Peabody opened her mouth, but Eve was already striding away so she didn't get to ask what a leather suitcase had to do with a wig.
Eve walked in the front door of the house just as Roarke came down the stairs. She blew her bangs out of her eyes and frowned at him.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I live here."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes, and I might ask the same. You're not off-shift as yet."
"I've got stuff I want to run here instead of at Central."
"Ah."
"Yeah, ah. And since you're here, I should be able to cut some time. I've got some questions you could – "
She started up as she spoke, breaking off when he laid a hand on her arm. "I was just upstairs, settling Mick into one of the guest rooms."
"Mick? Oh." She paused. "Oh."
"Do you have a problem with him staying here for a few days?"
"No." The timing sucks, she thought. Seriously sucks. "Like you said, you live here."
"As do you. I realize he comes from a time in my life that isn't entirely comfortable for you." He ran a finger over the strap of her shoulder harness. "Lieutenant. But it is, in fact, a time in my life."
"I met a few of your friends from Dublin before. I like Brian."
"I know." He laid his hands on her shoulders now, ran them down her back, moving closer until his brow rested on hers. "Mick was important to me, Eve. As close, likely closer than a brother might have been through some very ugly times, and some good ones. I thought he was dead, and I'd adjusted to that."
"And now you know he isn't." She understood friendship, its pulls and tugs and its puzzles. "Would you mind asking him not to do anything I'd have to arrest him for while he's staying in one of the guest rooms?"
He shifted just enough to press his lips to hers. "I think you'll like him."
"Yeah." And they both knew he hadn't agreed to her request. "You Irish guys are pretty likable. Listen, I just want to say you don't need any trouble right now, with the way this homicide investigation is heading."
He nodded. "It was never her, was it? That poor little maid."
"I don't think so. We need to sit down and figure who would go after you this way, and why."
"All right, when I can. I've some arrangements to put into motion just now. We're having some people over for dinner."
"Tonight? Roarke – "
"I can make your excuses if it's not convenient for you. Magda and her son, and a few key people will be here. It's important to smooth out feathers ruffled by the incident last night, and to reassure everyone involved in the upcoming auction that security and publicity are under control."
"No point in asking you to postpone the whole deal."
"None at all," he said cheerfully. "I can hardly put the hotel, or any of my projects or my life for that matter, on hold because it's believed that someone's hoping to upset me."
"The next move might be on you."
His smile never dimmed. In fact, it sharpened. "I'd prefer it. I don't want another innocent life on my conscience. In any case, I have the most reliable of bodyguards very close at hand."
And she intended to be closer. "What time's the dinner thing?"
"Eight."
"Then I'd better get some work done. I guess I have to put on some fancy deal."
"Leave that to me." He took her hand, kissed it. "Thank you."
"Yeah, yeah, save it. I want some of your time before tomorrow," she added, jogging up the stairs.
"Darling Eve, I want a great deal of yours."
She snorted, kept going, and when she reached the second floor paused as Mick came out of one of the countless guest rooms. He'd removed his suit jacket and looked, to her eye, casual and at home.
He gave her a quick, crooked smile. "Ah, Lieutenant. Nothing more annoying than an unexpected houseguest, is there? And add on to that an old boyhood friend of your husband's who's a stranger to you, and you have tedium on top of it. I hope you're not too inconvenienced by my staying."
"It's a big house," she said, then realized that was probably not the most polite of responses. But he received it with such a huge, rollicking laugh she had to grin back at him. "Sorry, I'm a little distracted. Roarke wants you here, so that's fine with me."
"Thanks for that. I'll try not to bore the ears off your head with stories of our youthful escapades."
"Actually, I like hearing that kind of thing."
"Well now, that's opening the worm can." He winked at her. "Some house," he said, letting his gaze wander the generous hall and stairs. "House isn't the word, I suppose, not near to grand enough for this palace. How do you find your way about?"
"I don't always." She noticed his gaze shifting again, resting contemplatively on her weapon harness. "Problem?" she said, coolly now.
"No, indeed, though I'm not shamed to say I'm not one to care for that sort of weapon."
"Really." Idly, she laid her hand on it. "What kind of weapon do you prefer?"
He lifted his arm, cocked it at the elbow, and bunched his fist. "This always did fine enough for me. But in your line of work, well… And speaking of that, I was just thinking this is one of the rare pleasant conversations I've experienced with a person in your profession. Roarke and a cop. Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, there's a brain rattler. Maybe you'd sit and tell me the story of how that came to be one of these days. God knows I'd love to hear it."
"Ask Roarke. He's better at stories than I am."
"I'd like your version all the same." He hesitated, then appeared to come to a decision as he approached her. "Roarke wouldn't have settled for less than smart, so I figure you for a smart cop, Lieutenant. And as one, you'd know the likes of me when you look. But maybe you don't know that Roarke's my oldest friend in this world. I hope I can work a truce, if nothing better than that, with the woman my friend married."
When he held out a hand, Eve came to a decision of her own. "I'll take a truce with a friend of the man I married." She clasped his hand. "Keep it clean in New York, Mick. I don't want any trouble for him."
"Nor do I." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Or for meself for that matter. You work in the homicide part of things, don't you?"
"That's right."
"I can say, looking you in the eye, that I've never had occasion to kill anyone, and have no plans to begin. That might help things along here."
"It doesn't hurt."
CHAPTER FIVE
Leaving the houseguest for Roarke and Summerset to deal with, Eve buried herself in her home office to study the case files on the long list of murders tagging Yost as the primary suspect.
She picked them apart, put them back together, searching for holes in the investigative process, for pieces that had been mislaid or ignored.
Whenever she found something she set it aside in what she began to think of as her Screwup File. There'd been a number of definite screwups, to her way of thinking. Witnesses who hadn't been thoroughly interviewed, or pushed during an interview. Trace evidence that had been logged, but not tracked down to its root source.
In a smattering of the cases she found there had been some small, personal item taken from the body of the victim. A ring, a hair ribbon, a wrist unit. All inexpensive items that held consistent with the lack of robbery as motive.
But that didn't, Eve felt, hold consistent with pattern.
"If he took something from one, he took something from all," she muttered.
He was anal, tidy, habitual.
Souvenirs, she thought. He takes a token. What had he taken from Darlene French?
She brought up the security video, keyed it into the section where Darlene had wheeled her cart to the door of 4602, froze the image, magnified it.
"Earrings." In the image Darlene wore tiny gold hoops at her ears, all but hidden by her dark, curling hair. Though Eve was certain no such jewelry had been on the body, she checked the record, split-screening images so that she could examine Darlene, battered and broken on the bed. "He took your little earrings."