She struggled not to cringe when he left her alone. She could almost hear the spiders spinning. She shined her light over the living area.
There was a single couch. One cushion had exploded and left a kind of gray mushroom of filler growing up from the torn fabric. There were no rugs, no art, a lone unshaded lamp on a crate that served as a table. But the entertainment screen was new, top of the line, and, she noted after a quick scan, bolted to the floor.
Not the most trusting of men, she decided. In addition to being a slob and a loser.
The kitchen was along one wall of the living quarters. A counter cluttered with take-out boxes and a blender, a cheap AutoChef and a grimy minifridgie. She’d just opened the fridgie to peruse the contents of home-brew, a withered fuzzy tube that might have once been a pickle, and a golf ball-sized lime when McNab puttered in on the scooter.
The headlight beamed brightly.
“Good thinking,” she decided. “Strange but good.” She opened the lone cupboard and found three glasses, two plates, and an opened bag of soy chips.
“You know, his financials weren’t stellar, but he had enough to live better than this.” She turned around as McNab poked under the cushions of the couch. “And you can bet not all his money was reported.”
“Probably couldn’t hold onto it. Slippery fingers. Spent it on women and illegals.” He held up a small bag of white powder he’d pulled out of the damaged cushion.
“How’d the locals miss that?”
“Didn’t care enough to look. My question is why’d he leave it behind?”
“Because he left in a hurry and planned to come back… or he didn’t leave voluntarily.” She started toward the bedroom. “Bring the scooter.”
The bed was unmade. But the sheets, Peabody noted, were prime quality. They matched the entertainment unit more than the rest of the house. The skinny closet held three shirts, two pair of trousers, and one bunged-up pair of gel-sandals. The dresser held four pair of boxers, a dozen T-shirts or tanks, five pair of shorts.
There was a ‘link, but it had been turned off. The data unit sat on the floor and looked as if it had been through several wars. She left McNab to fiddle with it while she searched the tiny bathroom.
“No toothbrush, but there’s a half tube of toothpaste,” she called out. “No hairbrush or comb, but there’s shampoo. There’s another set of sheets-whoa, baby, very smelly sheets-stuffed in the hamper in here, along with a moldy towel.”
She stepped back out. “Looks to me like he packed up a few essentials, and before he did, he had company. Female company who earned the fresh, fancy sheets.”
“What’re you doing?” McNab asked absently.
“We’re taking the sheets in for testing. He put them on, but the bed’s not made. That tells me they got used. That says sex, so maybe there’s some DNA.”
He grunted and continued to work with the computer.
“I’ll tell you what else isn’t here, besides his toothbrush and comb. There’s no scrapbook on his brother. That’s interesting.”
“So’s this.” He scooted around until he faced her, with the headlight from the scooter shining on his face. “It’s really interesting that this unit is fried. That it appears to have been infected with the same worm as the ones in New York.”
In New York, Eve paced Roarke’s locked-down office with her secured ‘link on privacy mode as she listened to Peabody’s report. It was, she supposed, still possible for someone to copy the transmission even through the lockdown, even through the layers of security, but it would take time and effort.
“I’m going to pull strings, and pull them hard with the locals,” she told Peabody. “And get you cleared to transport any and all items from that location that you deem applicable to this investigation. It may take a few hours, but I’m going to see to it that you and those items are on a transport in the morning. Sit tight. I’ll be back to you.”
She broke transmission, then paced a moment longer as she calculated how best to start the wheels turning.
“If I may suggest,” Roarke put in. “I could have a private shuttle bring them back, circumventing any of the red tape with the local police.”
She frowned, but considered it. “No. I don’t want to circumvent. It’ll take a little more time this way, but we’ll keep it clean. When this comes out, and I’m going to make damn sure it does, I want our end to sparkle. I’ll start by playing diplomat with the local chief, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll toss him to Whitney. But it should work. What do they care if we haul off a busted data center and some sheets?”
“Then I’ll leave you to it and go back to our company. Some grilled meat should set you up for the ordeal yet to come.”
“Don’t remind me. I don’t like the way Trina was eyeballing me.”
He lifted the lockdown and left her alone. Once she’d re-established it, she sat down at his workstation. She could stay here all night, she mused. Locked in, nice and safe, away from hair products. There was access to food, to drink, to communications. It would be so… soothing to hunker down and work alone again.
Then she thought of Mavis, who’d bounced in twenty minutes before with a beaming Leonardo.
At times like this, Eve decided, alone was nothing but a fond and distant memory. She engaged the ‘link and prepared to grease the wheels.
Chapter 13
Eve considered it strength of character not to keep the room sealed, with her inside. But she braced herself, went downstairs, then wound her way through the house to the back patio.
And stared at the scene.
She knew her scenes. Normally, there would’ve been a corpse somewhere in the vicinity, but she still knew how to read a scene where death wasn’t part of the landscape.
There was a bird singing a two-note repetitive chirp that was both cheery and insistent. Butterflies with wings of bold orange and black massed like a fanciful army on the purple spires of a bush that fountained just beyond the west corner of the stone patio.
Roarke’s newest toy, an enormous silver monstrosity on wheels, was smoking away, with the man himself at the helm with a long-handled spatula. The smoke smelled like meat-real meat from real cows. Several individuals were currently chowing down on it in the form of thick burgers on buns.
They were seated at tables or standing around chatting, in full party mode.
The city’s medical examiner was swigging beer from the bottle and having what appeared to be an amusing conversation with Mavis. Mira-and where the hell had she come from-was seated at a table scattered with food and flickering candles while she held some sort of confab with Leonardo and the terrifying Trina.
The captain of EDD stood munching a burger one-handed and giving Roarke advice on the mysteries and mystiques of outdoor cooking.
Everyone seemed pretty damn jolly and well-fed, and to Eve’s mind out of place. Hadn’t she just left a sealed room where she’d spent considerable time picking her way through red tape and the land mines of diplomacy and palm greasing? Wasn’t she in the messy middle of a murder investigation involving covert organizations and state secrets?
Now it was burgers and beer in the twilight with birds and butterflies.
Her life, she decided, was just plain strange.
Leonardo spotted her first, and with a wide grin splitting his big caramel-colored face, glided over to her in what Eve supposed was his casual cookout-wear of shimmery white pants and a bright yellow shirt that crossed over his impressive chest in a skin-tight X. He bent down, his soft, curling hair brushing her cheek just before his lips.
“Mavis told me she’d been upset, and came to you. I wanted to thank you for being there for her, for giving her this time tonight to feel normal and steady again.”
“She just needed to spew.”
“I know.” Then he wrapped his big arms around Eve, pressing her hard against the rock wall of his chest. This time when he spoke, his voice was thick and shaky. “The baby moved.”