by J. D. Robb
Shelby let her eyes open wide. “You didn’t report the murder?”
“I did. I did! After I got home, and—and could think clearly again. And I could hardly tell the police I was in a relationship with Ariel with Merit right there. I knew he wouldn’t understand, that he’d turn away from me. And I was right.”
In a gesture Shelby found fascinating, Gwen covered her eyes with the back of her hand.
Did she practice in a mirror? Shelby wondered. Or was it just innate ability?
“We’ve already sent out the invitations. I have my dress, and—and everything. Now I’m humiliated, and my parents will be furious. You have to help me.”
“How?”
“You’re with the police. You could do something. Look at the files or whatever and …”
“And what? You want me to tamper with evidence?”
Now it was Gwen who waited a couple of beats. “No, of course not. But you’re right there, with the police. You’d have access.” She rose to sit on the sofa beside Shelby, took her hand. And her eyes filled with pleading.
“Anything you could do, anything at all. I’d be so grateful. I need someone on my side, Jan, someone who knows the real me. Someone who knows my heart.”
She pressed Shelby’s hand to her heart. “I’m so frightened.” She leaned in. “So frightened. I need a friend. I need you. I’ve missed you. Missed being with you.”
Shelby used her hand to nudge Gwen back. “I’m seeing someone.”
“It’s only you and me here now. No one has to know.”
An instant before Gwen’s mouth met hers, Shelby rose. “I’d know. And since there’s nothing I can or would do for you, Gwen, you’re insulting us both by trying to trade sex for my integrity.”
“I need help.” Tears. “Can’t you see how desperate I am?”
“You need a good lawyer. And if you don’t want me to add offering sexual favors to a cop for information on an active investigation, you need to leave.”
“That’s it?” The tears in her eyes burned away with temper as Gwen shoved to her feet.
“Yeah, I’d say that covers it. I’d say sorry about your bad luck, but it’s clear you brought it on yourself. And you’re alive. Someone you claimed to have feelings for isn’t.”
“I never had any for you.”
“I know.”
“You were never anything but a summer diversion—the dumb bitch from the blue-collar family, with the rich uncle with no class who couldn’t keep her stupid mouth shut about some careless sex on the beach.”
“I guess I was dumb to get tangled up with you, but my uncle has more class in his left armpit than you ever will. And I never told anyone about you and me.”
“Liar!”
“Of the two of us standing here, I think you’re the clear winner of the title.”
Shelby went to the door, opened it. “Get out.”
“Of this pathetic shithole? My pleasure.”
She actually sailed to the door. Shelby didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone else pull that description off.
“And it was lousy sex.”
Now Shelby smiled. “Liar,” she said, and shut the door in Gwen’s face.
After deciding she deserved a second brew, she carried her minicomp from the closet to the table. She wrote it up, all of it, and sent the report to her lieutenant.
8
At her command center, Eve read through Shelby’s report. While she digested it, she went into the kitchen, programmed coffee and cake.
After she set it up, she went to the doorway. Roarke worked something on his desk screen.
“I’ve got cake. You want it in here or out there?”
“I’ll come to you—and the cake. Two minutes.”
She spent it studying her board.
“Ah, at the table, is it? Like the civilized.”
“It looks like really good cake.”
She sat, sampled a bite. “I’m wrong, it’s not. It’s really freaking good cake.” She shoved in another bite. “Gwen Huffman went to Shelby. Dug up her address from a cousin—of Shelby’s.”
“So she made bail.”
“She did—and though Caine repped her at the bail hearing, he didn’t cough up the bail. She did.” Considering, she eyed Roarke. “If you got busted and charged—”
He shot her a warning glance much like the one he shot Galahad when the cat bellied toward breakfast plates. “Hypotheticals can still be insulting.”
“And still. If you did, I’d stand your bail. I’m a cop, but I’d stand your bail.”
“How beautifully romantic. I, of course, would do the same for you.”
“But he doesn’t cough up her bail, and in fact breaks the engagement. That tells me it’s very unlikely he knew or suspected his bride-to-be was having an affair while she planned the wedding, and your speculation on him hit the mark.”
“You didn’t consider him a suspect?”
“His alibi’s solid, his background’s clean. Gwen, on the other hand? She takes the time to go home after getting sprung—”
“And dumped,” Roarke added.
“And dumped,” she agreed between bites of cake. “Takes time to change her clothes into the more casual, takes the time to dig up Shelby’s address, then goes there. Turns on the waterworks, spins a new story—slight variations from what I broke out of her in Interview, and a long way from her initial statement.”
“A clever liar molds the tale to her audience.”
Eve shook her fork at him, then licked it. “That’s just right. Anyway, she had the affair, but both parties knew it was just sex. Ariel suddenly demanded more, threatened to expose her, and blah blah. She left out details like having and destroying Ariel’s key-card copy, and claimed she just has an urge for a new ’link. How I’m a big meanie out to destroy her, and help me!”
“She becomes the victim.”
“I half believe she sees herself that way. She went back to the shock—why she left the scene this morning—but added, maybe a slip, that she had to protect herself.”
“Ah.” Roarke toasted with his coffee. “A moment of truth.”
“How I see it? Merit’s dumped her, humiliation, bitch cop, parents will cut off the money stream. Help. You’re a cop, you’re right there, you can look at files, and so on. A lot of play on that long-ago summer, then she made a move.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Roarke sipped some coffee. “That sort of move?”
“That sort. When Shelby rejected the move, said she was seeing someone, Gwen pushed a little harder, said nobody has to know.”
“Faithful isn’t a word in her particular world.”
“Again, just how I see it. Shelby booted her, and Gwen went from sexy and needy to pissed off, tossed out a few insults, and left. One thing more,” Eve added. “She accused Shelby of talking about their summer fling—at that time—so Gwen’s parents found out. Shelby maintains she didn’t tell anyone.”
“Teenage romance often means other teenagers in the vicinity, doesn’t it? It’s unlikely it was a locked secret.”
“Why tell the parents? Maybe somebody pissed at one or both of the teenage romancers. The brother springs to mind first, as sibs can get really pissed off. It doesn’t actually matter,” Eve added with a shrug. “I just hate blank spaces.”
“I can’t tell you if, at not quite eighteen, Trace Huffman weaseled on his sister, but I can tell you from what I’ve dug into, his relationship with his parents wasn’t likely any stronger or closer at that time than it is now.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You don’t have to like the authority figure to rat somebody out. People do it with cops all the time.”
“They do, don’t they? I found out a bit more on him than your standard run. It happens I know a producer who often uses him in recording sessions.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. Paint me a picture.”
“Talented, steady—though steadier now than he was a few years ago.”
“Illegals or booze?
”
“A bit of both. Nothing that kept him from working, but enough to keep him from progressing, you could say. He wanted to play music, write songs, drifted his way west, where he landed some gigs in Vegas. He’s recently hooked up, personally and professionally, with another musician. The producer says she’s also talented and steady, and he hopes to produce some of their music before long.”
“So he’s getting what he wants.”
“What he doesn’t want is any connection to his family, which is why he goes as Trace D. Huff, and in fact has turned down gigs in New York. He told my friend they’re toxic, like a poison, and he didn’t want to risk them getting into his bloodstream. He took off the day of his eighteenth birthday, so he tells it, with his guitar, a duffel bag, and the money he’d squirreled away over the previous six months by pawning things he felt wouldn’t be noticed. His tennis racket, his dress wrist unit, and so on.”
“So he planned it out.”
“Yes, waiting until that day, as it made him legal, and because, he claims, that night his parents planned to initiate him into their cult. His term.”
“Natural Order.”
“He didn’t give it a name, according to my friend. He contacted his parents the next day, to let them know he was alive and well, then pawned his ’link so they couldn’t track him, stuck out his thumb, and kept riding it on the way west.”
Yes, Eve thought, Roarke painted a picture very well.
“He worried they’d come after him.”
“Apparently, so he kept moving for the first two or three years until he felt they’d decided disinheriting him was enough.”
“It jibes with what I’ve dug up on the father.”
She looked over at the board and Oliver Huffman’s photo.
Sternly handsome seemed to fit, she thought. Chiseled features, pale gold hair dashed with silver, upthrust chin, chilly blue eyes.
“The parents keep their connection to Natural Order as down low as possible, but you don’t have to dig too deep to find it. They practically helped start it up, along with Stanton Wilkey.”
“A charismatic lunatic.”
“I’ll agree on the lunatic. Crazy eyes.”
She pointed with her fork, then scooped up the last bite of her cake. “Some people might look and see, I don’t know, holy or empathic, but most every photo I studied today? I see crazy eyes.”
“Cop vision, and yours is very sharp.”
“Huffman senior went to hear Wilkey speak when Huffman was in college. He liked what he heard. Huffman had money, Wilkey had—we’ll go with charisma—and together they had a vision. A few years later, Natural Order. Huffman marries Paula Vandorn—also made of money. I guess you could term them silent partners. Or benefactors. Or let’s just go with cultists.”
“I would,” Roarke agreed. “By the time Trace Huffman was born, Natural Order was global, wealthy. Secretive, of course, as such things are, but always on the lookout for wealthy or influential … initiates.”
“And by then the Huffmans were well established, had started their clinic here in New York, and were members of East Coast society. With Natural Order having a dubious reputation, they don’t advertise their membership. Oliver Huffman’s rep, however, is one of intolerance.”
“You can see that on his face,” Roarke murmured.
“Yeah, you can, can’t you? He’s a strict hard-liner who’s been known to pass on certain patients who don’t meet his criteria. He’s brilliant, supposedly, at what he does, but he won’t treat the mixed race—which cuts out a hell of a lot of patients. That goes for gay and trans, for a female who lists an abortion in her medical records, and so on.
“Oh, and he’s deleted his son from his official ID.”
“I’d say the son is better off.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
Studying the board as she did, Roarke reached over to rub his hand over hers. “We had problematic childhoods, you and I, so we recognize others with that same broken foundation.”
“Some build their own, and some don’t.” Eve shrugged. “The mother only works at Mercy three days a week. She cut back ten years ago. A little more digging there? Paula lends her services two days a week, and half a day on Saturday, to the exclusive Eternal Flame clinic, which is—surprise!—owned and operated by Natural Order. Oliver also ‘volunteers’ there.”
Roarke frowned. “I don’t know this clinic.”
“Small, exclusive—as in members only—and in Westport.”
“So in Connecticut.”
“Where Wilkey has his headquarters.”
“That I do know about. The compound’s largely self-reliant. Its own schools, medical facilities, greenhouses and gardens.”
“And housing—including Wilkey’s main residence. More digging? Several Eternal Flame clinics globally, in wealthy suburbs. It’s a moneymaker, all of this. All legit, at least on the surface. So you wonder, in an organization like this, what’s under that surface. And what the careful Huffmans would do to protect that, to protect their reputations, their natural order.”
“As in dispose of the lover of their daughter who might expose the affair shortly before the wedding to the son of a respected family.”
“Yeah that. Especially if they had some hope to rope some of that money and influence into their organization. It’s a thought. Because somebody sure as hell killed her.”
“And conveniently for Gwen Huffman.” Roarke shifted his study from father to daughter. “If she hadn’t gone back the next morning, if she hadn’t reported it, started spinning lies, you wouldn’t have connected her. Or not easily. Not with her DNA and prints off record.”
“Even without, I’m going to trace the wine and flowers.” Eve pushed up, paced. “Yeah, we’d have tracked those back to her eventually. But does the killer know she habitually bought those? Or knowing, think we’d look there?”
“Which means you don’t think she’s the killer.”
“She didn’t use the hammer—but that doesn’t mean she isn’t the hammer. She’s not just connected, she’s the reason.
“Pattern.” She walked back to the table, sat. Then just pushed up again. “She’s in trouble, so she contacts her fiancé. He comes running this morning, and he comes to her again after she’s arrested. Somebody always takes care of things.”
“But then he doesn’t.”
“Right. She can try lying to him about the affair, but it won’t hold. He’s a lawyer, her lawyer, and he sees the evidence. So he gets her through the bail hearing, then that’s it. We’re done. Wedding’s off.”
“So no clear-cut way to cover now. And bail isn’t vindication.”
He rose as well, walked to her board. He often wondered if he saw what she did. “If she goes to her parents, will they cover for her, believe whatever lies she spins? Or will they discard her?”
“She needs somebody to fix it.” Eve paused to stand beside him. “So she tries Shelby. Summer friendship, summer love, nostalgia, rosy glasses.”
“Rose-colored.”
“Okay, fine. And a cop—isn’t that handy? It’s so perfect. She’ll lean on that prior connection, weep, beg, play the victim, and warm it up with a little sex.”
“And Shelby doesn’t cooperate. What now?”
“She’s got to come up with a new plan,” Eve said. “But go back. Her secret lover doesn’t want to be a secret. She wants more than sex when it’s convenient for Gwen. Argue, fight, say hard things. Pattern.”
“Someone needs to fix it for her,” Roarke finished.
“Everything’s on the line for her, right? She doesn’t attack Ariel, not physically, but she’s got connections. Connections that should be more than willing to fix her problem. Maybe we can find a communication on her mangled ’link. Maybe.”
As she shook her head, Eve hissed out a breath. “Still. She didn’t expect to find Ariel dead in the morning. Now that I have a better handle on her, I don’t think she’d have gone back if she knew. It’s more: Fix it
for me, talk her out of it, threaten her, pay her off. All those make sense. And in her shallow way, she doesn’t think the fix is to take out the threat.”
“That fits pattern, and it’s logical. Except—”
“Yeah, yeah.” She turned away, realizing sometimes his ability to think like a cop irritated. “Why hasn’t she rolled on whoever she contacted? Save her own skin, make a deal.”
She turned back again, scowled at the board. “But that might be next. Or she might fear the fixer more than the fix she’s in.”
“Who does she fear? Her parents.”
“Yeah, yeah.” It didn’t work, it didn’t play, Eve admitted. “But her parents—certainly her father—are the ones she doesn’t want to know she’s banging it with another woman. I can’t see her telling Daddy. Somebody else she’s got on the string?”
Slipping her hands in her pockets, Eve shifted. “Sex is a kind of power center for her. Another lover, or former lover. Somebody she can play victim to, or try to bribe.
“Somebody,” she muttered, “I don’t have on the board yet. But I will.”
“I have no doubt, but it won’t be tonight. You’re spinning, Lieutenant. Time to let it sit and brew a bit.”
“I’m leaning toward someone connected, like she is, to Natural Order. And someone close enough geographically to meet Gwen, take the key, get downtown. Somebody, most likely, with personal transportation, because it’s a pretty narrow window.”
She paced another minute. “And somebody who’d kill without hesitation. Walk into the apartment, go up to the studio, pick up the hammer. Bam. No attempt at persuasion, bribery, threats. Just end it.”
She turned back to Roarke. “That’s not spinning, that’s logic.”
“It is, yes. But as you don’t have candidates for that position, as yet, and won’t likely get any until you squeeze Gwen a bit more, or EDD comes through, you’ll be back to spinning.”
“I can do a search for members of Natural Order who live within the geographic range, then filter to ones most likely to know my prime suspect.”