Ned Custer’s photo. “She sure as hell didn’t count on any connection between the murder of a philandering, blue-collar asshole and the murder of her renowned philanthropist husband. Murders committed months apart, with different MOs, in different parts of the city.”

  “It could work,” Peabody said under her breath. “It could really work.”

  “It did work,” Eve corrected. “Two men are dead.”

  “You think they traded murders. Fuck me,” Baxter added.

  “I know they did. Ava’s been planning this a long time. At least two years, since I believe she killed her father-in-law. But probably longer than that. Once the father-in-law was out of the picture—” Eve tapped Reginald Anders’s photo on the board. “Lots more at stake. More money, more power, more control. That skin she was wearing, boy, that really had to start to tighten up on her. Every single day, to have to look at this guy she’d married, play the contented wife, listen to him drone on and on about his sports, his business, his programs. Planning the murders, that would help her get through it. That light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “Yes,” Mira agreed when Eve turned to her. “For a goal-oriented personality, one who sees the big picture, the planning is part of the reward. For one who’s skilled in long-term role-playing, there would be considerable satisfaction in the success of that role. But you’re talking years, Eve. Any actor, even one so amoral and self-serving, would require breaks.”

  “The vic traveled a lot, she encouraged it. And she would often entertain during those trips, leaving out the vic’s nephew and closer friends. Her parties, her way. And Charles. He added to her cover, to the picture, but let’s not discount the release of good sex—especially when you’re in the driver’s seat. The client holds the power with an LC.”

  “If she did Custer, she must’ve stalked him,” McNab put in. “The wife couldn’t know what bar he’d troll in the night of. And Anders couldn’t have pulled it off on impulse. She had to be set.”

  “Exactly right. We’ll canvass his haunts again, and show Ava’s photo, and the photo of her with red hair I’m having Yancy generate. She picked the flop, had to. Her type wouldn’t leave that to chance.”

  “Agreed,” Mira said.

  “We find a connection between her and the flop. Show her photo there. She’s not going to be alibied for the night of Custer’s murder, but we’re going to get that solid. She bought the wig, she bought the clothes. We’re going to find out where. We’re going to go over the case file from the father-in-law’s death and find her mistakes. And we’re going to bring her in. We’re going to sew her up, and we’re going to take her down for two counts of murder, and one count of conspiracy to commit.”

  “Suzanne Custer,” Baxter murmured.

  “Yeah, she’s the needle in the haystack and the needle for the thread. She trusts you.”

  “Yeah.” Baxter sighed it. “Yeah, she does.”

  “We’ll use that. We’re going to break her down, Baxter, you and me. We’ll break her because she’s not built like Ava.”

  “She got nervous.” Trueheart shifted his attention to Baxter. “When we went back to talk to her, a few days after the murder, she was jumpy and nervous. She didn’t want to talk to us. You smoothed her down.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It set off a little buzz, but there was nothing to tie her. Nothing. So I put it down to regular nerves and the situation. She had me, goddamn it.”

  “Now we’ve got her,” Eve reminded him. “Dr. Mira, can you give us a personality profile on Suzanne Custer?”

  “From Detective Baxter’s overview, I’d say she’s a woman who accepts or perhaps expects her own victimization. She accepted, or certainly lived with, her husband’s behavior. While it appears she sought more for her children, she failed to take advantage of programs offered for abused women. It’s possible she didn’t see herself as such. She doesn’t control, or seek control. At this point, until further study, my opinion would be she fears and seeks those with authority over her.”

  “A woman who does what she’s told.”

  “So it would seem,” Mira said, “from the data I have at this point. I’d like to look at her background, her childhood.”

  “I’d appreciate if you could do that ASAP. Feeney, McNab, I need a search on electronic purchases. Look for the wig, costumes re Ava. Dig in. She may have picked them up a year ago, two years. Hell, she might’ve had them for a decade. Look for all communications between her and Suzanne Custer and her personal ’links, and any at Anders’s. I’ve got warrants to check all communication devices owned by Plowder and Bride-West.”

  “On it,” Feeney told her, and kept eating.

  “Trueheart, you’re with Peabody. Check for Suzanne’s purchases at a smut shop called Just Sex. Her husband shopped there, so odds are if she needed anything for the job, that’s where she’d go. Get the medicals on her from her health clinic—a Dr. Yin—and prescriptions from its pharmacy. Tap the Transit Authority. She had to get from her apartment to the Anders house and back. Mother of two, I bet she uses the subway routinely, and a fare card.”

  “Lieutenant.” True
heart raised his hand and lowered it again as Baxter elbowed him. “I don’t think she’d leave the kids alone. I don’t think she’d have gone out and left her kids unattended. She’s just not the type for it.”

  “Okay. Then let’s find out if she got a sitter, or where her kids were on the night of. If the civilian has time…”

  “The civilian can probably carve out a few minutes here and there,” Roarke commented.

  “A remote was used to shut down the security at the Anders house. A high-end and illegal remote. Where did it come from and which one of our killers obtained it? I haven’t picked up a hot one there. You find out.”

  “Not as entertaining as a visit to a smut shop,” Roarke considered, “but the black market has some appeal.”

  “Good luck.” Feeney saluted him. “Coulda been any of a couple dozen types—or versions of types—picked up any time within the last couple years. Coulda been homemade, for that matter, you had any snap for it.”

  Roarke smiled at him. “Adds to the fun, doesn’t it?”

  “Let’s all go out and have fun. Baxter,” Eve said, “with me.”

  I wouldn’t have pegged her.” Baxter brooded out the side window as Eve drove. “She snowed me right from the get.”

  “You didn’t peg her because she didn’t do it.”

  “Same thing as doing it, and I didn’t get a whiff. The boy did. When we went back and she was nervy, he caught the whiff. And I blew it off, explained it away. I didn’t see it, didn’t smell it, didn’t hear it.”

  “Guess you’d better turn in your papers, then. I hear private security’s a good gig for washed-out cops.”

  “To borrow a phrase, bite me.” But it didn’t seem he could work up any steam. “She’s soft, Dallas. Mira’ll come up with her psycho-whatever, but it comes down to her being a soft sort, a little wounded, a lot tired. Mousy, if you get me. Right now, with all you worked out, I’m trying to see her going into that house, pumping Anders full of tranqs and setting him up like a kink kill, and I can’t see it.”

  “You like her. You feel sorry for her.”