Strangers in Death (19 page)

“The reasonable, loving, indulgent wife.”

“Yes. Yes, exactly what it would seem. But, in fact, she was happier when he was gone than she was when he was home, and the longer he was gone, the happier she would be. This is my opinion,” Greta hastened to add. “My sense only.”

“That’s what I’m after.”

“I would sense an annoyance in her on the day he was scheduled to return. I could sense it even as she fussed about what meal to serve him to welcome him home. When he was gone, she would have dinner parties or cocktails with her friends. Friends of hers, you understand, that were not so much friends of his. And never with Mr. Benedict.”

Greta paused, pressed her fingers to her lips for a moment, then folded her hands neatly in her lap again. “I might not be saying this to you if she hadn’t instructed me to clear his clothes out of his dressing room, as she might instruct me to see that the floors were polished. Just another household task. I might not be telling you this if I didn’t know she saw the disapproval I didn’t hide quickly enough. And seeing it, Lieutenant, her manner changed. Her voice thickened with the tears that came into her eyes. But it was too late. I’d seen the other, heard the other, so it was too late. It was then she asked me to help at Mrs. Plowder’s, and told me what she would pay for my time, which is more than it should be. It was then she told me I would have a raise in salary when I returned to work tomorrow, and that she depended on me to help her through this difficult time.”

Greta looked down at the hands folded in her lap, nodded. “It was then, Lieutenant, I decided I would begin to look for other employment. Only this morning, I contacted an agency for this purpose.”

“She miscalculated with you, Greta. Will you be able to go to the memorial, to the Plowders, to go back to work, for the time being, without letting her see what you think or feel?”

The faintest smile touched Greta’s mouth. “I’m a domestic, Lieutenant. I’m very skilled at keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself.”

“I appreciate you sharing them with me.” Eve rose, held out a hand.

Getting to her feet, Greta took it, then held it. And held Eve’s eyes. “We may be unfair to Mrs. Anders. But if we aren’t, I trust you, Lieutenant, to make justice for Mrs. Anders.”

“I’m good at my job, too.”

“Yes, I believe you are.”

Rather than cab it all the way back to Roarke’s office, Eve flipped out her ’link as she hit the street again. The transmission bounced straight to his admin. “Hey, Caro, could—”

“Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah.” Was she supposed to make small talk? Hadn’t she done that enough already? “Well…sorry to interrupt. Maybe you could tell Roarke I’ll meet him at the memorial.”

“If you’d hold a moment, I’ll put you right through to him.”

“But—” Too late, she thought with a roll of her eyes as the calming blue wait screen came on her screen.

And, as advertised, a moment later Roarke’s vivid blue eyes replaced the calm. “Just called to chat?”

“Yeah, it’s just talk, talk, talk with me. Listen, I just wanted to leave a message that I’ll meet you at the memorial. It’s still too early, so I’m going to duck into a cyber-café or something, get a little work done, then cab it over.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m over on Third, heading down to Fifty-fourth. So—”

“Wait there.”

“Listen—” Too late, she thought again, as this time her screen went blank. “Wait there,” she mumbled and jammed the ’link back in her pocket. Wait so he could drive across town to pick her up when she was perfectly capable of getting herself where she needed to go.

She could hardly call any of the women on the list Linny Luce had given her while she stood on the damn street. Those conversations would involve considerable delicacy, she imagined. And privacy.

At loose ends, she strode to the corner, swung wide of the throng waiting for the light, and studied them for a while.

Briefcases, shopping bags, baby carts—strollers, she corrected. Three people at the curb tried to out-jockey each other for position while they held up their arms to signal a cab. And the fleet of yellow streamed by, already hauling fares. Up the block a maxibus farted as it lumbered to a stop to disgorge passengers, take on more.

Some guy bopped by eating a slice, and as the scent reached out and beckoned like a lover, Eve remembered she’d not only given her ride to Peabody, but left the crullers in it.

Damn it.

She leaned back against the corner of the building while sky trams cruised overhead, traffic clogged the street, and the subway rumbled under it. Everybody going somewhere, or coming back from somewhere else.

While she waited, a couple of women already loaded like pack mules with shopping bags stopped by the display window beside her. And cooed, Eve thought, with the same over-the-top, slightly lame-brained adoration as Mavis cooing over Belle.

“Those
shoes
! They’re absolutely beyond.”

“Oh God! And the bag. Do you
see
the bag, Nellie? It looks positively gooshy!”

Eve tracked her gaze over. They looked like a couple of perfectly normal, perfectly sane women, she noted. And they were about to drool on the display glass over a pair of shoes and a purse. They continued to rhapsodize as they pulled the shop door open. Where, Eve assumed, they would shortly drop many hundreds of dollars for something to cart their junk around in, and many hundreds more for something that made their feet cry like babies.

She glanced away in time to spot some guy in a green army coat come flying across the street, dodging vehicles, clambering over others with a wild, happy grin plastered on his face. Happy, she assumed, because the beat cops in pursuit huffed half a block back, losing ground.

People scattered as people tended to do. Eve continued to lean back against the building, but she rolled to her toes and back as she gauged the timing. Green Coat bugled a hooting call of triumph when his combat-booted feet smacked the pavement. And flicking a glance—and his middle finger—behind him, kicked in for the dash down Fifty-fourth.

Eve simply shot out her foot.

He flew, the green coat rising like wings, and landed with what had to be a skin-scraping slide over the sidewalk. He groaned, grunted, managed a half roll. She helped him the rest of the way to his back with a shove of her boot, which she then planted on his sternum.

“Nice takeoff, bad landing.” She pulled out her badge as much for the people rubbernecking as the guy under her boot.

“Shit, shit! I had it cooked and in the pan.”

“Yeah? Well, now it’s burnt, and so are you.”

He held his hands out to show his cooperation, then used the back of one to swipe blood off his face. “What the hell’re you doing standing around the damn corner?”

“Just waiting for my ride.” She saw it cruise up, the mile-long black limo that actually made her stomach hurt with embarrassment. When Roarke lowered the back window, cocked his head, grinned, all she could do was scowl.

The beat cops huffed and puffed their way up to her. “We appreciate the assistance, ma’am. If you’d just—Lieutenant,” the cop panted when she badged him in turn. “Lieutenant. Sir. We were in pursuit of this individual as—”

“This individual made your pursuit look like a couple of old ladies hobbling back to their rocking chairs.”

“Fucking-A right,” said the individual.

“Shut up. You’re winded, sweating,” she continued. “And this guy was fresh as a daisy until his face met the sidewalk. This embarrasses me. Now if you’ve got your breath back, wrap him up.”

“Yes, sir. For the report, Lieutenant, the individual—”

“I don’t care. He’s all yours.” She strode toward the limo. “Lay off the crullers,” she called back, then climbed inside the shining black car.

12

“I WONDER,” ROARKE SAID CONVERSATIONALLY, “how the city of New York and its population manage without you personally patrolling its streets.”

She’d have come up with a smart remark, but he distracted her by handing her a cup of coffee. She reminded herself as she settled back that the windows were tinted. Nobody could actually see her stretched out in a limo with white rosebuds in crystal tubes while she drank coffee out of a porcelain cup.

So she did. “Why?” she asked. “Why did you pick me up in this ostentatious street yacht?”

“First, I don’t find it ostentatious, but convenient. And very comfortable. Second, I had a bit of work to polish off on the way over and didn’t want to drive myself. Third,
you
mentioned work, so if you need to do any, this is more comfortable than a cyber-café.”

“Maybe that’s logical.” She drank more coffee, closed her eyes a moment. And Roarke’s fingers brushed her cheek.

“Did the man sprawled on the sidewalk and under your boot get any licks in?”

“No. He never saw it coming. I’ve just got a lot in my head.”

Now he brought her hand to his lips. “Why don’t you let some of it out.”

She eyed him. “Was there a fourth reason we’re in this boat, and was that so you could put moves on me?”

“Darling, that would be the underlying reason for all my decisions.”

Because she could, she grabbed his lapel, yanked him over, and took his mouth in a kiss full of heat and promise. Then pushed him away again. “That’s all you get.”

“I’d prove differently, but it seems a little crass as we’re biding some time before attending a memorial.”

He could prove differently, she knew. And the hell of it was, she enjoyed when he did. She sat a moment, trying to put her thoughts back in order. “You got any crullers on tap?”

“You want a cruller?”

“No. Damn that Peabody. Anyway—”

Roarke held up a finger, pressed the intercom. “Russ, swing by a bakery, will you, and pick up a half a dozen crullers.”

“Yes, sir.”

No wonder her head was screwed up, Eve thought. A couple of minutes before she’d had her boot on some idiot’s chest while she dressed down a couple of lead-footed uniforms. Now she was gliding around New York drinking outrageously good coffee and getting crullers.

“You were saying?” Roarke prompted.

Might as well go with the flow. She crossed her booted ankles. “I spent the morning conducting interviews. So yeah, it’s been a chatty day.”

She ran it through for him, which never failed to organize her thoughts for herself. She paused only when the driver passed Roarke a bakery box, shiny white this time. She wrapped it up snacking on sugar and fat.

“It appears,” Roarke said, offering her a napkin, “that when people scrape the veneer away, as you’ve prompted them to do, Ava Anders doesn’t appear quite so smooth and glossy.”

“They don’t like her. What they liked, with the exception of Leopold who liked nothing about her, ever, was filtered through Anders. Tommy. With him not there as filter, the smudges are coming through. She doesn’t care about being liked. Or cares only because being liked is a stepping-stone to being admired. Being admired, now that’s important, and it’s a stepping-stone to being influential.”

“And Tommy. Another stepping-stone.”

“Yeah. People have been sleeping and/or marrying their way to the top since the first cavewoman said: ‘Ugh, that one’s the strongest and has the biggest club. I’ll shake my mastodon-skin-covered ass at him.’”

“Ugh?”

“Or whatever cave people said. And it’s not just women who do it. Cave guy goes: ‘Ugh, that one catches the most fish, I’ll be dragging her off to my cave now.’ Ava sees Tommy and—”

“Says ugh.”

“Or today’s equivalent thereof. There’s a rich guy, a guy people like, who has good press. A nice, easygoing sort. You can bet your ass she researched him inside out before she settled on him. Worked the transfer to New York, made sure to put herself in front of him as often as possible. Four-walls him, too. But subtly. Too aggressive, you could scare him off, too delicate he might not pick up on it. You put on the suit, the ‘what Tommy likes and how Tommy likes it’ suit, and you wear it like skin. And after you reel him in, you keep the suit on. Maybe a few adjustments here and there, but you keep it on. You get some power, you get the big houses, fancy life. You get some prominence, some
position.
And nudge him out of the house every chance you get so you can take the suit off and fucking breathe.”

“For nearly sixteen years?”

“She could’ve done it for twice that. But you know what happened? His father died. I gotta look at that.” She tucked it into a handy corner of her mind. “And I need to check with Charles, but I’ll lay you odds her first session with Charles was only weeks after the old man went under and Tommy inherited. Boy, the stakes just went way up. ‘Look at all this, and it could all be mine. How can I have it, and get out of this frigging suit.’ It’s gotta be itching some, and he’s only got a decade on her. He could live another fifty, sixty years. It’s just too much. Anyway, she’s earned it. God knows, she’s earned it. Divorce won’t do. She could work it, sure she could work it so it was all his fault, like she did the first husband.”

“But as that’s already been done, it wouldn’t do to repeat herself.”

“You got it,” she said, pleased. “And the payoff wouldn’t be enough in a divorce. Not anymore, not with all the years she’s put in. If he’d just die, she could be the shattered widow, the widow who picks up the pieces of her life and goes on. Why can’t he just die, why can’t he have a fatal accident, why…What if?”

“She wouldn’t be the first to hook herself to wealthy then grow weary of the price,” Roarke commented. “Or the first to kill over it. But the method in this case seems particularly vindictive.”

“Had to be. Terrible accident, but more, one brought on by his own weakness, his own disloyalty to her. The worse he looks, the brighter her halo. And, I think, once she saw a way out, that suit got tighter and tighter until it was cutting off her blood supply. Whose fault is
that
?”

“Why his, of course.”

“Oh yeah. He had to pay for that, for all the years she wore it, all the years she played the game.” As she sat in the fragrant air of the limo, Eve could all but feel Ava’s rage. “She hated him at the end. Whatever she felt at the start, or during, at the end she hated him.”

“And the killing itself was so intimate, and so ugly,” Roarke said, “because of the hate behind it.”

“Bull’s-eye.”

“If it played out the way you think, she still has an obstacle. There’s Ben.”

“I bet she’s got plans for Ben. She can bide her time. Unless he gets in a serious relationship, starts thinking marriage. She’d have to move faster then. Or she might consider setting it up soon. An overdose would be best. Pills, too many pills. He couldn’t take the grief, couldn’t take the pressure of stepping into his uncle’s shoes. Opts out. There’s a risk there, but if I close this case with her in the clear, as she expects, she might take it.”

“Do you intend to warn him?”

“He’s clear for now. Case is open, and she needs more time.” Calculating it, Eve tapped her fingers on her thighs. “She needs time to lean on him, to turn to him. To present the image that he’s her support now, all she has left of Tommy now. She plans, and she considers contingencies. She needs public displays of their mutual grief and dependence to establish the foundation.”

“I can’t say I knew Thomas Anders well, but I would have said he was a good judge of character.”

“Love clouds things.”

“It does, yes.” Roarke danced his fingers over the ends of her hair.

She shifted to face him. “You never asked yourself, not even once, if I made a play for you because of the money?”

“You didn’t make a play for me. I made the play.”

“
That
could’ve been my play.” She smiled at him. “And you fell heedlessly into my wiles.”

“Where I landed very comfortably. The only suits you wear, darling Eve, are the ones in your closet. And then they’re worn reluctantly.” He laid his hand, palm down, between her breasts. “I know your heart,
a ghrá.
” And drew the chain she wore under her shirt. On it winked a diamond and the metal of a saint, gifts from him. “Do you remember when I gave you this?”

He swung the chain lightly so the diamond flashed and burned.

“Sure.”

“You weren’t just horrified and confused, you were terrified. Fearless Lieutenant Eve Dallas, terrified by a piece of compressed carbon and what it represented.”

“Love wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in my what-if. Not then.”

“Yet, when you finally came to me, you wore it.” The diamond sparked between them. “And you wear it still. Hidden most of the time to preserve your odd cop sensibilities, but worn just there, against your heart.” He slid it under her shirt again. “It was you, Lieutenant, who fell into my guile, after I gave you a bloody good shove.”

“I guess we both took a fall.” She glanced out the window as the limo drew to a curb behind other limos—the somber glamour of death. “Too bad Anders didn’t have a better landing with his.”

P
hotographs of Anders stood throughout the elegant double parlor. He swung a golf club or a bat, hiked a football or returned a tennis volley among the meadow of flowers on display. Sunflowers, with their deep velvet brown eyes, dominated.

“His favorite,” Ben told them. “Uncle Tommy used to say if he ever retired he’d buy a little farm somewhere and grow nothing but sunflowers.”

“Did he have plans for that?” Eve asked. “For retiring?”

“Not really. But he did make some noises about finding a place outside the city, taking long weekends. As long as there was a golf course handy. He was sort of toying with the idea of building a farmhouse by the sports camp upstate. A real country home, where he and Ava would eventually retire. He’d have his sunflowers, get out of the city a little more until then, and have full use of the camp facilities. Said he’d have to put in a spa for Ava, to get her to go along with it.”

He smiled with grief raw in his eyes. “Anyway, he loved sunflowers. He was loved, too. We’re having simultaneous memorials, all over the world. Right now, all over the world people are…Sorry, excuse me a minute.”

He turned toward the door. Eve wondered if he’d make it out before breaking down. And she saw Leopold cross the room quickly, and laying a hand on Ben’s shoulder, walk out with him.

Love, Eve thought, in sorrow and selflessness.

Then she turned to study the widow who sat pale of cheek, damp of eye in a blue velvet chair surrounded by flowers and people eager to console her. Once again, her hair was coiled at the back of her neck to show off fine bones, sharply defined features. Her widow’s weeds were unrelieved black, perfectly cut to showcase her statuesque build. She wore diamonds, exquisitely, at her ears, her wrists.

“Careful,” Roarke murmured, “the way you’re aimed at her, the hair on the back of her neck will stand up in a minute.”

Not such a bad idea, Eve thought. “Let’s go offer our condolences.”

Tommy had drawn a crowd, Eve thought as she moved through it. That would please the widow, that good PR the media would run with. As she approached, Ava lifted her gaze, glimmering with suppressed tears, and bracing a hand on the arm of her chair as if she needed the support, rose.

“Lieutenant. How kind of you to come. And Roarke. Tommy would be so pleased you took this time.”

“He was a good man.” Roarke took Ava’s offered hand. “He’ll be missed.”

“Yes, he was, and he will be. Have you…have you met my friend, my dear friend Brigit Plowder?”

“I believe we have. It’s nice to meet you again, Mrs. Plowder, even under such difficult circumstances.”

“Sasha will be devastated you remembered me and not her.” Brigit smiled at Roarke, a warm hostess to a guest. “Would you sign the mourner’s book? It’s an old-fashioned custom we thought Tommy would appreciate.” She gestured to the narrow podium beside her, and the gilt-edged white book open on it.

“Of course.” Roarke took up the gold pen to sign.

“You should have some wine.” As if confused or mildly ill, Ava touched her fingers to her temple. “We’re serving wine. Tommy so enjoyed a party. He wouldn’t want all these tears. You should have some wine.”

“I’m on duty.” And for a moment, for just an instant, Eve stared into Ava’s eyes and let her see.
I know you. I know what you are.

In Ava’s, behind that sheen of tears, flashed surprise. And for only a moment, for just an instant, heat flared with it. Then she swayed against her friend. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I feel…”

“Sit now.” Brigit eased Ava into the chair, stroked her cheek. “Sit back, Ava. You’re taking on too much.”

“How can it ever be enough? How can I…Where’s Ben? Where’s Ben?” A single tear spilled out of each brilliant eye. “I need Ben.”

“I’ll fetch him for you.” Roarke glanced at Eve, then made his way through the crowd of mourners.

“He’ll be right along,” Brigit soothed. “Ben will be right along. We’ll take you upstairs, sweetheart. You need some quiet. It’s too warm in here, too close, with so many people. It’s all too much.”

“I’ll give you a hand with that.” Eve stepped closer. “Why don’t I help you upstairs, Mrs. Anders?”

“I want Ben.” Ava turned her face away to press it against Brigit. “I’ll be stronger if I have Ben. He’s all I have left of Tommy.”

“He’s coming now. He’s coming, Ava.”

Ben rushed through the room, the grief coated over with concern. He bent over Ava like a shield. “I’m here. I just went out for some air. I’m right here.”

“Stay with me, Ben. Please, stay with me, just until we get through this.”

“Let’s take her upstairs.”

“No, Brigit, I shouldn’t leave. I need—”

“Just for a few minutes. Just a few minutes upstairs until you feel better.”

“Yes, you’re right. A few minutes. Ben.”

“Here we are. Take my arm. You’ll have to excuse us, Lieutenant.”

“Sure.”

So the widow, overcome, was led away to her private grief. Pitch-perfect, Eve thought. She could use some air herself, she decided, then spotted Nadine Furst across the room with Roarke.