by J. D. Robb
“My girl and I—we share a room in the house—knocked off about one, one-thirty, and went to bed. I can give you the names.”
“I’ll let you know if that becomes necessary. Mr. Billingsly, I feel you deserve to know that the circumstances of your breakup with Ms. Huffman were false.”
“A setup.” His right shoulder jerked in a careless shrug. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes, then scrubbed his face with his hand. “This is like waking the dead or something. I never cheated on her. I never used an LC. I loved her. When you love somebody, you’re faithful. It was the worst time in my life. I knew I hadn’t done it, but it was right there, all over the fucking Internet. She wouldn’t even talk to me, and ran home. My friends believed me, and my family, but there were plenty … I’m like barely twenty, heart busted, life over.”
He shook it off, literally. “Anyway, my uncle—well, great-uncle—he’s a cop.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, my mom’s uncle Stu. And he believed me, and did some cop stuff and tracked down the LC. She told him Gwen paid her two thousand dollars to come into my dorm room, get naked, do the recording. How I’d be zonked out, how it was just a prank.”
“Must’ve pissed you off.”
“Yeah, it pissed me off, but more it just cut.” He blew out a long breath. “Man, it cut.”
“Your uncle must have told you that you could have charged Gwen on several counts.”
“Yeah, and he wanted me to. But I wanted it over. It didn’t just piss me off, cut me, but I had to ask myself what kind of person does that? Nobody I want to be with. I loved her, and I thought she loved me. If she didn’t, and didn’t want to get married, she could’ve said that. It would’ve cut, sure, but it wouldn’t have humiliated me and screwed with my head.
“Anyway, I got through it, and graduated, took a gap year to get some work experience. Now it’s grad school, and I met Holly. Gwen’s yesterday. But she taught me a lesson.”
“What lesson’s that?”
He smiled again, and the dimples popped back. “It’s engineering, man. Something might look bright and shiny on the outside, but the structure’s what counts.”
A good lesson, Eve thought, and added the conversation to her murder book.
She scanned her search results. Two matches in her initial twenty. She’d run those names, and remove the violent offenses from the filter.
Impulsive, Mira said. And maybe a first act of violence.
While that ran, she contacted a valuable source.
Nadine Furst came onto her screen. Her normally sharp green eyes looked teary.
“Jesus, what?” Eve demanded.
“I’ve just finished a tour of Mavis and Leonardo’s—and Peabody and McNab’s—house. Mavis is in there now with an architect, an engineer. They’re starting demo tomorrow.”
“Already?”
“They’re Roarke’s guys, already had the plans, expedited permits. She’s so stupidly happy, she’s dancing one minute, crying the next. It got me. It really got me.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “As it happens I was about to come your way.”
“Why?”
“Why’d you tag me?”
“Natural Order. What do you know?”
“I might know some of this, some of that.” Now those cat’s eyes turned sharp. “Was the artist who was murdered a member?”
“No.”
“The killer then.”
“If I knew the identity of the killer, I’d be making an arrest instead of talking to you.”
“Digging then. I’d be happy to have a little tête-à-tête with some tit for tat included.”
“You’ve already got tits, and I don’t have a tat.”
“Then we’ll quid some quo,” Nadine said breezily. “Why don’t you meet me in that sweet little park between Central and Mavis’s new place? That’s a nice little walk for both of us.”
“You said you were coming here, now you want me to meet you in the park?”
“Neutral ground, Dallas. And since I’m going to be in the studio all afternoon, I’d like to soak up a little spring. See you there.”
She clicked off before Eve could argue.
Annoyed, but reminding herself what Nadine didn’t know she could usually find out, she left the search running. Since, knowing Nadine, she already had the tat for the tit, or the quo for the quid, she went to Peabody in the bullpen.
“I’m going out to meet Nadine, see what she knows or can find out about Natural Order. I’ll fill you in on that, on the Mira consult, and on my conversation with Billingsly when I get back. Keep running the cross-matches.”
“Where are you meeting her?”
“That dinky little park a couple blocks from the new house.”
“Oh, that’s such a sweet one, pretty green space and the playground. McNab and I can walk right by it on the way to work once the house is finished. Mavis buzzed me that demo’s starting tomorrow. I can’t believe it. We’re going to—”
“Run the matches,” Eve finished, firmly. “Full run on any. I’ll be back.”
She escaped from what she knew would be a daily spewing of bubbly and, rejecting the elevator, took the glides all the way down.
It gave her time to think, but what she wanted more was information. Information she could then sift through at her desk, with a cup of coffee.
She hadn’t considered Chad Billingsly as a viable suspect, but now she crossed him off the bottom of her list. And he’d given her a little more, a confirmation of what she’d already concluded for herself.
Gwen didn’t make friends. She selected tools.
And in the case of Billingsly, Gwen had—finally—told the truth.
On the main floor, she took one of the side exits out of the busy lobby and hit the busy sidewalk.
Apparently, everyone in New York wanted to soak up some spring. She saw business types with jackets hooked over their shoulders by a finger or draped over an arm. Tourists gawking. Shoppers hauling bags to the next place they could buy something else.
The corner glide-cart did a brisk business selling water, soft drinks, dogs, and pretzels. The smoke pumping off the cart smelled of meat and onions. Concrete planters—too cumbersome to steal—burst with flowers.
Vehicles streaming by had their windows open to the air so the sound of traffic, of horns and curses, mixed with music—from trash rock to opera.
A woman in tiny red shorts, two white bags over her arm, glittery framed sunglasses obscuring half her face, minced along on red-and-white-striped ankle boots. She had to mince, Eve figured, as the boots had tall needles for heels.
She, very casually, held the leash of a black-and-white dog as big as a pony.
She minced right into a deli with the dog, in violation of several health laws.
Eve kept walking.
She saw a woman dressed like the Statue of Liberty hyping some joint called Lady Liberty, a guy with a moustache that drooped a good three inches below his chin passing out flyers for a fortune-teller. She spotted a woman sunbathing on a fire escape in a bikini barely big enough to avoid the indecent exposure laws.
And the several people who paused to take pictures or vids as she, well, soaked up some spring.
New York had it all.
The little park did have some green space with some short flowers running along its borders. Beside it, twice as much space held the playground with its spongy checkerboard of primary colors covering the ground.
Kids sent up a din as they swung on swings, climbed on climbing things, slid down sliding things, tunneled through tunnel things.
Parents, grandparents, nannies watched indulgently.
Strollers, carriage things lined up like cars in a lot. Some still held the bags and backpacks she assumed carried kid and baby paraphernalia.
Nadine had already claimed a short bench and sat in her off-air jeans, a blousy white shirt, and white kicks.
Her sunshades neither glittered nor obscured half her face.
Eve sat next to her. “It sounds like a war.”
“I was just sitting here wondering how the adults know if the scream is a happy one or an I-just-broke-my-arm one. God, I love those boots!”
“They got me here. What do you know about Natural Order?”
“You might be interested to know that when I was just starting out at Seventy-Five, I planned to do an exposé on them.”
“Planned to?”
“It didn’t work out. But I did many man-hours of research, conducted interviews. I even dug up the names of three former members. It cost me fifteen hundred dollars, and got me next to nothing, as none of them—not one—would talk to me. Even off the record. I signed up for an introductory seminar, which cost me two-fifty—and that didn’t include the two grand I spent on fake ID and background to get through their security.”
Nadine tipped down her sunshades. “That’s out of pocket for a young, struggling reporter who wasn’t on expense account. I got through the first session, the break—refreshments and chitchat—before they broke through the fake ID and booted me.”
“You’re better now, richer now, and have an expense account.”
Nadine beamed a cheerful smile. “All true, but you’d better believe they know me. I wouldn’t get through the door now. I’ve invited Wilkey, and his three sons, his daughter, to come on Now—or to give me an interview.
“Denied. They only talk to, we’ll say, sympathetic reporters and/ or plant positive stories through their very extensive and efficient PR. And they’re exceedingly well funded.”
“What did the young struggling reporter find out?”
Nadine reached in her humongous shoulder bag, took out a small tube of water, offered Eve a second.
“I gave you a solid hint of the quid. Let’s have a little quo.”
“Red light on the info until I clear it.”
“Understood, as always.”
“The victim was having an affair with Gwendolyn Huffman.”
“Wait, the Gwen Huffman who’s engaged to Merit Caine, about to have the wedding of the season?”
“Was engaged, was having.”
“Well, interesting. That’s going to leak to the society and gossip channels asap. Seventy-Five gave her a full fifteen-minute segment just last week.”
“You can leak the breakup, but not the reason, and not her connection to my victim.”
Nadine crossed her ankles, studied her own kicks. “That’s going to leak, too.”
“Sure it will, but I need to keep it plugged as long as I can. It gets out, she loses any motivation to cooperate. Now I’ve got her where I need her.”
“Is she a suspect?”
“No, but connected. That’s enough quo. Give me more quid.”
Nadine sipped some water. “Stanton Wilkey, born in Kansas—a small, struggling farm—had three siblings. Complications during the birth of his younger sister—and the choice of no doctor, no midwife, home birth—killed the mother. Besides the three live births, she’d had at least three miscarriages. The father remarried about six months later.”
“Wow, so much grief.”
“Eve’s curse—not you,” Nadine said with a laugh at Eve’s baffled frown. “The Adam and Eve one.”
“She always gets the pointy end of the stick.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Anyway, I was able to convince the mother’s sister to talk to me when I was working on the exposé. She despises Jethro Wilkey—Stanton’s father. That’s what she claimed he called it—Eve’s curse. Women are meant to bear children, birth them in pain and blood. His second wife was eighteen to his thirty-nine. Just eighteen. They married on her birthday, as her parents refused parental consent. She had two children before she ran off with them. Apparently women are also meant to do what they’re told when they’re told or get a good belt in the mouth.”
“Did she file charges?”
“Too afraid, according to the aunt—who knows the second wife’s family. Fortunately for her, Wilkey the first didn’t have the money to go after her, or the two daughters she’d had with him. Word was, according to my source, he claimed the second wife had tainted blood anyway. Her great-grandmother was Native American. He married a third time—without benefit of a legal divorce—but that wife and the baby she carried died in childbirth.”
Nadine scooted around so she and Eve sat face-to-face.
“Stanton Wilkey and his siblings were raised by this man. He was a white supremacist, a misogynist, and a religious fanatic. His version of religion. He was also a raging alcoholic, an abuser who refused to send his children to what he considered government facilities—schools, hospitals. He homeschooled them with his twisted vision of history, science, and so on. They never saw a doctor, had inoculations, screenings, dental care.”
“Okay, yeah, I know the type.”
“He died from a diseased liver when Wilkey was sixteen. His sister, fourteen, had clearly been sexually abused. Child Services placed her and Wilkey with the aunt—the two older sons were eighteen and twenty, so legal age. Stanton Wilkey took off, but the aunt was able to get the sister into therapy. She eventually became a therapist herself, has never married, lives quietly. She wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t push there.”
Nadine gestured with the tube. “Your turn.”
“One second.”
Eve spotted the thief—early twenties—in his running shoes, with his battered brown shopping bag as he loitered around the strollers. He’d casually unzipped one of the backpacks when he saw her coming.
He ran. She ran faster.
She grabbed his arm, blocked his punch, then kicked his legs out from under him.
“What the hell, lady!”
“Lieutenant.” She held him down, a knee to his chest, and flashed her badge.
“I didn’t do anything. I’m just walking here.”
“Why did you run?”
“I wanted some exercise.”
She noted the shopping bag was empty, which meant he’d already passed on his latest haul, or was just starting the day’s work.
“You’re sloppy. If I run you, I’m going to find priors, maybe a parole violation. You’re going to get a break because I’m busy, and since you’re sloppy, the next cop that busts you won’t be so busy. But listen, and listen real careful.”
She leaned down, shoved her face into his.
“My friend brings her kid to this park. If I see you anywhere near this area again, I’m going to bust you for exposing yourself to minors.”
“What!” His eyes popped wide to goggle. “I never did! I never would!”
“You’re exposing them to a half-assed street thief right now. Get gone. Stay gone.”
She stood. He ran. With a shake of her head, she picked up the shopping bag he’d left behind, then stuffed it in the nearest recycler before she went back to the bench.
“How did you make him?” Nadine wondered.
“He’s loitering around a playground with no kid—not watching them, so I figure not a pervert. But watching the adults, and easing his way toward the bags the adults are brainless enough to leave unattended. So thief. Anyway.”
She gave Nadine the basics on the murder, on Gwen’s relationship with the victim, and the cover-up.
“She could have contacted somebody, had them do the murder.” When Eve simply leveled a stare, Nadine sat back. “Which you’ve already looked into. Oliver and Paula Huffman—I don’t know anything about them except they’re doctors, rich, and were giving the bride away. They’re members of Natural Order.”
Nadine rolled that around. “They don’t know their daughter’s gay?”
“She was caught as a teenager with another girl.”
“So they know. Listen, Dallas, there are rumors—or were when I tried to break into this—of conversion centers.”
“Realignment centers they call them, according to Gwen. Her parents sent her to one, on the island Nat
ural Order owns.”
“That’s criminal,” Nadine murmured. “Except maybe it’s not, in the legal sense, as Utopia Island has sovereign nation status, and its own laws. Listen, I’ve got to get to the station. I’ll dig up my research, send it to you, and I’ll dig in some more. I want this exclusive, Dallas. Wilkey’s a lunatic. I didn’t have the chops to expose this before. My chops are bigger and sharper now.”
“You help expose all this, I’ll give you an exclusive one-on-one.”
“On Now. It’s important, Dallas, and a full segment on Now, with my audience, it has reach.”
“Done.”
Before Eve could stand, Nadine put a hand on her arm. “Wait. I was coming to Central to give you this.”
She reached in her bag again, pulled out a book. “Hot off the press.”
“The Red Horse Legacy,” Eve read. “Talk about lunatics.”
“It’s not out for another ten days, but you get the first copy. Who knows how many more they’d have killed if you hadn’t rooted them out?”
Eve merely grunted. “Your name’s bigger on this one than on The Icove Agenda.”
Smiling, Nadine fluttered her lashes. “Is it? I didn’t notice.” She shouldered her bag and rose. “Ten days and it launches, and I start a very intense book tour. We’re going to close your case, expose Wilkey and his sick order, and report it all on Now before I leave. We’ll do that because we’re the smart girls.”
“That’s order of priority.” Eve got to her feet. “Close the case, expose Wilkey, blather about it on-screen.”
“We wouldn’t have had this conversation if you didn’t know I understand the priorities.”
“You got that right.”’
“And I got something else.” Grinning, Nadine wiggled her shoulders. “I got my next book.”
12
As Eve walked back into Central, her communicator signaled with a message to report to Whitney. One glance toward the banks of elevators had her taking the glides.
When she reached the commander’s office, she found his door open and his admin’s desk empty.
He sat at his desk, broad-shouldered, wide-faced, his close-cropped black hair shot with gray.