“Yeah.” She wasn’t quite sure what response was called for, and gingerly patted him somewhere on the miles of exposed skin of his back. “She said. So, ah, everything’s good now.”
“Everything’s perfect.” He heaved a sigh. “Perfect.” He drew back, and his gold eyes were gleaming. “Good friends, the woman I love with our child inside her. Life is so precious. I realize that now more than ever before. I know Dr. Mira needs to speak with you, but I just wanted to have a moment first.”
Drawing her close to his side he all but carried her to the table where Mira sat.
“Now don’t start.” He wagged a finger at Trina. “Dallas needs to speak with Dr. Mira, and to have a moment to relax.”
“I can bide my time.” Trina grinned, a wide magenta smile that sent a chill up Eve’s spine. “I have plans. Lots of plans.” She scooped up her plate and wandered off on six-inch platform sandals.
“Oh my God.”
With a look caught between sympathy and amusement, Mira patted the chair beside her. “Sit. What a gorgeous evening. I’m stealing an hour of it to be here, on what was supposed to be a quick professional call. Now I’m having this lovely glass of wine and this rather magnificent hamburger.”
“Did he actually cook it?” Eve glanced back at Roarke. “On that thing?”
“He did. I’m probably telling tales out of school, but he talked to my Dennis at some length about how to use the grill.” Mira took another bite. “He seems to have figured it out.”
“Nothing much gets over on Roarke. A professional call?” she prompted.
“Yes. I could’ve waited until tomorrow, but I thought you’d like to know as soon as possible that Reva Ewing passed her level-three.”
“Thanks. How’s she doing?”
“A little shaky and tired. Her mother took her straight home. I think she’s in good hands there.”
“Yeah, Caro’s another who always seems to know what she’s doing.”
“She’s afraid for her daughter, Eve. However efficient and steady she is on the surface, under it, she’s desperately worried. I could speak with her, or Roarke could. I’m sure he will. But the fact is you’re the one in authority. And you’re the one whose thoughts and opinions she’d respect most in this.”
“Did you come by to tell me about the level three, or to tell me I should talk to Caro?”
“Both.” Mira patted her hand. “Also, I looked over the results of her blood tests taken just after she was taken into custody.”
“There was nothing. No chemicals, illegal or otherwise. And the medicals found no trauma to indicate she’d been physically knocked out.”
“No.” Mira picked up her wine. “But we both know there are some anesthetics that can debilitate quickly, and dissipate without a discernible trace within two or three hours.”
“The sort of thing Homeland would have in its pantry.”
“I imagine so. When I had Reva under, I took her back through the steps and stages of that night. She recalled a movement to her left as she was facing the bed. She doesn’t remember this, not clearly, except under hypnosis. A movement,” Mira went on, “then a scent, something strong, bitter, and the taste of it in the back of her throat.”
“Probably sprayed her.” Eve looked over the gardens, but she wasn’t seeing the busy butterflies now, or hearing the insistent bird. She saw the candlelit bedroom, the bodies curled close together on bloody sheets. “Waited for her to come up, came in on her on her off-side, hit her with the spray. Set the rest of it up while she was out.”
“If so, it was organized thinking. Cold and organized. And still… much of what was done was overly dramatic-beyond the violence that shows the capability for brutality, there were added steps, complications that were unnecessary for the result we’re assuming was desired.”
“Because he was having fun with it.”
“Yes.” Pleased, Mira enjoyed her hamburger. “He was. Several misjudgments and flourishes-when simplicity would have served his purposes better-indicate to me that he gets caught up in the role he’s playing. Enjoying it, and perhaps wanting to prolong it.”
“Adding touches to a pretty tight and simple plan that unbalance the whole. What do they call it? Ad-libbing.”
“Very well put. You have organized thinking but impulsiveness as well. I doubt he was working alone. I also doubt that the one who conceived the core of the plan was the one to carry it out. Now I’m going to pass you to Morris so you can get the business over with and enjoy some of your evening.”
“It’s a little tough to enjoy anything when I know Trina has plans.” But Eve rose, walked over to Morris. “Got something for me?”
“Dallas!” Mavis popped up. “Did you know Morris played the sax?”
“The what?”
“Saxophone,” Morris said. “Tenor. It’s a musical instrument, Lieutenant.”
“I know what a saxophone is,” she muttered.
“He used to play with a band in college,” Mavis went on. “And sometimes they still get together for private gigs. They’re The Cadavers.”
“Of course they are.”
“We’re going to jam sometime, right?” Mavis asked Morris.
“Name the time, name the place.”
“Too mag to lag!” she danced off and into Leonardo’s arms.
“That’s a very happy young woman.”
“You wouldn’t’ve thought so if you’d seen her two hours ago.”
“Gestating ladies tend to swing. They’re entitled. Want a beer?”
“What the hell.” She snagged one from the cooler. “What’ve you got for me?”
“Nothing as wonderful as this cow patty. Chloe McCoy. No evidence of recent sexual activity. But… it would appear she’d expected some as she’d inserted protection. An over-the-counter product called Freedom. This coats the vaginal area with both spermicide and a lubricant, which protect against STDs and conception.”
“Yeah, I know what it is. You can use it up to twenty-four hours before you rock. When did she use it?”
“My best guess? An hour, possibly two pre-mortem. And she’d also ingested fifty milligrams of Sober-Up at approximately the same time.”
“Well now, isn’t that interesting?”
To show their unity on that point, he tapped his bottle of beer against hers. “At least one hour before she ingested the termination pills. And if those were purchased on the black market, someone has a very valuable source. They weren’t generic or clones or homemade. And, the kicker: They were dissolved in the wine before they were ingested.”
“So she protects herself against pregnancy or STD, sobers herself up, cleans her apartment, gets herself a sexy outfit, and does her face and hair. Then drops a couple of fatals in her wine and offs herself.” Eve took a long pull on the beer. “And you said you didn’t bring me anything as interesting as that burger.”
“You haven’t tasted the burger yet.”
“I’ll get to it. What’s the ruling on this matter by the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City?”
“Homicide, staged to look like self-termination. That girl didn’t knowingly eat those pills.”
“No, she didn’t.” And that made Chloe McCoy hers. “Termination pills require a prescription-after considerable testing and counseling. If she didn’t get them that way, and she didn’t, and they weren’t black-market, would you say that a strong possible source for meds of that type and potency would be a covert government organization?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
“Neither would I.” She pondered for a few minutes. “There’s something I’d like you to check out.”
When she was finished with Morris, Eve headed over to the grill. “I’ve got some new juice,” she said to Feeney, then found a plate shoved into her hand.
“Take a minute. There’s always time for meat.”